In our Mindpark book-club we still read Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahnemann, and recently we went thru the part where the book talks about “the tyranny of the remembering self“. This is a very interesting concept, that says that we as humans do a lot of things not because we want to do it, but because we like to remember that we have done it. This leads to both good and bad effects in our daily life.
One of the examples from the book is:
If you ask people that they would be able to go on a vacation whereever they want in the world, but afterwards all pictures or films they had taken would be destroyed, and they would take a pill that makes them forget the entire vacation, what would they spend on that vacation? It turns out most would not go at all, some not even if they where payed for it. An interesting visualization of the concept, that we do things not because we enjoy every moment of them, but because we want to enjoy remembering we did them. Which explains a lot of the decisions we make that can seem ‘illogical’.
Is social a deeper reason?
However, when I thought about it more, and paired it to my own experience of what drives me, I realized that maybe it is not a tyranny of the remembering self – it might rather be a tyranny of the social self. Kahnemann suggests we do most things because our remembering self gets to decide, rather then our experiencing self. But maybe it is rather our social self that decides – we want to tell others that we have done what we do.
Others could be either just a partner or close friend, as well as everybody – but I think in the age of the internet and social media, it shows that we do things because we want to be able to tell about it, and not just ‘for ourselves’. Of course, this also requires us to remember it. But I think the social aspect might be “deeper” reason behind it, then just the remembering aspect.
It might be that I am wrong, or it might that when Kahnemann played with the idea of the remembering self we just where not as surrounded by social-proof and sharing as we are now – but I think the recent years have revealed more insights into what really drives us humans. And one them might be this – that we do things not because we want to them, but because we like to tell others that we have done them.
I know that that often is the case for me at least, I am honest towards my own feelings and motivations.