A recent Atlantic article on the way the mind goes about decision-making suggests that there really isn’t one governing body in control – not one sane mind deciding if the devil or the angel shoulder wins.

Says the author, Paul Bloom, “The idea is that, within each brain, different selves are continually popping in and out of existence. They have different desires, and they fight for control—bargaining with, deceiving, and plotting against one another.”

This is sometimes why on a Friday night you know it’s a bad idea to go home with ________, yet one week later you wake up in _________’s bed. Other times it’s because you drank too much.

Compounding that is the situational nature of memory – the fact that remembering something is easiest when you’re in the same state the original act occurred. “Someone who learned something while he was angry is better at remembering that information when he is angry again; the experience of one’s drunken self is more accessible to the drunk self than to the sober self.”

So sometimes if you’re mad about something when it’s time to decide whether to go home with ___________, you’ll be less likely to go. Other times you’ll just angry-drink and go home with _______ later.

One more learning, then the pay-off.

“Sometimes one self can predict that it will later be dominated by another self, and it can act to block the crossing—an act known as self-binding…Self-binding means that the dominant self schemes against the person it might potentially become… Ulysses wanted to hear the song of the sirens, but he knew it would compel him to walk off the boat and into the sea. So he had his sailors tie him to the mast.”

So we can use our memory to booby-trap the self we predict will vie for power grown-up Goonies style

We do this all the time – put people in charge of us before a night out so we don’t make-out at the bar or cut up credit cards so we stop shopping.

But now – on account of the two premises above – people are buy self-binding technology applications for every-day use. Wrote Bloom, “As I write this article, I’m using a program that disables my network connections for a selected amount of time and does not allow me to switch them back on, thereby forcing me to actually write instead of checking my e-mail or reading blogs.”

This is good. We can do this — develop a variety of weakness-based programs that force maturity through creative self-binding. Then we’ll make Facebook applications for them and we’ll all become responsible adults with healthy savings accounts.

I’d like to suggest the following preliminary options:

• An online system where you register yourself and an appropriate dollar limit with any number of participating retail stores. Store security escorts you out the moment you attempt to make a transaction over the amount you’ve predetermined in your registration information. $40 at H&M, $100 at J. Crew, $19.99 at Payless.
• A gchat bank account function that takes one dollar from your checking account and puts it in a un-touchable savings account every time you gchat a person on your black list of contacts. Suggested use: Guys you cannot get over. Girls you tend to fight with on online. The drug dealer you correspond with via gchat.
• A text message setting whereby when you text an individual in your pre-determined black list it automatically texts that same message to the last four people you’ve called. So Mom, Dad, Work, and New Hong Kong Chinese will all know that you’ll be “in bed waiting 4 u in 15 mins”.
• A refrigerator that locks after 2am.

Other suggestions?