The ability to solve problems now, the inability to see the consequences of our actions

A weird thought cam up when I wasn’t really paying much attention to my thoughts. But this thought made me travel inwards; it was a small thought at first, but it grew the more energy and time I spend on it. We excel at solving problem now, when we see that something is wrong we are able to act accordingly and as a group, country or race unite against a common problem or enemy. If this is true (which it is, just look around) how come we are unable to see that we are the cause of many of these problems, we are unable to really see the consequences of our action. I think that it is because the consequences of our action only become visible trough time, more time then we want to look ahead. As long as the consequences don’t threat our way of life and existence, why should we do anything about it? So we continue are way of life, because we like living like this and don’t want to change that. But when we reach the point that the consequences of our previous actions threaten our way of life, we become the world’s greatest problem solvers. Which of course would have been unnecessary, or the problem would have been smaller if we would have acted when the problem was still small.
We are all like smokers: we know our way of life (smoking) is deadly to use and those around us, but not right now. Because we like it and are addicted to it. We started it and keep doing it because everybody (a lot) is (are) doing it. We know how bad it is, but because the effect will be noticeable so long after we started it and might not even notice it because we will be die before its noticeable, we have no reason to worry about it now.
Nobody would smoke if long cancer directly followed everybody’s first cigarette. This of course goes for more then just smoking.