Droplets

Blogging will be photos-only and sporadic for a while.

Sunlight on the Bridge

"The very existence of society is in peril"

"We are living in a time of unprecedented change and uncertainty. All around us are threats no one could have imagined even a few years ago. Unless we take swift and immediate action, the very existence of society is in peril."

That isn't actually a quote from anyone - I just made it up. But the essence of it - that the world is facing a near-insurmountable challenge that cannot be overcome unless dramatic action is taken immediately - can be recognized anywhere today: presidential speeches, books, articles, college application essays, wherever.

For example, Tom Friedman, channeling Malthus, wrote a column in the New York Times a few weeks ago called The Earth Is Full. It begins this way:

You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?

And continues:

We will not change systems, though, without a crisis. But don’t worry, we’re getting there.

[quoting an expert] “We are heading for a crisis-driven choice,” he says. “We either allow collapse to overtake us or develop a new sustainable economic model. We will choose the latter. We may be slow, but we’re not stupid."

I don't doubt that these authors, columnists and Ivy League hopefuls truly believe these ideas but a dose of skepticism and a glance at history are in order.

Published in 1968, the popular book The Population Bomb written by a Stanford professor named Paul Ehrlich, selling over 1M copies, began this way:

The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.

Explaining the book's premise, Ehrlich said:

There are 3.6 billion people in the world today. We're adding about seventy million a year and that's too many. It's too many because we are getting desperately short of food."

It's clear that these predictions didn't come to pass: between 1961 and 2000, the world's population doubled but calories consumed per person increased 24%.

Dan Gardner, in his excellent book Future Babble, points out that these weren't isolated claims:

Paul Ehrlich's bleak vision in The Population Bomb was anything but that of a lone crank. Countless experts made similar forecasts in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1967, the year before Ehrlich's book appeared, Wiliam and Paul Paddock - one an agronomist, the other a foreign service officer - published a book whose title said it all: Famine 1975!  When biologist James Bonner reviewed the Paddocks' book in the journal Science, he emphasized that "all serious students of the plight of the underdeveloped nations agree that famine among the peoples of the underdeveloped nations is inevitable." The only question was when. 

"The U.S. Department of Agriculture, for example, sees 1985 as the beginning of the years of huger. I have guessed publicly that the interval 1977-1985 will bring the moment of truth, will bring a dividing point at which the human race will split into the rich and the poor, the well-fed and the hungry - two cultures, the affluent and the miserable, one of which must inevitably exterminate the other… I stress again that all responsible investigators agree that the tragedy will occur."

History is littered with these kinds of failed doomsday predictions. That should lead us to be skeptical whenever a person in a position on authority informs us of our pending demise. That isn't to say that because something's been predicted before and the prediction utterly flopped that we should brush it aside. Examine the reasoning and facts behind the claim, but be skeptical.

SF Houses

Seeing Others See

This is somewhat of a continuation of last week's post.

When you realize that someone else has also felt or thought what you previously thought was unique to you, a light goes on.

Colin Marshall:

"I've come to find myself asking only two qualities of a writer: honesty and clarity. The rest is window dressing."

Andy McKenzie:

This is going to be a brutally honest post. 

... 

There's a part of my brain that admires each of my friends for their accomplishments, and wishes them future success. But I have to admit that there's also a part of my brain that is intensely, viscerally jealous of other people's successes and future plans. Some higher, more cognitive part of my brain recognizes that it comes from our human need to compare ourselves to others, but the base feeling remains nonetheless.

Ben Casnocha:

Edward Norton: You know that feeling that you're going to fail or be exposed as no-good? It never goes away.

Lily

Archetypes

There's always a little light that goes on in my head whenever I see someone capture the essence of something that, while perhaps stereotyped and oversimplified, has a lot of truth to it.

Daniel Rosenthal's answer to Why is U2 so popular? on Quora:

Imagine you’re a middle-aged, upper-middle class male.You live in a large metropolitan area. You have a good job. Your wife does Pilates.  Your oldest just started Kindergarten. Yes, you’re an adult but you’re still cool! Your jeans cost $125. Sometimes you wear sneakers with a blazer!  

Then you learn that U2 is coming to town – U2!  Earnest, melodic, Oprah-endorsed U2! $200 a ticket? No problem. You get a sitter. Your wife is excited – this is going to be great!  You invite some friends from college to join you.

On the way, you listen to the “early stuff”. Joshua Tree pumps through the speakers of your Lexus SUV (no judgement - you have two kids!). The harmonies soothe. The lyrics are straightforward. You recall a simpler time before car seats and prostate exams. The nostalgia is so thick you have to wipe it from your face. You haven’t looked at your phone in nearly 11 minutes.
 

You arrive at the show and see yourself everywhere. Tasteful North Face and Patagonia jackets abound. The stands are awash in earth tones.  No one is shoving. No one has a nose ring. These are your people.  

The Ship Has Sailed on the head nod:

Here's to the head nod, the greeting that isn't. 

The person you encounter doesn't merit the opening of your mouth or the formation of words, much less the lifting of your hand. At the same time, though, for whatever reason--oh, and there are plenty--it is an acknowledgment of their existence.

The disdainful head nod - I dislike you so much that I'm going to deny you the satisfaction of thinking I'm avoiding you. 

The forced head nod - This is when you make eye contact with someone you don't really know that well, and hold it too long, and your social instincts compel you to make some sort of acknowledgment 

The guilty head nod- You know you "should" be acknowledging this person--what have they done to you?--and you oblige, but it the weakest way possible.  

The embarrassed head nod - You have been defeated in some way by the other person, and are too stunned and/or shamed to reply with words

And on one of the favorite topics among underclassmen at Cornell:

"Speaking of why we heart Cornell, I came here because I hated Harvard. So upper class and snooty--I hear they have segregation there. I like the diversity and acceptance here--a doctor's daughter from Long Island could totally date an accountant's son from Westchester, and it's honestly not really like a big deal at all!"