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Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 15[11])
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.
Book Reference
Nietzsche,Friedrich: 'The Joyful Science, and 1881-82 fragments (v 6)', ed/tr. Del Caro,Adrian [Stanford 2023], p.478