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inertial loyalty
Thursday, February 18 2010
Our friends Andrea and Susan came over today and took Gretchen away. They were carpooling down to the city for something animal-rights and/or vegan-related. I'm not into those scenes, but I've nevertheless become a pretty observant vegan. Today while Gretchen was gone, I ventured solo into town for the first time in at least a month. Normally on these errands, I'd stop in at a convenient pizza place for a non-vegan (though vegetarian) slice. Today, though, my stomach felt a little queasy at the idea and I realized that if I made myself step into that Uptown Kingston pizza joint, I'd just be doing it out of an inertial loyalty to the person I used to be. It seems a lot of human behaviors are really more about continuity than pleasure or duty. We like to acknowledge the people we used to be even when though those people are dead. Every time I wake up in the morning, I'm a reincarnation of the person I was the day before. But I'm not really him anymore. Over the years we can change a lot and even our memories, the things that convince us that we are essentially the same, can suffer from the telephone effect.
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