I think this is an excellent way to phrase the experience of "programmer brain" and I will be blatantly ripping it off in the future. It's definitely an occupational hazard, and something we should be wary of, but it's only a small symptom of the larger technologized worldview that permeates Western thought (and via export, a lot of global thought). There are definite upsides to technology and programming, but: "we shape our tools, our tools shape us". I think we technologists think a lot about the former, and rarely about the latter (that's for those squishy humanities types!) -- at our own peril.
> at our own peril.
I always like to quote the frog in water. As the water is heated to boiling point, apparently the frog doesn't spring out. That is, in fact, an urban legend - the frog does spring out. However we are the frogs that don't spring out.
It is exceeding difficult to sacrifice yourself for someone you barely know even if you know it is for the betterment of everyone. Ants have 0 problem with this.
Finding a hobby that provides a little of that helped me. What I also noticed, having spent far too much time in front of a screen and programming, that I began to think of the world as a giant program that is really really buggy. Trying to fix those bugs got me down ... just gotta live with those bugs.