Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just do whatever we wanted all of the time with no future consequences. Get as drunk as you want and party Saturday night and not feel awful Sunday morning, ah wouldn’t that be nice to go to church feeling one hundred percent in the morning. For the better or for the worse, our actions do have consequences to our future selves. Our natural instinct to indulge in partying, unprotected sex, too much food, etcetera… these will circle back around and bite you at some point or another. I believe that we disassociate our future selves from who we believe we are right now to an extent - this is a product of the ego. If I decide to over indulge in drinking tonight, I am consciously putting a burden on my future self; more importantly I am saving that burden for a future time, sacrificing a good time now for a bad time later. Maybe that was a good choice to make… or maybe not.
To what extent do we view our selves as a function of time? If we strictly view our self as only existing at point t on a timeline at any point in our life, we will make choices maybe not so advantageous to our future selves, because to them we cannot relate. If I disassociate from past and future versions of myself, I cannot feel in that moment how I would feel in the future, therefore decisions I make in the present are blind. The decisions are less blind per se, then they are susceptible to being regretted by your self in the future. As you might see, this creates an imbalance. Born from this imbalance in the self might be a seeding hatred of the self, the imbalance could manifest itself in a number of ways. This is the furthest on the spectrum one way, now for the other side. Let me now propose the idea of viewing yourself as all you ever will be, say years into the future. One’s self as they view it goes beyond the moment of time they are sitting in, they feel the effects of current actions. To best show the perspective switch between both views of self, read this analogy. One who views themselves only existing at one point in time, has motion through time, imagine there exists some literal timeline and the person is running through it like a race, from start to finish. Whereas in the second example, the individual is static, sitting there as the time line runs through them. In the latter, the individual does not change, their self is balanced. They understand that they will stay the same throughout all time. They see their actions as affecting themselves directly, not a future version of their self, because their self does not change over time. These were both extreme examples, but it does beg a question.
To what extent should we view our selves as a function of time? In some regard, we want to disassociate from future versions of ourselves, we want to not be able to relate to them. In the same words… we want to change, to grow, to evolve as people. If we accept that the future version of ourself is the same as our present, then we also accept that we will not grow. The price of balance in the moment is accepting your static present self as your everlasting self. There is a duality here, two forces, both with their respective pulls and pushes. The first, towards viewing yourself as passing through time, disconnected, disassociated from your future self has the pull because it incentives growth as a person. It is somewhat necessary and understandable to be unhappy with the way you exist as a person right now, and many people rely on this to encourage change. In the latter example, although we are content, we are static in growth.
To what extent do we view ourselves as other people? Empathy is one of the most important feelings we have as people, our ability to recognize and feel other people’s emotions. Just as there is a balance between how we view ourselves in time, there is a scale to which we view ourselves as and in others. Our world is so separated, politically, ideologically, but how different are we really? I believe that we all have a lot more in common than we do differences. Again, it is up to the individual how they want to think of themselves. Born out of seeing ones self as strictly an individual is the ego. Many narcissistic personalities come from this, only focusing on themselves, believing in their heart that they deserve more than everyone else, that they are literally better. Loosely I call this selfishness. This is viewing yourself as your ego, and strictly that. Conversely, you can view yourself first and foremost for the similarities you have with other people as opposed to the differences. Carl Jung said that there were three layers to the psyche. The conscious ego - the section of one’s psyche that comprises conscious thoughts, memories, and what the individual is aware of. The nature of the unconscious, existing conceptually below the conscious ego - a storehouse of repressed memories specific to the individual. Finally, the collective unconscious - the collective unconscious is similar to all humans, consisting of archetypes of human behavior, seen in symbols throughout biblical literature. The deeper we go through these ‘layers’ the further we stray from the ego, and the more the perspective shifts to similarities rather than differences. What I am concerned with, is how does a specific perspective on this scale between the similarities and differences affect decision making of the individual, and the outcomes of the collective.
If an individual is most concerned with the prosperity of their self, you might say that they are selfish. If an individual is most concerned with the prosperity of the collective, you might say that they are selfless. But the collective is composed of individuals, and the prosperity of the collective is measured somewhat as the sum of its individuals’ prosperities. Therefore, concerning yourself with the prosperity of the collective means not providing the collective with individual prosperity. So which one is really selfish - concerning oneself with their individual prosperity or the collective prosperity? They are both selfish and selfless, a paradox. So in what direction should we strive towards on the scale of individual prosperity to collective prosperity?
The dissolution of the ego leads to two things. Firstly, we start to think of ourselves as static moving through time, we accept future versions of ourselves as ourselves instead of disassociating from them. We start to view our actions as affecting our future selves directly, not disassociating from the consequences of our actions - not stowing away our emotions for a future self. Secondly, we start to look at ourselves as similar to other people versus different. Starting to view yourself as the collective rather than an individual in the collective. As we shift on the scale from having an ego to its dissolution, there is an effect on the prosperity of the collective system. We must have agency, and we must have adequate perspective - opposites.
One cannot act as the collective, the only way they can speak to others and make changes to the collective is from the individual. The objective function must exist at the level of the individual, and the individual must have the ability to process observations of the collective in order to make adequate decisions. In our own life it's hard to decide where exactly our perspective should be. Is the action more important than the understanding? To what value do you value understanding a problem over solving it. This balance is a universal one - from psychological to economic. Economic prosperity involves a balance between the individual’s prosperity and the collective’s. Take unregulated capitalism for an example, the prosperity of the individual is overvalued, as they do not have motivation to care for the prosperity of others. Take communism for another example, there is no motivation to produce, people are not motivated to produce goods and services they will not be adequately compensated for. There needs to be some intermediate balance between these two extremes, from that we get a free market economy with government regulations. These regulations ensure that people don’t unfairly take advantage of their employees - hire children for example. Whatever your economic political stance is, we can all agree that the prosperity of our economy relies on a balance created by market freedom and market regulation. To what extent these forces should be present is arguable, up for debate.
Traffic light sections are actually a great example of how this could play out in a system. The objective function for each agent exists on the level of the individual. The agent must find a policy consisting of a balance, a balance between empathy and greediness… if you want to call it that. I think it is helpful to take the perspective of the traffic light section, to feel what it might feel if it had feelings. Because agents, policies are identical; and one policy being greedy will punish the same policy function, I’m not completely sure if any intersection regulation measurement is needed in the objective function. I think that already exists inside the policy, the balance between cooperation and greedy action are a product of the self similar policy.