In the Indian epic Mahabharat (ought to be required reading for all warmongers), Yudhisthir, the protagonist known for his uncommon wisdom and integrity was asked to name the most confounding conundrum of human existence. He replied that it was the fact that humans, aware of their eventual, unavoidable death, spend their entire lives devising ways to stay alive.
Well, I guess it is true that we do our best to avert danger, disease and calamity. We fasten our seat belts, watch our diet, go to the doctor when sick. When our life, wealth or way of life is threatened, we set our burglar alarms, call the police or go to war. When the foundations of our moral and religious values are shaken we write letters to the editor or push lawmakers to change the constitution. But we react with greatest alacrity when danger has a human face even if the precautions we take are for the most part useless or of little effect.
We are not so diligent or sagacious when it comes to slow and creeping perils whose progress is not easily recorded by our brain. And we are particularly apathetic to slowly advancing natural catastrophes which we see as an act of god rather than man. Which is why the Bush administration plays so successfully on our fears of Islamic terrorism for repeated polical gain at the polls but gets away with its utterly callous attitude towards global warming.
After all, we have put a bearded, turbaned, Muslim face on global terrorism which we hope to recognize on the subway and at airports but global warming is something nebulous in the future whose effects don’t capture our imagination with the same spectacular urgency as a pair of speeding and tilting airplanes flying into tall towers.
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If Only Gay Sex Caused Global Warming
Why we’re more scared of gay marriage and terrorism than a much deadlier threat. by Daniel Gilbert |
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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… 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. 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. And so we are outraged about every breach of protocol except Kyoto… 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. 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. 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. Daniel Gilbert is a professor of psychology at Harvard University and the author of "Stumbling on Happiness," published in May by Knopf. |
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