History suggests that the disillusioned and the disaffected do not readily take to the streets nor man the barricades to defend a system that failed to defend them.
David OlusogaRead
The primitive fight-or-flight regions of our mammalian brains react to immediate danger. We instinctively run from an avalanche but the gradual retreat of a glacier, the portent of the far greater danger of rising temperatures and rising oceans, just doesn't get through to us in the same way.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Our brains respond quickly to immediate threats but struggle with gradual dangers like climate change.
David Olusoga's quote highlights the human instinct to react to immediate physical threats, such as an avalanche, while failing to adequately respond to slow-building crises like climate change. It illustrates the challenge of perceiving and addressing gradual dangers, which can often feel less urgent and therefore less impactful on our emotions and actions, despite their potential for catastrophic consequences.
Themes
Climate ChangeDangerInstinctEnvironmentAwareness
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about climate awareness, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of recognizing slow-moving threats.
More from David Olusoga
All quotes →No matter that you're a British citizen, no matter that you were born here - your skin colour means you do not have the same rights as others to express critical opinions about your own country.
David OlusogaRead
Public buildings, built from the rates and taxes paid by past generations, are being auctioned off by impoverished councils who need the money to pay the redundancies of workers they can no longer afford to employ. Many of these grand Victorian buildings will be turned into flats that most people will never be able to afford.
David OlusogaRead
Black history is a series of missing chapters from British history. I'm trying to put those bits back in.
David OlusogaRead
We nonchalantly expect that next year's smartphone will be faster and better than this year's, yet we struggle to imagine that society and our lives could progress at anything like the pace at which technology advances and we meekly accept it when things go backwards.
David OlusogaRead
Our national history cannot be national if, in the near future, one in three young adults feels their stories remain untold, if this country's long global history of empire and interconnections is marginalised and if the historical reality of race is rendered almost invisible.
David OlusogaRead
Similar quotes
It's hard to imagine anything more interesting than learning how we're woven into the enormous tapestry of existence. Where did our universe come from? How special is our world, and how special are we? We allocate tens of billions of dollars annually to NASA, NSF and academia in search of the answers.
Seth ShostakRead
If the only time you think of me as a scientist is during Black History Month, then I must not be doing my job as a scientist.
Neil Degrasse TysonRead
Perhaps arising from a fascination with animals, biology seemed the most interesting of sciences to me as a child.
Elizabeth BlackburnRead
It remains an astonishing, disturbing fact that in America - a nation where nearly every new drug is subjected to rigorous scrutiny as a potential carcinogen, and even the bare hint of a substance's link to cancer ignites a firestorm of public hysteria and media anxiety - one of the most potent and common carcinogens known to humans can be freely bought and sold at every corner store for a few dollars.
Siddhartha MukherjeeRead
The doubter is a true man of science: he doubts only himself and his interpretations, but he believes in science.
Claude BernardRead
I miss the early days; I do. I was so lucky. I basically had it to myself, learning about these chimpanzees. Nobody knew anything about them. Discovering their different personalities, different life histories. I was lucky.
Jane GoodallRead