Most people know they’ve gone too far when they break something that has a clear and undeniable negative impact on them, by which point it’s often too late. If one wants to avoid going-too-far as much as possible, step one is to realize that you, by yourself, can’t reliably stop yourself from going-too-far or even realize that you have gone too far. Step Two is to re­alize that you can’t stop going-too-far with self-improvement. You can’t logic yourself or research yourself or willpower yourself into not-going-too-far. What’s dangerously seductive about those tools is that, often, they do help—a little. And that can mislead you into believing that if you just ap­ply them a bit harder—just an ounce more willpower—you’ll fix the prob­lem. The problem is, you’re a primate with evolved mental limitations, bias­es, ego issues, and an impulse to con­serve energy, including mental en­ergy. Prejudices, biases, algorithms, and blindly trusting authority figures, while at times problematic, often helped people survive while running on autopilot. If one insists that he is above all that, he is bound to make things worse for himself, not better. The same is true for not realising as to “how much is too much”.

When individuals learn to overcome this tendency of ‘going too far’ in pur­suit of human ambitions, then the so­ciety and the governments can be ex­pected to set the well-defined limits and boundaries that should make the governance more transparent, hon­est, efficient, public serving and wel­fare oriented than self-aggrandize­ment. It........

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