tijaco

When I was on my walk today, I started thinking about how we attribute meaning to things. It seems like humans are meaning seeking creatures, and that we are always trying to attach some meaning to the inanest statistics. This is probably an evolutionary trait because the cases in which we accurately attribute meaning likely outweigh the cases in which we inaccurately do so. Trying to articulate what I mean here is difficult, and this idea is certainly nascent in my mind, but I’ll give it a go.

There seem to be certain situations in this world which are effectively win-win-win and others which have some pay-off and some compromise that we need to make. I thought of this when I was walking along wearing a facemask, and watching people running and not wearing a facemask. I am not passing judgement on those people or even on the government decision, but it got me thinking about different situations and the trade-offs of some compared with others.

Wearing a facemask while you are running would be far more annoying than wearing a facemask while walking. In saying that, when you are running, there is far more chance of a virus to spread because you are moving faster and excreting more bodily fluid. So, as the transmit-ability (if that was a word) increases, the inconvenience also increases. It would be far better if as transmit-ability increased, the inconvenience decreased (or convenience increased). That would be a kind of win-win situation. And that kind of situation is what I see in the case of renewable energy.

With current technology, renewable energy really is a win-win-win. First, it is now far cheaper to build renewable energy than to even continue with fossil fuel generation. Next, it is now far more reliable now that battery technology has improved. Third, it is better for the environment. And finally, renewable energy creates far more jobs than does fossil fuel generation, at least in the short-term. These jobs are also far cleaner and safer. There really isn’t a loss in building renewable energy generation, that is unless you are an executive at a fossil fuel company. But even then, there is still time to invest in the right way and save your dying energy company. Without going too deep into the weeds here, this is an example of a win-win-win situation.

But renewable energy wasn’t always like this. Even a decade ago, the cost of solar energy was greater than that of fossil fuel generation. This creates a situation much like the facemasks – an increase of risk of impending disaster came with an increase in convenience. Now that the technology has improved, we are in a win-win situation. But that technology improvement didn’t occur because entrepreneurs and scientists were morally minded. For much of the improvements, it was simply a sight of long-term economics rather than short-term. They just wanted to make more money.

Now, to get back to the idea of meaning. I am often questioning “why” certain things are the way that they are, even on a sort of cosmic level. Is there some philosophical reason why just at the right time when we have the ability to save the Earth from impending doom that renewable energy finally reaches its win-win-win stage? Could we not have lived in some alternate reality in which there was no way to gather energy from renewable sources. In that situation, would we all not be doomed? Why is that there always seems to be some solution that isn’t all that inconvenient?

The problem of nuclear energy and weapons offers another example of win-win-win in terms of proliferation. Nuclear energy is one of the most expensive and dangerous ways of creating energy in the long-term, and nuclear weapons only make us more and more unsafe and unstable. Therefore, nuclear proliferation seems to be a win-win-win for everyone involved.

This is why I am disposed to attach meaning to the world. These are two of the biggest problems of our era, and yet they both have incredibly simple, win-win solutions. It seems incredibly lucky, convenient or of some greater creation. This is as close as I get to believing in God.

I might be repeating myself once again here, but to reiterate what I mean in terms of the pandemic. All of the actions to mitigate a pandemic and reduce its effects are incredibly inconvenient; reducing human contact, wearing face coverings, washing your hands. Is it just pure dumb luck that this pandemic is not as great a threat to our lives as climate change or nuclear war? While we might not take the simple solutions on those issues, we cannot deny that those simple solutions are there. But with a pandemic, that is not so.

Or is it that I, as a human, am attaching meaning too liberally? Perhaps I would see it differently if the pandemic was an existential threat to the human race. Perhaps then I wouldn’t see the measures as inconveniences and would only see the positives in the arresting of the disease. Or perhaps if the pandemic were more deadly, a win-win solution would be found more quickly. But these alternatives just aren’t logical enough for me.

The only ‘out’ I can find to this conversation without admitting that this is all too convenient and that there must be some God, is that not everything means something. It is just pure luck and circumstance, cause and effect patterns that led us to where we are today. It will be pure luck and cause and effect patterns that lead us to where we are going. All that we have is our consciousness to make an impact on the probability of a better future, however we define that “better” future.

And so, it comes back to this Buddhist idea that the only thing that really matters is the present. That our concept of the past is a product of our ego narrating our memories, and the future the product of our ego projecting from those memories. All that we can do is be present and change what little that we can change in order to shape the world however we please.