Perception

In The End of Nature, Bill McKibben relates the gravity of humanity’s environmental problems to the limitations of our perception. We cannot directly see slow and subtle changes in the earth’s climate, or easily imagine the effects of our ecological behavior years in the future. Scientific study brings the world’s subtler properties to our awareness – graphs of historical temperature and carbon dioxide data are an effective illustration of the changes we have wrought. But they do not have the psychological power that a disruption of the seasons would to tell us things are out of joint.

Perception laid the foundation for the human phenomenon, and it may also define its limits. People can perceive complex abstract relationships in the world around them that other animals cannot, and so we can solve problems that were once fundamentally limiting. This perceptive ability is the basis of progress – the sciences, art, and philosophy all explore new ways of understanding, while technological innovation applies our perceptive ability to practical betterment. Sixty years ago it seemed to enjoy unbounded success.

But perception constrains just as much as it expands. It is the basis of market failure, where economies fail to optimally allocate resources because some costs are difficult to perceive. There had been no cost associated with the emission of greenhouse gases until very recently, because no-one could possibly know without extensive study of the climate system that such emissions were costly. The nonlinearity of climate and ecosystems is beyond our intuitive perception.

When I must write a paper for class, I don’t often begin but a night or two before it’s due. It gets written, and I have a relaxing time before I start, but the writing is stressful and the product of questionable quality. Climate negotiators in Copenhagen look a lot like me four days before a deadline. One weighs the benefits and costs of starting against the merits of the status quo, which sometimes looks deceptively good.

Inaccurate perceptions lead to incorrect judgements – when I underestimate the difficulty of an assignment, I wait until it makes sense to begin, and then it is too late. When people, due to the lack of immediacy in our perception of ecological and climatic change, underestimate the problem’s size, we wait until the perceived urgency justifies the economic cost. If our perceptions are skewed, that could be the other side of the Rubicon.

Just as my procrastination leads to unpleasant sunday nights, the evidence currently discussed suggests a painful adjustment to new environments, perception aligned only by physical and social immediacy. To improve my academic life, I am trying to temper my perfectionism, and essentially lessen the difficulty of each task. I wish I could make such a prescription for the international community, short of arguing for the unimportance of economic well-being.

But instead of shrinking the problem, there are ways to address the constraints on our perception. To correct for market externalities, we can see commodities in holistic rather than economic terms. Steak is not entertainment-on-a-plate for twenty dollars – it is food with a history that is not captured in the number. Bovine flatulence and labor relations should give us pause, even if we eat it anyway. In all our interactions with the world, we might recognize that more is at work than we can see, and try to see it when we can.

A looser way of improving perception is to consider the simplicity of actions. Simple things are closer to what we would call nature, and more complex ones are more deeply constructed, and generally more costly. Simple things leave room for the rest of the world, while the complicated tread heavily, and squeeze it out. To see things in this dimension, along with some knowledge of environmental issues, allows one a more basic insight into the extra costs of complexity. To enjoy simple things is to perceive more basic and often obscured reasons for living. And to live simply is to set just the example that the world needs.

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