Corruption of the heart
The most difficult problem I see in modern life is the vast sea of opportunities we have in front of us ALONG with the vast inequality of opportunity between peoples depending on where they live and their connections.
Money makes the world go around, and more and more each year, until it doesn't - when TSHTF and we all have to go scrambling back to reality of our excesses.
I've been offered an opportunity to FUND a week or so trip to Mexico City, to broaden my horizons into a different culture, and help my girlfriend's 3 kids gain the same, with ages 11-16, they're old enough to appreciate the trip, and the youngest two have been going to a Spanish immersion school for 5 years and would have a chance to use their bilingualism.
It is easy to justify anything if you spin things the right way. I can spin things that 90% of the world's population doesn't have the money to fly to other countries. I never traveled by airplane before I was nearly 22, with a college geology trip to Hawaii with two professors.
I see "life as debt" as slavery and hope to escape someday, by 2012 if I'm lucky, although I don't know what I'll do if somehow I still have excess money when I'm 5 years older. There's always good places to invest money, ways that INVEST in future prosperity.
I can argue that fossil fuels are being needlessly squandered. (I don't even own a car myself!) I can say there is NO fair way to judge opportunity when you're living unsustainably. I can say that whatever hardships are coming (as energy resources dwindle) I'm still better off saving resources now and if tomorrow comes, and I don't need what I have, I have more to give away.
But my girlfriend, as a parent, sees her kids in a precious point in time, sees an opportunity that won't come as easily in the future. She doesn't have the luxury of worrying about the future because if she did honestly worry, she'd have to admit the state of her weakness, and imprudence of spending needed resources on a singular week trip.
In some part, it comes down to personal risk. Will the future be filled with difficulty that will benefit from prudence now? Will some new experiences, however brief, change people's view of the world and their place in it to a degree that future costs and sacrafice are worth the trade off. I don't easily bet in favor of either arguments - I figure staying close to home is the safer bet, and look for opportunity where I am, taking a path of least resistance.
It seems to be two sides of human nature - the side that takes risks into the unknown, and the side that digs in to defend a safe center against future uncertainty. The fable of the industrious Ant and the fun-loving Grasshopper might support one side of this, although I'd like to defend the grasshopper's view too. If you're going to die anyway, what's worth doing? No one promised that we can all live through the winter!
I'm still terribly upset to see a world that seems clueless to the difficult winter that must be coming in the next 20 years, as offered in Kunster's "The Long Emergency."
Should we look at this danger from the prudence of someone who wants to live through to the other side, or forget about an uncertain future and TAKE everything we can now, however unsustainable, dishonest, and ultimately destructive origins, and deal with the consequences later, when circumstances finally make us face reality.
I have no answers, or no great vision of defended castle walls in my future. If I'm the Ant, I don't really work that hard, beside being lucky to scavange more than I need close to home. Anyway, I'm corrupted myself. I just think we're all fools.
I don't care about a trip to Mexico, fully outside my values, but I believe sometimes experiences change us, and life is short, so I can perhaps justify extravagence sometimes, especially if someone else wants to say it is important.
Money makes the world go around, and more and more each year, until it doesn't - when TSHTF and we all have to go scrambling back to reality of our excesses.
I've been offered an opportunity to FUND a week or so trip to Mexico City, to broaden my horizons into a different culture, and help my girlfriend's 3 kids gain the same, with ages 11-16, they're old enough to appreciate the trip, and the youngest two have been going to a Spanish immersion school for 5 years and would have a chance to use their bilingualism.
It is easy to justify anything if you spin things the right way. I can spin things that 90% of the world's population doesn't have the money to fly to other countries. I never traveled by airplane before I was nearly 22, with a college geology trip to Hawaii with two professors.
I see "life as debt" as slavery and hope to escape someday, by 2012 if I'm lucky, although I don't know what I'll do if somehow I still have excess money when I'm 5 years older. There's always good places to invest money, ways that INVEST in future prosperity.
I can argue that fossil fuels are being needlessly squandered. (I don't even own a car myself!) I can say there is NO fair way to judge opportunity when you're living unsustainably. I can say that whatever hardships are coming (as energy resources dwindle) I'm still better off saving resources now and if tomorrow comes, and I don't need what I have, I have more to give away.
But my girlfriend, as a parent, sees her kids in a precious point in time, sees an opportunity that won't come as easily in the future. She doesn't have the luxury of worrying about the future because if she did honestly worry, she'd have to admit the state of her weakness, and imprudence of spending needed resources on a singular week trip.
In some part, it comes down to personal risk. Will the future be filled with difficulty that will benefit from prudence now? Will some new experiences, however brief, change people's view of the world and their place in it to a degree that future costs and sacrafice are worth the trade off. I don't easily bet in favor of either arguments - I figure staying close to home is the safer bet, and look for opportunity where I am, taking a path of least resistance.
It seems to be two sides of human nature - the side that takes risks into the unknown, and the side that digs in to defend a safe center against future uncertainty. The fable of the industrious Ant and the fun-loving Grasshopper might support one side of this, although I'd like to defend the grasshopper's view too. If you're going to die anyway, what's worth doing? No one promised that we can all live through the winter!
I'm still terribly upset to see a world that seems clueless to the difficult winter that must be coming in the next 20 years, as offered in Kunster's "The Long Emergency."
Should we look at this danger from the prudence of someone who wants to live through to the other side, or forget about an uncertain future and TAKE everything we can now, however unsustainable, dishonest, and ultimately destructive origins, and deal with the consequences later, when circumstances finally make us face reality.
I have no answers, or no great vision of defended castle walls in my future. If I'm the Ant, I don't really work that hard, beside being lucky to scavange more than I need close to home. Anyway, I'm corrupted myself. I just think we're all fools.
I don't care about a trip to Mexico, fully outside my values, but I believe sometimes experiences change us, and life is short, so I can perhaps justify extravagence sometimes, especially if someone else wants to say it is important.
posted by Ares Olympus at 12:04 PM
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