Thanks for recommending a concrete change in behavior here!
I also appreciate the discussion of your emotional engagement / other EAs’ possible emotional engagement with cause prioritization—my EA emotional life is complicated, I’m guessing others have a different set of feelings and struggles, and this kind of post seems like a good direction for understanding and supporting one another.
ETA: personally, it feels correct when the opportunity arises to emotionally remind myself of the gravity of the ER-triage-like decisions that humans have to make when allocating resources. I can do this by celebrating wins (e.g. donations / grants others make, actual outcomes) as well as by thinking about how far we have to go in most areas. It’s slightly scary, but makes me more confident that I’m even-handedly examining the world and its problems to the best of my abilities and making the best calls I can, and I hope it keeps my ability to switch cause areas healthy. I’d guess this works for me partially because those emotions don’t interfere with my ability to be happy / productive, and I expect there are people whose feelings work differently and who shouldn’t regularly dwell on that kind of thing :)
Thanks for recommending a concrete change in behavior here!
I also appreciate the discussion of your emotional engagement / other EAs’ possible emotional engagement with cause prioritization—my EA emotional life is complicated, I’m guessing others have a different set of feelings and struggles, and this kind of post seems like a good direction for understanding and supporting one another.
ETA: personally, it feels correct when the opportunity arises to emotionally remind myself of the gravity of the ER-triage-like decisions that humans have to make when allocating resources. I can do this by celebrating wins (e.g. donations / grants others make, actual outcomes) as well as by thinking about how far we have to go in most areas. It’s slightly scary, but makes me more confident that I’m even-handedly examining the world and its problems to the best of my abilities and making the best calls I can, and I hope it keeps my ability to switch cause areas healthy. I’d guess this works for me partially because those emotions don’t interfere with my ability to be happy / productive, and I expect there are people whose feelings work differently and who shouldn’t regularly dwell on that kind of thing :)