I’m sure everybody’s motives (including mine) can be cast in a selfish light, but what makes people interesting to me is self-illegibility. A poet is not necessarily more or less selfish than a banker, but it’s harder to penetrate to the underlying self-interest in writing poetry

Re: my earlier thread, one hypothesis I like is that it takes uncertainty to eat uncertainty (a variant of Ashby’s law that variety eats variety). So if the world seems level 11 uncertain to you, pursue motives that are at least level 11 uncertain to your best introspection.

If there’s an impedance mismatch between self-certainty and world-certainty, things get boring and/or dangerous. It’s not that “deep” people have “depths” but that they choose to get out of their depth by learning to want things they don’t understand their own motives for.

“Man’s reach should exceed his grasp else what’s a heaven for” etc etc

Alt version: a risk you take in the outer world is only actually bold to the extent it threatens to change who you are. Puts “bet only what you can afford to lose” in a new light.

If you only grow your external winnings (while perhaps appearing radical to mooks) but leave your self entirely untouched, protecting your psyche like crazy... you’re kinda boring. And possibly also susceptible to the Dark Side and Palpatine’s inane whispering sin your ear.