Situational gravity
All of us are good at rationalizing. It helps us process the world, navigate our choices and live with ourselves.
But gravity doesn’t care if you got a lot of sleep last night or not. It’s still the same amount of force.
The pavement doesn’t care if you always wear a helmet on your bike, except just this one time when you didn’t, because you were having a video taken.
Melanoma doesn’t care that you always wear sun screen, except that one day when you were really busy and couldn’t go back to the house for it.
Outside forces don’t care about the situation, because they have no awareness or memory. They simply are.
Newton’s law doesn’t care that you were really distracted and that’s why you weren’t wearing a seatbelt, and the virus that infected your friend doesn’t care about why that person in the office decided not to wear a mask, either.
People are very good at stories. That’s our core technology. Everything else in the world, though, has no interest in them.