Living in the Moment

It has become commonplace to implore people to live in the moment - to be more impulsive and more spontaneous. To encourage them to let go of tomorrow and to seize the day. But what are the implications of not considering the implications?

Firefly's Jayne Cobb is the perfect example of a character living in the moment. He has a preconceived focus - himself and getting paid - and a notion as to their order of precedence - 1: Himself, 2: Getting Paid, 3: Everything Else.

Yet while this driving motivation makes Jayne's behaviour consistent, in a way that those around him can have some stable idea of what to expect - that he will always look to himself first - it also drives a number of conflicts that damage Jayne's own interests. His selfish focus leads to an attempted sell out of fellow crew members - the fugitives Simon and River - and the betrayal his Captain, Mal.

Jayne's intense focus upon deriving the maximum personal benefit from each task leaves him disconnected from the bigger picture. While in isolation his actions furthered his narrow and impulsive interests, in context, these separate actions formed a patchwork, a whole, a sum that threatened the very aims that motivated the parts.

This is no singular trope. From Scott Pilgrim, to Bender Rodriguez, to even the Dark Lord Sauron, a narrowly focused intent on completing immediate tasks to achieve desired aims, has kept characters blind to greater dangers on the horizon.

Becoming caught in this kind of narrow bubble is a danger, all too prevalent, in the real world (Green, 2012). Not least amongst these dangers is the limiting of our ability to change (McGilchrist, 2011) - something that has been observed of the persistence of governments with economic austerity even as it struggles to achieve the stated aims (Wintour, 2012).

A narrow focus on immediate tasks, and obstacles to be overcome, can deprive us of the important information that context offers us about our actions. But, possibly an even greater danger is that, we can lose perspective - and without perspective we can become detached from the larger consequences of our actions.

This can lead us into repeating our mistakes - our lack of comprehension only serving to blind us, as our behaviour impacts upon ourselves and those around us.

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References:
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+ Iain McGilchrist's 'The Divided Brain'; RSA Animate on YouTube; 21 October 2011.
+ John Green's '#42: Globalization II - Good or Bad?'; Crash Course World History on YouTube; 9 November 2012.

+ Patrick Wintour's 'George Osborne prepares for climbdown on missed fiscal targets'; in The Guardian; 2 December 2012.