The 'I'm important' identity

Sometimes I do something naughty. Like I’ll look at the overflowing rubbish and know that I haven’t been doing my fair share of taking it out in a long time. And I’ll look at it and it will look at me. And then I’ll look at the floor and scurry away.

Or maybe I’m in the middle of doing something and I know I should leave and if I don’t then I’m going to be late for whatever thing I’m supposed to be going to, and then I’ll notice that and it will notice me and then I will look at the floor and carry on doing whatever I was doing.

There’s two species of justification/ rationalisation that I can see. Actually maybe there’s just one. It’s but this is really important.

Like, I know it’s my turn to take out the rubbish but I’m in the middle of this other thing and I only came down to get coffee and I need to get back to this important thing.

An important part of this story is that this is only a temporary state of affairs. Like soon I will actually have capacity to/ be the kind of person that does take the rubbish out regularly. Maybe even more than regularly. In fact, the important thing that I’m in the middle of doing is somehow a necessary stepping stone to getting to that place.

Like, maybe it’s a piece of work that feels urgent. And I’m like ‘Well, I need to get this piece of work done that feels urgent, and only then will I be able to respond to my messages, which are also urgent but a lower priority. And after that I’ll be able to plan my day, which is also important but which can’t happen with the first two things hanging over me. And then when I plan my day I’ll be able to schedule some time to reflect on my responsibilities, and at that point I’ll be able to think about how I’m not meeting my responsibility of taking the trash out and do something about that.

I’ve been thinking about effective altruism in terms of the promises it makes, but another way is to think about it in terms of trades. What do I get and what do I receive.

And it seems to me that one thing that people get is an identity of being important.

Like, look man, the unfortunate truth is that there are lots of stakes and urgency and some charities are orders of magnitude more important than others and I happen to be one of the few people who are aware of that and that makes my time pretty valuable, and so although I don’t want to arrive late and keep you waiting, it’s just an unfortunate consequence of me making sure I get these really important things done.

Probably I was going to be late anyway, but this internal justification does a significantly better job at dampening the guiltshame.

So one thing that effective altruism can give people is a license for neglecting their mundane responsibilities. In the grand scheme of things, these mundane things just don’t matter much.

But of course this comes at a price - an expectation that one must do important things and be an important person. It’s plausible to me that this is actually a pretty acceptable cost in the short term for university students in particular. After all, the most important thing they can do now is think about their career, which is abstract and futury. But the responsibilities they are neglecting now are very concrete and real.

Maybe this means that effective altruism could be particularly appealing for people who are having the most difficulty with their mundane responsibilities, as acquiring the license to neglect has the most benefit for them.

Once I was having a conversation with my mum where she was saying something to the effect that I didn’t come and visit her enough. And I jokingly said something like ‘you should be grateful, I have a friend who’s optimised how he spends time with his family so that he only needs to do it twice a year now’.

My mum has brought this up again over the years, which irritated me. I’ve only recently begun to realise that that is actually how she feels, that I’m ‘optimising’ how I spent my time, and aiming to get away with the minimum I can with her.

And in a sense it seems true. I have consciously thought things like ‘oh I’ll go over this period as that will space it out enough such that I don’t have to see her in this period as well’

Having an identity of ‘I’m important’ helps with this. Like, sorry mum, I’d love to spend time with you but I’m really trying hard to make the world better and I’m busy with a lot of stuff around that that only I can do.

And it also seems like this provides an effective screen against noticing the underlying mundane difficulties. Like, oh, shit, actually what’s going on is I don’t feel intrinsically motivated to see her, and I don’t want to see her just out of guilt, but if I don’t see her then I do feel a lot of guilt.