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Column: Alex Nedelcu

Human nature

It is in human nature to ignore long-term risks, writes Alex Nedelcu. But should we just accept that?

Alex Nedelcu, columnist Delta (Foto: Sam Rentmeester)

(Photo: Sam Rentmeester)

When I was three years old, I loved running around the house. But my clothes once snagged on the doorknob, and I loudly hurtled down to the cold, hard floor. After that, even when running, I always stopped at the doorframe, carefully stepped over the sill, then continued to run like my life depended on it. And even now, my apprehension towards risk is how I keep in touch with my inner child.

This is why I don’t think I would be a good venture capitalist. Where others see life’s little pleasures, I see probability and severity. The buzz of one too many beers, the nicotine rush of a cigarette, the sugar high from a tiramisu. It seems that, to do anything that makes life worth living, we need to trigger several risk factors for an unhealthy lifestyle.

Is disregarding risk in our nature? William Rees cogently argues that many of our societal ills, from addiction to environmental degradation, stem from spatial and temporal discounting. We care more about what happens here and now than in about 10 years in the future. In the proverbial cave, it is the humans who risked hunting and gathering whose lineages continued. But the increasing complexity of modern human society means that we make decisions that indirectly affect our lives decades from now. With our brains and intuitions evolutionarily focused on the here and now, we may not be capable of correctly assessing the risks related to our decisions.

Our focus on short-term benefits obstructs our understanding of subsequent costs

Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that we should paternalistically obstruct people from making certain choices that they want to make. After all, a moralizing 22-year-old writing a column is not a particularly reliable arbiter of risk and recompense. But we need to recognise that even discerning adults do not make ‘reasoned’ decisions in a vacuum.

In truth, a significant section of society has adapted specifically to this discounting impulse – not to mitigate it, but to capitalise on it for financial gain. Billion-dollar industries around gambling, sports betting, tobacco, and lots of other things play our prefrontal cortex for instant gratification. And collectively, we have designed society around the convenience of fossil fuels, even though we risk catastrophic consequences through their continued exploitation. Our focus on short-term benefits obstructs our understanding of subsequent costs.

It would be easy to hide behind human nature and say that there is nothing to be done about it. But this means accepting all the resulting pain and suffering, and I’m not sure I can do that. Is it not possible for human nature to be in flux, continuously evolving in relation to the culture that envelops it? Would we not be able to live beyond the moment and ‘evolve’ by focusing on the future in our common pantheon of values?

I choose to believe that we can change. And, if I think about it, I’m not very happy about the risks if we don’t.

Alex Nedelcu is an international double master’s student in Industrial Ecology and Sustainable Energy Technology. He is also a student representative in the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering’s Board of Studies, where he focuses on communication and sustainability issues.

Columnist Alex Nedelcu

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