Epimetheus

Epimetheus is a Titan in Greek mythology. Brother of Prometheus, his name translates to hindsight. The Titan god of afterthought, the father of excuses. He is credited with brining the world our knowledge of dependency on each other in terms of sharing, caring, meeting, dwelling and loving.

Psychologist Daniel Kahneman talks about their being two selves. The experiencing self and the remembering self.

The experiencing self is you right now, a three second window of what you feel and what you think.

The remembering self is the part of you that tells the story of your life based on the memories that it keeps from your experiencing self. But your remembering self is like Michael Bay. Your remembering self is made up of the big events, big change and moments. Your remembering self is made up of stories.

The flaw that Kahneman points out here is that the remembering self is often in control when we decide what we do with our lives.

“We don’t choose between experiences, we choose between memories of experiences.

Even when we think about the future, we don’t think of our future normally as experiences. We think of our future as anticipated memories.”

We optimize for remembering but we spend so much less time remembering than we do experiencing.

Say you take a trip around the world. You spend 80 days experiencing it and you spend a total of a day or two in the rest of your life remembering it.

Technology has grown in a way that it often sits between the experiencing self and the remembering self. A lot of little moments that would not have been remembered. Tweets capturing moments. Thousands of photos stored in a pocket at all times. Years and years of text message conversations. Or a series of half-told stories about failed relationships.

Dependancy: An Afterthought