What may come as a surprise is that we’re not only excellent at bullshitting, we’ve come to respect it. A researcher recently polled over 100 employees at several large companies. What he found was that employees who were ranked low in terms of honesty and humility were held in high esteem for being “politically skilled.” These bullshitters were also seen as being more competent than the employees with high levels of honesty. You could say that getting others to believe you is seen as being more valuable than being honest and accurate. So, the next time you see bullshitters quickly climbing the ladder at work, you now know why. Humans are not only great at lying – and falling for lies – we’ve likely selected bullshitting as an evolutionary advantageous skill.
Our inability to consider long-term consequences is threatening our survival.
But because our minds evolved to focus on immediate concerns, we are ill-suited to consider the long-term effects of those decisions.
There are countless examples of how our prognostic myopia has now become a threat to our very survival on the planet
yet, chances are, most of us don’t feel like we’re in any immediate danger, and until that feeling changes, we’ll continue to make the kinds of decisions that will speed up our chance of extinction. That’s human nature.
You could argue that living a pleasure-filled life is what any animal on the planet is striving for. What’s troubling is that we have the intelligence and ability to make ourselves – and the other animals of the world – happy and comfortable. We could do it if we wanted to. But instead, we tend to do the opposite.
Meandering leads to perfection 