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The cognitive crisis

The So-Called Environmental Crisis Is Really a Cognitive Crisis.By Olaf Krassnitzky(Presented at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP), Boston, Massachusetts)Abstract. Measured as threats to humankind, the rate of human-made environmental degradation, such as global warming, air, water, and soil pollution, and the loss of natural habitats and wild life, is accelerating to crisis levels. It is a consequence of the ways in which humans make sense of, use and transform their natural, social and technological environments. The ways have shifted from a competitive meeting of needs to a competitive pursuit of reward-driven wants, with the use of a vast array of methods, and without agreed upon limits. Humans do understand the destructive effects of their wants on the natural and social environments, yet the pursuit of wants is not slowing down. Attempts at reducing environmental and social threats tend to be merely new varieties of pursuits of wants, which escalate the current environmental crisis further. The utilization of sociopathic leadership, obedience and group conformance by militarism and corporatism provides a supportive psychological environment for this world-wide destructive human behavior and for the underlying crisis in human sense-making (the ‘cognitive crisis’). Direct utilitarian interventions in human transformative and productive activities cannot stop the current environmental crisis. Instead, we need to acknowledge the destructive power of human want-based sense-making, and understand the cognitive contingencies which stand in the way of turning around the environmental crisis. Before we can fix the environment, we need to understand and fix ourselves and our cognitive crisis. Some major contributing elements of the human cognitive crisis and obstacles to dealing with it effectively are described, along with the kinds of solutions that need to be considered.Earth has been colonized by an alien species. Planet earth has been colonized by an alien species that is not adapting to the earth’s environment, but is adapting the environment, not just to meet its needs, but to meet wants, in a competitive and socially stratified manner: a few meet their wants without limitations, some meet them within limits, and a majority cannot even meet their needs. As a consequence of this alien colonization, the adapted world now has environmental conditions which are detrimental to the aliens themselves. They recognize their destructiveness, but seem incapable of stopping its progression. Interventions to halt the destruction fail as the preference of wants over needs and the level of wants are not curtailed.Of course, the aliens are us. Earlier in biological evolution, a group of species became destructive for most other species. Green algae produced toxic oxygen. Some species managed to metabolize the oxygen, thereby opening access to an abundant energy source, sun light, which made higher complexity of life possible. Then there was one problem of one kind only, and life on earth had hundreds of millions of years to adjust genetically. Humans are now intoxicating the environment by accessing new sources of energy for the development of new levels of complexity. This has created a vast array of kinds of problems, just in the course of a few hundred years, far too many and far too fast for the biosphere to adapt. Many call this an ecological crisis.The cognitive crisis. To deal with the crisis effectively first causes must be found: these are not what humans do, but how they make sense of their existence, their natural, technological and social environments. This sense-making is currently not directed at meeting needs, but at fulfilling wants. The pursuit of wants is embedded in an environmental and psychological nexus of contingencies which prevent a change in sense-making: this is our true crisis, it is a cognitive crisis. The problems of sense-making have been with us throughout history. The current cognitive crisis, however, has been precipitated by three conditions, which made the effects of our cognitive problems grow exponentially, and which are outcomes of human sense-making: 1) the population explosion; 2) the technological explosion; and 3) the unprecedented access to energy, which made the former two explosions possible. We know a lot about the effects of our cognitive problems, we know very little about our cognitive problems themselves, and even less about their locus, human neurocognition and neurocognitive development. We do know, however, a number of obstacles which stand in the way of overcoming the cognitive crisis.1. Wants over needs. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” irrespective of what one has produced, as Karl Marx put in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program (Marx, 1972). He did not account for the power of human wants. Meeting needs is based on rational thinking over the long-term, wants call for short-term satisfaction of desires, a non-rational process. Fulfilling wants is rewarding, meeting needs may not be rewarding at all. The top paradigm for want-based decision-making is the financial market place. At present, the totality of the human cognitive crisis and its environmental consequences can be linked to the stock markets, a global market economy, and its investment gambling addicts. Financial markets respond to events in real time, not with a long-term outlook, and as long as they rule human economic and ecological activity, the cognitive and environmental crisis will continue.2. The false dichotomy of reason and emotion. Emotion and reason are believed to be dichotomous, oppositional and mutually exclusive states of mind. This is a false dichotomy, and stems from looking at emotion mostly in terms of fear and anger. But these are exceptional states, whereas pleasure, satisfaction, frustration, disappointment, boredom, etc. are far more common, occurring with rational or moral cognition. There is a true dichotomy between rational, functional, utilitarian evaluations, and moral, value-based evaluations. Both may be linked to or ‘tagged’ with emotional states. They are incommensurable i.e. there have no common property based on which one can compare the two. Morals can tell us what is important, science can tell us how things work, but morals cannot tell us how things work; and science cannot tell us what is important. In a conflict between rational/utilitarian and moral cognition, the emotional tags decide. We do many things because of their utility in a desired context, but which are quite immoral. And we do others because they seem to be the moral thing to do, but have no utility or worse. We then tend to moralize utilitarian/rational decisions, and to rationalize moral decisions, when they turn out to be defective. A university degree does not just make us smarter, it also makes us better at rationalizing our moral lapses. Higher religious involvement does not just make us holier, it also makes us more fervent at moralizing our rational lapses. A case in point is the abortion debate, with the unborn child referred to either as fetus (a thing) or as unborn child (a person).3. The cognized environment is now transcendental. The operational environment (i.e. all the natural and human-made existential processes and their contingencies) is infinitely transcendental. In the past, a tiny portion of the knowable, the cognized environment, could be comprehended with human sense making, in its entirety, by at least some individuals. (Rappaport, 1984). Knowledge of the infinitely large remainder was substituted with fiction and ad hoc interpretations of the operational environment, such as religion, ideology, and superstition. This has been pointed out by R.A. Rappaport. Today, the cognized environment, i.e. that which is known, has also become transcendental, and in its entirety is no longer comprehensible for any one individual. In addition, the current degree of urbanization has effectively removed a large portion of the global population from the natural operational environment. In order to understand a natural environment, we need to cognize it directly with our senses, not through representations or simulations of it. A coherent cosmology that integrates rationality, morality, and emotionality (or aesthetics) is currently out of reach.4. There may not be “free will”. There is some evidence that we become conscious of our decisions fractions of a second after the brain has already decided on action. Our conscious decision may well be little more than awareness after the fact available for reflection. Arguments that we can veto the brain’s initiatives, once they become conscious, are not convincing, since such vetoes must necessarily arise from the same kind of non-conscious initiatives of the brain. This observation stands in stark contrast to notions of body, mind and soul as separate and distinct substances, and derivatives thereof (such as law, ‘mental health’, and free will, sprituality). As long as we teach this profoundly false trinity to our children, a badly needed skepticism towards our notions of free will and agency cannot arise. Descartes still rules.(Hofstadter, 2007; Libet et al., 1983)5. Scylla and Charybdis, and beware of Thrinacia. Corporate and most military decision making is done without moral sentiment, and hence without empathy. The balance sheets and kill rates are amoral. In Greek mythology, when Odysseus sailed through the Strait of Messina, he had a choice to stay away from the monster in the whirlpool – Charybdis (which I see as representing the chaos of pure ideological sense-making without any utilitarian reasoning) and to end up getting close to Scylla, the murderous seven-headed monster in the cave (what I see as representing utility and rationality without moral sentiment); or to stay away from Scylla and get close to the whirl pool. He chose to get closer to Scylla, lost a few men, and got through. In the whirlpool he and all of his crew would have perished. Unfortunately, soon after, on the island of Thrinacia, his men succumbed to their overwhelming wants, and killed Apollo’s sacred cattle, despite Odysseus’ warnings. Everybody, except Odysseus, was killed by Zeus. Today, we are following the utilitarian route of Odysseus, steering away from an existence governed by pure morality and the abyss of ideological warfare. We prefer cost/benefit analysis, if possible at all, quantified in monetary terms. But ultimately the wants and incentives associated with the utilitarian route keeps us on our self-destructive path. Scylla is the logic of the corporate world: not everybody is getting killed, but quite a few. It goes like this: If it is doable (technically, and generating wealth); and affordable (i.e. fundable, attracting investments); and if negative intended or unintended consequences are deniable, it will be done. There is no “middle” path, avoiding both monsters entirely. At best we may follow a zig-zag course, letting the wind of incentives drive us towards one monster, and when we recognize the danger, we steer the other way and so forth. Of course, these monsters are monsters in our minds. However, this metaphor would suggest that our cognitive crisis may ultimately be fatal, except for a few survivors.6. Cognitive dissonance is a key impediment to good human sense-making. It is a state of inner tension when actual events stand in contradiction to beliefs and expectations. Usually, this tension does not make us change our beliefs, we interpret the new reality in ways that are compatible with our beliefs, in the form of moralizing or rationalizing (Festinger et al., 1956). Yet this discomfort offers an opportunity to change our beliefs, and to accept new truths- but this is not how we deal with it most of the time.7. Disinformation. Interested view points, culture, gender, social class distort the representation of reality, in an involuntary, non-conscious fashion. In addition, most of what is being publicly communicated is disinformation, i.e. deliberate distortion of representations of a truth to serve a specific purpose. Best possible and available truths are accessible only for privileged groups, classes or individuals. Disinformation, as partial truths or outright falsity, pervades marketing, public relations, political propaganda, entertainment in every possible communications medium. The public is served simplicity instead of complexity, and meaning instead of facts.8.Temple, castle, market. Much of our sense-making is shaped by our main institutions: the temple and the local deities, the castle and the local ruler, and the market or the traders. Through history, their relative power (and ownership of wealth) has changed. Today the traders are the main owners of wealth. The castle and the temple are subservient to the market, maintaining a pax economica, under which exchanges can proceed undisturbed. No personal rule is exercised as it was by priests or rulers, there is only a system of depersonalized, rational/logical exchange rules of the market9. Neurophenomenology. Finally, all of our experiences, thoughts and actions are produced by our nervous system. For the longest time cognitive psychology has been restricted to observing behaviors and introspective information. Brain scan technology is beginning to map those behaviors into the central nervous system. Two articles, one on functional MRI, the other on the nature of morality, both written by Greg Miller, address the current uncertainty about the trinity of rationality, morality and emotionality, and their neurobiological correlates and related research methods. None-the-less, research is expected to show how human decision-making can be steered and changed. Unfortunately, such knowledge is sought out primarily by those whom we least like to use it: marketing specialists, public relations people, corporate trainers, politicians, and the military, and not in the best public interest. In addition, there is a broad range of communications technologies making it possible to channel manipulative information to reach our brains and control our rationality, morality and emotionality (Miller(2), 2008).What should we do? Leaving aside the nature/nurture debate, we can say that our modes of experiencing, thinking, and deciding to act are shaped by individual rational, moral and emotional development. However, at present, we are shaping them the wrong way – and I have just outlined how so. Our highest priority should be to change the ways in which we make sense of the world, especially we need to move from wants to needs fast and soon. In particular, we need to curtail the autonomy of stock markets. We need to bury the notion that it is now the turn of billions of people to fulfill their wants – the West will have to pay its dues for that. Baby steps of environmental progress will not suffice after hundreds of years of massive assaults on our environment, and continuing with an assault more massive than ever before. We need to stop exempting religion and ideology from critical thinking and invent a universal human value system and morality, with a new transcendental sense-making of our existence, that would support our new morality, and is not in conflict with critical, rational thinking (Kauffman, 2008). We need to use disincentives, where incentives do not work; dissolve megacities, to get people to interact with the natural environment again; and put an end to disinformation. We are in desperate need of finding a new kind of leadership that can channel our tendencies towards group conformance and obedience into a kind of ecological healing. Finally, we need a neurocognitive science,which can explain how humans make decisions and what they do about them, if they turn out to be detrimental in any way. Without any and all of this our environmental wrecking ball will keep on swinging. Al Gore’s book is like prescribing aspirin for a plague epidemic ! (Gore, 1992).ReferencesFestinger, Leon, Henry W. Riecken, Stanley Schachter (1956). When Prophecy Fails. A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World. University of Minnesota Press.Gore, Al. (1992) Earth in the Balance. Ecology and the Human Spirit. Rodale.Hofstadter, Douglas. (2007) I Am a Strange Loop. Basic Books.Kauffman, Stuart (2008). Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason and Religion. Barnes and Noble.Libet B, Gleason CA Wright EW, Pearl DK (1983). Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity (readiness potential). The unconscious initiation of a freely voluntary act. Brain, Vol 106 (Pt 3), 623-42.Marx, Karl (1972). Critique of the Gotha Programme. Foreign Languages Press. Peking.Miller, Greg. (2008) The Roots of Morality. Science Vol. 320, 9 May 2008, 734-7Miller, Greg. (2008) Growing Pains for fMRI. Science Vol. 320, 13 June 2008, 1412-4Rappaport, Roy A. (1984). Pigs for Ancestors. Waveland Press, Inc. Delete Comment