As the publication of my book comes closer, the first question which most elders ask me after reading the heading “How the Homo Sapiens Blundered” has been “What is the number one blunder according to you?”
The answer to this question is not straightforward. If it was, I would probably not have enough matter to write a 600 plus book.
However, there is one very important blunder which stands apart. And the entire book is probably dedicated to analyzing how to make us aware of it and how to try and correct it. This is
“Complete apathy towards sacrifice of anything that is green, for myriad reasons from aesthetics to greed to complete insanity”
This can be considered, one of the serious contenders of being the number one blunder. Indeed, not something that the usual scientific community would agree with. For them, the number one blunder would probably be
“Burning of Fossil Fuels, or probably building the entire economy on something which pollutes the atmosphere”
Still, others might blame the numbers, the population, the greed, the exuberant resource utilization or the relentless pursuit for money or profit at all costs.
These arguably are also important contenders.
However, one of the Blunders, which I believe is the root cause of each and every one of the above and which in itself leads to all the above, and which according to me is the number one blunder of Humans is
“Tunnel Vision”
Tunnel vision is a relatively simple term to understand and is very easily illustrated by the famous story of “an elephant and the blind men”.
As we all know, the blind man standing near the elephant leg says that the elephant is like a tree or a pillar, the man standing near the tail says the elephant is like a rope, the man standing near the trunk says the elephant is like a snake, the man standing near the ears says that the elephant is like an ear and so on.
The wrong impression these guys are having is due to not seeing the complete picture from the spatial point of view.
Although understanding this is easy, the significance of this in our day to day lives is rather difficult to understand. The truth is that each and every choice or decision of ours is based on Tunnel vision.
There is no individual in this world who is pan-knowledgeable. There are huge portions of knowledge which we don’t know at all, despite considering the intellect of all humans put together. Just because we humans have reached the moon and have successfully miniaturized the computer to fit it on our wrist watches or successfully created atom bombs, does not make any of us pan knowledgeable.
We, humans, have a very limited perspective. We humans are, sort of imprisoned in a world which is limited to a small space which our senses can perceive and a small period of time which we call “the present”.
And our ability to predict what will happen in a space away from where we are and at a time different from where we presently are is significantly limited. This ability, however, is variable and there are some individuals like the highly knowledgeable scientific community, who probably can be considered to have tools (like Satellites) which increase their perspective of space and have a much greater knowledge of various subjects and techniques and thus a greater ability to predict, what was there in the past or what will come in the future. This is akin to the difference in the ability of the person sitting in the watchtower of a ship compared to the passenger in the ship, to see the approaching iceberg better with his higher location and the telescopes.
One has to note that the “vision” in this entity of “tunnel vision” is not what the eye can see, but what the brain can see or what the brain interprets. What the brain can see or what the brain knows can also be termed as knowledge or “Gyaan” and thus everything lying beyond this is what our brain does not know or the gaps in understanding of our brain what is commonly called as “Agyaanta” or lack of knowledge.
It is inevitable, thus that tunnel vision is omnipresent and we have no option but to live with it. Is that the mistake, then? No. Tunnel vision is something which is good for us humans. In fact, the human brain, although a powerful tool, has its limitation and it cannot handle information overload. The Human brain or the human mind has, over the years of evolution, developed many mechanisms to filter excess or unwanted information. And indeed, the important information that is perceived unimportant may also sometimes be filtered away. The difference in opinions, between two individuals in any of the issues or subjects, stems from this difference in understanding or difference in knowledge or point of view.
The real problem is not tunnel vision, but an inability to acknowledge the presence of it.
This means, that we assume that we know everything and we jump into conclusion that we know enough and make our choices based on grossly inadequate information based on certain beliefs in our mind which I call biases.
It does not end there. What we know, we tend to focus more and what we don’t know at all, we tend to disregard as unimportant. For example, an ecologist might give more importance to solving the ecological crisis caused by Global warming, a psychologist would focus more on how to use human psychology to solve it, while an engineer or a physicist would sway towards inventing a solution or focus on the physical elements like temperature and radioactive forcing disregarding the psychological aspects or underestimating the ecological implications.
Now that you know what is the number one blunder, the questions which might come up are – how can we call it a blunder? and how to get over it?
The true significance of the term needs a thorough understanding of it with multiple examples. This, I would venture into, in my next blog.
However, here I will try to enlighten how Tunnel vision leads us to a glitch.
In his book’s title “How life imitates Chess”, Grandmaster Gary Kasparov has inscribed the ultimate truth about life. Chess, as most of us know, is a complex game, and every move in chess is like a choice. Not everyone understands that every move we choose has multiple consequences. A master in chess is the one who can decipher each of these consequences multiple moves into the future.
Thus, chess illustrates the most important principle of life “Every choice has a consequence.” This is similar to the concept of “Karma” and “Fala” that Lord Krishna taught in the Bhagwat Geeta. You have to keep doing your Karma, whether you do good Karma or bad karma would decide whether you would get a good or bad “Fala”.
It is then clear, that choices made with only present in focus or only a small part of the Earth in focus would likely have consequences which cumulatively lead to catastrophic results.
This will be clearer with subsequent blogs.
So keep reading.
Regarding “how to get over it?” – the only way to solve the problem of tunnel vision is to increase the knowledge, both at an individual level (by reading my book or other books or websites on this subject) and at the level of humanity as a whole (by doing further research which would have to be done by the scientific community.) However, this is not as easy as it looks. This is because the knowledge has to be the right one and it has to be interpreted in the right manner without getting influenced by games of Ego. This will be explained subsequently in the blog and pretty elaborately in the book as well.
Before we end this blog, I would like to share with you, a very common example of Human Tunnel Vision.
(in the book I have given multiple examples like these and the explanation of why I consider them tunnel vision).
A very common statement given by Environmentalists “We must save our Forests” or “Save Trees” is a typical example of tunnel vision.
“How it is?” will be clear to you if you read my next blog.
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Stay tuned.
Written by: Dr. Rohit Kale
Author of the book: How the Homo Sapiens Blundered
Follow on Twitter: @RohitKale23
Contact on: drkalerohit23@gmail.com
Website: saveourmotherearth.in
Contact on WhatsApp: 8801047099
Hats off to your "Out of the box" initiative and unique way to put it.
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