The Wetware Imperative: Stopping Small-Mindedness Before It Kills Us
There have always been small minded people who can't see beyond their immediate self-interest, people who insist on short term gain even if it costs them more in the long run, people who insist on getting more for themselves even if it costs everyone around them.
Indeed there may be nothing but such people.
We all start small-minded.
We all get small minded sometimes.
If someone credible intervenes to give me feedback on a way I'm behaving that they suspect will not serve me and others well in the long run, and I dismiss the feedback without considering it, even that is being small-minded.
Maturity, self-discipline and integrity are names for efforts to control our natural small-mindedness.
Some of us never want to, have to, or can learn to control it.
Some minds stay smaller than others because their emotions simply run stronger.
If your immediate ups and downs are more intensely felt, then of course you're more likely to get small-minded so you can reap more immediate ups and avoid more immediate downs.
Most of us feel emotions intensely on one topic or another so most of us have experienced the clash of the small minded, where our immediate demands conflict with someone else's and we do battle.
There are some people who have trouble staying out of those clashes.
Others among us learn to side-step such pettiness wherever possible.
We seek the company of people who have developed some constraints on their impulsivity, people who can do the harder thing of considering something that is immediately disappointing but might be worthy of their attention for the sake of the big picture.
I'm 53.
My dear daughter is 19.
By the time she is my age the world, both culturally and physically is likely to have changed for the worse more than it has in millennia.
For years we've know about the possibility of global warming and had a sense of an avoidable disaster impending some decades off.
The news of the past decade that our small minds avoid as much as possible is that the disaster is more likely and much sooner than previously thought.
We might have worried for our children making a decision about whether to have grandchildren, but really the tough decision was our generation's.
We look lovingly into the sparkling eyes of a generation we will be sending directly into intense peril.
Conservative estimates suggest that energy demand will double by 2050.
To avoid the tipping point where climactic feedback loops cause accelerated disaster, we will double current energy production without any increase in carbon emissions.
And even if we avoid the tipping points, sea levels and weather patterns are bound to change.
Among the tipping points we face is the one that confronts all societies in the face of scare and scarcity.
In crisis we tend to get more small minded, causing greater scare and scarcity causing greater small mindedness.
Leaders on climate change say quite rightly that there are and can be hardware and software solutions.
If we prioritize to the big picture and the long term we could prevent a lot of the disaster with existing and developable technologies, making the world work better for everyone.
All we need is the political will.
In other words, the limiting agent isn't hardware or software but wetware, the human mind, or more specifically the human small mind.
It used to be that you could simply walk away from someone intolerably small-minded.
Not anymore.
They-we, when we are small-minded-will make or break us.
That's the wetware imperative.
What has to change is our minds and I hate that because I can't think of anything mushier or slower to change than small mindedness.
Small-mindedness is like a poorly differentiated cancer.
It can't be surgically removed.
But it grows like a cancer.
Watching the manipulation and trivialization of policy debate these days we see small-mindedness gaining ground.
The factions claiming falsely to represent traditional right wing values gives all signs of really being a movement by the small-minded for the small-minded.
Small-minded is not easily defined.
Actually the most prominent definition is anyone who stands in the way of my interests and long term goals.
That's not going to help.
I try in these pages to figure out what small-minded really is and how to deal with it, both in myself and in us all.
I'd welcome any suggestions.
Think big.
Indeed there may be nothing but such people.
We all start small-minded.
We all get small minded sometimes.
If someone credible intervenes to give me feedback on a way I'm behaving that they suspect will not serve me and others well in the long run, and I dismiss the feedback without considering it, even that is being small-minded.
Maturity, self-discipline and integrity are names for efforts to control our natural small-mindedness.
Some of us never want to, have to, or can learn to control it.
Some minds stay smaller than others because their emotions simply run stronger.
If your immediate ups and downs are more intensely felt, then of course you're more likely to get small-minded so you can reap more immediate ups and avoid more immediate downs.
Most of us feel emotions intensely on one topic or another so most of us have experienced the clash of the small minded, where our immediate demands conflict with someone else's and we do battle.
There are some people who have trouble staying out of those clashes.
Others among us learn to side-step such pettiness wherever possible.
We seek the company of people who have developed some constraints on their impulsivity, people who can do the harder thing of considering something that is immediately disappointing but might be worthy of their attention for the sake of the big picture.
I'm 53.
My dear daughter is 19.
By the time she is my age the world, both culturally and physically is likely to have changed for the worse more than it has in millennia.
For years we've know about the possibility of global warming and had a sense of an avoidable disaster impending some decades off.
The news of the past decade that our small minds avoid as much as possible is that the disaster is more likely and much sooner than previously thought.
We might have worried for our children making a decision about whether to have grandchildren, but really the tough decision was our generation's.
We look lovingly into the sparkling eyes of a generation we will be sending directly into intense peril.
Conservative estimates suggest that energy demand will double by 2050.
To avoid the tipping point where climactic feedback loops cause accelerated disaster, we will double current energy production without any increase in carbon emissions.
And even if we avoid the tipping points, sea levels and weather patterns are bound to change.
Among the tipping points we face is the one that confronts all societies in the face of scare and scarcity.
In crisis we tend to get more small minded, causing greater scare and scarcity causing greater small mindedness.
Leaders on climate change say quite rightly that there are and can be hardware and software solutions.
If we prioritize to the big picture and the long term we could prevent a lot of the disaster with existing and developable technologies, making the world work better for everyone.
All we need is the political will.
In other words, the limiting agent isn't hardware or software but wetware, the human mind, or more specifically the human small mind.
It used to be that you could simply walk away from someone intolerably small-minded.
Not anymore.
They-we, when we are small-minded-will make or break us.
That's the wetware imperative.
What has to change is our minds and I hate that because I can't think of anything mushier or slower to change than small mindedness.
Small-mindedness is like a poorly differentiated cancer.
It can't be surgically removed.
But it grows like a cancer.
Watching the manipulation and trivialization of policy debate these days we see small-mindedness gaining ground.
The factions claiming falsely to represent traditional right wing values gives all signs of really being a movement by the small-minded for the small-minded.
Small-minded is not easily defined.
Actually the most prominent definition is anyone who stands in the way of my interests and long term goals.
That's not going to help.
I try in these pages to figure out what small-minded really is and how to deal with it, both in myself and in us all.
I'd welcome any suggestions.
Think big.
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