Theodore Roosevelt is purported to have offered this advice: “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” I used to love this quote because it spoke to the wisdom of taking risks and being proactive to reach one’s personal goals. However, in other contexts, I have realized that it is terrible advice.
Previously, I offered some hypotheses for why humans feel the need to sacrifice, or give up something for some greater cause. Two of the reasons that we sacrifice are to:
1. Distract a threat
2. Build trust in a complex social order
The delusional religious sacrifices of the past, such as the human sacrifices practiced by ancient pagan civilizations, seem to have their origins in these two objectives. Somehow the members of these ancient peoples were convinced in their pre-civilization state that their lives were in peril and that they needed to “do something” in order to ward off the threat. Perhaps someone in the very early stages of the panic conceived an idea that tapped into the human instincts to distract a threat and appease the social order, and thus the tribes implemented a solution that went unquestioned and was passed down from generation to generation.
Why wasn’t there any sort of push-back against such nonsensical proposals? In the face of danger, rational thinking takes a back seat to instinct. Careful reasoning did not save our ancestors when a snake lashed out to bite or a tiger attacked the village. Instinct did. If our instinct is to distract a threat and appease the social order, then anything feeding that reaction will be welcomed, while rational analysis of cause and effect will be rejected if it challenges the instinctive behavior.
We may look back at the ancient pagan civilizations of the past and think that humans have made significant progress, but we have in fact changed very little. From my observation, the beliefs may have changed, but the instincts remain the same.
In our modern world, many people believe that if something needs fixing in our society, we need to “do something!” By this they often mean that the government needs to intervene in order to address a crisis or solve some perceived problem. The advice from Theodore Roosevelt is suitable for achieving personal goals, so wouldn’t this advice apply in achieving collective goals through democratic processes? Wouldn’t it be better to do something, even if it may turn out to be wrong, rather than do nothing?
More often than not, the something ends up resulting in individuals giving up some freedom or privilege for the greater good. In other words, individuals must sacrifice something in order to achieve some collective end. Because these goals exceed the scope of the individual, we can objectively analyze these ends. As it turns out, relinquishing freedoms so that government may have more power to solve a problem often leads to the problem never really being solved and our freedoms never really returned.
I believe this attitude towards solving societal problems by fiat lies in our instinctive desire to sacrifice in order to achieve goals 1 and 2 listed above. Many people believe that by “doing something”, we are combating the supposed threat and helping the people in our society, even if that “something” has no effect on solving the problem. Should you point out this inconvenient truth, these same people will accuse you of being dangerous or uncaring. You are combating instinctive behavior with reason and will be vilified for it.
Little do people realize that just as the ancient pagan sacrifices had little effect on the natural laws that govern the course of the sun, so too do the sacrificing of our rights have little effect on the natural laws that govern human interactions. Instead, by sacrificing our freedoms, we only empower those who are already in positions of authority, and it’s a long, hard road to get those freedoms back.