Amygdala Deterioration Affects Legislation

As our abilities decline, we begin to legislate to adapt:

State officials are working to get the word out about Washington’s Driving Under the Influence of Electronics Act, which goes into effect Sunday and bans the use of handheld devices while driving, even when stopped in traffic.

Fines start at $136 and can go up to $234; violations will be reported to insurance companies, meaning violators could see their rates increase.

Other distractions, such as grooming, smoking, eating or reading, could result in a $99 ticket if you are pulled over for another offense.

If you are colorblind, you can’t imagine what it would be like to see colors. If you see the normal range of colors, you can’t imagine what an alien who sees four additional colors would see.

Likewise, we may see a different world from the world that those of incredible amygdala development see. The soldiers home from WWII never had a problem eating Big Macs as they drove their convertibles down the road. In fact, if you had proposed this law to them, they would have thought it insane, and any politician who proposed it would have been run out of office as some sort of pathetic ninny.

Then again, back then, I doubt those people would have been playing a videogame in their car as they were weaving through traffic. Having a functional amygdala has a lot of advantages.

But today, we all agree, you can’t possibly do anything while you are driving, because the least distraction is a terrible risk, and we can’t expect ourselves to self-police those risks.

I just see a yin and yang thing going on between amygdala atrophy, and some recognition of it as we try to create s system to make up for the cognitive shortfall. Given that, it makes me wonder about something else.

Just how different does it feel to live in an age of developed amygdalae, and had our immediate ancestors not been flooded with dopamine for the last four decades, would we notice a distinct difference in how firmly our brains held on to the reality around us? I see turtles slowly eating leaves of lettuce, seemingly a shadow of our awareness and consciousness filling their eyes, and I marvel at how much more immersed in our world we are by comparison. Are those of impeccable amygdala development even more immersed than us?

Even more interestingly, after the Apocalypse, will we see a different world, and be different people ourselves. The things that living in this era could reveal to us may be incredible.

Tell everyone about r/K Theory, because it will change how everyone views reality