An Inconvenient Truth

What if convenience itself was to be held responsible for the destruction of our world's future potential?

Convenience is about instant gratification.

1. Convenience is what creates "standby" electronics that consume power when they are unused.
2. Convenience is what gives atttraction to access to: one car, one TV, one computer, one book copy, one bathroom, one of everything for every adult. Never have to wait.
3. Convenience allows us lights to keep awake to 3am and access to enough morning coffee to get away with it 5 days a week.
4. Convenience creates "systems" to meet our needs, reliably and thoughtlessly, giving us whatever we ask for when we want it.
5. Convenience of autotravel and fastfood means we're always within 10 minutes of energy dense food of any taste and texture we want.
6. Convenience of credit cards, to pay for anything instantly and worry about how we'll pay for it later, or never as long as we can keep making the minimum payments.

Now its true, most of life doesn't have such convenience, certainly not with fickle and distracted family and friends, or finding a quiet moment to relax without falling into unconsciousness, or time to think and practice good "home economics" to keep all our possessions functional and organized.

Anyway, just thinking on my usual thoughts, wondering why it seems hard to be aware and responsible and make good decisions, wondering what sort of structures can exist to encourage moderation.

One of Daniel Quinn's ideas from his books is that human population rises in response to a surplus of food, just like any other animal. I certainly accept the premise that population will be the fundamental cause of our demise, although it never seems as simple as that. In poorer countries, populations rise much faster than developed ones where there's so many distractions and ambitions available that raising children need not be the only opportunity for a good life. But even so, perhaps our abundance of food doesn't multiple population as fast, it can multiple consumption even faster, even exponentially, if surplus energy is available.

I've long seen at a personal level that I gain "freedom" by creating self-limitation systems, like for junk food, choosing to not buy it, and if I do buy something, try to moderate consumption by "serving size". I've known others who spend much more on food than me, using price as a moderating influence, drinking wine over beer, fancy chocolates over Hershey's, etc. If you're wealthy to be able to "overconsume", I suppose buying high-end products helps make life more interesting and seemingly harmless.

When I've thought of conservation, like oil or gasoline, I'll long thought price alone was necessary and sufficient to curb consumption, even if I wasn't entirely confortable with the reality that the poor are most affected by price increases and least able to react to them.

One of the sad things about being poor is times of abundance are rare, and therefore not good teachers for moderation. I've known poor friends who take large tax returns and blow them on a "good time" rather than invest in something that will ease their burdens the rest of the year. I can have all the compassion in the world, but sad to see short term decision making.

It's easy to say collectively "we're wasteful", but I know conservation isn't enough either. It bothers me that both abundance and scarcity are illusions. It bothers me that the most frugal life choices can be insufficent for some, and the most wasteful extravagance of others rulely rewarded for circumstance.

VP Dick Cheney said conservation was a personal virtue, not something that the government ought to encourage or discourage. I think he also said that the American way of life is not negociable. And of course that's nonsense, except short periods of extreme wealth and abundance.

Global warming, or CO2 production, isn't a "problem", but a side effect of our success. And like population, it can reverse if energy sources dry up.

And on top of all our success is a smaller world, our own little corners, which don't seem to have any big effect on the wider world, whether we act like saints or sinners. We all want to be happy. We all want to find satisfaction. We all want to have a place where we can make a difference every day. We all want to be loved.

Anyway, I mostly know, in my own heart, that I am easily corrupted, that I need support systems to encourage me to limit my choices in ways that don't help me in my bigger goals.