Environmental Policy and the Lived Experience
Last week I was in Yosemite National Park with my family. It is such a beautiful place, filled with massive granite domes and a vibrant natural setting for experiencing the wonders of nature. It is also the home of many black bears.
As we entered the park I noticed the sign photographed here. It’s meaning was immediately clear to me. The red image evoking impressions of danger (and the need to be cautious) and blood (images of mangled bears). A few miles down the road, I saw the same sign again. It clicked right away: These signs were placed along side the road in places where cars had hit a bear.
I had discovered a very clear example of environmental cognitive policy.
Throughout our posts here on hivethrive, Evan and I look for ways to incorporate our understandings of human cognition into green business, environmental solutions, and politically significant events. Yesterday, Evan wrote about how findings in neuroscience can help explain the effectiveness of misinformation campaigns. Smears work because of the way our brains structure information during the learning process. Today, I’d like to sketch how the policy at Yosemite to place signs where bears have been injured or killed is built upon insights into the nature of our lived experience.
I’ve written elsewhere about the idea that every policy has a material part (the “expression in the world”) and a cognitive part (the ideas, values, and understandings that allow it to make sense). This distinction can be seen clearly with the Speeding Kills Bears signs. The material part is the metal signs and their placement in locations where bears have been hit by cars within the park. The cognitive part includes the understanding that cars often harm wildlife, that speeding cars have a more difficult time swerving to miss obstacles, and that many bears emerge onto the roadways in Yosemite National Park.
What do human brains have to do with this? It is helpful to know how information is stored in the neural circuitry of our brains and is shaped heavily by our past experiences. Thinking involves simulation of past experiences in order to make sense of current happenings. Remembering is more like “re-enacting a story from the past” than retrieving an item from a drawer. So when I am driving through the park, my body is immersed in a stream of perceptions that make sense from times in the past when I have ridden in a car. I feel the familiar sway as the car veers around turns - familiar because it has happened so many times before.
What’s more, I have experienced the shock of impact when the vehicle I was in had killed an animal. Many bugs have been smashed to death on my windshield. There have been a few more traumatic moments when birds crashed into the grill and, more potent still, a few tragic moments of death for dogs that ran out in front of me before I could swerve to miss. All of these lived experiences shape my emotional responses to a sign about bears in the wilderness.
I also live in a country where cars rule the road. Many a time have I seen small white crosses appear where a loved one was killed in a car accident. When these ceremonial objects appear alongside the road, often adorned affectionately with flowers and a photo of the beloved whose life was lost, I know right away that this is a place of mourning. I am reminded again each time that cars can take life away quickly and violently.
The same is true for bears.
This wealth of knowledge, built up in my bodily experiences of the world, is the source of an effective policy to slow drivers as they travel through Yosemite’s winding roads. It is not the outcome of benefits weighed against costs that causes me to ease up on the gas and ready myself for braking “just in case.” Rather it is the full bodily experience, lived day in and day out, that makes these signs work so well.
Cognitive policies can be powerful and consequential, shaping human behavior toward positive ends. They allow us to clearly understand the consequences of our actions, helping us to act in accordance with our most deeply help values - especially the sacred value of life itself.
