From Nate Soares’ Not Yet Gods:
Most people's "coulds" are broken.
People think that they "could have" avoided anxiety at that one party. They think they "could have" stopped playing Civilization at a reasonable hour and gone to bed. They think they "could have" stopped watching House of Cards between episodes. I'm not making a point about the illusion of free will, here — I think there is a sense in which we "could" do certain things that we do not in fact do. Rather, my point is that most people have a miscalibrated idea of what they could or couldn't do.
People berate themselves whenever their brain fails to be engraved with the cognitive patterns that they wish it was engraved with, as if they had complete dominion over their own thoughts, over the patterns laid down in their heads. As if they weren't a network of neurons. As if they could choose their preferred choice in spite of their cognitive patterns, rather than recognizing that choice is a cognitive pattern. As if they were supposed to choose their mind, rather than being their mind.
As if they were already gods.
We aren't gods.
Not yet.
We're still monkeys.
I was thinking about this article again, in part, because it uses the video game Civilization as an example and a new one just came out. I, of course, want to play it, but also want to avoid letting it take over my life.
To do that, I have to work with the monkey inside me, not fight against it:
Don't berate the monkey. Help it, whenever you can. It wants the same things you want — it's you. Assist, don't badger. Figure out how to make it easy to act as you wish. Retrain the monkey. Experiment. Try things.