Great article from Virginia Postrel in the NYTimes today about New Year’s resolutions:
In the early 1980’s, [Nobel economics laureate] Professor Schelling applied similar analysis to individuals’ internal struggles, seeking to develop what he called “strategic egonomics, consciously coping with one’s own behavior, especially one’s conscious behavior.”
The problem, he suggested, is that pretty much everybody suffers from a split personality. One self desperately wants to lose weight or quit smoking or run two miles a day or get up early to work. The other wants dessert or a cigarette, hates exercise or loves sleep.
Both selves are equally valid, and equally rational about pursuing their desires. But they do not exist at the same time.
[. . .]New Year’s resolutions help the earlier self overrule the later one by raising the cost of straying. “More is threatened by failure than just the substance of the resolution: one’s personal constitution is violated, confidence demoralized, and the whole year spoiled [. . .]”
So there! Read it all!
(I just read Postrel’s The Future and Its Enemies last week. It’s a heck of a book, when it comes to identifying the shifting alliances of political ideology and the perniciousness of technocrats. I recommend it highly.)