When I have discussions with people about politics or morality, I often seem to find myself wondering “sure, that might be great for now, but what about it’s long term effects?” It seems to me that often people don’t consider the effect that whatever action they propose will have 5 years down the road. A quick look at what passes for sensible economic policy in this country seems like enough to confirm this, at least for politicians. And while it’s never good to focus only on the long term and never meet the needs of the present, the future should be given at least as much consideration as the present.
Prevention Is Better Than Cure
This is the main reason to pay attention to the long term; preventing a problem is almost always easier and cheaper than fixing it whan it arrives. This is obvious when it comes to health, you can either live a healthy lifestyle (don’t smoke, limit alcohol, lots of veggies, exercise), or face a much greater risk of health problems such as cancer and diabetes later in life. The healthy lifestyle might not be as much fun in the short run, if there was nothing wrong with it, I’d eat a pound of cheese a day, but after a while I’d regret it, when my colesterol went through the roof.
In money too, this is evident. If I save a little every month and never buy anything I don’t have the cash for, I won’t be able to buy as many things as I’d like, but I’ll be able to prevent a huge pile of debt in the future.
It’s also important in politics. In the short run policies like a minimum wage and welfare sound like good ideas, but the long term effects of such policies is to force many people with little or no marketable skills to become utterly dependent on the state. Not an easy situation to overcome, especially if you were raised in this kind of environment.
Also in relationships. Telling white lies in a relationship may allow you to avoid unpleasant conflicts at the moment, but the long term effect could be to turn every conversation into a minefield. Where you have to put aside half the things you want to say in order to keep it pleasant.
Why?
Why do we seem to ignore the poor effects that some behaviors have on our long term happiness? At least part of the reason is that througout most of human history, people didn’t have much of a future to look forward to. Even a recent as 10,000 years ago people barely lived past maturity, they never knew when they were going to get attacked by a predator, or get a random cut infected, or run out of food. Every day was a struggle, and long term plans were often useless. Thus, those people who focused on the benefits that were within sight often did better.
Overcoming Shortsighted Habits
Most of these shortsighted habits are very hard to see, because we subconsciously don’t really want to see them, for the reasons I mentioned above. But in order to get rid of them, you must first be aware of them. I suggest sitting down, and writing down a list of every habit you have that comes to mind, not just the bad ones, include the ones you consider good. Then, when you have the list in front of you, go down it one by one and decide what kinds of things are likely to happen in your life as a result over the next five years.
I just started to do this, and I didn’t have to go very far before I thought of a couple I could stand to get rid of. One habit I have, is that whenever something I’m reading or watching something that brings up a really strong emotion in me, I physically shudder as a way to push the emotion back into the of my mind so I don’t have to deal with it. Of course the long term effect is that these emotions will only get stronger, and it will become harder and harder to face them. If I never deal with this, I may reach a point where I never let myself experience real emotion.
I hope you found this useful. If you do the exercise above, I’d love to hear if you discovered anything. Just email me or post it in the comments below if you’d like to share.