The Psychology of Collapse: A Deep Dive in Human Misbehavior

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

It’s really happening.

The world is moving backward. I’ll give you two examples: In Arkansas, lawmakers tried to pass a bill to remove fluoride from their drinking water. The bill failed, but the bill’s backers vowed to keep trying. It’s part of a trend now that includes federal judges. They aren’t worried about toxic air or diseases. They aren’t worried about guns or fossil fuels. They’re worried about fluoride.

Last year Delaware, a blue state, voted overwhelmingly to legalize the sale of raw milk after news broke about H5N1 bird flu in dairy cows. Since then, there’s been a major push nationwide in favor of it.

Demand is going up.

One piece attributes the increase, roughly 20 percent in just one year, to a simple case of full-grown adults wanting to defy public health recommendations. They heard raw milk was dangerous. That made them want it.

There’s going to be a lot more of this.

Everywhere you look, a large and growing number of people actively reject the knowledge and tools that would save their lives in favor of habits and behaviors that put them at risk or cause them direct harm. It often looks like society is utterly incapable of responding to threats. Everyone rushes to do the exact opposite of what they should, and it’s getting worse. If you’ve noticed, you’re not alone. Entire disciplines have spent the last 70 years studying human behavior and coming to the same conclusion. I’ve spent the last three years diving into it, and I thought I would collect everything I’ve learned into one post.

We almost like being wrong.

The question is… why?