This is just natural dialectic logic at work. Any move has to arise in the context of the counter move being possible. If you turn left, then you could have turned right. And now the agony of that counterfactuality has become apparent to you.

To make a choice is to move towards some goal, but then leave behind everything else that lies in the other direction. And yet you must move in some positive direction or else there is only a state of undifferentiated confusion. Which is of course worse.

If you can strike out one way, that also reveals the other way you could have gone. So there is at least the possible now of making a return. Except to the degree that irreversible changes have been made.

A smashed mirror is difficult to glue back together. The Second Law of Thermodynamics applies also to life.

So choices are necessarily counterfactual. But also frictional. To turn left or right might have the same cost. But to reverse that choice now adds a cost.

This would seem to be what would give pause to your thoughts. You can always have done the other thing. But you also can’t wind back time. And that makes life complicated. So full of choices. But also then so full of this kind of second guessing. The costs of living with the frictional consequences.

I'm not sure that is enough to understand what I mean. — Red Sky

An example might help.

Sometimes I feel unsure of myself, not confidence wise but more characteristically.
For example I would be decisive in something by nature because of my thoughts, but through my same reasoning I would be careless or hesitant in others.
I'm not sure that is enough to understand what I mean. To describe it without personal example, characteristics or beliefs of mine would lead to two different opposing outcomes.
Like if I wanted to be brave in the face of danger, I would become a coward in the face of risk.
Both sides would be true, at least I think so.
I feel like every time I would try to reach out to achieve something, I would be leaving a shadow behind. Not that this has become much of a problem in my life, but I wanted the opinions of others. I wanted to explore this idea. — Red Sky

This is vague, An example would be useful. Aren’t many people ambivalent and tentative in their approaches and interactions? Rather than being dualistic creatures, we seem to operate on a continuum informed by how brave or safe we feel to take action. And some of us are less timid or more foolhardy than others. What I’ve noticed is that many younger people these days seem to experience considerable anxiety and struggle to make decisions, and as a result, are often caught up in endless “what ifs.”

What I’ve noticed is that many younger people these days seem to experience considerable anxiety and struggle to make decisions, and as a result, are often caught up in endless “what ifs.” — Tom Storm

Too many rewards bring with it the logical corollary of too many risks. If you can win, you could also lose.

So the question is whether risk and reward are being pragmatically balanced in the mental arithmetic of life.

The boomer generation was probably irrationally optimistic. What could go wrong? The current generation – probably more rationally now that they must live in the world the boomer's made – might be wondering, well, what could possibly go right? :grin:

The boomer generation was probably irrationally optimistic. What could go wrong? The current generation – probably more rationally now that they must live in the world the boomer's made – might be wondering, well, what could possibly go right? — apokrisis

Nice. That's a good line.

What worries me is that the view that everything is hopeless is so useful to certain politicians and corporate interests who would like to rule without the rule of law. If too many people give up, we leave the world to them.

What worries me is that the view that everything is hopeless is so useful to certain politicians and corporate interests who would like to rule without the rule of law. — Tom Storm

What worries me is that the urge to fight injustice moves out of the real world and into the realm of social media.

It was easy to be the young and angry standing against "the establishment". A lot of social change happened as a result of getting out in the streets with placards. And once the rational case against injustice had been made, the establishment relatively smoothly got behind a more progressive agenda. A positive democratic feedback loop was created. While also remaining in a real world of money, work and wars. A progressive agenda could be mounted across the board – but one that also still encountered the conservative agenda as the other it needed to work with.

Hippies got families and careers. Wherever they landed politically became the new collective norm.

But what happens instead when the world of work, money and wars becomes detached from this political process and all the youthful energy can only focus on identity politics as where the changes can be made – if you can organise this new supposedly democratic space of social media through cancel culture.

The millennials at least looked to the internet for its promise of social entrepreneurship. The chance to promote good causes that scaled. A way to fix the whole planet because any individual could make a big difference with a clever idea.

But the internet moved on. What was a medium for promoting social change became an algorithmic echo chamber that simply promoted polarised conservatism. Two fixed ideologies in mortal contest.

The autocratically minded political and corporate interests didn't have to steal anything away. They simply had to have the brazen gall to step confidently into the resulting power vacuum.

People haven't given up so much as they got homogenised. They lost their individualism to identity politics. The loss of democratic liberties is following along as no one is minding the shop.

Yeah, I think those are fairly established criticisms. I don’t have any insights on social media since I’m not on any myself and haven’t seen much of it; this is my only forum.

But I do know a lot of young people, as many I work with are between 22 and 32. For the most part, they seem smarter, more caring, and better organised than me or my friends ever were at that age. Perhaps in part because the cost of living is so much higher than it was when I was young. Many of them are happy to attend street marches and also letterbox and try to reach others to make change. Anxiety is a big issue perhaps because there are too many competing problems. And everyone says they are dealing with trauma. I'm not sure I see all that much bubble phenomena. I see that more from hermetically sealed older people who, perhaps, have never evolved past the 1970's and seem incapable of seeing past familiar patterns and prejudices. I live in my bubble as a white, middle-aged guy in a prosperous city, working in the same industry for the past 30 years.

This is vague, An example would be useful. Aren’t many people ambivalent and tentative in their approaches and interactions? — Tom Storm

An example of this would probably be a time when I wanted to become smarter, and through some manner of my own mindset I would become a bit smarter. However then I would become more stupid in some other area. Like I wanted to become better at math, then I became worse at English.
I know that every choice means not choosing something as well. However what I am thinking about is why the thing I lost was coming from something I wanted to get better at.

Like I wanted to become better at math, then I became worse at English.
I know that every choice means not choosing something as well. However what I am thinking about is why the thing I lost was coming from something I wanted to get better at. — Red Sky

That helps a bit. I’ve never found this to be the case. If you’re so bad at maths that you need to devote most of your time to it, you might end up failing three other subjects. Does this then become a trinity rather than a duality?

Seeing life as a dualism seems too simple and is a pretty well worn trope in pop culture. In my experience, most situations don’t fall into two clear categories but exist along a range of possibilities. It’s often, it seems to me, more apropos to think in terms of degrees or continuums rather than strict opposites.