When I knew that a colleague shared the same birthday as mine, I suddenly felt an urge to befriend him even though I had virtually zero knowledge of who he was and what he was like. Familiarity, after all, doesn’t breed contempt–it breeds comfort. The book Willful Blindness (2011) by University professor Margaret Heffernan described more “comforting shortcuts” our brains make: we tend to donate more to victims of typhoons where the typhoon names are similar to ours or choose a profession with starting letters that are the same with ours. Although these phenomena feel like novelty and harmless, Heffernan described serious, deadly, and long-lasting repercussions of our shortcuts and comfort in family, business, and politics.
Migo Aguado 