EcoLocalizer

I often ask myself why I continue getting the paper. Getting the newspaper is supporting an unsustainable practice of harvesting trees and manufacturing them into disposable items. And then something magical will happen.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to write tonight. A few minutes ago I found myself reading the book review section of the Chronicle. The article “Gender Identity and Phantom Genitalalia” initially caught my attention and ended with a great quote from V.S. Ramachandran, a neurologist and psychologist at UC San Diego and a leading authority on phantom limb sensations, who says it has long been known that some people who are born without arms have vivid phantom arms.

• » See also: Obsessed with the Magic of Chickens
• » Get EcoLocalizer by RSS or sign up by email.

“I expect a lot of criticism,” Ramachandran says. “Those who study transsexuality tend to be territorial because they themselves have made so little progress. There is no literature that illuminates the underlying mechanisms, other than psychological mumbo jumbo. And then someone comes striding in and spends two weeks solving the riddle. It must be infuriating.”

Across the page was the article “Relying on the random” about a book called Predictably Irrational that suggests we are far less rational than standard economic theory assumes. Essentially this professor Dan Ariely is studying and thinks he understands why people do stupid things. [My words not his.]

He has some general findings (”why we often pay too much when we pay nothing?”, “why options distract us from our main objectives”) and then extrapolates to why these tendencies are important.

The first thing I’m thinking is “have I got a test group for you!” I would love to see his analysis on why we continue holding onto this vision of an infinitely globalizing and growing economy based on finite fossil fuels. After all its current incarnation is damaging the life support systems of the planet. I’d like to know why we continue to desperately and predictably cling to a culture that centers on buying things and cars even as the ecological, social, and economic mount unsustainably. Why getting priced out appears to be our only hope of getting off the growth treadmill and how high the prices have to go.

There is an alternative. Check it out later this month at the Ecocity World Summit. I will be speaking on one panel and will be moderating two others. More on the conference in the next several weeks.

Link to cool flash opening Ecocity World Summit.

But as the author suggests, we are predictably irrational.

Tweet This Post

You might also like: