Models

I see the statement Everyone should change except me. as one that defines our time. We recognize the problems. Like traffic, we all contribute to them, but also like traffic, we feel like they---other people---cause it and we're caught in a mess of their making. Of course we cause traffic as much as anyone. We cause our cultural and environmental problems too. We could change.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer lived in a culture whose values he disagreed with. He could have dropped his values. It would be easier and more comfortable not to have to push against resistance. He didn't. He chose to live by his values, even when it was hard. One result was that he couldn't spend time with his family in person. Did that separation mean they loved each other less? Did it deprive him of expressing his love for them or receiving their love for him? Did it deprive them of expressing their love for him or receiving his love? No on all counts. On the contrary, he wrote to them, regarding the separation: "these difficult years have forged an even closer bond between us than ever before."…

I think there are a lot of people who consider it virtuous to help people through Adam Smith's invisible hand but crippling to give them a helping hand. That is, I think they consider it magnanimous to act selfishly and mean or debilitating to help people directly. I can see how they get there. I think in their minds they think they're concluding what they should do from first principles, but I suspect they're actually rationalizing and justifying what they wanted to do in the first place. I'm not them, so I could be wrong. I'll have to ask one of them about it.

People who work on our environmental problems seem to go through stages. I'll describe them, if you don't mind I haven't studied them in detail, just painting broad strokes. We start with ignorance, generally gaining knowledge and ideas of what they can do. We move from ignorance to basic knowledge. Some drop off there. Others continue to more knowledge. Some of them move to realizing they can act. The details of each stage aren't my main point. The last stage is, or what would be the last stage except that everyone turns back from it. Those who keep going reach where they realize we have to change our culture. Few reach that realization, since most stop at some point to focus on developing a technology,…

The book Limits to Growth doesn't answer everything about the environment and sustainability, but I find it gives the best high-level, systemic understanding of the patterns of humanity's overall interaction with nature. The authors created a model and ran simulations. It could have happened that none corresponded with observation, but after 50 years, there is remarkable correspondence, as researched by podcast guest Gaya Herrington. I recommend reading her results after reading the book. My comparison Reading Limits to Growth is like learning to sail. Their results teach you generally what we can do, but many things are beyond our control. In sailing we can't control the wind or currents, but we can still have a great time. In humanity's interactions with nature, we can't control…

The scene: We're walking along and see a bunch of helpless children drowning. Instead of helping them, scientists study the situation, educators teach about what the scientists learn, journalists write stories about tragedy, politicians seek funding to solve, CEOs see all the activity and find ways to sell products about the situation, and activists protest that something like this shouldn't happen. But none help. As they study, teach, write, raise funds, market products, and chant, more children appear drowning. The tragedy worsens. It appears they've build a highway that leads cars off a cliff into the water. Everyone says, "governments and corporations caused this problem! They should fix it, not us!", even while the children are drowning and more cars are driving off the cliff.…

Everyone says GDP has to grow or everything will fall apart, based on economic theory. When Captain Cook found Hawaii in 1778, people had lived there for at least 500 years. Settling Hawaii 500 years before now, the human population was 450 million, suggesting that 500 years was enough for Hawaiians to overrun the islands and cause them to collapse. They didn't, meaning they must have stopped growing, for centuries. Yet they survived and apparently thrived. If a theory says something is necessary but a society survives without it, how can we not conclude that theory is wrong, or at least doesn't always apply? In physics, we hold that if a theory predicts something and observing nature shows something else, the theory is wrong, not…