EDITORIAL: Tempted by a Brighter Future, Part One

Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it…

I was party to a curious conversation early last week. A friend who owns a downtown business was complaining about the relative lack of customers in 2026, compared to previous years, and he said he was looking forward to the tourist season in 2027.

Surely, it would be better than this year.

Right?

But that conversation took place, as I said, early last week. Before the disaster of November 2, 2026.

As the predicted San Juan River flood peak kept getting bumped up higher and higher on Sunday — from 16.9 feet to 19.7 feet to 21.9 feet — and the rain kept falling, my son-in-law Chris joked that we were looking at an event “of Biblical proportions.”

Not quite. But still, frightening proportions.

But now that we’ve experienced not one but two “100-year flood events — one in 2025 and a worse one in 2026 — it’s tempting to look forward to a brighter future.

Or at least, some kind of future.

We could look forward to today’s election, for example. To take our minds off the local disaster for a moment.

I assume that many Daily Post readers have already submitted their ballots, but we might still be looking forward to hearing the election results tomorrow morning — whatever results may be available — and getting a sense of where Colorado and the U.S. are headed.

Will Colorado voters approve a graduated income tax? Will we limit sex-change surgeries for minors? Will we demand draconian prison sentences for distribution of fentanyl-laced drugs?

Nationally, will we see changes to the balance of power in the U.S. Congress?

Locally, will voters approve higher property taxes for a proposed new school facility? Increased taxes on tourists to pay for road maintenance?

All interesting questions. But not really “top of mind” when our little community will be dealing with millions of dollars in damage.

A couple of the bigger questions locally:

Will FEMA — the federal emergency management agency — be authorized to provide funding assistance for the disaster recovery in Archuleta County, estimated last week at $80 million? Was $80 million a realistic estimate? Perhaps it was, last week.

If that’s indeed a valid estimate, would it play out as $10 million a year for 8 years? That would be an enormous investment for a small, rural community.

I came across an interesting 7-minute TED Talk last week… a lecture by psychologist Philip Zimbardo… about Temptation.

Actually, his short lecture not really about Temptation, so much as it’s about how a human being feels about the Past, Present and Future.  But he does begin with the story from Genesis about two people and a tree full of forbidden fruit.

Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

The man in the story seems comfortable with this arrangement, but the Lord God senses an abiding loneliness in him, and so creates a woman to keep the man company.

A cunning serpent tempts the woman to eat the forbidden fruit, although she’s fully aware of the Lord God’s edict.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.

When Professor Zimbardo tells the story, he embellishes it somewhat, as psychology professors are wont to do.  When the woman offers the fruit to the man, according to Professor Zimbardo, the man is hesitant. “But… but… we were told… we will surely die.”

Then the man says, “Oh, what the hell… I might as well try it.”

The man’s momentary hesitation is not part of the original story, however.  The original story implies that the man didn’t give it a second thought.

Then the story gets a bit strange. According to the Lord God, the man would surely die “in the day that you eat” from the forbidden tree.  But neither the man nor the woman die from eating the fruit. Sure, they each have a curse imposed, and they get evicted… but they live long enough to raise children, one of whom becomes a murderer.

Professor Zimbardo uses this embellished lesson to illustrate the point that, according to past psychological experiments, certain people who dwell mentally in the Present — “Present Oriented Individuals” — often make choices that feel good in the moment, but play out badly over the long haul.

People who dwell mentally in the Past — “Past Oriented Individuals” — make decisions based on their past memories, based on information that may very well be outdated.

People who consider how their decisions will likely affect the Future — “Future Oriented Individuals” who engage in a “Cost Benefit Analysis” of situations — these people put aside the Present needs and desires, and Past strategies that may have worked or failed, for something they hope for in an uncertain Future.

They probably don’t eat the forbidden fruit, for example. As tempting as it might be.

Professor Zimbardo asserts that none of these orientations are foolproof.  Any of the three can be useful, depending on the situation. What humans need, he proposes, is the flexibility to move from one “time zone” to another, as circumstances dictate.

Which brings me to the subject of this editorial series.

What awaits Pagosa Springs in the immediate Future?  Not 50 years from now, but what awaits us over the next four or five years? Are we headed in the right direction, at the moment?

The votes cast in today’s election will partly determine where we will be five years from today.

But there are many other factors in play, over which we have no control. We can control only how we react to those changes.

Let’s start with the comment my friend made, about 2027 “surely being better than 2026″…

Read Part Two… tomorrow…