The biggest change from having children has been that I see the children inside grown up people now. I can see the impulsive emotions that drive things much more. Before, I could only really see my own emotions clearly, and I was able to justify my behaviour because it was the understandable outcome of my emotions. To exaggerate, everyone else seemed to be robots, and I would get upset when they seemed to be doing the wrong thing. Now everyone just looks like a bundle of emotions, and I can’t really blame or praise anyone in a serious, fundamental way.
The intellectual life is real, but only when far removed from immediate motivations. And even then, behind it lurks emotions. Moral philosophy in particular is probably a completely nonsensical idea from the perspective of a detached, alien/divine mind.
This is kind of like discovering the “fundamental attribution error”, where you attribute the actions of other people to their character and your own actions to circumstance (in this case, your emotions), but in a more internalized way.
