At nearly 24 miles long, the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the world’s longest bridge near New Orleans, Louisiana, was photographed from an altitude of about 1000 feet during a helicopter photo flight.
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In 1981, Kent Cochrane was involved in a motorcycle crash that left him with an unusual brain injury. His perception of time changed. After that he was visited by a psychologist. “What are you doing tomorrow?” asked one. “I don’t know,” Cochrane replied. “Remember the question?” said the psychologist. “What am I going to do tomorrow?” “Yes. How would you describe your state of mind when you think about it?” “Blank, I think.”
Psychologists have found that Cochrane is unable to form mental images of time other than his present. There is nothing to hold you up or do anything.
Cochrane had lost the function of mental time travel, the ability to move the mind to the past or the future. We are lucky to have this talent. This means you can remember your best experiences and make detailed plans for tomorrow. It may even have facilitated human evolutionary success. But it’s an imperfect skill. We may still be preoccupied with the immediate and present. So why are we struggling to take a long-term view?
For the past five years, I have tried to answer this question by long viewI would argue that society is in danger…
