Blind spot.

We are living through an extraordinarily difficult time now. The trouble is that most people, however intelligent they happen to be and however keen to keep up with the news, don’t have the slightest wish to see with open eyes what really is happening in our world. Even if they sense or intuit or suspect something, they have an overwhelming urge to tune it all out and say “No, no: I don’t want to know. I just want to go on as before.” Well, there is no going on as before. Maybe we’ll think we can act in the same way for a few more years; but what we are leaving behind us is a totally different world. And we have a certain responsibility to wake up to the awareness of what that means. — Peter Kingsley.

Ian Miller

March 25, 2022

Journal

climate, environment, quotes, technology

One response to “Blind spot.”

Stuart Bullock

March 25, 2022 at 8:58 am

A well written, or said, comment; but one whose impact is reduced when considering that it could have been said, with equal validity, after any major event that spanned less than a decade. For example: at the end of World Wars I and II; at the end of the great depression. The invention of the printing press. The assassination of Julius Ceasar.

In essence, its seems to me a truism that can be re-stated as follows: “People expect their environment to return to its previous equilibrium after a short, catastrophic event and this is a cognitive blindspot. That is, people are not initially prepared for the prior event (often) necessitating changes to the subsequent environment.”

The other thought that came to my mind is this statement missed a great question. Why? Why should such a cognitive blindspot exist and does it exist in other animals? I theorise that if one suddenly changed an enclosure at a zoo, then even the higher mammals will initially behave as if they expected the new environment to be the same as the prior one.

What can be said is that, in our lifetimes, both Ian and I have lived in ‘interesting times’ from the landing on the moon, the cold war, the fall of the Iron Curtain, 9/11, and now the pandemic. My parents lived in even more interesting times, and can include in that list the second world war, the atomic bomb, and the assassination of Kennedy,

Me? Right now I’m ready to live in uninteresting times. My cognitive blindspot is I have an irrational faith that fishing in a remote location may do this — particularly if I don’t add the bait.

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