The Myopia Epidemic: Why We Struggle to See Beyond Today

A few days ago, I came across a reel which was both sensible and necessary. The particular content creator, a girl in probably her twenties, spoke about how it is necessary for women and men to understand each other, build bridges instead of searching for red-flags and how men need to speak about their struggles, as well. Contrary to my judgment, the comment section was filled with juvenile comebacks and ‘what-if’ responses. I was then, reminded of a book called Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson wherein he broadly divided the personality types into four and finding ways on how to adapt to better communicate with them. As I went through the pages, I pondered upon a thought: Why do we need to tailor our speech to ‘adults’? More specifically, why do we have such short-sightedness in abundance?

As someone who is interested in Indian philosophy, it is peculiar to notice that every time a commoner is asked about his favourite crop of Indian philosophers, he would laud the likes of the same philosophers. It may be Chanakya, Buddha, Adiguru Shankaracharya or Lord Krishna. The answers wouldn’t ideally follow with what they loved about these philosophers; or even names of other philosophers like Vidura or Yagyavalka. Chances are, they did not pay attention to their works. Either that, or they had probably listened to someone who ‘thought about them favourably’ and believed the same, just because they liked the person delivering the message due to his nature, politics etc. Only a microscopic minority finds the time to ‘read their books’.

This is just one of the few examples. When we look around, it is not uncommon to find a myopic culture amongst us. With the growth of social media, we see an explosion of opinions. This leads to echo-chambers and confirmation bias. People who believe their group has a moral or cultural right over another, pay attention to information that support their side. When such things happen, people support their side passionately for immediate rewards, even if it leads to suboptimal future benefits. An example would be: believing that a certain leader might be involved in an international scam, even if it tarnishes the nation’s reputation later.

As humans, we are often hardwired for survival. A government facing protest may agree to the protestors and partially cave in to their demands even if it means a long-term economic failure. The government sees no problems in gaining a few seats in exchange of distributing freebies during inflation. Now, if a group doesn’t have the appropriate awareness of their decision, they’ll obviously focus on the urgent and immediate ones. In this example, it’s subsidies. Other examples, can be prices of everyday items or even abstract ones such as ‘your position as a person of specific group in a society’. It is also not uncommon for political outfits to hire consultants who provide them tailor-made solutions for immediate incentives such as winning the next elections. Hence, winning the next election takes precedence over devising policies which benefit the nation in the long run. Even in the international realm, we see the prevalence of debt-culture. Governments often go for long term debts which may bring in benefits but also contribute heavily towards fiscal deficit.

In certain societies, tradition is valued over long-term thinking and innovation – which also has its fair share of merits. However, there needs to be an understanding that traditions are normally based on historically predictable inputs which yielded historically observed predictable results. Over time, there can be a lot of factors which contribute to different outcomes and hence, long-term thinking must be revised from time to time. However, it is easy to look back at historical incidents and wrapping it under the guise of tradition, rather than being open to innovation.

Away from the political realm and closer to our workspace, we find numerous examples of companies pursuing short-term targets such as quarterly sales profits as the sole parameter even if it is not advisable for the long run. Bosses, too, love to posture as grandiose leaders in needless meetings despite knowing that the said time could be utilised by their subordinates in producing more targets.

At a societal level, myopia to societal and personal issues is ubiquitous. The question is: How to get rid of such myopic tendencies? In the age of data, it’s not tough but one should engage with all sorts of data regarding various issues – both, which questions and confirms our bias. Only then, we can avoid falling into the myopic trap. While most of our focus delves on survival and short-term benefits, we must also look at long-term incentives. For example, conducting meticulous environment impact assessments while carrying out a property development project; or the final goal of a government policy. Aside from making earning and capitalising profit our sole aim in life, we must also foster a culture of learning and reflection.

-Shreyan Laha