We support
DOD decision superiority.
That’s the logo for the defense information systems agency (DISA).
Don’t ask me how I know that.
Currently, I am wasting time thinking about things that I shouldn't be thinking on.
But I am wasting it efficiently.
It has got to do with something I read in one of the books Kris lent me:
On the whole, philanthropy seems sort of redundant-they're already giving seventy-hour weeks to the creation of new technology meant to empower the world. That's not enough? That said, one's job is still put to the old-fashioned halo test: You've got to be improving society, or what's the point?
But not everyone can design the Mac and liberate electrons. So a few tricks to passing the test have evolved over time. The first is the libertarian view: you believe that the vigorous pursuit of self-interest leads to the most efficient allocation of resources, which ensures continued development.
The second is related but far more twisted. It's the workaholic value system: nothing good comes easily, so if it's a terrific challenge, it must be good. By this self-referential logic, any project that is totally consuming is worthwhile. The corollary to this is that if you're not sure your work is contributing, you should work harder at it and soon it will.
It follows that perhaps one of the reasons people here work so hard is that they're not really sure how their little piece of the jigsaw puzzle fits into the big picture of a better society.
-The idea of self-referential logic is kind of scary to me. I always have the ability to make any choice I've decided on, good, bad, or otherwise, make sense to me, if I want to.
So the idea of bullshitting yourself to live with poor decisions isn't anything new. But when I factor in the really important issues of career-motivated action and an inner need to motivate something significant with my time on earth, it starts to get a little stickier.
Bad decisions always seem to stick with me over a cycle contained in month and year-measured chunks.
I don't mind this, really. The only thing you really learn from are mistakes. The perspective you gain from heaps and heaps of bad decisions.
But even after living a very bad, aggressively evil lifestyle, I still have ideals. I still have conceptions of things in its absolute perfection. So I do believe that a person can motivate an *ideal* lifestyle.
My concern now is that I somehow hinder the attainability of this by the really bad way I make sense of many ludicrous decisions with self-referential logic (many times I'll think about something, say to myself,"Well, I *feel* fine about it, so I must be fine").
Hmm.
I don't know what to base my decisions against as a measure of how good or bad they were.
God, opinions of my friends/family, personal perspective, things I’ve read in books.. it all seems very self referential.
So far, the only good, stable test of how good/bad a choice I've made is time.
...
Well great then. I'm screwed.