What did surprise me was that in some civilizations there were variations in which the tower was being built just in case the gods sent another Great Deluge to prevent humans from overpopulating the world. Instead of conceit, as told in the Old Testament, the purpose was survival. Our inability to date to speak with one voice on the subject of Climate Change is resulting in global flooding and the Anthropocene Extinction.
My update to the Optihumanist Principles for 2021 is to insert the following line into the "Optimism is Opportunity" section:
Recently I attended another Church of Perpetual Life video conference that was attended by a dozen or so.
There I bumped into a couple of people I knew from years past from the
cryonics community. It was apparent that they were not regular
attendees at these monthly meetings so it was neat that they were there
when I was.
A month or so ago I was telling a sailing friend stories about another friend who had moved away from Dallas to Florida some time ago. By coincidence that night, I was looking at sailboat tours on YouTube and came across a video made by that same Florida friend. When he moved, he had switched from selling insurance to selling boats.
A few years after I graduated with a Masters degree from Caltech, I got sucked into the dot com boom and found myself working in Silicon Valley. By happenstance, I bumped into two of my former Caltech computational neuroscience teaching assistants, one at a restaurant and the other at a startup meeting. They had authored doctoral theses in esoteric subjects but were now, like me and many others who had been drawn into this same vortex, in the business of launching e-commerce websites.
On such occasions, people will frequently greet their friends from the past with the expression, "Small world". I like to say instead "Small worlds" plural because I think it is a big world but that people with similar interests tend to run within the same small circles. "Birds of a feather flock together" might work here as well.
After my Silicon Valley experience, I noticed trends over the years where multiple friends would be drawn into the same areas of the country at around the same time. During those trends, I considered following some of my friends to regions like Phoenix and the Pacific Northwest but I never did. Now I know of at least three that have moved to Florida, possibly because it is where people want to be as they approach retirement.
I am aware of the Mormon Transhumanist Association but that group is too Christian for me. The Church of Perpetual Life appears to have some soft Deism but I find this tolerable. I look forward to attending their future video conference events.
Some years ago a member of a group that I was in asked us for ideas on behalf of a local utility company that she was associated with. She was asking for innovative ways in which consumers could conserve the product provided by the company. I forget exactly whether it was water or electricity that was provided but you get the point.
Straight away I responded that the utility company should increase the price in order to decrease demand and then use the extra profit to increase capacity. When she asked how this might impact the poor, I responded that the price could be progressive. When the gentleman next to me told her that he agreed with me on this simple solution, I think she was a little disappointed that we were not suggesting ideas that might involve a voluntary reduction of consumption of the utility as a form of individual sacrifice.
I thought of this as I was watching the new educational video Can You Fix Climate Change? by the YouTube channel "Kurzgesagt -- In a Nutshell". The video makes the point that individual sacrifice is not going to be effective in eliminating the emissions that cause global climate change. They go so far as to suggest that recommending individual sacrifice is a cynical ploy by the worst emitters to distract us from more substantive policies.
Where I thought this video floundered is toward the end where it insisted that there was no one solution to the complex problem of reducing emissions. The video suggested that we should demand change from our elected officials despite the fact that we are not quite sure what to do. Finally, the video opined, we should continue to engage in personal sacrifice just to do our small part even though it really will not help with the overall problem.
I watched the video again to see if there if there was any reference to a carbon tax. I saw a very brief mention that suggested that imposing the costs of carbon capture on the energy industry would bankrupt it. To this I respond that even with a carbon tax the traditional energy industry will never go bankrupt until people are able to get all of their energy needs fulfilled from carbon neutral providers.
Later the video suggests that politicians are reluctant to reduce subsidies to the carbon emitting energy industry because doing so would have the downstream effect of increasing the prices of consumer goods. I respond by recommending that we use the income from the carbon tax to mitigate these impacts. The carbon tax income could be used to subsidize the necessities for living while simultaneously expanding our energy capacity by funding research into carbon neutral sources.
This video was funded by the billionaire Bill Gates so I started to wonder what he has against the carbon tax. I found a YouTube video by Gates entitled This tool will help us get to zero emissions. Given this title, I initially assumed that this video would propose the carbon tax as the solution since it could be that one tool.
Instead Gates suggested what he calls the Green Premium. This seems to be a plan to quantify the emissions that are coming from the production and consumption of each product and then funding research into reducing those specific emissions. In an interview in which he is directly asked about the carbon tax, he states that it could work but then implies that it is not politically adoptable because of the increase in prices to consumers.
Gates is pushing the Green Premium as the next best alternative but I am not willing to give up on the carbon tax. The carbon tax is straight-forward and it lets the invisible hand of the free market determine where best to invest research dollars into carbon neutral technologies. I believe it can be politically viable so long as we offset the indirect impact of the carbon tax on consumers with benefits from the income to make the overall effect progressive.
As I was waking this morning, the first stanza of this song was sung to me in my dream. I used my smartphone to record a selfie-video of it so that I could capture both the lyrics and the tune. The following stanzas flowed from me over the next hour or so.
Oh, just walk away
From the beautiful spaces,
Walk away
From the beautiful faces,
Just walk away,
Walk away
You're no longer young,
You know it's true,
But don't be sad,
Don't be blue,
Just walk away,
Walk away
You're stuck in a rut,
You're going nowhere,
You cannot win,
And you don't care,
Just walk away,
Walk away
You're all used up,
There's nothing left,
You gave it your all,
You tried your best,
Just walk away,
Walk away
Your time is done,
You've got to go now,
You know that you must,
And you know how,
Just walk away,
Walk away
There's something else
Waiting for you,
You've got to go,
You've got to get through,
Just walk away,
Walk away
I received a call this morning from a young man who asked me what he should do with his life. I recommended to him that he do now what is required to become a good father and grandfather in the future. I told him about how my goal was to become like my grandfather Joseph Wallace Croft Senior who was able to provide shelter, security, and support to his descendants in their times of need.
The conversation reminded me of a lecture by Jordan B. Peterson on the subject of Meaning of life for men. Toward the end of the talk he states that most suffer when they lack meaning in their life except for "low conscientious people". I am of the opinion that those people suffer as well, perhaps even more so.
I also listened to his audiobook 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos after it was recommended to me by a friend. This is the same friend who recommended to me the book Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. I see a shared theme between Frankl and Peterson in their emphasis on the necessity of meaning as a requirement for human survival.
Here is a picture from 1942 of my grandfather holding my newborn father Joseph Wallace Croft Junior. This was just before my grandfather was shipped to Europe to fight in World War II. He did not see his son again until the war was over in 1945.
There is an old story called Belling the Cat in which a nest of mice decide that for their own safety the cat should be made to wear a bell so that they can hear it coming. Although initially applauded, the plan is later dismissed when the mice realize that none of them is willing to volunteer to do the actual work of affixing the bell to the cat.
Back when I had more free time, I used to take on active roles in voluntary associations in which there were no paid employees. In organizational meetings, the Belling the Cat scenario came up so frequently that I hit upon a solution which I named the "Bell the Cat Rule":
The one who proposes a task is the one who performs the task.
This works out pretty well because generally a person is motivated to put in the effort to make something succeed when it is their own idea. After a few applications of the rule, it also saves time at future meetings because committee members learn to stop proposing projects that they would not want to work on themselves.
Under the proposed American Families Plan, these child tax credits would be extended another five years. There are some legislators who would go even further by making it permanent. My youngest is seven-years-old so we could be receiving these checks for another decade.
Besides a reduction in childhood poverty, one of the benefits of permanent child tax credits could be a restoration of the national fertility rate to a sustainable level. As I wrote previously, we need to figure out how emulate those countries that are both happy and fertile. Some countries are attempting to resolve this issue with monthly payments to parents but this is only partially successful.
I think urbanization is a main cause of the declining birth rate. We are all moving to the city because that is where the jobs are. To raise children requires extra bedrooms which is often unaffordable in the city even with both parents working full-time.
Just a few generations ago, my ancestors raised their large families on relatively isolated farms and ranches. The technology and cultural shifts of the current pandemic might help us spread out again. This in turn might help us survive the next world-wide crisis.
I finally got my second COVID-19 vaccination a week ago. I was very sick the day after I got the shot. My wife Shannon got her second shot a couple of days ago and, as she had predicted, had no significant side effects.
They say that two weeks after you get the second shot, you are immune to COVID-19. I feel a sense of relief as I approach my personal finish line of this pandemic marathon that began more than a year ago. The good news is that I am emerging from this historical calamity even healthier than I was before.
taking advantage of a disaster declared by the governor under Chapter 418,
Government Code, or by the president of the United States by:
(A)
selling or leasing fuel, food, medicine, lodging, building materials,
construction tools, or another necessity at an exorbitant or excessive
price; or
(B) demanding an exorbitant or excessive price in
connection with the sale or lease of fuel, food, medicine, lodging, building
materials, construction tools, or another necessity
John Stossel has a video
in which he argues that price gouging should be legal since the law of supply and demand ensures that supply meets demand through optimal pricing. The
flaw in his argument is in assuming that this economic law works in emergency
situations where buyers have little to no choice about purchasing necessities
from the seller at any price. How much is one willing to pay for a
bottle of water when dying from thirst?
As an example of this, recently the Electric Reliability Council of Texas
(ERCOT) charged an
exorbitant price
for electricity during a state-wide winter emergency. Rather than
holding prices at the normal rate as the ability to provide electricity fell
below minimum demand, they instead let the price
rise to the legal maximum
despite consumers having no choice about buying the electricity. How
much is one willing to pay for electricity to heat a home during a multi-day
freeze?
Previously I wrote about the connection between being considerate and being conscientious without defining what I meant by the term considerate. To be considerate is to refrain from behaving in a way that suggests that you failed to consider the negative impacts upon others before speaking or acting. Sometimes, however, not speaking or acting might be inconsiderate when it would be of benefit to others for you to do so. This thoughtlessness can be a result of apathy, selfishness, or mere ignorance.
Avoid being oblivious to the state of others to reduce the risk of being unintentionally inconsiderate. A simple example would be making loud noises without noticing that someone nearby is on the phone. Another would be to fail to express an appropriate level of gratitude for a gift or favor because you were unaware of the substantial cost to your benefactor. A more complicated example might be to criticize someone for their lack of productivity at work while being clueless about their personal crises at home.
You cannot always predict ahead of time whether what you say or do will hurt or inconvenience others. Attempting to do so might cause you to freeze up completely. You can, however, respond positively when someone brings an issue to your attention by assuring them that the harm was unintentional and that you will avoid repeating the mistake in the future.
For more thoughts like these plus some quotidian, please see my paternal advice website. I have been adding everything I can think of to it recently, including the kitchen sink.
I have let my magazine subscriptions lapse. Just recently I have also been unsubscribing from all of the mailing lists that have been clogging my email inbox, including the ones that I would really like to read someday should I ever get the time. I might re-subscribe to a few when I start seeing my email backlog shrinking rather than growing on a daily basis.
I went digging around on the Web and discovered the book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. This seems to cover the flip side that I was seeking. Like the word "minimalism", the word "essentialism" also has a historical definition that differs from its modern meaning.
Other people have noted the connection between minimalism and essentialism. One person illustrates this with a Venn diagram showing how they parallel and intersect. I like to think of minimalism as freeing up your space and essentialism as freeing up your time.
I am inventing the term "minessentialism" to mean a practice that combines both minimalism and essentialism. This word has no historical alternative definition to confuse the meaning as confirmed by a search engine. It has the advantage of emphasizing the shared themes and goals.
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