I would add to your list: choose an appropriate community.
If I wanted to stop/start eating animals, I think the single most effective thing I could do would be to start hanging out in a community of vegetarians/omnivores. (Especially if I considered it the moral/prudent thing to do, though it would work about as well either way.)
Similarly, my social circle is at this point largely polyamorous. My own relationship is not, essentially because neither I nor my husband have any particular interest in inviting a third person into it—we barely manage to find adequate time and energy to maintain one healthy relationship! -- but the existence of a social norm supporting it has certainly changed how easy it would be to do so: if we wanted to start seeing other people, it would be no more complicated than simply mentioning the fact to our friends, and the social reaction would be roughly on a par with when we got married.
That said, this approach suffers from the “you can’t change your behavior once you arrive on the scene” problem in a big way.
It was a reference to the original post; the story about Josh Steiber. What I mean is, if I choose a community in order to reinforce a lifestyle, I make it more difficult to extract myself from that lifestyle if I later choose my mind. It’s a powerful solution, but it’s not a flexible one.
Nice.
I would add to your list: choose an appropriate community.
If I wanted to stop/start eating animals, I think the single most effective thing I could do would be to start hanging out in a community of vegetarians/omnivores. (Especially if I considered it the moral/prudent thing to do, though it would work about as well either way.)
Similarly, my social circle is at this point largely polyamorous. My own relationship is not, essentially because neither I nor my husband have any particular interest in inviting a third person into it—we barely manage to find adequate time and energy to maintain one healthy relationship! -- but the existence of a social norm supporting it has certainly changed how easy it would be to do so: if we wanted to start seeing other people, it would be no more complicated than simply mentioning the fact to our friends, and the social reaction would be roughly on a par with when we got married.
That said, this approach suffers from the “you can’t change your behavior once you arrive on the scene” problem in a big way.
Yep, I was going to suggest this.
What does this mean?
It was a reference to the original post; the story about Josh Steiber. What I mean is, if I choose a community in order to reinforce a lifestyle, I make it more difficult to extract myself from that lifestyle if I later choose my mind. It’s a powerful solution, but it’s not a flexible one.