Was listening to public radio last night (good distraction from the active act of driving a car) where David Suzuki (Canadian environmentalist) spoke about the paradox of constant growth.
Today people from all countries are conditioned to think about growth as the only imperative, progress in all manners of systems whether economic, monetary, agriculture et al.
The reality though is that there is a limited resource called Earth and by simply making a better mouse trap we are not going to find new mice to trap. There are only 99 mice left (metaphorically paraphrasing).
He uses a test tube full of bacteria that exponentially multiply to elaborate his point. That when supply is constant and demand exceeds a tipping point we are screwed. He indicated that we are already in the last inning but we kid ourselves (through our acquired arrogance) that we can outdo this cycle.
Truly the only outcome I personally see is for places like India to retard and eventually cull their enormous populations while for the so called developed world to figure out a brand new concept called 'Conspicuous Abstinence'. That would simply mean not buying an iphone or new car every 2 years as an example.
Can we do that?
Today's world is hyper connected. I am not so sure what it means but you hear it a lot. It is probably hyper but not sure how connected it is. Sugar (fermented or not) is available in many ways than before and so getting hyper is easy. It is probably more a threat than cocaine since it is sold legally. And what is this connected stuff? Most people I encounter seem disconnected from reality. So going back to this assumption that we are connected there are subtle and no so subtle instances of how brands and companies and middle men try to portray someone - A linkedin profile for somebody working for X years at a place advertises to the connected network that so and so is CELEBRATING X years @ Such and Such Inc. Do we know if (s)he is celebrating or cringing? Perhaps a better way to portray will be - So and So LASTED X years @ such & such inc. Then it exhorts the readership to go ahead and congratulate them for this lasting effe...
If we were to examine growth of our brains/intelligence instead, we will discover that there is negative growth happening...
ReplyDeleteMust be all that MSG messing up the messages our brain is processing
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