Resolutions & Vices
One of my New Year's resolutions is to read more. It's too easy to get home from work and turn on the TV, but it wastes a lot of the personal time I have, which is diminishing rapidly in fatherhood!
So I smiled when I saw this post from the Pessimists Archive, one of my favourite Substacks, talking about how the worries of yesteryear included the perils of reading in bed.
Image by The Pessimists Archive
It's pretty incredible how quickly cultural norms can evolve: how fast things that are "OK" can become "not OK" (e.g. non-politically correct comedy, smoking, and so on) and things that are "not OK" can become "OK" (e.g. reading in bed, driving a car faster than 20 miles per hour, and so on).
I wonder what I am doing today that will be shocking in 5, 10, 20-years time, and what I'm avoiding today that might turn out to actually be completely fine with the benefit of hindsight (cf Palmer Lucky's recent controversial comments on the potential net benefits of smoking as one interesting - if questionable - example).
The one thing that's for sure is that with the prevalence of smartphones, our future selves will never be able to forget or deny our 'vice'-ridden past!