The Mental Pyramid

The discussion of the Mental Pyramid is very enlightening, too.  It attempts to explain why people do things that are so obviously wrong by positing that an initial decision made long ago, a decision at the time that seemed so ambiguous and inconsequential as to be unimportant, can slowly snowball into such a huge disaster.

The perfect example is the gambler who loses $20,000 after vowing to stick within a $2000 limit.  Before he sat down at the table he assured himself that he wouldn't lose a penny over $2000.  The catastrophe isn't the last $500 he loses - it's the first $50 after the $2000 limit is researched.  Everything unfolds so slowly and so incrementally that it becomes more palatable, more reasonable.  When you see a politician caught with a prostitute it's likely that he didn't break this law his first day in office - he got away with little transgressions which became medium-sized transgressions and - suddenly! - there's his picture on the Internet in a hotel room with someone he shouldn't be with.

So back to my favorite aphorism: "Take care of the small stuff and it's all small stuff."  This is why I try to stick rigorously to the core principles that are at the heart of my make-up.  I fail every day, of course, but I strive for the goal of perfection.  Treat the coffee shop barista like a princess and I don't have to worry about embezzling a million dollars.  

The Mental Pyramid

When the person at the top of the pyramid is uncertain, when there are benefits and costs for both choices, then he will feel a particular urgency to justify the choice made.  But by the time the person is at the bottom of the pyramid, ambivalence will have morphed into certainty, and he will be miles away from anyone who took a different route.   The first steps along the path are morally ambiguous, and the right decision is not always clear.  We make an early, apparently inconsequential decision, and then we justify it to reduce the ambiguity of the choice.  This starts a process of entrapment - action, justification, further action - that increases our intensity and commitment and may end up taking us far from our original intentions or principles.