"Safe fail, not fail-safe." I get it. We will see how it works for me after the first defection. I think re-surrendering can work... I am using terms like "nanoreligion" and "microreligion" for a reason, I am actually borrowing techniques from there (ob. atheist or else this sentence would be formulated entirely differently) because they are excellent at mind-programming, even if in a dark-arts way. So perhaps re-surrendering takes the equivalent of a confession, remorse and penitence. This may also work as a reconstruction of the identity.
Incidentally, I never understood why even smart people of old religions (Aquinas) took justice e.g. punishment as balancing some cosmic ledger instead of something purely instrumental. Perhaps, at least on the penitence level, it acts as reconstructing an identity, if one submits voluntarily to punishment / penitence.
Maybe you're right. Confession does work just like that for Catholics. For example if you have a Catholic guy who normally does not masturbate (because it is against Church teaching), and then one day he lapses, it is common that in the following days he will find it very difficult to resist constant repetition of the behavior -- basically because his identity is ruined in the way that I said. But as soon as he goes to confession he can suddenly stop masturbating; he gets the identity back.
About the justice question, I think it is simply to justify the doc...
1. Ignoring goals, tabooing / identifying with methods - the opposite of Beeminder, even the opposite of SMART
Suppose I want to lose weight. Have a general idea of how much and how fast, and decide on the method. Then I ignore the goal and focus on the method. I ignore both the long-term and short-term goal (no Beeminder), ignore the measurement (SMART), ignore all the common wisdom here. The reason I ignore them that I want to avoid constantly haggling with myself, using the soda example, "Surely this one glass will not set me back much?" and instead I identify with the method, such as, simply shaping my identity as a person who does not drink soda, period. Instead of being conscious of the goal, just focus on this new identity. Without a goal in mind, there is nothing to haggle about and that makes it work. So there is not that kind of "Perhaps, this is a special case because X so half a glass should be allowed..." instead, it is just taboo, because it violates my new sense of self of a person who just does not do that. The beauty of this solution that there is nothing to haggle about. It is a harnessing of the cognitive dissonance and protect-your-identity mechanisms, if the new self is the sort of person who just does not drink soda then the only way to not get dissonant and to preserve the identity is to not do so. This, so far, seems to be surprisingly easy for me. It is similar to religious taboos, like people who don't eat X because then they could no longer consider themselves a pious follower of religion Y and it would shake their identity. You could say it is a custom-made nanoreligion each time. Being pious by not violating self-made taboos, preserving the identity of the pious person, without having keep the goal in consciousness.
2. Don't fight The Boss
Someone casually dropped on stopdrinking.reddit.com "It is not about fighting your urges, it is about stopping to fight your better judgement." Precisely. There is a Higher Self (say, Superego) telling me to live healthy and a Lower Self (Ego, Id) telling me to indulge in urges and cravings. Identify with Higher Self, and it is a constant fight with the Lower Self. Identify with the Lower Self and all I need to do is to surrender to the commands of the Higher Self. It does not feel good, but in this case it is okay to not feel good. I call the Higher Self The Bos. It is like "I really want to do X but The Boss does not let me do so. It makes me feel depressed. It is okay. Just accept the feeling and don't fight The Boss. You can never beat The Boss. Just surrender and accept your fate." It is also a nano, well, in this case a microreligion because it is more consistent than the one-off taboos of nanoreligions. Identifying with Lower Self is a bit of an "I am a sinner" thing, and this surrender to The Boss feels a bit religious, a bit close to the AA and 12-step methods.