This time it's different

We, Americans, value our individualism.  We love the idea that we are that unique snowflake on the winter winds.  Our individual relationships, from our perspective, are immune to the typical issues that lead to divorce or infidelity.  We are special, after all. We are always told to, “be who you are,” even when we don’t have a clue who that is or who we actually want that to be.  While nothing is wrong with individualism restrained by a healthy perspective of our world at large, our “special snowflake” ideas can lead us down some dark paths.

This is MY special snowflake, go get your own!

Our popular “Geist” or spirit of our culture which I have grouped together as the “Cult of Progress” has helped spread this idea that we are in a unique culture at a unique time in history, with our own grand destiny.  However the only way we can arrive at this conclusion is by continually re-writing our own history.  We certainly can't be bothered to step off our pedestals and accept blame or fault.  Furthermore, It would be almost impossible to admit that we should “know better”.  Since our ego’s are scandalously involved with our forbidden lover, technology, there is no way to separate the two without hurting both.

On an individual level, arrogance keeps us from learning from others, our past or our mistakes.  Arrogance mistakes helpful advice for insults against our nature.  Arrogance mistakes compliments for jealousy.  Arrogance perpetuates paranoia and anger.  Arrogance makes us feel superior to others so much so that we dehumanize them.  Arrogance justifies selfishness and destroys self reflection.  Arrogance becomes a monster that overtakes our minds and sows the seeds of our own destruction.

Yeah this is real.  Apparently printing money doesn't always make you richer?  Any thought's Janet?

In Christianity, arrogance is of course one of the seven deadly sins.  The ancient Greeks recognized the same problem of “excessive pride or self-confidence” and called it “Huberis.”  Huberis marked a disconnect from reality that was often a fatal character flaw in many Greek Tragedies. In Buddhism, the ego is recognized as a story told by the mind unto itself, an illusion that is the source of our suffering and anguish.  Buddhists seek to teach us to understand ourselves so that we might see the world un-distorted by our own preconceptions.  It is a bit too much to think that these cultures over vast amounts of time and space have nothing useful to tell us about human nature?  Our ego might tell us that these cultures are too old, superstitious, and primitive to tell us anything about ourselves or our future.  Kind of like a grandpa with an overactive imagination and a penchant for story-telling.

Taxi! Taxi! Drop me off at Caesar's Palace, I need to hit the slots.

To view Buddhists, Christians and ancient Greeks as primitive and outdated you have to do some mental acrobatics by recognizing the level of technology they were associated with.  Once you have realized these folks aren't associated with starbucks and iphones you make the ridiculous leap of saying, “that stuff doesn't apply to me in my life.”  What if I told you that the Roman’s had metered taxi chariots which told the charioteer how much to charge for the distance traveled? Did you know Roman’s also had concrete that cured underwater?  What about Mayan astronomy calculations that were so accurate that their predictions of the orbit of Venus lost only two hours in a 584-day cycle? These types of facts never make it into the history books though because they conflict with our civilizations “snowflake” story.  We might actually have to consider that we are no more intelligent, evolved, or human than these people were.  Maybe we actually just found half a billion years of stored sunlight and then proceeded to pretend we were gods?

Phoenix, Arizona home of sand burgers and meth labs.

Humor me for a minute and pretend to yourself, your civilization, and period of history aren't actually special. What would that mean?  Take a moment to reflect on your knowledge of history and put every historical event you think of and adapt it to happening the next day, the next year, or the next decade.  You and your country are vulnerable to the same downfalls of the Babylonians, Roman’s, Mayan’s, and countless other civilizations.  In your lifetime you could experience a civil war, famine, outbreak of riots and social unrest, race wars, hyperinflation, economic depression, currency collapse, or even a epidemic on the scale of the black death. Do you feel vulnerable and exposed?  Does it feel uncomfortable?  Is it a bit overwhelming?  

You may feel just fine because of a psychological phenomenon known as “normalcy bias.”  Normalcy bias is a state people tend to enter when faced with a possible crisis whether it be losing a job or a volcano erupting right next to your village.  Normalcy bias is where you project the current conditions into the future.  It is quite comfortable to stick with the familiar and cozy warm feeling we get when we arrive home after a long trip.  However, normalcy bias can distort our understanding of the future so much we don’t recognize problems until its too late.

Do you get extra karma points if you meditate on a meditating statue of the most famous mediator of all?

Consider the case of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and subsequent destruction of the Roman city of Pompeii. Although a few fled, many people in the Roman City of Pompeii in 79 AD watched for hours as Mount Vesuvius erupted, without evacuating until it was too late. Then, when Vesuvius violently erupted, a tidal wave of 1,000 degrees Celsius molten ash and pumice moving 450 mph killed the 20,000 residents almost instantly.  Pompeii was buried in 6 meters of ash with thousands of ancient Romans plastered into the scenes of their last moments until excavations discovered them in 1599. Of course that could never happen to you right?  What if you lived next to a volcano all your life with it never erupting so far?  Would your normalcy bias prevent you from leaving till it’s too late?  What disastrous event in your area do you cover in denial because of your normalcy bias?

Save the coconut's!  Get to da choppa!

The Nazi Holocaust provides another horrific example. Normalcy Bias explains why so many Jews ignored and underestimated the obvious signs of danger even after they were required to wear yellow stars, possess a ‘J’ stamp ID card and discriminatory laws targeted them and their businesses. Many Jews could afford to have moved but stayed and perished because of their Normalcy Bias.  

I just met you! And this is Crazy! But.......  

My conclusion is that we can use our knowledge of history to work our way through our normalcy bias and cultural delusions.  History provides an example on which we can draw and learn from comparing similar historical situations with their more modern counterparts.  History can give us a context with which we can prepare for disasters, revolutions, and “unforeseen” events.  So next time you write off some sort of warning you should ask yourself, “Is it really different this time?”

Doesn't matter they're both made by Pfizer. Call a doctor if you still have that problem in 4 hours though.