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I think we can better motivate ourselves to take interest in thinking abstractly about morality by understanding, on a much more intuitive, concrete level how it relates to sense of life. I think I've been able to do this and consequently have taken much greater interest in morality and introspection. I'll give a simple example. Last week, while rushing to a meeting, I reversed into a blind-spot pole in a high-rise parking lot. I'm going to tell you that had I moved out of home at age eighteen (instead of 26) I would likely have not reversed into that pole. Hear me out. Every moment you spend doing the wrong thing (morally) you accumulate and internalize an attitude, behavior and train yourself to mentally focus on the incorrect aspects of your perceptual and conceptual field (the standard being reality). I bought my car from my parents. It's a nice car. I did legitimately buy it (at a discounted price, but still a reasonable one). But did I really earn it? I did, but not in the fullest sense of the term. Had I been paying rent and trying to make my own way I probably wouldn't have bought that car. And if I did buy a car every accident would hurt so much more: a $300 repair bill would really hurt emotionally, because that's a lot of my time in work hours. It hurts less when I'm at home. So after your first accident your level of alertness and care for your car would drastically increase in the situation that your not at home vs. the one that you are. I was rushing to a meeting, yes; but, subconsciously my sense of priorities and what I choose to focus on is vastly different in both scenarios. Every moment I spent at home also helped develop my personality. When your sense of the value of money is determined by an income you make while living at home, your sense of the value of time is also affected. What I find interesting and worth my time would be much different had I moved out at eighteen. Without even knowing what it is I'd find interesting, I'd say it would be better because it's based on the requirements of reality: needing to earn a living, make your own way in the world, not pretending to feel a love that you don't feel. And with that latter point my approach and attitude to relationships would change and so would my friends. This is just one example. I can come up with so many more where I feel like I'm clearly seeing how small decisions compound throughout your life and result in the sum total of who you are. I pick-up on subtle feelings and can often connect them to a string of events in my life now. This is motivating. It makes you want to study ideas, to learn as much as you can and be as good as you can. Experiences, feelings, knowledge that you would have never even conceived of opens up to you when you step down this path.

So, if you like your politics, you can keep your politics. I’m not trying to take it away from you. I’m just saying that I wish good people wouldn’t pour their time and energy down that particular drain—I don’t think it benefits them. Why I Stopped Spending My Time on Politics… And Why I Think You Should Too Discuss.

I think you're right: everyday decisions have a cumulative long term effect on each person's personality. But, I think it's identifying the waves without acknowledging the current (or the current without acknowledging the moon?). There are certain personality traits which are less obvious or perhaps more difficult to change later on (if ever), ie. "the current," which will influence everything about those later everyday decisions, and a person's willingness and ability to change the effects of those decisions, ie. "the waves." You can see this in families with multiple children (for example). Some trends such as type of sense of humor, or work ethic, will be evident in each sibling forever, while other traits will pop up seemingly out of nowhere, or established traits change seemingly on a dime later in life. Even with the ongoing circumstances and examples from life more or less the same for each kid for long periods of time, their small decisions are much different because of broader personality trends they've edtablished along the way. (Or, were some established soon after birth? I don't know). There's an ongoing dynamic between established mentalities and the daily barrage of new ideas. You know that life experience is going to have some effect, but it's difficult to say just what effect. That's why some people crash their cars and blame the universe and whine about it for weeks, while others introspect and then notice a trend of valuing things more when you put in the hours to pay for them.

I agree with the article. I literally just read that article before logging on here. Focusing on politics and who to vote for to me is a gross mis-allocations of one's time and effort. You are better off focusing on your interests. I plan to donate to people spreading good ideas like reason and self-interest. Democracy is a farce. It's a show. Your vote is nearly worthless. If you do vote, you should vote for the person you actually want in, not the party you think 'has a chance' of winning. Your vote doesn't matter anyway. People actually have the fantastic delusion that their vote has more worth if they vote for one of the two major parties. I cannot change the world. I cannot save people from their own irrationality and self-destructive path. I only focus on what I can do for myself, and I treat government like the weather, something outside of my control that I have to deal with, plan for and accept. Suppose they held an election and nobody came.

Is this "inability" a bad thing? How would things be different if we could "factor out the process of observation"? What would this change?

It is immoral to initiate force for the reason given in the Ayn Rand quotes given earlier. If you want to act like an uncivilized aggressor who decides to deal in threats, force, fraud, etc., then any rational man has the option of treating you in kind -- i.e. we would thereby gain the choice of your premises and can use force to restrain you. So, from the purely egoistic stance, do you want to trade value for value in economic exchange, or do you want to be treated as a brute who, by right, could be forced to do anything by your own premises? It is not altruism that is at work in Rand's formulation, but rather egoism, that a rational man would not want to exchange punches in order to gain a value, because then he could have much greater force acted against him by right. Therefore to the rational man, force can only be used to deal with force, and that if the brute wants to use force as his means of "exchange" then the rest of us could comply at any time and take the brute out with force, either by restraining him or by killing him. If that is the terms under which you want to live, then tell us your real name and your address so we can send the police your way.