The furor over health care reform is like St. Augustine’s take on chastity: “Give it to us, Lord, but not yet.” So says a very insightful New Yorker article examining the sometimes-maddening conservative tendencies within human nature: the “endowment effect” or tendency to overvalue something because you think you own it, and the “status quo bias” which has us hanging on to what we know. Even if it’s broke, we’d often rather not fix it.

The Ethicurean blog applied these concepts to the reform challenges in food practices and policy in Behavioral economics and the food system. The “give it to us, but not yet” attitude can also be seen in the slow progress towards climate change response, and really in any kind of change on a personal or collective level. Sometimes it’s disheartening to encounter the climate change debunkers, the people resolved to find something negative to say about any progressive legislation, the everyday nihilists who can’t suspend their disbelief long enough to let a little bit of hope seep in. From a few steps back, though, it is not too hard to see these negative voices as a sign, like the buzzing of wasps growing louder as you near the nest. The status quo bias is most fully activated when the status quo senses a real threat; times of hopelessness tend to breed a sort of lull, an apathy rather than a protective swarm.

It’s easy to find things in the news and online that are kind of infuriating. But it’s not that much harder to take a step back and say to those angry buzzing voices: “thank you.” No matter how much one may disagree with certain opinions, the fact is that they represent someone sincerely protective of something they believe to have value. Seen through this forgiving lens, we can appreciate that in this country people still care about things. If no one felt the need to protect their status quo, if no one felt the “endowment effect” about anything going on in this country, there would be no civic investment at all. Perhaps we could liken the sometimes harsh political tenor to the furious tingling of a limb, long asleep, to which the circulation has begun to return. Change strikes us all of a sudden, no matter how much we are prepared for it; it always catches us mid-buzz, right where we left off caring enough to worry.

Sometimes individual news articles and blog posts and such do make me mad, but on another level they are just making me swarm, calling up what I still think  is worthy of protection in life. So in that sense it is good to be reminded that there are things I care about. We can think of the buzzing going on in the country right now as the swarming behavior bees exhibit right before change: when they are looking to create a new nest. This is a holy instinct born out of a collective conviction during times of upheaval. It’s somehow a lot easier to look at the news with this “thank you” at the ready. A thank you for being reminded of what is worth protecting, and a thank you for the signs that the change we’d all rather have “not yet” may have already begun.

Posted in Culture, Economy, News  | |  

About the Author

Kim works in the IT department and is from a psychology, human rights, and health care advocacy background.