The World is Too Big, the Brain is Too Small
I once tried to understand the global economy. At first I was excited, imagining myself sitting in a cafe, reading economic reports and sipping coffee. Five minutes later, I was trying to figure out why cats like to sit in small boxes. This is the main problem with humans: we live in a world that is too big and our brains still think in village terms.
Our brains evolved to deal with conflicts between families, not to understand geopolitical tensions between two countries we’re not even sure where on the map we’re in. We easily get involved in small dramas in our family WhatsApp group, but we have a hard time understanding the global energy crisis. Just compare: if our neighbor loses their wallet, we immediately panic. But if there’s a report about millions of hectares of forest being lost to deforestation, we just nod and continue scrolling through Instagram.
This problem is present in all aspects of life. I can easily understand the concept of “running out of money because I buy coffee every day,” but when I try to understand inflation, I feel better giving up and buying another coffee. We can feel guilty for forgetting to reply to a friend’s message, but not so much when we read about the widening economic inequality.
Then there’s the problem of time scale. Humans are designed to think about “how to survive until tomorrow,” not “how to avoid climate catastrophe in the next 50 years.” This explains why I can easily put off exercise even though I know it’s good for my long-term health—because evolution cares more about whether I can get dinner, not whether I’ll be fit at 70.
So how do we survive in a world that’s not suited to our brain capacity? Maybe the answer is to accept our limitations, but still try. We can’t figure everything out, but we can try to be a little more conscious. We can’t save the world on our own, but we can at least try not to make things worse. And if all that feels overwhelming, there’s always the humane way to deal with it: postponing our worries with a cup of coffee. ☕🙃
