We Are Binary in Our Beliefs About Faith, Science, and Climate

We’re all going to die. No we’re not.

The “end of the world.” is imminent. We hear this almost every day now. A strange binary has arisen wherein people who believe in climate disruption suggest we human beings are threatening all life on Earth. This assertion is invariably countered with “Earth will be just fine and will recover.”

Both of these statements are curious for several reasons. The first reason concerns how things change daily no matter what. There is no “flip” button upon a day wherein one can say all floods, fires, storms, wars, refugee crises, famines, and plagues break out on that particular day.

There are, or course, tipping points and signs we would be wise to attend to regarding change, but just as there has always been gradual change (excluding a Chicxulub asteroid visit) most change, even with volcanic cooling, happens more slowly.

Then there is the notion that “This calamity is about to destroy everything.” It is almost never framed in the context of how it is happening at this very moment. That is, fires are burning somewhere NOW. Floods are rising NOW. Animals die in the Sixth Extinction, NOW. Refugees are on the move NOW. And so on.

It’s not “going to be a mess in the future,” it is happening today. Considering this, the idea of “fear-mongering” about all these imaginary fears to come seems quite absurd. But it certainly does reveal cognitive defenses, notably an optimism bias and a level of denial we must face.

Certain religious faiths have always prophesied “the end of days.” The imagery and passions of these descriptions seem timely, and provide a data point of evidence for believers. But such descriptions are secular now, as well.

We somehow seem to expect everything to happen at once as proof that it is real. Perhaps this arose because we all grew up with various apocalyptic programming and blockbuster movie imagery, and disintegration by one torn thread here and one rent fabric there is not dramatic on a large enough scale. It’s not all day, every day, everybody…do don’t fret.

Another factor is that so many experts do agree things will get worse. It is sadly, true to say, “we have very little time,” and “it’s going to get worse.” Both are true, but the first statement seems to suggest it’s not happening already, and the second one may seem to dismiss how bad things have already gotten.

Polarized lenses

Today, media, capitalism, world politics, economic defenses, and varying faiths have coalesced to see the world through rose-colored lenses, or gray sooty, ones. There seems to be little middle ground or nuance.

Politically minded people who have values of protecting power and wealth often align with religiously minded people who have a world view of wanting to feel special and chosen — elite, or protected — by power of their perceived faith and status in the world.

In the corporate world that runs on fossil fuels, this translates to spreading fears about the end of the oil industry and what disruption it would bring.

In reality, however, fossil fuels are booming and emissions still rise.

Although science tends to see nature as neutral, many people of faith see it as their duty and right to dominate nature and to exploit resources in ways that display they were given “dominion.” This sets up an immediate binary between those who “are chosen” (good). and those who “are excluded from grace” (bad). There is little wonder that black and white thinking set us up from the beginning to be unconsciously primed to see doom and gloom, or bloom and “ room in paradise for the chosen.”

Yet, most people are neither religious, nor are we science experts.

How then did we get so binary in our belief systems? Like the Earth itself, society changes slowly over time, albeit at a much faster rate than geology or natural climate cycles.

The term “Doomers” has emerged to designate those who think it’s all over, now, Baby Blue Marble. As mentioned, other terms like “Bloomers” describes those who tend toward rosy, blooming scenarios of hope.

The truth is that just as most of us do not fit an extremely rigid binary of gender, most of us are both “dooming and blooming” at different moments of our lives, and with varying moods, data, and events of the moment.

Just as most human beings are neither Black, nor racially pure, white, most people are on a continual spectrum somewhere

between denial of reality and acceptance of reality.

We only choose tribes and sides at those times when we feel strongly compelled by social pressures to conform or get with the programming.

Our motivated human reasoning is affected by more than one thing at all times. We will look to authority, sometimes dogma, to make sense of what we perceive. We notoriously do cherry-picking of evidence, make logical errors due to our biases, and are susceptible to false data and fake news. Altogether then, we are hardwired to make errors about anything we want to see as objectively black or white.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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