The human brain is not good at absorbing, understanding, and acting on the basis of abstract information that arrives from distant places. There’s no reason why evolution should have equipped our ancestors with that ability. In sub-Saharan Africa, where our ancestors lived, there was no abstract information arriving from distant places!
The only information that was important in the passing on of one’s genes was immediate and concrete. Lion over there, gotta run.
So here we are, living in a vastly different world from the one our ancestors lived in. Abstract information reaches us daily from distant places — and some of it is vitally important to our survival. But we don’t have the capacity to process it and act on it. We act like nothing is the matter. We just stroll onward, averting our eyes.
Here in the U.S. (I can’t speak very knowledgeably about other nations), we have, in no particular order:
– An entirely corrupt Congress and Administration, in which our nominally elected officials are all accepting enormous bribes on a weekly basis from Read the rest of this entry »
