If only gay sex caused global warming
sorry if you're seeing this twice... i put it up on myspace as well. it's well-written, entertaining, and a good palate-cleanser after primal_sanshin's news max posts >_O enjoy!
From the Los Angeles Times
By Daniel Gilbert
Daniel Gilbert is a professor of psychology at Harvard University and the
author of "Stumbling on Happiness," published in May by Knopf.
July 2, 2006
NO ONE seems to care about the upcoming attack on the World Trade Center
site. Why? Because it won't involve villains with box cutters. Instead, it
will involve melting ice sheets that swell the oceans and turn that
particular block of lower Manhattan into an aquarium.
The odds of this happening in the next few decades are better than the
odds that a disgruntled Saudi will sneak onto an airplane and detonate a
shoe bomb. And yet our government will spend billions of dollars this year
to prevent global terrorism and * well, essentially nothing to prevent
global warming.
Why are we less worried about the more likely disaster? Because the human
brain evolved to respond to threats that have four features * features
that terrorism has and that global warming lacks.
First, global warming lacks a mustache. No, really. We are social mammals
whose brains are highly specialized for thinking about others.
Understanding what others are up to * what they know and want, what they
are doing and planning * has been so crucial to the survival of our
species that our brains have developed an obsession with all things human.
We think about people and their intentions; talk about them; look for and
remember them.
That's why we worry more about anthrax (with an annual death toll of
roughly zero) than influenza (with an annual death toll of a
quarter-million to a half-million people). Influenza is a natural
accident, anthrax is an intentional action, and the smallest action
captures our attention in a way that the largest accident doesn't. If two
airplanes had been hit by lightning and crashed into a New York
skyscraper, few of us would be able to name the date on which it happened.
Global warming isn't trying to kill us, and that's a shame. If climate
change had been visited on us by a brutal dictator or an evil empire, the
war on warming would be this nation's top priority.
The second reason why global warming doesn't put our brains on orange
alert is that it doesn't violate our moral sensibilities. It doesn't cause
our blood to boil (at least not figuratively) because it doesn't force us
to entertain thoughts that we find indecent, impious or repulsive. When
people feel insulted or disgusted, they generally do something about it,
such as whacking each other over the head, or voting. Moral emotions are
the brain's call to action.
Although all human societies have moral rules about food and sex, none has
a moral rule about atmospheric chemistry. And so we are outraged about
every breach of protocol except Kyoto. Yes, global warming is bad, but it
doesn't make us feel nauseated or angry or disgraced, and thus we don't
feel compelled to rail against it as we do against other momentous threats
to our species, such as flag burning. The fact is that if climate change
were caused by gay sex, or by the practice of eating kittens, millions of
protesters would be massing in the streets.
The third reason why global warming doesn't trigger our concern is that we
see it as a threat to our futures * not our afternoons. Like all animals,
people are quick to respond to clear and present danger, which is why it
takes us just a few milliseconds to duck when a wayward baseball comes
speeding toward our eyes.
The brain is a beautifully engineered get-out-of-the-way machine that
constantly scans the environment for things out of whose way it should
right now get. That's what brains did for several hundred million years *
and then, just a few million years ago, the mammalian brain learned a new
trick: to predict the timing and location of dangers before they actually
happened.
Our ability to duck that which is not yet coming is one of the brain's
most stunning innovations, and we wouldn't have dental floss or 401(k)
plans without it. But this innovation is in the early stages of
development. The application that allows us to respond to visible
baseballs is ancient and reliable, but the add-on utility that allows us
to respond to threats that loom in an unseen future is still in beta
testing.
We haven't quite gotten the knack of treating the future like the present
it will soon become because we've only been practicing for a few million
years. If global warming took out an eye every now and then, OSHA would
regulate it into nonexistence.
There is a fourth reason why we just can't seem to get worked up about
global warming. The human brain is exquisitely sensitive to changes in
light, sound, temperature, pressure, size, weight and just about
everything else. But if the rate of change is slow enough, the change will
go undetected. If the low hum of a refrigerator were to increase in pitch
over the course of several weeks, the appliance could be singing soprano
by the end of the month and no one would be the wiser.
Because we barely notice changes that happen gradually, we accept gradual
changes that we would reject if they happened abruptly. The density of Los
Angeles traffic has increased dramatically in the last few decades, and
citizens have tolerated it with only the obligatory grumbling. Had that
change happened on a single day last summer, Angelenos would have shut
down the city, called in the National Guard and lynched every politician
they could get their hands on.
Environmentalists despair that global warming is happening so fast. In
fact, it isn't happening fast enough. If President Bush could jump in a
time machine and experience a single day in 2056, he'd return to the
present shocked and awed, prepared to do anything it took to solve the
problem..
The human brain is a remarkable device that was designed to rise to
special occasions. We are the progeny of people who hunted and gathered,
whose lives were brief and whose greatest threat was a man with a stick.
When terrorists attack, we respond with crushing force and firm resolve,
just as our ancestors would have. Global warming is a deadly threat
precisely because it fails to trip the brain's alarm, leaving us soundly
asleep in a burning bed.
It remains to be seen whether we can learn to rise to new occasions.
From the Los Angeles Times
By Daniel Gilbert
Daniel Gilbert is a professor of psychology at Harvard University and the
author of "Stumbling on Happiness," published in May by Knopf.
July 2, 2006
NO ONE seems to care about the upcoming attack on the World Trade Center
site. Why? Because it won't involve villains with box cutters. Instead, it
will involve melting ice sheets that swell the oceans and turn that
particular block of lower Manhattan into an aquarium.
The odds of this happening in the next few decades are better than the
odds that a disgruntled Saudi will sneak onto an airplane and detonate a
shoe bomb. And yet our government will spend billions of dollars this year
to prevent global terrorism and * well, essentially nothing to prevent
global warming.
Why are we less worried about the more likely disaster? Because the human
brain evolved to respond to threats that have four features * features
that terrorism has and that global warming lacks.
First, global warming lacks a mustache. No, really. We are social mammals
whose brains are highly specialized for thinking about others.
Understanding what others are up to * what they know and want, what they
are doing and planning * has been so crucial to the survival of our
species that our brains have developed an obsession with all things human.
We think about people and their intentions; talk about them; look for and
remember them.
That's why we worry more about anthrax (with an annual death toll of
roughly zero) than influenza (with an annual death toll of a
quarter-million to a half-million people). Influenza is a natural
accident, anthrax is an intentional action, and the smallest action
captures our attention in a way that the largest accident doesn't. If two
airplanes had been hit by lightning and crashed into a New York
skyscraper, few of us would be able to name the date on which it happened.
Global warming isn't trying to kill us, and that's a shame. If climate
change had been visited on us by a brutal dictator or an evil empire, the
war on warming would be this nation's top priority.
The second reason why global warming doesn't put our brains on orange
alert is that it doesn't violate our moral sensibilities. It doesn't cause
our blood to boil (at least not figuratively) because it doesn't force us
to entertain thoughts that we find indecent, impious or repulsive. When
people feel insulted or disgusted, they generally do something about it,
such as whacking each other over the head, or voting. Moral emotions are
the brain's call to action.
Although all human societies have moral rules about food and sex, none has
a moral rule about atmospheric chemistry. And so we are outraged about
every breach of protocol except Kyoto. Yes, global warming is bad, but it
doesn't make us feel nauseated or angry or disgraced, and thus we don't
feel compelled to rail against it as we do against other momentous threats
to our species, such as flag burning. The fact is that if climate change
were caused by gay sex, or by the practice of eating kittens, millions of
protesters would be massing in the streets.
The third reason why global warming doesn't trigger our concern is that we
see it as a threat to our futures * not our afternoons. Like all animals,
people are quick to respond to clear and present danger, which is why it
takes us just a few milliseconds to duck when a wayward baseball comes
speeding toward our eyes.
The brain is a beautifully engineered get-out-of-the-way machine that
constantly scans the environment for things out of whose way it should
right now get. That's what brains did for several hundred million years *
and then, just a few million years ago, the mammalian brain learned a new
trick: to predict the timing and location of dangers before they actually
happened.
Our ability to duck that which is not yet coming is one of the brain's
most stunning innovations, and we wouldn't have dental floss or 401(k)
plans without it. But this innovation is in the early stages of
development. The application that allows us to respond to visible
baseballs is ancient and reliable, but the add-on utility that allows us
to respond to threats that loom in an unseen future is still in beta
testing.
We haven't quite gotten the knack of treating the future like the present
it will soon become because we've only been practicing for a few million
years. If global warming took out an eye every now and then, OSHA would
regulate it into nonexistence.
There is a fourth reason why we just can't seem to get worked up about
global warming. The human brain is exquisitely sensitive to changes in
light, sound, temperature, pressure, size, weight and just about
everything else. But if the rate of change is slow enough, the change will
go undetected. If the low hum of a refrigerator were to increase in pitch
over the course of several weeks, the appliance could be singing soprano
by the end of the month and no one would be the wiser.
Because we barely notice changes that happen gradually, we accept gradual
changes that we would reject if they happened abruptly. The density of Los
Angeles traffic has increased dramatically in the last few decades, and
citizens have tolerated it with only the obligatory grumbling. Had that
change happened on a single day last summer, Angelenos would have shut
down the city, called in the National Guard and lynched every politician
they could get their hands on.
Environmentalists despair that global warming is happening so fast. In
fact, it isn't happening fast enough. If President Bush could jump in a
time machine and experience a single day in 2056, he'd return to the
present shocked and awed, prepared to do anything it took to solve the
problem..
The human brain is a remarkable device that was designed to rise to
special occasions. We are the progeny of people who hunted and gathered,
whose lives were brief and whose greatest threat was a man with a stick.
When terrorists attack, we respond with crushing force and firm resolve,
just as our ancestors would have. Global warming is a deadly threat
precisely because it fails to trip the brain's alarm, leaving us soundly
asleep in a burning bed.
It remains to be seen whether we can learn to rise to new occasions.