In 1962 Stanley Milgram ran a psychology experiment called the “obedience study”. The purpose of this and other studies was to see how far someone would go in harming another person if directed to by someone in authority. Interestingly when a subject could see and hear the recipient of shock punishment, the percentage of people willing to harm was reasonably low. If they could only hear the subject but not see them the percentage went up and if they could neither hear nor see the subject the percentage was higher again.
So according to this experiment, a person is more likely to do something they don’t agree with if they are told to by someone in authority. And if they cannot see the effects of their harm, they are more likely to 'flick the switch'.
This is interesting and may explain things like littering, excessive waste and not really wanting to know where your meat came from and what it went through in the process. Often ignorance is bliss.
When you think about how our governments respond to issues such as climate change and or the loss of plant and animal species, you may recognise a similar behaviour?
If people can’t actually feel or see the effects of their actions, they are less likely to care. The people or animals who could lose their homes as a result of climate change aren’t in your daily line of sight. The plants or animals threatened with extinction may be something you haven’t heard of. The possibilities of a dead reef, changes in ocean currents or increased regularity in extreme weather are not something we can mark on a calendar or touch tomorrow.
Often people don’t respond to issues that seem to be off in the distance, uncertain or not directly witnessed by them.
It is hard for us to comprehend geological time, thousands of years or millions of years in time is mind boggling and so we compare how things use to be when we were younger and brush off science as its not in our memory. Often when people discuss climate change they will repeat things like, “I remember how it was when I was a child” or "droughts and floods have always been there".
The thing is, because the effects are not all happening at once and are not always obvious to us in our everyday lives. You can effectively say what ever you like, as no one can definitively say you are right or wrong. Its not like its all going to go wrong at once tomorrow so the risk of being proven wrong is pretty unlikely. In the short term anyway.
Like many things that we act on, it usually requires thinking that what ever we do now will definitely result in something positive in direct response to our actions. We usually have to physically witness the problem before we will care and certainly before we will act on it at all. Most of all, we need to see the positive result of our actions immediately and certainly, not in 10 or 20 or 30 years time. Unless its something like finance and someone draws a graph with dollars compounding over time. Then people have the ability to plan for the future. However even this is a struggle for many.
You often hear of people coming home from visiting a third world country or seeing the plight of something like the orang-utans in Borneo and saying “we have to do something about this”. The danger is that if we don’t fire up and start a movement or at least make immediate change in our own lives. The impact of seeing these things soon dissipates and we go back to living day by day in our own little bubble.
The fact is by doing something positive, you may never see the full effects of your efforts. We may not be around to enjoy the beautiful pollution free world of decades to come. A world where renewable energy is the only energy, a world where cars run on hydrogen, steam and solar charged batteries. A world where all new homes are built to the highest solar passive standards, a world where forests are planted, nurtured and enjoyed by absolutely everyone, and a world where food is grown in every town and city, and you know the person who grew your vegetables.
Wow after reading that paragraph, I don’t think I need to see it, for I will sleep well tonight, imagining a world where people will look back and say that this generation. Our generation, was the one who knew things had to change and they had the courage and forethought to act without knowing for sure that their efforts would amount to so much. They did it without benefit to themselves. They did it to benefit their children and future generations, they were, the most important generation to have ever lived.
Makes you think doesn’t it?
Is there anything to lose by taking positive action? I’m pretty sure there isn’t.
Thank you
Paul Hellier.