We think we are held up because of that traffic jam, but the jam itself emerges from the dynamics of highway systems. The disconect between such systems and how we relate to them begins with distortions in our mental models. We blame those other drivers clogging the road but fail to take into account the systems dynam ics that put them there.
"Much of the time," Sterman notes, "people attribute what hap pens to them to events close in time and space, when in reality it's the result of the dynamics of the larger system within which they are embedded."
The problem gets compounded by what's called the "illusion of explanatory depth," where we feel confidence in our under standing of a complex system, but in reality have just superficial knowledge. Try to explain in depth how an electric grid operates or why increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide ups the energy in storms, and the illusory nature of our systems understanding be comes clearer.
In addition to mismatches of our mental models and the sys tems they presume to map, there are even more profound predica ments: our perceptual and emotional systems are all but blind to them. The human brain was molded by what helped us and our forerunners survive in the wild, particularly in the Pleistocene geo logical epoch (roughly from 2 million years ago to about 12,000 years ago, when there was the rise of agriculture).
We are finely tuned to a rustling in the leaves that may signal a stalking tiger. But we have no perceptual apparatus that can sense the thinning of the atmosphere's ozone layer, nor the carcinogens in the particulates we breathe on a smoggy day. Both can eventu ally be fatal, but our brain has no direct radar for these threats.