Dr. Ellen Langer

I would say virtually all, I probably even mean all, but be a little safer.

All of our problems are the direct or indirect consequence of mindlessness, whether it's personal, interpersonal, global.

What is mindlessness to you?

Mindlessness is that responding to the world based on these absolutes, where you think you know, you're like an automaton.

So what happens is when you learn something, then you keep doing it.

So when you first learn it, you can be doing it mindfully, but now you know how to do it.

You do it the same way over and over again, but the world is changing, and very often you come up short.

An example I used to use a lot is, and this isn't good for California, and the last time I used it and was going to not use it again was in India, where it's also not good.

It depends on snow.

Okay.

put that aside, that if you're driving in snow and this car starts to skid and you ask somebody older than you, unless you were taught by that older person, what do you do when you're driving on ice?

And most people will say you slowly pump the brake and turn into the skid.

That made sense when you first learned it.

However, and you keep doing that,

But now there are anti-lock brakes.

And the way you stop a car on ice is you firmly hit the brake.

Okay, so what you learn for safety's sake is now unsafe.

So the point is, once you think you know, you freeze everything while things are actually changing.

So you're not able to avoid the danger that hasn't yet arisen.

You can't take advantage of the benefits that are right in front of you because you just don't see it.