Human Nature

I want to talk about a segment of human nature that is likely to be the cause of our downfall. Human beings in a large group are not very good at preventing things. Especially if those things are not easy to see coming.

We can prevent things if it only requires the effort of a few, but if all of society must be involved, it becomes a problem. Things are prevented all of the time; we just don’t know about them. Attacks from our adversaries, both foreign and domestic, are thwarted regularly. The attacks and the missions are generally classified so we never know the heroes that have saved us. That’s just another reason why we should always be grateful to our law enforcement personnel and our military. They are doing even more than you know.

When we actually do know of an impending problem and the problem is handled before any damage is done, we generally pretend it wasn’t a problem in the first place. An example of this is Y2K. There was a lot of talk about the mess that could happen at the turn of the millennia, then nothing happened. Nothing happened because software engineers went through millions of lines of code and made the necessary changes to prevent the problem from happening. I know, I was one of them. After nothing happened, people began saying that was all a hoax and there never was a problem.

Now, I’ll get to the point. When a problem is recognized, and the solutions requires a sacrifice, or at least a lifestyle adjustment from everyone, preventing the problem becomes almost impossible. People will find any excuse to avoid having to be part of the solution. There are people who will provide the excuses because they have a financial vested interest in avoiding the necessary adjustment. It’s not that we can’t do it. In WWII when the danger was very real, people banded together to collect scrap metal and old tires, and they made do with the government rations. The problem comes in when the danger isn’t that clear and present. Human beings just aren’t built for that kind of sacrifice when the danger isn’t clear and present.

The danger we face is about to become clear and, when it does, it will be too late to fix it. We scientists became aware of the danger of climate change, they calculated a point of no return. The point of no return was a measure of the rise of the global temperature. If the global temperature rises 3.6 degrees from their initial measurement, and remains above that point, nothing will stop it from continuing to a global disaster. We are now reaching that number. At the rate it is going, it will be years before it is consistently above the limit, but it is getting there, and we have done very little to stop it. We can’t because it isn’t our nature to make changes without a reason staring us in the face. They are always someone to tell you that it is all a lie, and that it is part of a government conspiracy to control you. I won’t argue about that.

As I always say on this issue. Don’t worry we’ll be gone before it all happens, but you can bet our grandchildren will be cursing our names.