The bears at the Zoo in Helsinki woke up from their hibernation, due to the noise of a leaking waterpipe. This means that their uninterrupted hibernation was only three full weeks, because their early phase was plagued by too warm weather, making them get up and wander a little.
Wouldn't it be nice if the crypto bear markets were only three weeks long?
Markets aside, it is going to be interesting to see what actually happens as the weather starts changing at an increasing rate. As I have said earlier, it doesn't really matter if it is naturally caused or human activity that has changed it, we as humans can only live in a thin set of conditions. If it gets too warm, or too cool, too much of this gas, too little of that, we are unable to adequately adjust to survive. It seems silly that we spend so much of our effort and resources on what is effectively going to make our ability to survive harder.
I was trying to explain to Smallsteps the other day about averages, which she understands, but never remembers what it means. We were talking about average weights using she and myself as the sample, and how we weigh on average 55 kilos. But if we both actually weighed that, I would look very sickly, and she would be enormously overweight. It was a good way to explain the lie of averages.
And I think a lot of people don't factor this in when talking about the average change in temperatures in the climate, where a degree or more higher doesn't sound like much. But what it does is fundamentally shifts what is a pretty sensitive ecosystem, making weather conditions far more volatile, with more storms, more drought, and more freezing temperatures. And volatile and unpredictable weather affects our ability to grow food for ourselves, or build adequate housing.
The average shifts, create extreme changes.
And I think this is one of the things that worries me about the world today, as I reckon most of the averages that are important to human experience, are changing for the worse, and we are becoming more affected and more volatile because of it. Our health, whether looking at physical, mental, emotional or social health is falling. Our weight is going up, our ability to concentrate and pay attention is going down, our feelings are turning more negative and our societies are disconnecting.
And while the averages might not seem to matter that much to an individual, all of these things compound and create a lot more volatility. For example, mental health might not be a huge problem for most people, but when a small subset become extremely volatile, their behaviours will impact on everyone else, creating a knock-on effect. Someone who is extremely overweight might get their "do what you want", but they too have effects on others too, as concessions for inclusion are made. Everything has a knock-on effect, good and bad.
Are any of us really islands?
Of course not, as the adage goes. But, we seem to keep raising individualism onto a pedestal and acting as if we each live in a vacuum, our actions separate from everyone else. But I don't think "live and let live" is sustainable, when the way we are living keeps changing our averages for the worse. It is like a bank account that has incoming funds, but the outgoing are draining it faster - and we didn't have very much in the bank to begin with.
We are bleeding our potential.
But, we keep buying into the idea that we as individuals don't make a difference, even though there are eight billion individuals making us worse on average. Even if the global population was much lower, we would still be bleeding our potential out, just at a slower rate. But most likely, we would consume more. It is just like getting a pay rise, where the first month we are happy, but after that, it just gets absorbed into our expansion of lifestyle.
But we can't keep expanding by using our natural resources.
Yet, this is what we keep doing and rather than finding ways to slowdown through innovation, there is more and more pressure to keep consuming in order to make more wealth for those who have already become wealthy, screwing us over. And they will screw us over again and again, because we as individuals keep on choosing to bend over for convenience.
It won't end well for any of us.
But unlike the bears who wake up early when disrupted by changes in their environment, we just keep finding new ways to dampen reality so we can stay asleep.
Taraz
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