We arent built to live in the moment, thats what distinguishes humans from other animals

What best distinguishes our species is an ability that scientists are just beginning to appreciate: we contemplate the future.
Published: May 28, 2017 1:56 AM


Martin EP Seligman & John Tierney

We are misnamed. We call ourselves Homo sapiens, the ‘wise man’, but that’s more of a boast than a description. What makes us wise? What sets us apart from other animals? Various answers have been proposed—language, tools, cooperation, culture, tasting bad to predators—but none is unique to humans. What best distinguishes our species is an ability that scientists are just beginning to appreciate: we contemplate the future. Our singular foresight created civilisation and sustains society. It usually lifts our spirits, but it’s also the source of most depression and anxiety, whether we’re evaluating our own lives or worrying about the nation. Other animals have springtime rituals for educating the young, but only we subject them to “commencement” speeches grandly informing them that today is the first day of the rest of their lives.

A more apt name for our species would be Homo prospectus because we thrive by considering our prospects. The power of prospection is what makes us wise. Looking into the future, consciously and unconsciously, is a central function of our large brain, as psychologists and neuroscientists have discovered—rather belatedly because for the past century most researchers have assumed that we’re prisoners of the past and the present.

Behaviourists thought of animal learning as the ingraining of habit by repetition. Psychoanalysts believed that treating patients was a matter of unearthing and confronting the past. Even when cognitive psychology emerged, it focused on the past and present—on memory and perception.

But it is increasingly clear that the mind is mainly drawn to the future, not driven by the past. Behaviour, memory and perception can’t be understood without appreciating the central role of prospection. We learn not by storing static records, but by continually retouching memories and imagining future possibilities. Our brain sees the world not by processing every pixel in a scene, but by focusing on the unexpected.

More:
http://www.financialexpress.com/lifestyle/we-arent-built-to-live-in-the-moment-thats-what-distinguishes-humans-from-other-animals/689119/