By SCHRODINGER'S CAT
Added: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 14:18:12 UTC

Many of us do things that are bad for us. We smoke, drink, eat too much, engage in unsafe sex, drive too fast, or any of a vast range of human activities all of which involve denial of the consequences of our activity.

I'm a smoker. I carry on smoking even though I know that smoking is not a rational activity. But, somehow I think that with smoking - and any other irrational and harmful activity - there is some sort of psychological mechanism by which we pretend that only other people get lung cancer, or liver disease, or death from blocked arteries, or whatever.

One might argue for an evolutionary trait of risk taking. But one has to balance that against the fact that many of said activities (including even sex) are addictive and hence one might argue that 'choice' is diminished. But addictiveness cannot be the sole answer, because natural selection would surely have weeded out harmful addictive traits.

Any other creature that was so susceptible to addiction to harmful things would surely have become extinct long ago. Yet succeptible homo sapiens (one has to wonder about the sapiens part) flourishes and thrives despite our ability to partake in every harmful activity under the sun - not to mention regular mass killings of each other for the sheer hell of it.

How does one explain this ? Howcome a species that collectively engages in more self inflicted harm than all other species put together ... now rules the planet ?

TAGGED: PSYCHOLOGY