What a year! I think this marks the past 365 days of my life that I’ve thought the most, about how I’m thinking and what I’m thinking and what I think I should think and what I think I should feel and what I feel about what I think, and so on, and so on. A mental marathon, this year. And it’s been fantastic. I’m getting better at developing my own opinions on issues by integrating the many pieces of information I encounter, rather than haphazardly leaping between the latest one I heard. I’m feeling more aware of the current state of my moral/ethical worldview. I’m reading so much cool stuff, about science and biotech and history and random people. I’m learning to actually take an idea I have and physically (or computationally, I guess) do something about it, rather than letting it slide away. So here, I’ll go into some examples of these ordinary and life-changing mental insights. Enjoy if you want. If not, I hope you have a very thoughtful 2020!
Climate change: I started off this spring with a slight crisis over whether my individual ‘sustainable’ life choices really made a difference to anything but my own conscience. Obviously, the literal impact is negligible, but if everyone thought that, change would never happen. The dilemma was that even if everyone shopped and lived and dined according to climate-conscious principles, the situation still might not be any better. It’s the fossil fuels companies that need to change, the entire industry of animal agriculture! Politics! Capitalism! How could I do anything about that?
That’s where I was after David Wallace-Wells’ The Uninhabitable Earth and Nathaniel Rich’s Losing Earth. Yet I still walked instead of driving, brought my reusable shopping bags to the grocery, and tried my best kept my apartment’s thermostat on the sometimes-unbearable Eco mode. I didn’t feel any sort of moral superiority from these choices anymore, or angry at those who didn’t do the same— but I also didn’t feel like they didn’t matter. I just kept on with it. Honestly, I don’t have much else to say on this. My dramatic “insight” has been to keep on with the best decisions I can make at the time I am making them, and to never, never be satisfied with it. Complacency, I think, is what I fear most.
In other news… I started this post off with way too much ambition. At the moment, the only other major change from this year that I can think of is this: umbrellas. They may actually have a use, after all. Guess I gotta update my front page.
Have a very happy holidays, if you happen to be reading this for some bizarre reason!