Journal 12.6.17

I think this quote is very accurate. We as human beings tend to look at a situation with "last event goggles" and try to act as if it's the same. It never is. I took a class called World Crises in high school which is essentially an international relations class. We built our foundations through analyzing the decisions and policies in the historical context of major wars and events. So incredibly often when looking at one crisis, policymakers inherently attempt to treat it using the lens of the last major crisis. We do not feel comfortable with the unprecedented, but in many cases, trying to figure out something new is more effective than retrying a failed tactic. That is not to say we can't use the past, but instead of replicating, we should learn. We are also not good at predicting events that have never occurred, as Al Gore says.

This reminds me of the responses to the major threat in "The Really Big One" and how many live in a state of ignorance of some sort. All the science points to mass destruction and an unparalleled amount of lives lost, and yet because there hasn't been an earthquake to quite that level, many just simply can't wrap their heads around it. They refuse to take as many, or if any, precautions as necessary because of the human mindset that Gore describes.
-Katie Hession (WRI I 21)