Interesting, and I can think of my own examples easily enough. I would like it tested over time as a previous commenter mentioned. I wonder has science isolated the "sharing / good deed" segments of the brain, as they have for certain other moral decisions? (see here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnXmDaI8IEo , in the interests of your time skip ahead to 10:00 in to bypass Dawkin's introduction and subsequent thanks segment)
I've not seen this full cycle since late adolescence, and as Adelene mentioned sometimes the cycle short circuits. The short circuit for me usually occurs when I find the proto-idol empirically wrong on a thing or two, and we are all empirically wrong on a thing our two some of the time. Humanity is then re-endowed upon the proto-idol and I go on my way. Probably still admiring of the idol in some aspects, but not fully entranced and in a glamor anymore. He/she/it is human too.
My trivial impetus is driving.
Some background is needed first. I grew up in a large family in the far North whose members were prone to loud talk and occasional hysterical theater. Scenery chewing, worse than James Blish on a bad day hysterical theater. So as soon as I hit sixteen if I was thinking on something deeply and one of these bouts came upon someone I would immediately hop in the car and go driving so I could continue thinking without the large scale distraction.
So driving and thinking are somewhat paired with me by habit but as I've aged I don't like to drive anymore.
There are two things I do to encourage the habit - the first is to pick a new destination with some small reward for every "thinking road trip" (bookstore, candy store, etc.,) and the second is to occasionally random drive. This makes for interesting scenery that you usually haven't seen before, and sometimes even getting lost. How do you random drive? With coin flips at every intersection - left is heads, right is tails.
It's akrasia btw to do something dangerous like drive while deeply thinking, but... the long established habit's unbreakable in my case.
I hit enter too soon and forgot to proffer my astonishing AI revelation: "Phillip K. DIck is a prophet sent to you from an alternate universe. Every story is a parable meant to reveal your true condition, which I am not at liberty to discuss with you."
"If one system makes a mistake, two others will catch it."
Didn't Airbus just get the fail on that one off the coast of Brazil, or is the AI making me imagine that?
Millennial Challenges:
Millennial Challenges / Goals
What should we have accomplished by 3010?
/a long term iteration of the Shadow Question