The Watchman's Rattle Quotes

“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology.”
― Rebecca Costa, The Watchman's Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction

“The principles governing the speed at which the human organism can biologically adapt offer us the single greatest insight into why civilizations succeed and fail as well as the most reliable preview of our own destiny.”
― Rebecca Costa, The Watchman's Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction

“Consequently, today we are more effective at responding to immediate problems than we are at reacting to vague, distant problems.”
― Rebecca Costa, The Watchman's Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction

“We have the need. We have the technology. But what we do not have is the faculty to act on a complex social problem. So ideas that can solve the problem come to a slow crawl and eventually die in committee no matter how effective they may be. One day, when the water crisis is bad enough, panic will ensue.”
― Rebecca Costa, The Watchman's Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction

“Conservation buys us time, but it also delays the inevitable as root causes worsen. Regrettably, the more time we buy, the more deluded we become that we have actually solved the problem. Successful mitigation is dangerous because it can easily be confused with a permanent cure as soon as short-term symptoms ameliorate.”
― Rebecca Costa, The Watchman's Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction

“Beliefs aren’t nurture; they are nature. They are not optional; they are a basic human need.”
― Rebecca Costa, The Watchman's Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction

“Human beings are organisms that have always required both beliefs and knowledge.”
― Rebecca Costa, The Watchman's Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction

“Then, as conditions grow more desperate, the second symptom appears: the substitution of beliefs for knowledge and fact.”
― Rebecca Costa, The Watchman's Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction

“For example, we now know that the Mayans lived with drought conditions, civil war, and growing food shortages for thousands of years prior to collapse. However, foreseeing all these problems in advance was of little use. The Mayans lacked the ability to discern the complexity of their circumstances and, therefore, had little possibility of rectifying deteriorating conditions. Instead, they did what every great civilization does when it reaches a cognitive threshold: They simply passed their dangerous problems from one generation to the next as these problems continued to grow in magnitude and peril.”
― Rebecca Costa, The Watchman's Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction

“The point at which a society can no longer “think” its way out of its problems is called the cognitive threshold. And once a society reaches this cognitive threshold, it begins passing unresolved issues from one generation to the next until, finally, one or more of these problems push the civilization over the edge.”
― Rebecca Costa, The Watchman's Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction

“The rule of thumb is that the complexity of the organism has to match the complexity of the environment at all scales in order to increase the likelihood of survival.” He then explains why the odds feel stacked against us: “What is a complex environment? A complex environment is one that demands picking the right choice in order to succeed. If there are many possibilities that are wrong, and only a few that are right, we have to be able to choose the right ones in order to succeed.”
― Rebecca Costa, The Watchman's Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction