No.3｜Why We Should Learn - The Essential Reason (Part 2)
This article is a translation of this article.
Another reason to learn is to think without bias. If you have a biased view, it is impossible to get the facts straight and have a productive discussion. Each person perceives the world through his or her own color glasses. The world is overflowing with information, and processing it all is beyond human capacity. Normally we live efficiently by extracting only the information we want. Conversely, everyone tends to be indifferent to information that they do not want to see. If you are not aware of where your biases lie, you won't realize that you are making judgments based on only a few facts. The most dangerous pitfall is that "unrecognized benefits tend to be underestimated and unintentionally destroyed. If we don't recognize it, we can't reflect on it. It's too obvious to recognize, but our lives consist of numerous benefits.
・Right to live safely
・Right to vote freely
・Right to education
・Right to work safely
・Freedom of Expression
These are some of the benefits that our predecessors risked their lives to win. It feels natural now, but it's almost a miracle that it feels that way. Once destroyed, it is not easy to get it back.
Among such benefits, one that has been fatally forgotten in modern times is the "benefit from nature".
・Clean water and air
・Safe food
・Abundant resources such as paper, wood, and fuel
・Place of Tranquility
・Reduction of damage from storms and floods
・Water retention function, drought prevention
・Climate stabilization
Services from nature have been so commonplace and cheap, that the most Japanese have become desensitized. Until the well dries up, we won't know how much we appreciate water. We don't realize that we're really on the verge of losing it. Even though these services are threatened in the future, it is difficult to realize the significance of the situation without special training. (Until a pandemic occurred, most people never imagined a pandemic could happen and we failed to recognize how peaceful it was before it! But there was a warning.)
Those who underestimate the benefits they receive will not be able to stop their desires. You will always feel deficient and try to fill it with something else. Human consumption has long since surpassed the amount of natural regeneration, despite the fact that it is difficult to realize in Japan that we are destroying the environment. This is due in part to Japan's dependence on foreign imports for much of its food. Food production is fundamentally destructive to nature, requiring about 20,000 times as much water to produce one kilogram of beef. Japan continues to export environmental destruction abroad through food imports. The destruction of the earth's nature hurts the life of the next generation of human beings.
In the past, mankind's impact on the earth has been negligible. Yet, with the world's population growing to about 8 billion and the ever-increasing development of science, humanity's influence is growing. It is dangerous to remain unaware of its power.
The world is made up of countless unseen benefits from nature, from the predecessors, from the numerous unknown people living now. We must realize it before we lose it. You must behave properly. Otherwise, we would be unwittingly destroying the foundation of society.