The Social and Environmental Perils of Magical Thinking

There has been much coverage in recent media of citizens who fail to acknowledge the existence of such global crises as Covid-19 or anthropogenic climate change. They are said to be skeptical or in denial. They refuse to participate in any solution for the simple reason that they believe them to be non-issues.

Just as dangerous to the common good is a person who fully accepts the existence of a problem, yet believes as a matter of course that everything will work out just fine. They are indulging in magical thinking — a mentality marked by excessive optimism and a dash of egocentrism. Magical thinkers are content to simply sit on the sidelines and radiate good thoughts at those doing the heavy lifting to solve the world’s ills.

Both adamant deniers and cheerful magical thinkers refuse to contribute time and energy or make personal sacrifices to solve social problems. They hold society back from tackling its most pressing threats to equity, security, and even survival. They leave others to do the worry and the work. Not only is this monumentally unfair to those who shoulder the responsibility, it wastes valuable time. No local or global crisis will disappear if everyone assumes that someone else will fix it.

It is easy to understand why magical thinking’s core element, optimism, arose as a human trait, and why it persists. The alternative to belief in positive outcomes can be resignation or despair, which are both painful and limiting. It could be argued that humanity would not be where it is right now if not for legions of optimistic ancestors ignoring the local doomsayer’s warnings not to cross that river or build that tower or taste that strange new berry. Whenever a bold (and perhaps foolhardy) pioneer managed to explore, engineer, or eat something new and lived to tell the tale, human culture grew in its complexity — and in its capacity for further creativity. To put it another way, had all early hominins been cautious to a fault, we may never have ventured away from our points of origin.

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Πηγή: realclearscience.com