Living in the moment seems like a lot of fun, no?
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Instagrammers flaunt its edginess.
Movie songs lend lyrics to its x-factor.
You and I envy its cool quotient.
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But what if I told you that this seemingly harmless attitude is symptomatic of a socially transmitted disease? Oh ok…not a disease, but a condition (condition sounds less spooky, right?) that goes by the fancy name of Prognostic Myopia (Justin Gregg, If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal).
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Prognostic myopia, in simple words, is our capacity to THINK about the future but NOT CARE much about what will happen thereof. It’s a seemingly sweet, feel-good, fun kind of cognitive dissonance that doesn’t show up in your RTPCR but comes loaded with some pretty devastating long-term consequences.
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You can think of prognostic myopia as Uncle Covid’s brother from another mother — a brewing-on-slow-fire kind of pand*mic (I know, I know, this word has lost its fangs and become a cliche now)😷
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The good news is that this pand*mic won’t go beyond its brewing stage during our life n times.
The bad news is that at the rate we’re going, there’ll be neither life, nor times for our children’s children😏
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Prognostic myopia plays on a MICRO level when you and I decide to binge-drink with friends on a Monday evening knowing fully well that we have to be up early next morning.
The consequences of our decision hit only on Tuesday when hangover goblins hijack our brain… and our productivity index goes for a toss.
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Prognostic myopia plays on a MACRO level when you and I decide to binge-buy, binge-spend, binge-waste… knowing fully well we’re squandering limited planetary resources.
The consequences of our decisions will hit only when our ecosystem goes for a (full)toss.
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The sad truth is that the further a problem goes into the future, the less we care about addressing it.
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This is because our brains, like those of other animals, are wired to deal primarily with the HERE and NOW (Justin Gregg, If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal).
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As humans, we are oh-so-proud of our mind’s capacity to innovate, to discover, to create.
And oh-so-cocky about our imagined superiority over all other species on this earth.
Yet, paradoxically, our oh-so-exceptional mind is the one that’s hellbent on turning earth into hell.
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While all other earthlings contribute to keeping our ecosystem’s wheels well-oiled and running smoothly, we the mighty humans create wheels that RUN on oil and RUIN this ecosystem.
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But Aunt Evolution is smart.
She knows how to save Mother Earth.
She knows how to get rid of species that suck and make the planet a muck!
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Evolutionarily speaking, our slide toward obsolescence isn’t out of sync with nature’s norms.
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We are totally on track to bring about our own extinction… thanks to our tendency to live in the moment! 😏

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