What are the best changes (in terms of tractability and importance) that you think could take place in the journalism industry in the next 20 years, and how can people help make them happen?
What’s the biggest bottleneck on the positive impact of your work?
How did you make the choice to go freelance?
I like the reframing, but I don’t feel like it centrally addresses the problem of demandingness. With your example (and knowing a man was pinned under machinery) and seeing a drowning child, I imagine wanting to leap into action. If I dragged a child out of a pond, and I imagine being wet and cold but looking at the child and seeing that they’re okay, and maybe the parents are grateful and people around me are happy, I feel actively glad I jumped in the pond, and would feel similar regret if I passed by.
The unpleasant feeling of wondering if I can get away with doing less, with not looking, hoping too much won’t be asked of me, etc., is still triggered for me in your framing if I imagine that this scenario happens on every walk I went on, and every time I tried to take a walk in the woods I thought “oh geez, probably someone will be in trouble and I’ll have to help, and it will be the right thing, but can I ever just have a walk the woods in peace?” I imagine I would even gradually become inured to the situation, possibly feel impatience and not want to see the family’s panic, etc.
In other words, it’s mostly the near-omnipresence of opportunities to help that makes me feel the aversive demandingness reaction, and the temptation of self-deception. And I still feel unsure how to deal with that in a world where it does basically feel like people are drowning in every river, pond, and other body of water I see.