Our Inability to Behave Humanely Or Reasonably

 

H/t Moudakis

Many years ago, I would periodically buy The National Lampoon, the era's  pre-eminent journal of satire. One of its covers has always remained in memory:

Presumably a spoof on the tendency of fund-raising organizations to use emotional ploys to encourage donations, it was also a devastatingly effective reminder of how emotion often strongly affects our decision-making, both for good and ill.

Years of observation and experience suggest to me that the role of emotion or reason in positive decision-making has passed. The only problem is that here in Ontario, our Chief Medical Officer of Health, Kieran Moore, has not gotten the memo.

In his press briefing yesterday, the good doctor appeared to take two tacks: an appeal to reason, based on the rising number of pediatric cases overwhelming hospitals, and an appeal to emotion, as he urged all of us to mask up "for the kids". Indeed, if one cares to look, one can readily find pictures and videos of kids struggling to breathe.

But will that be effective? In his column today, Edward Keenan suggests it will not, arguing that while Canadians are a rule-following people, they are less amenable to suggestions, even when strongly argued:

... in the past, I’ve found myself ignoring warning signs and wandering dangerously close to the edge of the Scarborough Bluffs and then, suddenly realizing I might fall off a cliff, wondering why there wasn’t a high fence to force people to stay away. Maybe a clear warning and an obvious danger — a sheer cliff drop-off, masses of hospitalized children — aren’t warning enough for us, because we’re somehow conditioned to think if something is really important, we won’t be given a choice.

Conducting a social experiment, Keenan donned a mask and went into the Toronto subway system.

In my subway cars, I counted about a quarter to a third of people wearing masks. In the Eaton Centre around lunch time, the number of people masked was more like 15 per cent. Inside City Hall, my observation was closer to 5-10 per cent of people masked.

Most of us say we’d wear a mask if officials say we have to, and a majority of us even say we think they should tell us we have to. But man, it appears most of us won’t do it unless we have to.

What seems reasonable to me is that mask wearing is a measure most of us could easily toggle on and off as needed to head off more severe measures and more severe consequences. What also seems reasonable to me is that if top doctors and public health officials are begging me to consider wearing one because hospitals are getting overwhelmed, then maybe that ought to be persuasive.

The goal, here, obviously, is for as many of us as possible to make it happy and healthy and alive to a time when there’s no real reason to wear masks when we go out. Maybe at some later point, it will make sense to wear masks again, for a while, to again ensure more of us can survive and thrive. Is that too big a burden to accept? And do we need a law to force us to co-operate every time?

Keenan uses reason and reasonable several times in the above. However, as we have seen in the past few years, so many seem to have abandoned that faculty, instead embracing negative emotional reactions to the problems confronting us, up to and including our present medical crises.

Do the right thing, urges Dr. Moore. Are enough of us even capable of that anymore?

Perhaps This Is Part Of The Answer

My wife, who is far from being the cynic of the family (that would be me), often concludes that humanity is a failed experiment. It is not an assessment with which I disagree.

I often find myself pondering why and how we have reached our current perilous, likely terminal, state. While there are many obvious factors, perhaps one of the biggest is that there are far too many people today. Beyond the physical pressures that our population puts on our planet, there is a breakdown of any sense of community with the larger world. Perhaps in earlier times, hunters and gatherers found it much easier to feel a kinship and responsibility for each other. Even today, we behave toward our immediate community, family and friends, far differently than we do with those with whom we have no immediate connection.

And with that loss of connection comes increasingly selfish behaviour, and self-regard often becomes our default position. If Covid has taught us nothing else, it is that large numbers put their personal freedom and comfort over the safety of others. Hence the outrage over mask mandates, vaccinations, etc. The same, I suspect, is reflected in our attitudes toward climate-change mitigation. While some can see the larger picture, others can only see the cost of gas, carbon taxes, etc. that elicit reflexive, often violent, reactions.

There is a letter in today's Star that got me thinking about the above. It expresses a perspective that succinctly puts all of us in our place.

Microbes may have swarmed Mars, Oct. 11

So French scientists have concluded that Mars may have harboured an underground world teeming with microscopic organisms …. Sadly, they say, these microbes may have themselves altered the atmosphere and triggered a Martian ice age, leading to their demise. These French scientists have further concluded that simple life like microbes might actually commonly cause their own demise.

I look at what is going on in our world today: climate change caused by humans; senseless destruction caused by the Putins of the world; the toxic environment created by politicians like Trump, Poilievre, Smith et al.

My non-scientific conclusion is that humans are no smarter than single-celled microscopic organisms.

 Patrick Stewart, Toronto

A Reader's Response

In response to yesterday's blog post, a reader had some well-considered commentary and observations that I am offering as today's post. I hope you enjoy them. Here is what BM wrote:

Many years ago in the late 1980s, I was asked to comment on the Brundtland Commission Report insofar as it related to our company.

That report talked about sustainable development. Within a couple of months, that sobriquet had already been changed to sustainable "economic" development by the various talking heads of the time. I criticized this co-opting of the terms compared to what Brundtland had actually said in my essay. Economics as such were not part of the report, sustainable development was, but none of the nitwits could see the difference.

BTW, there is a decent enough article on Wikipedia about the commission, the main point(s) being this"

""...the "environment" is where we live; and "development" is what we all do in attempting to improve our lot within that abode. The two are inseparable."

The Brundtland Commission insists upon the environment being something beyond physicality, going beyond that traditional school of thought to include social and political atmospheres and circumstances. It also insists that development is not just about how poor countries can ameliorate their situation, but what the entire world, including developed countries, can do to ameliorate our common situation."

This degree of cerebral thought went right past the heads of nearly everyone, including all I read in commentary about the report at the time. No, it was instead taken as a signal to rape and pillage the earth, because the new buzzwords were "sustainable economic development", which is a completely different thing to mere "sustainable development."

By 1993 I had become convinced that there was no chance that anyone would voluntarily cut back, sitting as I did one day on a plane to Ottawa next to David Suzuki sucking back his champagne and orange juice, wasting jet fuel.

The way I saw it then was that we had only the one chance to really cut back and examine what we were really up to on this earth, and we had better get down to it right away.

I also sickeningly realized that there wasn't the slightest hope in hell that anything would actually get done. Man doesn't exist like that. The selfish gene means that as biological entities we go on reproducing without limit come what may. Furthermore, any state control of child numbers to one per couple a la China still meant population increase, as mathematics will easily show if a generation is assumed to be 20 or 25 years. And in our primitive basic selves, government control of something as basic as the reproductive urge will never work.

So we are basically effed as a species. I don't think I've ever become despondent other than in an intellectual way about this. Back in the 1970s, I had worked out that the ideal world population was about 200 million humans. Then everyone could enjoy a reasonably comfortable physical and cerebral existence basically for ever. But the shrill environmentalists of the time turned me off. Just as today, everything has to be done IMMEDIATELY, frightening the general population, who just want to get by with a job, shelter and food.

It's too late now, but the same tactics are still being used. Panic, panic, you're either with us or agin us and thus an almighty fool. I really don't know if there is an answer, but am pretty convinced that the general population is highly unlikely to be swayed by logic of the LeaP variety, no matter what we may all would like to think.

I therefore declare myself as a fatalist rather than a defeatist.

BM

Here is what I wrote in response to BM's comments:

Thank you for your informed and insightful comments, BM. I can't disagree with your assertions, and, like you, the selfishness that seems to permeate our natures will surely be our undoing. Here are two small examples that I observe every day attesting to selfishness and egoism that goes beyond biological imperatives:

So many people are still driving huge vehicles that they don't need, be they trucks o SUVs. Indeed, every time the cost of gas drops, their sales increase.

People continue to spew greenhouse gas emissions through idling of their vehicles, whether they are waiting for a spouse in winter and keeping warm in their vehicle or in summer, when they keep the engine going for air conditioning.

If people cannot even make wise choices in these two very small matters, the big ones are obviously well beyond their capacity.

You are absolutely right: humanity is screwed.