Piracy and Commitment
This post is loosely related to On Piracy: A Reply to Herman. No counterpoints or anything. It's just some thoughts that rose up when I saw piracy is mentioned. This post is not really about piracy. It's about a lack of commitment. Again, I am not proposing a universal truth right now. I just think that this may apply to some people. Me, at least.
Piracy made me think of a lack of commitment.
When you pirate stuff, that book's, song's, or game's value essentially becomes zero.
It's not a bad thing. Free stuff is always great!
When everything is for free, you can have everything.
But as humans, we are ill-designed for more than one thing at a time.
So when we are faced with so many choices, we freeze up aka "paralysis by analysis".
We could not make a choice. Like an ass1.
So in the end, after pirating so much, we may end up doing something else, something worse, instead of actually reading the books, listening to the songs, or playing the games that we pirated.
I am just talking for myself. I have been having trouble since I started working on how to spend the evening. I can lie in bed resting, I can write a blog post (about my predicament in the evening), I can read my current book and around 20 that are next in the queue (for now), I can read the articles I save in my Readwise Reader, I can play some great games (including AAA titles). In the end, what do I usually do? Almost always something like reading whatever scrap manga online (because I have read most great ones), or playing some gacha games. It's not that I don't enjoy them, it's that I am aware that I am doing activities that are way less meangingful and mindful than I possibly can do.
When money is not the problem, we see the currency we truly pay: time and attention, or commitment. To commit is to choose just one and let go of the others, and be fine with it. And I have trouble doing that right now. Big success in life is often built up via a series of smaller success, each one qualifying you a chance for the next one, until the very big one at the end. I am scared of going down the wrong path. There are many things I'd rather do in the evenings. Doing or learning some new programming projects. Learning Japanese. Writing for my dusted blog. Trying some games with actually good stories, like Persona. But I am scared of actually making a choice. I may enjoy a good time, but I may also end up not good enough at work in the long run. I may get better with programming, but I will delay the wish to be able to read Japanese or actually have a blog. I don't want to make any choice, I don't want to think anymore, I indulge in mindless craps. Online free games, some B-rated mangas, an anonymous Discord server for toxic male gamers.
In the end, what saves Buridan's ass2 is randomness - someone coincidentally passing by gives the ass a kick, so now it's closer to the hay or the water and can actually takes care of one thing before the other. Whatever order is good enough. And that might save my ass too. I stop debating with 18 versions of myself what I should do right now. I just randomly pick an item from the list and try doing it. That first item was "writing a blog post". Just nice when I have some trouble to write about. Hence, here we are.
Learning "ass" can mean "donkey" makes me come up with all kinds of puns.↩