If You Liked Health Care, You'll Love Afghanistan

By Marty Kaplan The Huffington Post

If you’re depressed by the way the national debate about health care has been playing out, just wait until the rubber hits the road on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Israel. If you’re enraged by the way Wall Street’s rescue has made us hostages to their recklessness, get ready for how the oil and coal industries are going to game the energy and climate change decisions ahead. If you’re scared by the way the media can trivialize and polarize and make entertainment out of any topic in its crosshairs, imagine its toxic impact when we get around to dealing with education, immigration and trade.

An authoritarian society has no trouble making decisions. Dictatorships – whether right or left, theological or ideological – don’t deliberate. But open societies have to clear two hurdles if they want to do things democratically.

The first is biological – the way humans are hardwired.

We may prize reason, but our limbic system – the reptile part of our brain, the governor of our emotions, the seat of pleasure and fear and attention and memory – is pre-rational. We can’t help rubbernecking at accidents or being spellbound by stories. Sex, violence and novelty jerk our chain, whether we want them to or not. Our genes run us way more than we’re comfortable acknowledging, whether we’re negotiating between altruism and self-interest, or Our Tribe and the Other, or reality and illusion.

Read more at The Huffington Post