Short-term thinking has, in general, led to bad consequences in my life. As I look around at other people I know, directly and indirectly, I feel the same would apply to them as well.

As stresses build up in life our thinking is to extinguish the problem as soon as possibe. On paper that's great, but the consequences of a solving for a problem in the short-term versus long-term yield very different consequences. Take over-eating for example. T solve the problem of hunger immediately one only needs to gorgre on whatever resources are nearby. In the short we have solved the problem - but in satiating it so fast we have now lowered our tolerance for hunger and even raised the threshold for how much resources we can accomadate. Typical addiction pattern/downward spiral ensues.

Another example: social anxiety. To avoid a situation we may decide not to ask a girl/guy out on a date, skip work, cut class, avoid a family festivity, etc. In the short the anxiety is avoided. In the long-term the problem grows bigger. I won't elaborate on each example here but it is quite obvious.

This got me thinking, in the past, before we civilized our selves, if a problem presented itself in the wild we actually legitimately needed to solve the problem immediately. If a predator was present, we needed to runa away or kill it  - no waiting allowed. If the weather was threatening we needed to make a new shelter right away. This thinking hasn't died and it causes our species many many ills.

Does it not? More importantly, what do you think about this perspective on short-term decision making? How can we solve it? I'm currently practciing meditation and other forms of self-control/ascetecism to see how it alleviates ills in my life.

Really?

I do believe a lot of the problems we face today are at least partially caused by the dissonance between our curent environment [and by extension society] and that in wich most of our biology and instincts were formed, and we did have a lot more situations in which the luxury of long-term thinking wasn't present. That being said, things like social anxiety for one don't seem to be an example of such situatons. Unless you subscribe to Rousseau's et al ideia of men as pretty much not being a social animals back then [even though I don't think there's much room for believing that nowadays], social relations would have been every bit as important back then. Avoiding those because of a focus on the short term might have been even deadlier. Even then, though, the whole nature of said relations and of our needs would have made for a very different dynamic, which might negate a lot of the reasons why you might not want or could even be able to not go on "family functions", or the layers and expectations and what not taht are now present when asking someone out, for example. So even though I don't think it all boils down just to short- vs long-term, I believe a lot of these "anxieties" have to do with this sort of dissonance as I stated earlier, and maybe the fact that we're not as equiped to deal with those coupled with the fact that we have the option not to might lead a lot of people into the sort of short term mentality you're talking about.

And yeah, it does cause problems :P

Hey, great response! None, and then all of a sudden a good one!

Hmmm...I'll have to look into Rousseau's idea of never being a social animal. I mean, as you say, it really is inseparable from the progress we've made throughout evolution to get to where we are now. Seems to easy to cut that argument down.

You mentioned "layers" of expectations. The layers I feel come from interpreting events as serious, because the threat of predators and hunger were much more serious back then. So we used our brains at full capacity. Now, we have non-serious events (social functions, etc.) that are brains are tackling in a very serious manners. And the problem is that casual/non-serious events are waaaay more plentiful then serious events.

Perhaps I'm restating things a bit, but I'm feeling it for myself now a bit differently through your perspective.

I will say this though. I think this is where customs and traditions play a crucial role. These are set-ways of handling complex scenarios (greetings, appreciation, etc.) without the need for thinking through all the consequences and possibilities of our actions. We take a standard action and know there will be a standard response. I feel as though tradition/customs/norms are being diluted in this day and age. Perhaps a consequence of the liberation of individualism (I'm biased as an American) that current civilization has provided us with technology, political freedoms, and a long stretch of relative world-peace.

K, I'll leave it there for now.