Recency bias is a mental weakness of our brain that makes us favor recent events over historic ones. It’s about giving greater importance to the mos

5 Lessons From the Past to Overcome Capitalism

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2025-01-19 14:00:14

Recency bias is a mental weakness of our brain that makes us favor recent events over historic ones. It’s about giving greater importance to the most recent event, such as the final lawyer's closing argument a jury hears before being dismissed to deliberate, or having the last word in a presidential debate.

The lesson here is that we should not leave all of history to historians, or we may be doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, or forget the successes of the past.

Roman Krznaric [kriz-NAR-ik] writes in History for Tomorrow how events from the past can inspire us to tackle our modern challenges such as fossil fuels, consumerism, democracy, inequality.

The slave rebellion of 1831 in Jamaica and the Captain Swing Riots of 1830, had the powerful effect of accelerating the pace of change because they filled public discourse with anti-slavery, and anti-enclosure ideas. When radical flank groups take more extreme positions than the mainstream moderates, it makes the moderates appear more reasonable to the ruling class. The same happened with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s where the radical flank that included Nation of Islam and the Black Panthers, normalized the moderate movement for civil rights.

The radicals of today are Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, among many others. Not everyone agrees with them, but they play a crucial role in normalizing the moderate position that fossil fuels need to be phased out.