By Ariel Phillips
We humans do something with our brains that has gotten my attention lately, and I think it has implications for how we deal with some big things. The more I think about it, the more powerful it seems. I’ll explain:
Let’s imagine a grid with X and Y axes that each start at 0 and go respectively to the right and upward:
The X-axis has a slider that represents time. Starting at the immediate moment, 0, let’s say a right now, we can slide the X slider along to the right, past today, this week, this year, and on toward infinite time. The Y-axis is similar but represents space. The lowest point, 0, represents a very small space, let’s say our own body, and we can move the Y slider upward to represent larger spaces: the space immediately around us, our family or community, to a larger population, our planet, and on to the universe and infinite space.
Now let’s play with this a little. If we’re feeling very cold, we’re likely to focus on our own body and how we can quickly warm up. We would represent that by putting the slider close to the intersection of the two axes. Similarly, playing the simplest video games pulls us toward a focus on a relatively immediate space and time. But if a loved one is hungry, we would likely focus on how to help them quickly get food. So we would represent that by placing the Y-axis slider a bit higher than 0 because our focus is on a slightly larger space than our own self. But the slider on the X-axis, time, would not change significantly.
Let’s try playing with the other axis, using a short timeframe but a large area. That could mean focusing on something that’s fairly immediate in time but that affects a large number of people. For example, if a dam is found to be threatening a whole community, the sensible focus might be on immediately evacuating the residents. To represent that, we would move the slider upward on the Y-axis to represent a larger space (more people) but only a little further on the X-axis, time, because the timeframe is not very long.
I’m not the first to notice and explore this. Back in 1972, a group called the Club of Rome explored some of this and issued the book Limits to Growth. [1] Their view: “Only a very few people have a consistent, global perspective that extends far into the future.” Here is their version of this relationship:
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN IN REAL LIFE?
This sort of grid can be used as a tool for thinking about many human concerns. Some actions favor the short-term interests of an individual or small group over the long-term interests of larger populations and systems. For example, short-term thinking about economic growth, such as profits and employment from fossil fuels and coal mining carries long-term environmental costs, not to mention personal costs in terms of diminished job opportunities. Thinking about both big populations and long-term consequences would involve considering economic and social decisions with both axes in mind and developing strategies for promoting human wellbeing on a large scale while minimizing long-term problems.
WHY DO WE TEND TO STAY SO CLOSE TO HOME IN TIME AND SPACE?
Some of this focus on what’s immediate and close is natural and adaptive. As a species and as individuals, if we didn’t attend to our immediate physical needs and our needs for connection, our species might not have been so successful. Other species do this, too, and that contributes to their survival.
It can be tempting to think of this as a moral issue; it may initially seem ethically superior to try to think more long term and about more people. But it’s not so simple; there’s nothing wrong with having a focus on our own needs and the needs of those close to us; it’s partly a survival strategy. It’s critical to meet needs, and it also takes less energy to think in ways that are relatively less cognitively challenging. Not only that, but it’s natural and healthy for us to experience pleasure and stress relief from here-and-now experiences like meditation, music, art, or video games. The challenge is that consistently prioritizing closer and shorter-term things over broader and longer-term things can lead us to make decisions that may appear positive at first (at least to a subset of people) but that lead to negative consequences.
SO, WHAT CAN WE DO?
To recap, our species has evolved this rather amazing set of abilities-- one could say this a cognitive superpower--a power to do things with our brains that other species don’t seem able to do:
• Think very long-term (even as long as infinite time)
• Think about very big spaces (even as big as infinite space)
• Mentally move back and forth between long-term/short term and more space/less space. (What am I having for lunch? How do nanoparticles of RNA move around? Does life on Earth have a purpose? How does X feel about me? How can I increase my income? Are there absolute rights and wrongs? How will climate change affect future generations?)
So, although we are naturally inclined to think in simpler ways at times and to enjoy it—focusing on the short-term and the immediate moment--we can also enjoy thinking in very complex ways and moving back and forth, and we can actually become more adept at it.
WE ALREADY USE THIS POWER (BUT WE CAN GET BETTER AT IT)
Look, I know all this may sound hard, but it can actually be satisfying and even fun to use our brains this way. In fact, research indicates that we tend to move toward being better at more abstract and flexible thinking through our lives. That is, we get better at thinking about things that aren’t right in front of us, and we even get better at mentally moving them around. Correspondingly, we tend to get better at imagining how others see things—at taking their perspective.[2] This may manifest as wondering why someone who has done something we don’t like behaves the way they do and becoming curious enough to try to learn more, rather than simply judging.
SOME WRINKLES
It’s important to keep in mind that, taken alone, neither a big-space or long-term focus is always beneficial. For example, in an oligarchy, the wealthiest people often develop long-term strategies about how to maintain or increase their wealth, without considering how that affects the larger population. They are thinking long-term, but relatively small-space.
Similarly, as in the case of fossil fuels, we can develop relatively short-term strategies that seem to benefit a large population. But, although there are short-term gains, there is long-term risk. So, this stuff is complicated, but we can become more aware of space-time factors and the relationships between the two.
Another note of caution: our tendency to grow toward thinking more complexly is fostered by an environment that both provides for our basic needs and presents us with new and somewhat challenging ideas—but not too many or too challenging. Not everyone has the means to consistently meet their own physical and emotional needs. Poverty and high stress levels, including being in emotional and physical danger, seem to impede this kind of development, as does living in a homogeneous community that presents few challenges to one’s assumptions.
DECISION-MAKING
One way to use this remarkable power is in decision-making and planning. We can remind ourselves to consider the space-time dimensions, visualizing the short-term-long-term and small-space-big space dimensions and how they relate to the present situation. This helps us create plans and projects that are effective and durable with appropriate scales in mind.
Not surprisingly, this can get complicated when we apply it to complicated challenges. Decision-makers in California might decide this year to reduce fire danger through widespread removal of trees, so there will be fewer fires in the next few fire seasons. However, in the even longer term, removing large numbers of trees raises the risk of drought and fire because trees keep moisture in the soil and help mitigate climate change. Thinking more long-term might involve finding ways to constrain the sources of fires, such as sanctioning power companies when they don’t control sparking wires and working to restore previous moisture levels in the air and soil.
Of course, we won’t always have access to all the information that would allow us to make a completely informed decision, but asking the questions is a first step; we can then ask what we don’t know and if and how we can learn what we need to know. And it’s probably not helpful to hold ourselves rigidly to the standard of gathering all information--being comprehensive. If we find ourselves overwhelmed and paralyzed with uncertainty about a decision, we have probably set the bar too high. Let’s avoid letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.[3]
A NEW (ISH) TOOL
There is a powerful tool that didn’t exist when Limits to Growth was written: the Internet. Like many new technologies, it has been regarded as potentially dangerous, compelling, unifying, and liberating. No doubt there is merit in each of those views and in all the middle ground. But, regarding space-time agility, the Internet is a near fantastical tool for moving back and forth, up and down in time and space, for seeking and sharing mutually helpful information, such as information about global challenges and successful methods to respond to them. We are finding more and more ways to use our global connectivity as a very potent, beneficial force.
RISING TO A SHARED CHALLENGE
Perhaps the greatest current challenge for the human population is climate change, and it is already leading some people to use their powerful brains collectively to think in increasingly creative ways about large spaces and long time spans. In other words, climate change may provide enough common ground to give us humans a common purpose. If we can work constructively with our big, evolved brains, we may be up to this challenge.
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c. 2020 Ariel Phillips
ariel@arielphillips.org
This material may be shared with appropriate citation and a link to arielphillips.org
[1] http://www.donellameadows.org/wp-content/userfiles/Limits-to-Growth-digital-scan-version.pdf [2] Some references to work in this area, in no particular order:
J. Milem, E. L Dey,, and C. B. White: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK216014/
L. Kohlberg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg
W.G. Perry, Jr.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_G._Perry
C. Gilligan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Gilligan
R. Kegan: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/faculty/robert-kegan
M. Baxter-Magolda: https://www.aacu.org/publications-research/periodicals/engaged-learning-enabling-self-authorship-and-effective-practice
J. Loevinger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loevinger%27s_stages_of_ego_development
J. Piaget: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget [3] Voltaire voiced one of the earlier versions of this: “In his writings, a wise Italian says that the best is the enemy of the good.” https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Voltaire
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