Rational Philosophy

The tricky balance between anxiety and indifference.

This morning I was walking uptown when police blocked off 54th Street in preparation for the passage of the president’s motorcade (he was on his way to acknowledge to the Economic Club of New York that the economy is going through a rough patch.) At first I was miffed to be held up at the barrier (not the one pictured to the left, which is from another day and another part of town). Inwardly I fretted about the delay, and bridled at the imposition (even though I understood, rationally, that the barricades made for an appropriate precaution). Around me, the mood of my fellow detainees ranged from bemused tolerance to indignant outrage. More than one pedestrian tried to argue their perspective with the cops who stood guard at the barriers. After I’d accepted that for a while I’d be stuck at the steel barricade, I was able to get over my short term anxiety and watch with curiosity as the police did their work and as the motorcade passed through.

Up to now, Bush has responded to the current round of economic crises with a detached kind of downhome objectivity. We’re familiar with his slow-draw approach to crises. It’s part of what’s made him so incredibly unpopular with so many. (Examples being his glacial response on September 11th, and his lack of action during and after hurricance Katrina.) His stance has been that the economy is generally sound and that this is a bumpy section of road — an analogy he used today.

On global warming, the Bush administration has taken many years to come around to accepting the science at face value, and is now entering a period of accepting the science of warming, while rejecting the facts of an effective solution. Bush would have us switch to switchgrass fuels before we think about restricting emissions. BBC News reports today that:

“One recent study investigated the impact of fertiliser on biofuel production. Using sugar cane, according to the research, does offer greenhouse gas savings of between 10% and 50%.

“But using rapeseed and corn for biofuel manufacture can actually produce between 50% and 70% more greenhouse gases than using fossil fuels.”

When Bush takes the long view one senses that it’s because he shrinks from the prospect of near term realities. But if we’re prone to short term anxiety, the long view can help us gain a more rational perspective on life by putting our short term fears into perspective.

It can be particularly hard to take the long term view. We are wired to care deeply about how we feel right now and what we anticipate will happen to us in the immediate future. Eliot Spitzer took the short term view when he acted on his desire for sexual gratification, and one can imagine that the long term view was, if not the furthest thing from his mind, then at least stuffed into a far corner, as he did.

When it comes to government, some European countries seem to be particularly good at planning for the long term. The Netherlands has for some time been planning grand but pragmatic schemes to ensure the safety of its land from the threat of flooding from rising water levels. Mentioned in the same BBC article, Sweden already has 1,000 biofuel filling stations. Ireland has effectively eradicated the use of plastic grocery bags.

For everyday life, we can use the long term perspective to help us take a more pragmatic view about things like the development of our children (worrying about how long, relatively speaking, it takes our child to walk or talk), investment woes (if we make a long term investment, the stock price only matters when buy and when we sell), relationship problems (what was that we fought about last week?), and many other things.

(Of course, if we never fret about the short term, we may be very calm but everyone around us will loath us and think us arrogant and indifferent. Not that we’ll care…)

In the long, long term (scientists have calculated about 7.59 billion years) the earth will get swallowed up by the dying sun. This puts practically everything into perspective. Even then, there’ll be hope for the human race if we’ve put the Dutch and the Swedes in charge of planning our exit strategy… Whereas, if it’s down to George Bush’s intellectual descendents, we’d better buy some margarita mix and settle back for the final descent.

 

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.