more on this theme | more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
How weakly human beings feel responsible for their indirect and distant effects! And how cruelly and exaggeratedly the closest effect that we exert pounces on us - the effect we see, for which our myopic vision is still just sharp enough!
Gist of Idea
Humans are vividly aware of short-term effects, and almost ignorant of the long-term ones
Source
Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 15[11])
Book Ref
Nietzsche,Friedrich: 'The Joyful Science, and 1881-82 fragments (v 6)', ed/tr. Del Caro,Adrian [Stanford 2023], p.478
A Reaction
This strikes me as both accurate and important, because consequentialist ethics is largely committed to judging by a very distorted image of their own objective.