The Big(ger) Picture

   Here in the U.S. we seem to like things big: big cars, big homes, big highways, big meals, and in case you missed it, we also consume in big quantities.  We use resources such as energy, food, and minerals in massive amounts, far greater than in most parts of the world and for the most part think nothing of it.  Water is cheap, gas is cheap, food is cheap, so we've grown up feeling that everything --perhaps life itself-- is cheap.  This photo from Popular Science gives you an idea of what we humans have created, a mining excavator that weighs more than the Eiffel Tower and is taller than the Statue of Liberty (it can and does clear out a football field to a depth of 30 metres or nearly 100 feet each day).  Okay, it was created and is in use in Germany (and is one of many generations of such mining excavators in use worldwide and created by the company Thyssenkrupp) but here in the U.S. (since we don't have one) we want it...the biggest.

   It's the common tale of our capitalistic view to consume and acquire and consume more.  But sometimes in that work, work, work to get ahead attitude (what used to be called "keeping up with the Jones," a term to describe efforts to reach and then pass the neighbor or next "guy" in economic status) we lose sight of that which matters most and start to feel gypped or passed over (it's the old "every kid gets a trophy" philosophy); but it's not how the world runs.  John Scalzi's book (mentioned in an earlier post) talked about a bit of this, of people needing to shed the belief that they "deserve" success or fame or fortune: ...luck, circumstance and timing plays a part in one's career...resist the temptation to ascribe their own situation to a shadowy cabal out to defeat them personally.  They might also realize that the "expected" path isn't and never was real, and that nothing in one's career or even life is ever a given.  He then emphasizes: There is no expected path.  Believing that there is will only make you unhappy, and from there, bitter, and from there, blame-seeking.  There is only the path you make for yourself and where it takes you, however long you choose to be on it.  Why bring this up?  Because it would appear that what "was" is no longer (has it ever been?).  As Matthew Kiefer wrote to The Atlantic in response to an article: For most of a century, a strong manufacturing sector made it possible for anyone with good hands and a decent work ethic to live with dignity -- own a home, send their kids to college, and hold their heads high as productive citizens.  For too many Americans, this is no longer true.  To succeed in today's knowledge and innovation economy, you need a college degree (or more) and a willingness to migrate to the mostly coastal cities where the new economy is blossoming.  Those left behind --a big chunk of the electorate-- are so angry and disaffected that they're willing to blow up the entire system until something changes.

   The world is changing (as it always has) but this time we might we witnessing a move as large as the Industrial Revolution, or so postulates Yuval Noah Harari in his latest book, Homo Deus.  The things we used to blame for our downfall (famine, plague, and war) he writes, have pretty much been conquered.  Famine?  By 2030 (that's 12 years from now) 50% of the world is expected to be overweight.  Plague?  Smallpox, polio and other diseases are being removed from our lexicon.  War?  He writes: In 2012 about 56 million people died throughout the world; 620,000 of them died due to human violence (war killed 120,000 people, and crime killed another 500,000).  In contrast, 800,000 committed suicide, and 1.5 million died of diabetes.  Sugar is now more dangerous than gunpowder.  Certainly, hunger and disease and fighting still exists; but he notes that the numbers have dropped so dramatically that on a global scale (and compared to yesteryear), they simply aren't big factors compared to what's probably coming (his book is subtitled "A Brief History of Tomorrow").  As but one example he notes the arrival of the early Spanish explorers coming to South America and bringing with them diseases foreign to the native population; in just 60 years the population had dropped from 22 million to 2 million.  Translate that to today's numbers and you'd arrive at this: 665 million dying in Europe, 292 million dying the U.S., 4 billion dying in Asia.  Harari's intro says that while we will be likely to continue to fight for liberty and equality, his book "dismantles these assumptions and opens our eyes to a vast range of alternative possibilities"  with a shift from working class to useless class among them.

   Raymond Tang had an interesting talk on TED, one which talked about his stress from trying to always compete in today's world and turning to something that made him look at things in an entirely new way...water.  When coming to an obstacle, water encounters it, works around it, bounces back from it and all without emotion, he says.  It was his life, banging over and over against a perceived obstacle (not getting ahead) instead of working in harmony.  As Guillermo Del Toro said in his acceptance speech* for AARP's Best Director, he talked of us drawing lines in the sand but erasing them as we grow older.  "We have never been so close and we have never been so far apart," he said.  But love, like water, is always present, always changing shape to meet us, always there.  His new movie pairs an aquatic monster with a forgotten human, the struggle of life.  And in the end the discovery is that love, like water, conquers all...like the movie, like the world, like our lives, we should take a look.

*You'll have to jump to the last 30 minutes of the 2-hour program; at that point, Del Toro walks onstage...it's worth watching.  His recent movie, The Shape of Water, once again features the excellent Sally Hawkins.

Photo by Zak Noyle from an article in National Geographic

On an added note, some are wondering what on earth caused me to write about plastics; was it guilt from finding it so pervasive in our lives and yet still using it (re: picking up my dogs' poop then discarding the mess into the trash which thus means, the landfill).  Rather I think it was this photo taken in Java by Zak Noyle/A-Frame which appeared in National Geographic...yes, that's plastic and other trash in the wave.  The occasion was a discovery of yet another plastic "patch" in the Pacific, so-called because while the first patch of floating and sinking plastic in the ocean was the size of Texas, this new patch found floating several thousand miles away is estimated to be the size of Mexico...if our leftover plastic swirls are that large in the Pacific ocean, just think of how much we've buried in our landfills.  Perhaps the most sobering tale is that despite all of this, we continue to produce plastic at an ever-increasing rate.  As that old Pete Seeger song asked, "When will we ever learn?  When will we ever learn?"