Category: Thoughts

Impactful, aspirational stuff.

We can each be doing the same, on a daily basis without going to space, just by bing considerate custodians of the piece of world where we live. If you’re the type of person who picks up a piece of trash, home grows a vegetable, acts with consideration and kindness to a stranger, then you’re already part of that “Giant leap for mankind”.

Big, visible, international success and breakthroughs are triumphs of the human spirit (and I’m all for them), but I’d argue that the more important and impactful actions are those consistently applied by many, evidence of the mindset and values to which we subscribe.

Think of a beach strewn with plastic rubbish. An amazing machine would be able to collect that waste, and it would be hailed a success. An enterprise would invest R&D into it, build it at huge cost, and then charge for lugging it around to perform its function. That same end result is achievable if we there away our own rubbish, or (as an interim) picked up that which others threw away.

With a minor self discipline not only would we reap the benefits of a more beautiful beach, but also not create a monster, driving by profit, to fix “someone else’s problem”. I’m sure you can think of many similar examples.

The world won’t change overnight, but being considerate, and spreading that to others NOW can benefit not only the immediately obvious, but also in not creating yet another opportunity where we (lazily) fund someone else’s capitalist solution.

Businesses start with “what problem am I solving”. It’s the correct way to think. It would be ideal though if what they’re solving are matters bigger than “I’m too lazy to [insert what results in a problem here]”.

Although I don’t believe its our inherent nature, we have in this 20th / 21st century become beings who strive for convenience and entertainment rather than survival. Yes, I’m generalising and there are tons of examples to negate that, but, never before have so many had so much. Again, Im well aware that the gap between the “have lots” and the rest has grown outrageously, but the statement is still correct.

I read an interesting piece which interpreted wealth as the number of calories we have access to per day. it used to be about 400, whereas today (for much of the certainly first world countries) its now over 4000. With many living within this “satisfaction zone”, convenience, entertainment (fun) has become what consumes money given our calorie requirement is satisfied.

So it no longer becomes “working to be able to get my 4000 daily calories”, it becomes working as little to achieve that, or not just not working, but being entertained and having fun despite still being able to get them. That dynamic creates an environment where paying for convenience flourishes.

It’s easy to identify that this increased unequal wealth distribution is a problem, but we need to acknowledge that its because of willing consumers that its taken place. So, in our capitalistic worlds, those unequal barons of industry have become so not because they’ve screwed us, but because they’ve priced something at a point at which we’re prepared to buy en masse, and quite often its for convenience or entertainment. in cases where this is true we have to at least take part of the blame for enabling it.

I asked Grr this morning if she had any “good news” sites she visited, I find myself in need of an optimism injection. Her response, RAD, a local animal rescue organisation, and even that she said is a bit of a mixed bag.

That’s how the world feels at the moment, full of sad stories with the occasional “oh wow, someone got adopted”, and then we all hang on to make sure it sticks and that the lucky creature behaves themselves.

There’s an absence of permanence, of predictability, other than this background gut feeling hanging around like the smell of a blocked drain, that ‘something is wrong and I’m sure I could / should be doing something to improve it, or at least prepare for it”.

The weird thing is that normally with this pall of gloom I’d have to supply what date it is, and what the event is thats got me under a cloud, but there just seem to be an endless procession of them, … like an ever extending timeline of the same level of awfulness. And it’s not that prior worries get solved or addressed, they all just blend into the new ones, like a never ending line of things to be worried about that I cannot feasibly address.

I’ve lived my life believing I’m an optimist, and cannot put my finger on a time that might have changed, but realistically looking at my inner musings, they’re not optimistic.

Now, late September 2022, and –

• Putin is waving the nuclear baton supposedly to protect the soon to be (democratically ??) voted on recently re-introduced to the fold of the motherland pieces of Ukraine .. and Crimea
  • As an aside, I have a close friend I love dearly who sees this all as Zelensky’s fault
• Truss and her chancellor, barely 3 weeks into the job (at least 10 days of which were taken up with mourning the passing of the queen) have just reduced taxes to the rich, in the midst of a cost of living crisis affecting the poor, and promised to pay electricity bills over 2500GBP for everyone (which isn’t really going to make anyone cost conscious when they pass that threshold), and fund it by … its not clear.
• Eskom .. I don’t even know anymore. I have friends who’s manufacturing businesses can’t function because of the preceding and post 2hr’s necessary in addition to load shedding to get their equipment running. Locally, I look at almost all the businesses spending the equivalent of at LEAST one persons salary to try and keep their electricity on
• Climate change is … in some peoples minds still a fallacy. Yet Fiona has just klapped parts of Canada, and Ian is on route to be “the harshest storm in at least the last 100 years to hit Tampa”.
• Recession. World wide
• Quiet quitting, and now quiet firing are hot topics amongst HR managers, and one of the articles which I best understood recently pointed to the upcoming chaos more likely to impact white collar than blue collar workers, .. I happen to agree

The list is longer, .. way longer. But it illustrates why I’m looking for help finding good news.

At the same time, I’m looking around at people who seem to be going on with their lives as if nothing is amis, and I’m wondering if I’ve fallen down some conspiracy theory rabbit hole.

Here I am contemplating growing vegetables and keeping a few extra tins of baked beans in the cupboard, and my neighbours are complaining that they’ve just been fined for their car parked on a grass verge facing the wrong way.

I am truly battling to reconcile what I perceive to be happening on the planet, and how many / most people are behaving day to day, and I don’t know if I’m reading the wrong stuff, or if people are ostriches.