Research Scientists
Paul Slovic, PhD
University of East Anglia
Address
Address by Paul Slovic at the University of East Anglia, July 14, 2005, upon receiving an Honorary Doctorate in Environmental Sciences.
Chancellor Gough, Distinguished Graduates, Ladies and Gentleman:
I am deeply honored and grateful to the University of East Anglia for bestowing upon me this honorary degree. I am also very pleased that my wife, Roslyn, and daughter, Lauren, could be here with me today to share in the festivities. The support of my family has always been vitally important to whatever I may have accomplished in my career.
Another reason that I am pleased to be here today is the great respect I have for the School of Environmental Sciences and its faculty. I have had many rewarding visits here, as well as collaborative research projects, with such internationally known scholars as Ian Bateman, Nick Pidgeon, Tim O'Riordan, Graham Loomes, and others. In my opinion this is one of the preeminent schools of Environmental Sciences in the world.
In a world beset by conflict and violence, such as we witnessed in London one week ago today, I would like to make a few remarks about the importance of environmental science programs such as the program here at UEA.
Threats to peace are clearly threats to the environment. But threats to the environment are also threats to peace. This was prominently recognized in December of 2004, when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to a Kenyan environmentalist, Wangari Maathai. Wangari Maathai won the prize, in part, for planting trees. But what does planting trees have to do with peace?
Well, it was not just planting trees. After starting an organization called "The Green Belt Movement" in 1977, Wangari Maathai helped the women of Kenya plant more than 30 million trees. These trees provide fuel, food, shelter, income, improved soils, and more effective watersheds. Planting these trees helps women gain some degree of power over their lives as well as social and economic status and relevance. Moreover, under Wangari Maathai's leadership, the tree became a symbol for the struggle in Kenya for democracy.
The Nobel Committee challenged the world to broaden the understanding of peace. The Chair of the Committee, when presenting the prize to Wangari Maathai, stated that environmental protection has become yet another path to peace. He noted that many conflicts have been triggered by scarce environmental resources-disputes over oil, water, timber, and minerals. Below the surface of conflict in Darfur, Sudan, he noted, was desertification that forced Arab nomads south, bringing them into conflict with farmers. Speaking of Darfur, you may know there is genocide ongoing there. During the past year, hundreds of thousands of innocent people have been murdered, and millions displaced from their homes.
The atrocities in Darfur touch upon some of my research, which examines the meaning and motivational force of information. We live in a world awash in information. We expend great effort and use highly sophisticated technologies to create and gather information and to transmit it around the world almost instantly. But how do we understand that information, and do we use it beneficially?
My colleagues and I have found that for information to have meaning and be used effectively it must carry "feeling," what we call "affect." Without feeling, information lacks meaning and won't motivate action.
Consider a form of information that we create because we believe it has great importance in helping us understand and take action to prevent harm and save lives. This critical information comes to us in the form of numbers. The numbers don't always convey the meanings we think they do. And numbers don't always motivate appropriate actions. I will try to illustrate this with two passages taken from a 1994 book by the American writer Annie Dillard, called "For the Time Being." It's a book, in part, about numbers.
There are 1,198,500 people alive now in China, writes Dillard. "To get a feel for what this means (italics added), simply take yourself, in all your singularity, importance, complexity, and love, and multiply by 1,198,500,"
"See, nothing to it," she adds, with her tongue firmly in her cheek. She knows we can't do this. The circuitry in our brain that controls our feelings is not up to this task.
Later, Dillard ponders the day, April 30, 1991, when 138,000 people drowned in Bangladesh. At dinner, she mentions to her daughter—7 years old—that it is hard to imagine 138,000 people drowning. "No, it's easy," says her daughter. "Lots and lots of dots in the blue water." Again we are confronted with the impoverished meanings conveyed by numbers.
One death is a tragedy, and we will go to extreme lengths to prevent that death. But 1,000 deaths is a statistic. In recognition of the fact that we often fail to respond to statistics, they have been characterized as "human beings with the tears dried off."
This begins to help us understand why otherwise good people, who expend immense time, resources, energy and compassion to prevent death or mount rescue efforts for one person or for small numbers of victims, ignore mass murder, whether it be human genocide or species extinction.
When the grim facts of the Holocaust became well known, at the end of World War II, the civilized world recoiled in horror and vowed "never again." Unfortunately, never again has become "again and again" as mass murder and genocide have occurred repeatedly in places such as Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, the Congo, Zimbabwe, and today, as we speak, Darfur. And, in every instance, the civilized world, when presented with the grim statistics of slaughter, turned away and acted as though the problem didn't exist. Conveying the statistics of mass murder or genocide, no matter how large the numbers, fails to convey the full meaning of such atrocities. The numbers represent "dry statistics" that, like "lots and lots of dots in blue water" fail to motivate action. Genocide in Darfur is real, but we don't feel that reality. Extinction of plant and animal species is real but we don't feel that reality.
Annie Dillard writes of "compassion fatigue" and asks: "At what number do other individuals blur for me?" Our research team is beginning to study that question, hoping that by understanding the process of desensitization we can learn how to combat it. We are testing the sobering hypothesis that signs of "blurring" may become evident even when the number is as small as 2! We are also working to understand how to create forms of experience that will personalize loss and enable us to appreciate it—much in the way that forms of literature and art convey meaning through emotion—The Diary of Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel's Night are powerful examples of how one can make the blue dots in the water "come alive with feeling." Maybe some day, "never again" will become more than a meaningless phrase.
Thank you.