Our brains as a product of natural selection have several important features:
1) We are prone to pseudo-pattern recognition. Let's say, there's a log on a trail, or a sun spots on a bush, but we might see a tiger or a panther where there is none. If there is no predator, and we combine in our imagination all these spots as a pieces of puzzle into a predator, then we don't lose our lives. On other hand, if we miss a real predator– we're dead. So, the natural selection pushes towards "hyperdiagnosis"– stuff like "you can't be too cautious" and "better to be safe than sorry". Probably, it is the psychophysiological basis for establishing a religion– we see a pattern where it doesn't exist. However, religion apparently offers societal advantages too, so it has to have societal basis too, otherwise we wouldn't see the appearance of religions in every society since the stone ages. Similar trend is called by other scientists "a grouping", or "obsessive desire to make whole object from fragmentary evidence", as Ramachandran and Rogers put it. These property are planted in our brain by the evolution since they had some survival benefits. We'll discuss some aspects of the role of religion in society in later chapters, although within a very narrow scope just as applicable to our topic.
2) Physiologically we see desired objects nearer than they are, when we judge the distance.So, our emotions interfere with our judgement. No surprises then that even seemingly smart people can become delusional "progressives" or any other totalitarian in a state of permanent denial of facts and reality. The "gull chick principle" and "idiosyncatic preference" also might subconsciously affect our reconstruction of the sensory input, our "subconsciously digitally remastered" perception of the reality.
3) A specific gene is linked to the reckless spending and indebtness, namely MAO A gene (Monoamine oxidase A) with 15.9% incidence. I'd love to check the genetic profile of the Washington, DC politicians– may be, they are just mutants, and that's why they push the country into fiscal abyss? On top of that, the Democrats possibly also have a "progressive" totalitarian Democrat disorder which is expressed by shopping sprees using someone else's money, narcissism and need for approval just like entertainers on stage, delusions, blinding political correctness, denial of reality and facts, wishful thinking, non-existing utopian goals, being pathological liars, full of "noble intentions" that somehow always destroy their own country, and most important– by readiness to send the whole world to hell just to feel good about themselves as" the white knights on a noble quest" . It's their totalitarian "sacred values", and if those "values" ruin the world– they don't care, they are blind to reality! The same mental illness affects all other totalitarians: statists, socialists, national socialists (fascists), communists, islamofascists and the like.
4) Another confirmation that our visual perception is not fixed, it is affected by our emotions: if we are fearfull, then hill steepness is badly overestimated from 31 to 50 degrees. It is based on interaction of our 2 vision systems– one for perception (which IS affected by emotions), and another one for visually guided actions (which is NOT).
Evolution pressures push simultaneously in very different directions, and the "goals" might be antagonistic ones. In these instances the evolution tries to find a compromise, a new point of equilibrium, of a fine balance between conflicting goals in this particular time and environment. As usually, nature finds it easier to preserve the existing "floors" and just to build another floor on the top. For example, when our remote ancestors advanced from cold-blooded reptiles into warm-blooded mammals, the question was where to keep the testicles. If you keep it inside, which is safer, then high temperature will affect the metabolically highly active spermcell production, which will result in several thousand fold increase of the testicle cancer. If you keep it outside, then any accident might render the male useless from the natural selection and advancement of the species point of view. We already are disadvantaged comparably to some germs that reproduce every 20 minutes and can improve themselves that fast, while our cycle takes 20 years until the next generation can be improved. Judging by the result, the balance was served better by keeping the testicles outside, but to place it in a least vulnerable location in the groin, to protect it with the pubic hair, with the local high resistance against infections and with the use of cremaster muscle when we need temporarily to hide it within the body (in a cold environment, during sexual intercourse and the like). So, you can see that when there is an extremely complex system in the dynamic balance, formed by trillions of interactions of billions of factors and conflicting goals, then the only way to optimize the outcome is a self-regulation with the tightest possible feed-back. That's why any attempts of the government to regulate these self-regulated processes inevitably harm them, cause imbalances, distortions, inner pressure build up, and unintended consequences always make government "cure" much worse than the ill it supposed "to cure". The government has much less feed-back to make the necessary adjustments as we go, and the government consist of very few politicians and "experts", that know nothing about how complicated these process are, but still they have audacity to interfere under pretext of "solving" created mainly by the governemnt itself problems. In reality all they want is to get more power, more money and to ruin our lives. Only self-regulation with tight feed-back loop and high degree of freedom (in another words– free market in both economics and society) can optimize the outcome. So, don't let the Washington, DC bureaucrats regulate your testicle movements– use your cremaster muscle instead. Seriously, just keep in memory the simple fact that whatever government does– it does it wrong. Any government action is doomed to cause more harm than good, and that's why T. Jefferson said "the good government is the one that governs as less as possible". If government hurts anything it touches– don't let our enemy government touch American people, let it touch only our enemies abroad and inside (criminals, terrorists and the like).
Our present action affect our future. There are many technology and science advances but everything has a risk/benefit ratio, all the successes have some drawbacks and unintended consequences. Many millions underwent organ transplants that is folowed by the immunosuppressive therapy. Many more millions have HIV/AIDS immunity deficiency. Humans have natural total or partial immunity to many germs that are specialized on other living creatures. For example, human TB is caused mainly by human form of TB bacteria while about 10% caused by bovine (cows) and 1% avis (birds) bacteria. Those millions of immunocompromized patients represent a window of opportunities to many germs that can break through the "weak link", and then to specialize on human metabolism good enough to pass on to the healthy individuals as well, which creates a potential for more and more new diseases. Fast growing world's population and extensive communications turn the world into an an ideal exprerimentation lab where the germs conduct experiments on our bodies, thus, perfecting themselves. We figth back with antibiotics and the like, but the fast turnover rate (some germs multiply every 20 minutes) gives them an edge of advantage in the natural selection process. New and new disiease (such as already evolved HIV, Ebola virus, FSM, bird flu and the like) will keep emerging with the increasing speed as the successes of medicine increase the percentage of these "weak links" and bad genes in the genetic fund. Severe genetic disorders patients (congenital heart conditions, cystic fibrosis and so forth) used to be doomed to die before they could produce the offspring with the bad genes, but now they are saved and can do so. Lack of sunlight during childhood causes shortsightedness. Chemicals in our food and envorinment, increasing incidence of obesity, diabetes and many other unintended consequences of the civilization– all these factors give a worrysome prognosis for the future. Any forced measure by the governments (such as forced sterilization, forced use of "healthy products and practices") are doomed to make things even worse, giving more powers to the governments and, thus, accelerating the destruction of society by the Nanny State. A government can provide us with the advisory so we can make an informed decisions but our enemy government must not mandate anything. All we can do is to provide everyone with the pertinent information and hope that people will do right decisions. If not– Mother Nature will eventually use its powers of self-regulation to balance things out.