There is a better way to understand why all kinds of calamities happen; it is a learning disability called time blindness. We ignore it at our peril. by Joel S. Hirschhorn
(libertarian)
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
A loss expected to happen next year looks smaller than that same loss happening next week. Worse yet, a loss or catastrophe that may happen (indeed, is highly likely to happen) decades away is essentially invisible, unthinkable or unworthy of attention now. In other words, humans suffer from an intrinsic thinking defect best described as time blindness. It is the inability to correctly foresee and take seriously long term consequences of current actions.
No wonder that people easily spend decades eating unhealthy foods or living a sedentary lifestyle, or both, without appreciating or internalizing the inevitable negative and serious health impacts, from heart disease to all kinds of cancers, for example.
No wonder that all kinds of technologies that offer immediate rewards or benefits are embraced while long term negative impacts are easily ignored. Maybe cell phones really do cause brain cancer. Maybe deep ocean drilling for oil will fail and cause exactly what we are now witnessing in the Gulf of Mexico from the BP fiasco.
But we like cell phones and we refuse to take the many actions to rid society of its addiction to petroleum and so we willingly accept our time blindness no matter how many experts and researchers try to warn us about the terrible long term impacts. In other words, near term benefits blind us to long term costs. As economists might say, those long term costs are heavily discounted.
It is not just that individuals are time blind, but that there is collective time blindness. It is so powerful that conventional institutions we think of as protecting people and society are impotent. That's how powerful time blindness is.
Worse yet, the really smart people know how to take advantage of mass time blindness. Think of business and corporations that create mass market products and technologies that seduce people because their negative consequences fall victim to deeply imbedded time blindness. Think of all the Ponzi schemes that have victimized so many people out of many billions of dollars. By the time that negative impacts occur it startles and amazes people as if they could not have been predicted. Wrong! In all cases of catastrophes and crises there is always a record of some people correctly forecasting them. But they are ignored. Why? Time blindness. That vision of an awful, deadly future becomes invisible because of our time blindness, or it merely is seen as fantasy, speculation or entertainment.
Want another example? Try the classic one of over population: Too many humans on planet Earth using too many resources. Those not falling prey to time blindness have been trying to warn humanity for a very long time that a lower birth rate and fewer people would actually result in high quality of life for people, with less social conflicts, wars and terrorism. Also think global warming or climate change. Though there are clear impacts now, major calamities will become future shocks because of so much time blindness.
We ignore time blindness at our peril. The real lesson of the BP oil disaster is far more significant than merely one technology or one incompetent and immoral company that wrecks havoc and pain on so many people as well as ruining so much of the natural environment. We need to spend a lot more time understanding intrinsic time blindness as a kind of mental disability, and how to teach people to avoid it. One person has been doing just that for decades. Check out the work of Jack Alpert at skil.org.
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While time blindness might apply to the effects that the oil spill is having on and will have on BPs financial standing, it doesn't describe the effect that the spill will have on millions of gulf coast residents and doesn't describe the effect it won't have on the rest of the world.
What we do that harms other people but doesn't affect us or even worse, causes us to gain advantage obviously is another major form of blindness. Most pollution that isn't accounted for financially, and that would be most all pollution, falls under this criterium. The emitter gains while others lose, yet nothing is accounted or compensated for. The auto is a good example. The internal combustion engine is at best, one third efficient. The other two thirds, someone breathes.
What affects others but doesn't affect us directly is for the most part not our concern. This is why many people could care less that millions of gallons of oil are gushing into the sea. They can't see it or feel it or even see it on their balance sheets or stock portfolios, so they don't care.
I don't think we can solve these basic instinctual reactions. Better to devise some way that the ability to cause great harm and injury doesn't occur in the first place. Eliminate the state corporate alliance and no one would be crazy enough to drill in the middle of the ocean, just as no one would be traveling to the moon or stockpiling ten thousands nuclear warheads.
Mr. Hirschhorn has apparently been too busy fretting about "inevitable negative and serious health impacts" of diets and (non)-exercise to notice that life expectancy continues to rise. As for the notion that humans suffer from "addiction to petroleum", see Rob Lyons' excellent rebuttal in http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/9029/ . Global over-population? As people become richer, they have fewer children, and in any case the world can accommodate many times its current human count. Global warming??? Has Mr. Hirschhorn completely failed to discern that this is a massive fraud?
I'm surprised that nolanchart.com, which is allegedly devoted to human freedom, is willing to publish such drivel.
Posted By: Jahfre Fire Eater
Date: July 9, 2010 05:49:38 PM
Hi Joel,
This article is just an example of the results of social engineering propaganda techniques employed by those who would like to rule over the rest of us. This is classic Alphaville stuff. Declare those who disagree with you to be defective in some way then go about eradicating that affliction through any means possible...gas chambers, for instance. The site you referenced is pure nonsense from top to bottom. It is a faith-based dogmatic religion driven by the fear of mankind's eventual extinction. If you want science on the subject and not this crackpot pulpit preaching BS you should read Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.
The fundamental problems with the religions like Jack Alpert's are that they rest on several blatantly false premises.
1. Curing "temporal blindness" (...Or insert your dogma's target affliction here) will cause everyone to agree about how consequences will proceed from current events.
2. That if people agree and know exactly what will happen in the future they will change their behavior today.
3. That if people agree and know exactly what will happen in the future and they refuse to change their behavior it is a moral duty to force them to do so.
I'm serious, if you watch the movie Alphaville, and then Land of the Blind, you will have to notice the connection between State oppression and Alpert's religion.
The whole affliction-based rationale for dismissing opposition should always be recognized as an attempt to oppress liberty through illogical reasoning from false premises. Those who spout this line of BS have the right to do so, certainly. I would never try to stop folks from believing in the religion of their choice. I just think such evangelizing should also be accompanied by a counterpoint that puts it into context. Like this.
-Jahfre Fire Eater
Posted By: Joel S. Hirschhorn
Date: July 10, 2010 08:41:57 AM
By now I am used to seeing utterly ignorant comments from what appear to be far right idiots. These by JdL and Jahfre Fire Eater fit that category, though I am sure these people have some redeeming qualities that offset inferior intellects. First, note that neither of them has addressed the major point of my article, namely the BP oil disaster. This usually means that the people are very pro-corporate jerks. As to human longevity, that of US citizens is really awful compared to a number of other countries and, even more importantly, the lifetimes of Americans are being extended by spending enormous sums of money on health care to offset terrible, unhealthy lifestyles. In other words, our culture supports many industries making unhealthy products as well as a huge health insurance and care sector. But pro-corporate people apparently like all this. While other nations get longer lives without spending such high sums on health care because their citizens live healthier lives to begin with.
As to Jack Alpert, with a Ph.D. from Stanford Univ.: He has researched time blindness for decades and is a true scholar; what he advocates is certainly not any kind of religion, but a carefully analyzed framework for improving human conditions on planet Earth by teaching people how to better examine and understand the longer term impacts of their behaviors and actions so that they prevent negative impacts on themselves and their society. But far right jerks do not apparently appreciate improving mental capabilities; if that should occur than far right idiots like Palin could not succeed.
Posted By: Bentree
Date: July 12, 2010 10:26:28 AM
"But far right jerks do not apparently appreciate improving mental capabilities; if that should occur than far right idiots like Palin could not succeed." Well I think that this statement pretty much covers Mr. Hirschhorns true progressive proclivities. I'm sorry Mr. Hirschhorn time cannot always cure true Progressive Intellectual Dysfunction,(PID), sometimes it is just too profound.
