Feb 17 2010

Prisoners of our past

Category: Soft Edges — Jim Taylor @ 12:01 am

Wednesday February 17, 2010

Short-term solutions

By Jim Taylor

I’d like to lose about ten pounds. (Wouldn’t everyone?) But if you put a plate of white-chocolate-chip-macadamia-nut cookies in front of me, I cannot resist taking one. Or two. Or more.
        That’s because, argued two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof in a New York Times column last year, our brains are hard-wired for short term solutions.
        Citing a variety of academic studies of psychology, Kristof notes that immediate concerns grab our attention, “while our brain circuitry is often cavalier about the future… In effect, evolution has programmed us to be alert for snakes and enemies with clubs, but we aren’t well prepared to respond to dangers that require forethought.”
        “We humans do strange things,” agrees Paul Slovic, psychology professor at the University of Oregon, “perhaps because vestiges of our ancient brain still guide us in the modern world.”
        In that sense, we remain prisoners of a long forgotten past. We don’t even recognize the ancient bars that restrict us to particular patterns of thinking.

Four characteristics
        According to Daniel Gilbert, professor of psychology at Harvard., threats that grab attention tend to have four features.
        First, they are personal. Humans are social creatures. “That’s why we see faces in clouds, not clouds in faces,” Gilbert explains.
        Second, they are individual. So we obsessively watch out for predators and enemies who might affect ME – the classic “not in my back yard” syndrome.
        Third, the immediate present matters more than the future. That’s why most of us fail dismally at saving for retirement. We talk about freedom at 55, but we splurge now on big-screen TV.
        Finally, like the mythical frog who doesn’t realize he’s being boiled alive by gradually heating water, we respond to fast changes but tend to ignore slower ones. “We yawn at a slow melting of the glaciers, [but] if they vanished overnight we might take to the streets,” Kristof wrote.
        “In short, we’re brilliantly programmed to act on the risks that confronted us in the Pleistocene Age. We’re less adept with 21st-century challenges.”
        This “enemy with a club” reaction, Kristof suggested, explains why his country spends $700 billion a year on military security, and less than $3 billion on food and drug administration — even though food-poisoning kills far more Americans than foreign armies and terrorists combined.

Beyond evolution
        Short-term solutions probably worked well enough, back when generations could pass without significant changes in people’s living conditions, tools, and understandings.
        But as the rate of change in our lives accelerates, we need to recognize the mental prison bars that still program our thinking patterns – as individuals, and as institutions.
        Churches, service clubs, businesses – all need to recognize that the way things once were is not the way they must always be.
        But we can learn. If we’re willing to make the effort.
        If we can floss our teeth to protect them for the future, perhaps we can collectively also learn to respond in more intelligent ways to threats to our social fabric, our civilization, our species, and even our planet.

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Copyright © 2009 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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Your Turn



Last week, I lamented a shortage of mail. Joan Mistretta took me to task – both about that lament and about my pessimistic viewpoint.
        “OK, Jim, I’ll send you a letter since you haven’t been getting many lately,” Joan wrote. “What amazes me in today’s column — and often does when I am just talking to people — is that you seem to think that bad behavior just got here today. Vandalism, victimization of the down trodden, disinterest of witnesses — have you not read Dickens or any of the Victorian novels, not to mention just plain history, to know that it used to be much worse? And back then it was taken for granted — it would not even be worth a mention anywhere.
        “Last week in my church discussion group someone mentioned the religious group who had tried to take the children away in Haiti. One of the members said, ‘Doesn’t it say something about this time we’re in when we have to question the motives of someone who says they are rescuing children?’ Has she not read Oliver Twist? Is she not aware of the hundreds of poor children years ago who were rounded up and taken away from their families into indentured servitude?
        “At least today, thanks to the nosy media (whom we also decry regularly) it was discovered and stopped. Yes, these horrors still go on. And we still do not know about — or seem to care about — many of them. But at least today there is some sense, generally, that these things are wrong. I mean, if Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu could keep the faith, who are we to wallow in gloom? As far as Christianity is concerned, I hope for an establishment of God’s Kingdom, with peace and justice, on earth. It does not appear that it will happen in my lifetime (I am 75, for Pete’s sake). It is not my job to be concerned about when it will happen, but to do all I can to bring it about. Which is what you are doing. So, Jim, pull up your socks and quit whining.
        “Incidentally, I bet mine will be the only letter like this that you get. Every other one will be on the lines of ‘Yeah, ain’t it awful?’ Be of good cheer, Jim, even in February.”

Alex McGilvery thought my column was a kind of wake-up call: “While the mass institution of Christendom holds with pie in the sky because as a religion of empire it needs to keep the peasants quiet, Christianity is at the root of a great many social reforms. Jesus doesn’t talk about heaven as a place of reward as much as a place of surprises, and one of the surprises is how much what we do and experience here matters.
        “You do reflect the common view of the Church as being irrelevant to larger society. I think we need to get active again in working to reverse some of the more egregious evils of our culture.”

Suzanne Edgar offered encouragement: “Jesus chose to not fight evil, but to speak truth against it, and then walk through the murderous crowd untouched. Although, in the end, the blind and powerful did get him, they didn’t kill Love. Deepak Chopra’s book, The Third Jesus, says that Jesus would have us, if it had been recorded by the powers that chose the Canon, meditate on Love, and be healed ourselves from the pain of the lack of it — or face the horrible truth, and meditate on why and how it touches us, ask for healing and strength, and whatever else we need. Hang in there Jim.”

“Your article on picking a religion struck a chord with me,” wrote Jayne Whyte from Saskatchewan. “During a reading of the story of the Chosen People entering the Promised Land, I began questioning the ‘myth’ underpinning our Jewish, Christian, and Muslim world views. God loves us and that gives us the right to dispossess any other people of their land, to just roll in and take over, destroying the natives and setting up our tents, castles, and bungalows, assimilating the lucky ones and annihilating anyone who gets in our way? Scary, isn’t it?
        “And yet having begun to think this way, I see the pattern repeated in ancient and recent history. I see it in Canada where the ten tribes included the extinct native people of Newfoundland, the Ojibway, the Huron, the Cree, the Saulteaux, the Dakota, the Sioux, the Blackfoot, the Kwakuitl, … I see it in Israel-Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and heaven knows where else the press isn’t telling the story of conquest and destruction in our present day. I don’t have time or inclination to trace the invasions of history founded on the idea that God had chosen us to occupy and control other lands and peoples (the Dutch, British, French, Portugese empires)….
        “Can a people / faith/ community/ world with that foundational belief live in peace? Our history says no. Our present world says we must always be taking more, destroying more, buying more, displacing others so that we have more land, more possessions, more power, more love. We are the beloved ones so we don’t need to worry about peoples who are poor, disabled, a different colour than we are, different habits, or personal preferences, or politics, or genetics, or old and useless, or unloved and unvalued … yes, we could easily find 10 tribes to overrun. And if we happen to be one of those groups being displaced, it’s because God doesn’t love us and gave permission to get us out of the way so the good people can win!
        “So maybe I’m joining you in your February blahs.  But this has been on my mind. In this season of Lent, the crucifixion is clearer than the resurrection.”

And this from Don Sandin: “I like the Hindu Karma which states that you will pay the price of your actions — if not in this life then in a future life. That could be littering, loitering, assault, murder – whatever. We eventually will face the responsibility for our actions. NO FREE RIDES. This also relates to Reincarnation, which simply states that we will continue to be reborn until we resolve all of these issues to finally achieve our at-one-ment with God and are born again no more. The concept is rational and reasonable. I can’t imagine that I only have one life to accomplish all that I want to and need to in order to be spiritually whole. I think this philosophy makes eminent sense, and fits comfortably with my liberal Christian theology.”

Bob Warrick wrote from Australia (where the February blahs come in July, I suppose): “Not sure whether it is comforting to read of what happens in your part of the world, but it seems to be the same everywhere. Our federal government offered free ceiling insulation including foil insulation which has been installed by a large number of apparently unqualified or incompetent installers who used metal staples and left the ceiling electrified and some workers dead. Now all homes with foil are to be electrically inspected – at government cost!
        “In our State the government put over $4 million into a car race that never eventuated — no apology, no resignations, just no $4 million! Evil forces?”

Barb Landowski admitted that she hadn’t written about other columns, because “I am still stuck on ‘Why I go to church.’ Actually my question is ‘Why don’t I go to church?’ It was a very important part of my life from childhood thru the years my own children were growing up. Perhaps today’s column addresses that question in a round about way. Thank you for making me ponder my religious upbringing, feelings and thoughts.”

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About My Books



Over the years, I think I have written (or ghostwritten) about 17 books. Several of them (mercifully) are no longer available from any source. But here’s a listing of those that are still available. The ones marked “WLB”, you can order from Wood Lake Books, either on-line at http://www.woodlakebooks.com, or call Wood Lake Books directly at 1-800-663-2775 in Canada, 1-800-654-5129 (Pilgrim Press) in the U.S. The ones marked “JT only” are now available only directly from me — as collector’s items, I price them all at $25 Cdn.

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