“The Further Pledge: Voluntary Simplicity” by GeorgeBridgwater

Conscious Meaning

We share every moment with trillions of other conscious beings. Some are much like us, and others experience the world very differently. Creatures without a language to structure their thoughts, some who see broader spectrums of light or others who might experience the world in comparative slow motion. Each conscious moment immediately slips into the past largely unobserved and forgotten. They fall through time like snow to become frozen in the past. Always to have happened just as they did.

Each conscious moment is transient and one small part of a vast whole, so one could see any individual as meaningless and insignificant. But every conscious moment is imbued with meaning. Happiness that need not justify itself and pains that consume any desire but to escape them.

As individuals, we are not responsible for the state of the world. You did not choose to create disease, poverty and mental illness. You can’t control nature, and you can’t control the society around you.

Many schools of philosophy disagree exactly on what our moral obligations are to others. Given this disagreement, we could default to radical scepticism that all attempts to decide what the right way to [...]

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Outline:

(00:11) Conscious Meaning

(02:06) Ovarian lottery

(03:49) The Good we can do

(05:18) Creating Balance

(06:13) Voluntary Simplicity

(08:12) Setting Salary based on the Worlds average income

(10:12) Appendix: Let he who is without sin cast the first stone

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First published:
December 11th, 2025

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wd7XsSwqWCzd2uzhq/the-further-pledge-voluntary-simplicity

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.