Thanks for this. It's good work.

This is what I would call "Executive Function failure." It doesn't seem to me as much about a lack of foresight. Most people can imagine the general picture of different futures. The problem is that consumerism has trained most people to take action only when prompted by an external force. An example I use is that if you take 1000 people from almost anywhere, and drop them in a wilderness, they will sort things out that have to be done for survival. If you leave those same 1000 people in a 'civilized' environment, they will most likely just kill each other or starve to death waiting for civil authority or salesmen to show up and tell them what they need.

In the comforts of modern society, people tend to seek more comforts, to covet or hoard their resources, and to expect 'news' of any big changes to come from some authoritative, credentialed source (and probably ignore it until they can't).

When a tornado hits and knocks out the electricity, they go outside and talk to the neighbors to offer or ask for help: they take initiative when they know they don't have any other choice.

The traditional methods of motivation (Fear of God, fear of invasion, greed for gold, starvation, etc) have waned in the face of the information age, but our philosophers and leaders are too busy chasing ways to sell books or harvest money from The Economy to stop and lead or think.

Joe Bageant (RIP) used to try and illustrate these points about how liberal thought doesn't lead to action that reaches the working poor.

I submit that we have become too accepting of blind competition in all things, thanks to the power of Big Money's pyramid schemes that perpetuate a myth of meritocracy around money.

That competition mindset based on "here and now" busyness deters us from cooperating to establish executive function priorities and motivations that serve the future (in other words, we don't have town meetings anymore that prioritize community).

For most of the modern eras, God was the marketing department for the town meeting. Our 'brilliant' intellectuals/humanists have turned to logic and science for ways of living without the accoutrements of religious community rituals, but they haven't come up with a replacement Motivator to connect people with their own usefulness to a place and future.