Choosing/Decision-Making

What happened to utopia?

Choosing/Decision-Making / Nature

What happened to utopia?

When I was a kid, a popular idea of a utopia involved robots taking care of life's needs. Today when people talk about automation, they present it in the context of displacing jobs. Let's say robots and automation could provide all of life's material needs---food, water, shelter, warmth, etc. It seems that yesterday's idea of utopia has become a source of fear. Maybe that's the media selling clicks, since anxiety probably generates more than confidence. If we could create robots and automation to provide everything for us, would we prefer that life? I think we'd expect that if we could, the companies that provided the service would still charge us for it. Nobody could pay for it, so nobody would get it. So why not…

March 10, 2021

Population: Why not educate men on family planning?

Choosing/Decision-Making / Education / Nature

Population: Why not educate men on family planning?

The more I learn about successful, non-coercive, voluntary family planning leading to more freedom, stability, and prosperity, the more I talk about it. Think the opposite of China's One Child policy or whatever eugenics programs you've heard of. You don't judge fire because it burned down a home. Any time family planning comes up, someone parrots, "we must educate women and girls! It's the most effective way!" As far as I know, men around the world receive more education than women, though I understand less in the US and Europe at most ages and in most fields. Do we teach men and boys family planning, though? I don't know, but I have a feeling we teach men and boys vocational skills and probably broad subjects…

February 1, 2021

I’m not in great shape. I just spent nearly no time or money reaching the shape I want.

Choosing/Decision-Making / Fitness

I’m not in great shape. I just spent nearly no time or money reaching the shape I want.

It occurred to me why I do so much calisthenics based on burpees, bodyweight exercises, and exercises that need nearly no equipment. It's not to get in great shape. I'm not in great shape. I'm maybe average healthiness compared to all humans ever. I may be healthier than the average American, but Americans deviate from hundreds of thousands of years of ancestors that hunted and gathered food, not had doof delivered. Why burpees and calisthenics? I exercise with minimal to zero equipment, cost, spotters, trainers, risk of injury, dependence on weather or time, etc because they are accessible. Anyone can do what I do. I couldn't do what I do now when I started. We all have to start with what we can. Even someone…

December 4, 2020

Litter or Thrones?

Choosing/Decision-Making

Litter or Thrones?

Walking back from my daily picking up litter in Washington Square Park, where the drug dealers increasingly recognize me as someone to talk to---one of them told me he saw me on Facebook, he figures someone took a picture of a guy picking up litter---I asked myself what I would rather do than pick up litter in my neighborhood. I'd rather there weren't litter to pick up, but given that it's there, I'd rather act than passively watch the problem grow. Somehow Game of Thrones got into my head. I've never watched the show and barely heard anything about it. Only a friend showed me a scene of a woman forced to walk naked through a crowd of everyone saying "shame!" at her. I don't…

October 4, 2020

Kids you can’t afford?

Choosing/Decision-Making

Kids you can’t afford?

People sometimes call my life easier because I don't have kids or the challenges in time, money, and other resources that come from having them. They say, "Josh, you don't know what it's like as a single mom raising three kids on three jobs." If someone can't afford a house but buys one beyond their budget, we say they chose wrong and might help them fix the choice. If they can't afford a car and buy a Ferrari, same thing. If they can't afford a child, what do we say if they have kids anyway? I'm not questioning their right to. They have that right. I don't know the answer. I'm not suggesting one. I'm curious what people feel. It seems that questioning other people's…

September 22, 2020

A reader asks: how much money is enough to spend?

Choosing/Decision-Making / Relationships

A reader asks: how much money is enough to spend?

Following my request for questions, a reader asked one I wouldn't have expected: How much time and money is enough, or fair, to spend with your wife and children if you need to work to have money for a simple life, in your country? First a caveat: I'll plead some ignorance never having married. For that matter, my biological parents divorced around when I was in nursery school. On the other hand, my mom's second marriage is into its fifth decade and my father's into its second or third. Also, I've been in relationships that lasted longer than some friend's marriages, though we never shared bank accounts, real estate, or anything big, nor had kids. I'll also note the question didn't ask how much to…

July 16, 2020

358: Bald Versus Plastic

Choosing/Decision-Making / Podcast

358: Bald Versus Plastic

Here are the notes I read this episode from: People keep acting like I'm different, that they have to balance things that I don't when acting on the environment. So I'll share a recent decision I made. People I tell have sounded intrigued and delighted to hear it so I'll share with you. First sensed hairline retreating at 19. Not much for maybe a decade following, I don't remember. Maybe 10 years ago started using minoxidil. Don't know if works or not, but used as insurance. Not insanely expensive. Tested on thinning in back, so even less sure if it works. Over the past few years noticed it becoming my greatest plastic consumption. Thought more about stopping. Even stopping flying was reversible. Never decided to…

July 9, 2020

355: I balance values the same as anyone

Choosing/Decision-Making / Leadership / Nonjudgment

355: I balance values the same as anyone

People constantly suggest they have to balance different values as if I didn't. It came up in a recent conversation so I shared about it today. An element I factor in is how my pollution affects others---not just what I know about or wish I contributed, but what I actually contribute. Yet people think I factor in nothing else. It's weird to learn people see you as one-dimensional. If they felt others viewed them as they see me, they'd be insulted.

July 3, 2020

Covid advice applies to the environment. What we can do here we can do everywhere.

Awareness / Choosing/Decision-Making / Nature

Covid advice applies to the environment. What we can do here we can do everywhere.

EDIT: I recommend everyone watch these videos on preventing pandemics including COVID-19, considering how much our behavior is causing them: Pandemics: History & PreventionCan we stop a future pandemic? Dr. Michael Greger M.D explains what's next. My mom suggested a post from a woman, Jodi Ettenberg, who posts as Legalnomad, I'M IN THE VULNERABLE CLASS FOR COVID-19. A PLEA TO TAKE THIS VIRUS SERIOUSLY. First, if it doesn't go without saying, I recommend you follow the guidelines of the most knowledgeable people and organizations on the virus. I am not one of them so seek them out. I'm sure you already know that advice, but making sure anyway. I'm commenting on what I see could help humanity beyond this situation. I'll copy here advice from…

March 14, 2020

TEDx done, on to rowing in the morning, Harvard the next day

Choosing/Decision-Making

TEDx done, on to rowing in the morning, Harvard the next day

A quick update on past subjects because it's a busy weekend. This morning I spoke at TEDxConnecticutCollege, as I wrote about a couple weeks ago. I'm pleased to share that several people described me as professional. They told me to expect about a month for the video. Darn, that's a long time to wait. sa Tomorrow I'm competing in an indoor rowing competition---the one I wrote about in Old Athletes Keep Me Young. I also wrote about how grueling rowing makes you feel in What rowing 2,000 meters for time feels like. Since rowing 2,000 meters as fast as possible makes me feel like I got hit by a bus, I could have written that post in fewer words. So expect me to sound like…

February 29, 2020

My electric bill after a month with the fridge off

Choosing/Decision-Making / Exercises / Nature / Visualization

My electric bill after a month with the fridge off

A little over a month ago, I wrote in How long can I keep my fridge unplugged? how learning about fermentation and uses of electric power led me to see how long I could last in the winter with my refrigerator unplugged. Deciding to start First, I want to reiterate my process to decide to start the challenge. First the idea to try it came. Then I wondered if it was possible. Then I realized, of course living with the fridge off is possible, the question is how long. Then I wondered what I would do. Here's the key part that I've learned from my challenges and the opposite from what I learned from school: planning and analyzing delay starting and learning. I learned to…

February 9, 2020

How long can I keep my fridge unplugged?

Choosing/Decision-Making / Nature

How long can I keep my fridge unplugged?

I love the site Low Tech Magazine, which I consider one of the best on the net. Reading its piece Too Much Combustion, Too Little Fire, the section "Energy Use Compared: Ancient vs. Modern Households" made me think of my food power consumption. It was December and I don't heat my apartment so it's cool. Yet my refrigerator was on. As I started to wonder if I could get by without it, at least during the winter. The apartment is cool anyway and my food is less perishable -- more root vegetables, cabbage, etc -- I figured the best way to find out was to try. As I mention in my TEDx talks, the pleasant surprises that avoiding packaged food and flying improved my life…

January 3, 2020

When, specifically, is the best time for evening exercises?

Choosing/Decision-Making / Fitness / SIDCHAs / Stories / Tips

When, specifically, is the best time for evening exercises?

Yesterday's post answered the best time to exercise in the morning. What if you exercise in the evening too or instead? The beginning of that post---why exercise, listing the benefits, and so on---apply here. No need to repeat everything up to "First things first." Alternative 1: Just before bed The latest option is to exercise last before going to bed. Many ask if getting your heart rate up might keep you up at night. They probably haven't exercised late, or they would have learned that, however paradoxical it sounds, exercise gives you energy in general and helps you sleep at night. Vigorous summer exercise will make you sweat, assuming you don't over-air-condition yourself. You rarely need more than a fan. Exercise challenges you. Knowing and…

December 29, 2019

When, specifically, is the best time for morning exercises?

Choosing/Decision-Making / Fitness / Habits / SIDCHAs / Tips

When, specifically, is the best time for morning exercises?

Say you exercise in the morning. When is the best time for it? First, what's the point of morning exercises? Fitness? Yes, you can't leave fitness out, and if you don't impose on yourself a healthy daily challenging activity, you might expect the point of the specific activity to be the main goal. It's not---not in the long term. The goals of daily morning exercise include in the long term developing discipline self-awareness, and calm, learning your priorities, learning to prioritize, sleeping better, creating purpose and meaning, honing decisiveness and focus, and more; and in the short-term waking up, focusing your attention, saving time, saving money, giving yourself direction, whetting your appetite for breakfast, cleaning your space, preventing procrastination, creating a flow state, and more.…

December 28, 2019

If we don’t lower our birth rate nature will raise our death rate.

Choosing/Decision-Making / Nature

If we don’t lower our birth rate nature will raise our death rate.

As this phrase---if we don't lower our birth rate nature will raise our death rate---came out of my mouth in conversation yesterday, I could tell it captured a lot in a few words. I expect I'll start saying it more and promoting it. It gets to the heart of what we need to do. All research I know of says that we are over the planet's carrying capacity, which means if we don't lower our population, it will crash, as does every population that overshoots what their population can support. People can't get past thinking that the growth rate is decreasing, but the growth rate isn't even the population going down. It's just rising more slowly. Pick any environmental issue. Its causes lead to overpopulation.…

November 14, 2019

Do I ever feel like giving in?

Choosing/Decision-Making

Do I ever feel like giving in?

A friend came over for his first sampling of my famous no-packaging vegetable stew and the show that goes with it. Talking about vegetables, cooking from scratch, and maybe the daily exercise, he asked, "Do you ever feel like giving in?", which I took to imply meaning getting take-out, eating out, or getting comfort food. The question felt weird. If I think back far enough, I can remember craving the pretzels and ice cream I always kept in the kitchen. I used willpower to avoid eating too much of them. I don't feel that way now. I feel the opposite. Asking me if I feel like giving in feels like a child asking me about books if I feel like giving in and going back…

November 4, 2019

Candy is punishment, as is more stuff. Vegetables are reward, as is less stuff.

Enjoy Coca-cola!

Choosing/Decision-Making

Candy is punishment, as is more stuff. Vegetables are reward, as is less stuff.

I see people rewarding themselves and others with candy or other similar sources of pleasure. The idea used to make sense. For most of my like I saw baked goods and sweets as rewards. Now I see candy as punishment. Vegetables are reward. More material stuff is punishment, less is reward. Flying is punishment. Discovering the nature around you is reward. I can think of many other examples where my view of reward and punishment are backward from mainstream -- TV versus exercise, being busy versus having free time, and so on. If you behave otherwise -- craving sweets and bucket list vacations -- your values may be twisted from what you think they should be. Today, we have to realize when we're causing suffering.…

October 27, 2019

Update on the love letters with my high school girlfriend

Choosing/Decision-Making / Relationships

Update on the love letters with my high school girlfriend

Following my post Thoughts on reading my love letters to my high school girlfriend after 30 years, I've gotten closer to getting rid of them. I haven't, but I've gotten nearly as close as I'm willing, though I'm keeping a plan B. Since my post Less, Please, on getting rid of hundreds of books near the beginning of this blog, about ten years ago -- or "putting them back into circulation," as I put it -- I've striven to get rid of more material possessions. The more meaning a thing carries, the harder to get rid of, the more relieving and liberating when gone, but the harder to get rid of. Things I've kept a long time feel more valuable. I tend to think what…

October 24, 2019

Thoughts on reading my love letters to my high school girlfriend after 30 years

Choosing/Decision-Making / Relationships

Thoughts on reading my love letters to my high school girlfriend after 30 years

Following up my posts Mementos of my high school girlfriend and The Most Romantic Thing I Ever Did, I finally read the letters and cards from her to me and from me to her. We wrote them from around the summer of 1988, after graduating high school, to about a year later, the summer after our first years in college. She went to school outside Boston. I went to school in Manhattan. Context For about a year and a half before then she and I talked on the phone a few nights a week for a few hours. I think my phone was rotary. We were each other's first love. The time was my first on my own, struggling for independence, especially from my father,…

October 8, 2019

Examples of “tastes good” versus “want more”

Awareness / Choosing/Decision-Making / Perception / SIDCHAs

Examples of “tastes good” versus “want more”

I've written on the difference in sensation between something tasting good versus making you feel like you want more of it (see "Want to eat more" and "tastes good" aren't the same feeling). I also spoke about them as a podcast guest in Tastes Good versus Want More, explored in depth. The difference, briefly: when you bite into a fruit you love, say an apple, it tastes good and you want more. Yet rarely do I eat two apples in a row. The second apple tastes as good as the first, but the sensation of wanting more decreases. By contrast, when I bite into a potato chip, it tastes good and I want more. But a few chips in, the feeling of their tasting good…

October 7, 2019

Mementos of my high school girlfriend

Choosing/Decision-Making / Freedom / Relationships

Mementos of my high school girlfriend

Part 1: College personalities not so unique In college, I remember meeting many classmates who seemed unique. I couldn't imagine anyone else like them. Thirty years later, I've seen people like each. Over and over as college classes turn over every four years. I've also seen them grow up to become like everyone else. There's some variation, of course, but the differences aren't that great. Part 2: My high school girlfriend In high school, I met a girl junior year, which would have been around the winter 1987--88. Senior year we fell in love and she became my first girlfriend. We stayed together into college, though she went to school outside Boston and I want to school in Manhattan. After breaking up, we stayed in…

July 15, 2019

Kicking the flying habit, which keeps you from family and income

Pile of Refined Sugar

Choosing/Decision-Making / Habits / Nature / Nonjudgment

Kicking the flying habit, which keeps you from family and income

In an online thread with people insisting that they have no choice but to fly for family and work reasons, I wrote the following, which I'm sure some will disagree with. I'm learning too, though I hope to help people looking to find joy in polluting less. One flight will brings people closer. Flying in general led them to move far apart so they felt they needed to fly to get back together. It also leads to people constantly leaving their physical community. Global warming is front page news almost daily in some seasons. We fight wars for oil. There's no mystery the causes. If we never change our behavior we will feed these systems. We have choices. I don't see it as a moral…

June 7, 2019

Would you rather, part 5

Choosing/Decision-Making

Would you rather, part 5

Following up my first post on this topic and my last one, and while the options below don't have to be exclusive, people usually choose as if they are. Do you prefer . . . To burn tons of fossil fuel to see the AmazonOr grow a plant at home?To see a pristine paradise and tell everyone about it Or to let it be?Coffee in a disposable cupOr to skip it until you don't need a disposable container?Saving time by throwing away disposable plates and utensils Or to have to wash the dishes?To travel the world to see everything you canOr to discover yourself without distraction?Someone guiding you everywhereOr to find your path?Paper or plasticOr to bring your own bag?To travel to relaxOr to learn…

April 2, 2019

Letter to an 80-year-old on the environment

California is currently ablaze, after a record hot summer and a dry fall set the stage for the most destructive fires in the state's history. Above: The Woolsey fire, near Los Angeles, seen from the West Hills. Photograph by Kevin Cooley for The New Yorker

Choosing/Decision-Making / Nature

Letter to an 80-year-old on the environment

Remember this scene of Cypher's selling out his crew for his personal pleasure in The Matrix? https://youtu.be/Z7BuQFUhsRM My letter to an 80-year-old, prompted by an article on the environment 80-year-olds and 20-year-olds will view the environment differently. 80-year-olds might consider global warming, plastic pollution, extinctions, and so on abstractly. If environmental disaster will hit around 2050, that's someone else's problem. To 20-year-olds, 2050 is the prime of their lives. They have to deal with messes that generations before them left for them. I've emailed with a guy in his 80s whose only interests that he acts on regarding flying is his own. He loves the consequences of his actions that he wants, such as visiting places, and ignores the ones he doesn't like, like the…

November 22, 2018

A simple, low-cost proposal to reduce pollution

Choosing/Decision-Making / Nature

A simple, low-cost proposal to reduce pollution

How's this for simple and effective: Require all single-use items to carry a message that they pollute. I'm not sure the best wording, but something like: Short version: This object pollutes and is unnecessary. Please reuse durable alternatives. Long version: This object pollutes and is unnecessary. Making it created greenhouse gases and depletes resources. Disposing of it poisons our food supply. It may take centuries to break down. Using it makes you responsible. Please reuse durable alternatives. The messages don't mandate behavior, so it's not a nanny-state action. It provides information to make the market more transparent and companies more accountable. Nations around the world do it with tobacco, nicotine, and alcohol.

October 20, 2018

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