Welcome to the second article of my Blog.
As I said, every choice that we make in real life is based on tunnel vision. For example, eating fast food like a burger or pizza. The reason we order it is that we love it.
Imagine what would happen if our brain has the superpower to know what the fast food would do to your heart even before you order it. You would start feeling the pain of a heart attack which you would feel, 40 years in the future, due to the fat which we are eating in the cheese. A pretty ugly scenario, although it would mean you would make the right choice almost every time, isn’t it? Every time you are about to make a wrong choice, your brain would tell you that it is wrong and why. Our brain would become a constant battlefield due conflict between what our wild side needs or wants and what is ideally needed to stay healthy. Our brain would then be a constant source of anxiety and probably in no time, we would go mad.
This example shows us how vital it is for the human brain to filter out or suppress anxiety provoking impulses. This work is done by a section of our mind which Sigmund Freud, termed as Ego. The wild side of our mind, he named as “the ID” and the “more intelligent side –i.e. the one showing the right path or the one showing us our mistakes or why this choice is a mistake” is the one he called “the Superego”. What the ego does is to try and find a middle path between the two. This anxiety which is initiated by our Superego (especially if we have created a pretty fat Superego and the Id has an immense desire) is called Cognitive Dissonance.
But remember that if the brain, in the above example, did not know the intricacies of how the fat in the burger or pizza causes a heart attack (I.e. how the fat in the pizza after absorption in the gut, travels in the blood and accumulates in the vessel wall and leads to an atherosclerotic plaque which leads to narrowing of arteries supplying the blood and when this plaque ruptures and a blood clot (or a thrombus) forms. it leads to reduced blood flow to our heart muscle and death of the muscle in our heart leading to a heart attack) would never have this problem as this brain with limited knowledge about the pathogenesis of a heart attack would have a non-existent Superego. In them “the Id” would be in command and they would not think twice while ordering a burger.
The choice here is a tunnel vision because the human brain while ordering a pizza, does not think of the consequences it can lead to, 40 years in the future.
Another common example is spending time on the internet or in the gym or on a bicycle or with the family at home or going for a vacation. Imagine a middle-aged adult who wants to decide what he wants to do this weekend. All the above are probable choices which he has. Every individual has exactly 24 hours a day. Not one less, not one more. How he/she will spend them is a person’s individual choice. Another very obvious but (not easily apparent) truth is that if you choose one of them, that means that at that particular time, you have chosen not to do the other. You cannot do all of them at the same time. Indeed, as is evident, every choice of the above has multiple far-reaching consequences. Who we are, is determined by the choices we make. In reality, every choice a person might make from the above list is made by tunnel vision. If a person decides to spend the whole weekend holidaying or with his family, he probably wants to have a good time and relax. If a woman chooses to spend the entire day on the bicycle or running in a Marathon, she probably wants to focus on her health. Indeed, all these activities are examples of tunnel vision or focussing on something and disregarding something else. Imagine what would happen, if Bill Gates spent all his weekends holidaying when he was young, instead of developing Microsoft. Probably, he would be healthier and with much better interpersonal and family relations, but we would not have Microsoft, the way it is.
From the above para, we understand that in a way Tunnel vision is vital to success. We have to focus only on something if we wish to achieve something.
In fact, judging a person or a blog or book by reading the first line or making a judgment about a person based on reading a single tweet or Facebook post is tunnel vision. As you are arriving at a conclusion disregarding the fact that you have no idea what the author knows or means to say. A peer-reviewed paper, according to me is also akin to tunnel vision like a blog. The limitation in the amount of space in it literally prevents the authors from discussing all the aspects of the problem they are interested in. In fact, most often, a very small aspect of a subject is chosen and further dissected down to a smaller detail. Sometimes, due to this limitation, the authors might even fail to consider all the possible scenarios and tend to focus on a particular scenario alone. Commonly, only profit or temperature or radioactive forcing or nitrogen cycle etc. are taken into consideration and ecology or human psychology or human tunnel vision (i.e. lack of knowledge) may be disregarded. One subject may be given more importance and another equally important one would be left alone because the authors do not have knowledge in that field or understand the significance of it (due to their tunnel vision). Although this is inevitable and is not necessarily wrong, making absolute conclusions based on such inadequately examined data or making eye-catching and more widespread conclusions should be avoided (example – Planting trees is waste of money and should not be considered as a climate solution – a common myth widespread among scientific community). This is what is called as WYSIATI phenomenon i.e. “what you see is all that is”. This way you are only considering a small part of the picture.
The reality is that tunnel vision was (and is) the single most important reason why humans kept on making the wrong choices, since decades if not centuries in the past. It is not difficult to understand why, when we know that most of our choices were (and are) focussed on “profit” or “our comfort” or “our needs”.
Let’s come to the phrase “We should Save our Forests” Or “Save trees”. Indeed, this is a very common phrase used extensively by many environmental campaigns. Are these right?
Although they are not wrong and that we should indeed make every attempt to save trees and forests, they are still an example of human tunnel vision or not looking at the complete picture.
How?
Nature, in reality, is illiterate, Nature has not read geography. Nor has it read Botany.
For Nature, there is no India, Pakistan or America. For Nature, a tree in the Forest is as vital as a tree in your backyard. Nature does not know the names of Forests which are under the protection by a government and which are not. For Nature, the grass is as vital in its ecosystems as is the mighty Oak. If Nature has tried to grow a small twig at a place, probably it has its reasons. Just because we humans don’t know them does not mean it is not there. Thus saving only trees, and chopping off grass, weeds and other naturally occurring plants just because they do not develop a large trunk and thus are not trees, cannot be good for nature. “A tree which is a part of the protected forest should be protected but a tree which comes in the way of our masterpieces of architecture or our highways needs no protection and should be leveled as it is better used in our furniture”, is the worst attitude one can have.
We humans, due to our tunnel vision, i.e. complete inability to understand the importance of vital ecosystems, are in the path of self-destruction. The unfortunate reality is that the signs of the impending collapse of biodiversity are everywhere. But we just don’t want to see them. In the past, we humans had a narrow perspective as it was difficult for news to travel. But in today’s world of GPS and the internet, information is available at our fingertips and so are satellites. How much habitat destruction we humans are causing, can be very easily seen by all of us in the confines of our bedroom with just a couple of clicks on the google maps (use satellite views of different cities or countries). The facts that we have destroyed 80% of the wildlife and that we have started the sixth mass extinction and that the species extinction rate is 1000 times the baseline are freely available for everyone to read and understand and still most of us are leading an absolutely unconcerned life completely focussed on our own need. All this is due to Tunnel vision, as we are unable to comprehend these changes happening beyond our field of vision and that we are unwilling to open up our minds to see from others perspective.
The fact is that more than 1500 scientists constituting the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change or the IPCC has submitted more than six reports, the last one being the SR15 i.e. status report on 1.5 degrees warming, all these reports freely available on the internet to read, the last one being the most dreadful, giving humans just 12 years to bring about radical or read draconian changes in their lifestyle to keep the warming below 1.5 degrees (when we already have a warming of about 1 degree Celsius). The fact that most media outlets (including most in India) are still skeptical about covering these issues as much as is needed, and that governments of most nations are still arguing about how much emissions reduction is politically possible (read- arguing we can’t do emissions restrictions in our country, you should do it in your country) instead of maximum possible emissions restrictions, knowing fully well the horrific temperature projections and are still using coal-based thermal power plants, buying gas pipelines and pumping billions of dollars into fresh petroleum exploration, speaks volumes about Human Tunnel Vision. Giving us loads and loads of examples of how Humans take decisions based on consequences up to the politician’s chair lasts. They cannot think of anything beyond that.
A book, (Note that “Book” here is “a source of Information”, it could be and should be extrapolated to include a website or a post or an article or a paper or even a Blog) is an excellent tool which we humans have invented, which can be an effective solution to tunnel vision.
With a book, you can instantly connect to, or in the words of the famous scientist “Carl Sagan”, instantaneously enter into the mind of another person. You can see the world from the authors perspective, you can understand his concerns, feel his pain.
In my next blog, I would be discussing the importance of dissemination of the right kind of knowledge. Also, I would subsequently be categorizing humans and the right path which we humans need to stay on. In subsequent blogs, I would indeed venture into what are the right sources of information and why reading the right source of information is important.
Stay tuned.
Written by: Dr.Rohit Kale
Follow on Twitter: @RohitKale23
Contact on: drkalerohit23@gmail.com
Visit: saveourmotherearth.in
Contact on Whatsapp: 8801047099
Author of the book: How the Homo Sapiens Blundered now available at https://notionpress.com
(coming soon on Amazon, Flipkart, Infybeam, and Kindle)
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