climate change – My Mental Model

Where I draw the line with the right

The city I live in is relatively progressive. Not necessarily in a ‘leftist’ sorta way, but more so in a classic liberal sort of way. In this landscape, it’s difficult for right-wing nonsense to get any kind of traction. But that’s not to say that I don’t see it. I have a close friend who has started following some of the center-right media like Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder. He’s been testing me with some of his nonsense. So perhaps it’s time to call it out here too.

Trans people are people. I don’t think we’d be in this free speech mess around gender pronouns if we hadn’t collectively been giant assholes to transgender people. Throughout history, we’ve treated those who we didn’t understand with contempt and history has never looked kindly upon it. It happened with people from unfamiliar cultures, it happened with people with unfamiliar skin colors, it happened with people with an unfamiliar sexuality, and it happened with trans people. Conservatism has never been on the right side of human rights because the role of conservatism is to avoid change. If those who are different are understood, accepted, and appreciated, they don’t special protections.

Full-time work needs to pay a living wage. There’s a suggestion that a minimum wage is a bad idea. Apparently, by allowing businesses to pay wages lower than the current minimum wage, workers will make more money. That open market model only works if two forces are firmly in play: A strong incentive to pay the workers as little as possible (to maximize company profits), and a strong incentive to pay the workers as much as possible (to maximize talent acquisition). If the incentive to maximize company profits is stronger than the incentive to maximize talent acquisition, there is a strong downward pressure on wages. That downward pressure can be so strong that someone working 40 hours a week may not make enough to make a living wage. If we’re in an environment where the cost of living is rising quickly, it gets even worse. And who benefits? Clearly it’s not the worker. The business will benefit from better margins, but for how long? An underpaid workforce is more of a liability than an asset. When business owners under pay their employees less, they rely more heavily on social assistance programs. These programs are funded by tax payers, and not the ones who aren’t making enough money to pay any significant tax. Paying your laborers less than what it costs them to live a middle class life is a terrible idea for any economy.

Racism still exists. Racism exists, sexism exists, ageism exists… there’s no lack of ways in which we try to generalize others to their detriment. I wish we could solve them all at once by understanding that prejudice leads to inaccurate understandings and bad decisions.. but we have to start somewhere. And I’m not interested in addressing controversial racism like who got kicked out of a Starbucks or who’s modelling a black panther costume. I’m talking about that KKK shit. That sand n*gger shit. That BUILD THE WALL shit. That is some of the ugliest behavior I’ve seen in western society and the right needs to do a better job of standing up to it. Everyone on the right wishes the moderate left would call out their more extreme counter-parts. Well everyone on the left wants the same from the right. It can’t be a, ‘sure, we all know that racism exists but it’s not the problem here.’ Without racism, we wouldn’t have Trump. Without racism, we wouldn’t have a government shutdown right now. Without racism, Fox News wouldn’t have been fear mongering around a migrant caravan. It might not be at the center of all our problems, but it does seem to make most of our problems worse. Identity politics exist on both sides, and both sides need to hold their crazies accountable.

Stop cherry picking your science. Climate change is real. Humans have contributed to it significantly. The scientific consensus here is over 99%. Why are you still arguing this? I understand if you’re a stake holder in the fossil fuel industry, but otherwise you’re just being argumentative for the sake of being argumentative. Even if it wasn’t man made, our window of opportunity for maintaining an ecosystem that’s habitable for humans is closing. We should be all hands on deck, but the right is dragging their feet. If you have no interest in listening to scientists on this, then you’re about as useful as those on the far left which ignore biology to advance their gender politics agenda.

Religion. Religion exists across the political spectrum, but the right seems to have their own approach to it. The evangelicals denounced a democratic president for having an immoral character, then celebrated Trump on the basis that moral character isn’t an important consideration. The religious right also argues that abortion is a religious issue when the bible offers no such guidance beyond telling you how to do one. They’re also quick to point out all the flaws of religions like Islam, while failing to acknowledging the dark history of western religions or the issues of today. And to make it all worse, politicians are now abusing religion again, excusing their actions as some twisted act of god. Next time you see a politician say “well that’s what I believe”, look closely.

Feminism is a big deal. I’m not talking about the man-hating variety that seems to be pushing it’s way into the mainstream today. I’m talking about a movement that started centuries ago.. maybe even millennia. It’s about our species evolving to the point where men didn’t have to be hunters and gatherers, and women didn’t have to forage and care for the kids. It’s about men no longer having to go out and do hard labor and women being able to join the work force. It’s about moving past our traditional blueprints of what men and women were supposed to be, and exploring the freedom of what we can be within a modern society. One of the smartest things western society ever did was bring women into the work force. There’s still more ground to cover.

You overestimate your abilities. I used to assume that people who were wealthy were naturally hardworking and very smart. Then I started to meet some of them. Many of them were smart and many of them were hard working, but what they were more likely to have in common was an inflated sense of ego. They took responsibility for their actions, and since they were successful, they were responsible for their success. But then I would look behind them and see an incredible amount of support. More often than not, it included a good family, a private school, an ivy league education, connections, and an inheritance. Bit of a stretch to say you’re responsible for all those factors too. What I’ve noticed from the right is that tend to equate financial success with human value. Those who find a path to financial success overestimate what their contribution was to that point, and underestimate what was already in motion. And then they dismiss those who are less fortunate as lazy or uninspired.

You’re selfish. Something else I’ve noticed about the right is their tendency to be selfish, after they’ve ‘made it’. When I was younger, I wasn’t all that interested in helping my fellow human. It was about being as successful as possible, as soon as possible, and then helping my fellow human. I see a lot of people take a similar path, but when they arrive at success, they’re much less interested in helping others. Now it’s about paying the least amount of tax possible, or doing away with social assistance programs that you don’t personally use, or avoiding giving money to the homeless ‘because they’re just gonna use it on drugs anyways’. And what I find remarkable is that liberals do this too, just not when they’re poor. The rich shouldn’t give to the poor out of sympathy. The few should invest in the many, because none of us truly do anything on our own.

Your immigration policies suck. Besides the fact that they’re currently rooted in racism, they’re also shortsighted. Most people would be surprised to find that children of wealthy families make ill-equipped leaders. But it’s not that hard to understand why. When you go through adversity, you experience challenges that you wouldn’t otherwise have access to. Parents who have fled to the US from a harsh environment provide a powerful and unique environment for children to grow up in. That home is more likely to produce a world leader or Pulitzer prize winner than someone who was so rich that they didn’t need to bother learning the local language. Written on the statue of liberty is, ““Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” America is supposed to be the land of opportunity, where you escape from terrible conditions and are given the chance to make something of yourself. This is the secret sauce of the American immigration policy. If we close the doors to all that have made us great, and only open our doors to those who are already ‘great’, I think we’re in trouble.

You can be an argumentative dick. I know, because I used to be one too. Back in university, everyone was for gay marriage but me. I had no issues with gay people… or them getting married.. but I didn’t like that everyone was agreeing with one another on something they hadn’t really thought about. So I said I was down with them being legally married, but wasn’t OK with them appropriating a ceremony from a religion which was expressly against gay marriage. I may have had a point, but I was arguing for the sake of arguing. I see this happen from the right so often. You realize that your up against someone who hasn’t quite thought things through, and rather than help them get there, you pick them apart and try to make them feel like they don’t know what they’re talking about. Meanwhile, it’s quite possible that they had a point and just weren’t able to argue it effectively. Or maybe they had a good idea but didn’t quite know how to make it a reality. Fantastic, you won that argument.. but at what cost? At what point is the pursuit of truth more important to you than ‘winning’?

The relentless spin. If I were to guess, the right is more intelligent than the left. It’s not that a ‘right-wing’ ideology produces smarter people, it’s that intelligence lends to success,, success lends to wanting to keep things as-is, and wanting to keep things as-is lends to conservatism. You know, conserving the good life. So when the less fortunate get together and say things aren’t fair, we need change… you say that things are fair, that you’re an example of how to be successful, and to just keep working hard. But then the less fortunate notice that there are far more hardworking poor people than rich people. At the end of the day, the left might not have the best idea for how to get things done, but they are often right about what needs to be done. And no matter what they present you with, you’ll spin it to your favor. If you were up against someone who could debate you properly, you’d look absolutely foolish. But the mainstream media doesn’t provide that format so everyone’s left speaking into their echo chambers. I can’t tell you how many times colleagues of mine have tried to spin the most ridiculous Trump lies into something reasonable. Recently, they’ve started to give up.. suggesting that it’s not what he says but what he does. Well he’s behaving like the most compromised or corrupt politician in modern American history.. and you’re still trying to spin it.

You don’t want a meritocracy. I’m a big fan of equal opportunity over equal outcome. So is the right.. it’s one of their primary arguments against social security programs. The left hasn’t been able to wrap their head around the concept in a way that fits their ideology. I think the political spectrum is generally clueless about what a meritocracy really entails. For example, there’s a good chance that in a true meritocracy, most top CEOs would still be men. But you know what else happens in a meritocracy? Those responsible for educating future generations aren’t living paycheck to paycheck. But perhaps the most powerful example, in a meritocracy, inheritance wouldn’t exist. In a meritocracy, you receive resources in exchange for the creation of value. The more value you produce, the more resources you have to work with. In that model, someone like an Elon Musk would be one of the most well resourced individuals in the world while someone like Trump would be broke. But in a world where Trump can leave billions in wealth to his children.. something’s not right. In a world where future generations of your family can enjoy substantial resources despite having not created any value… something not right. In a meritocracy, Harvard isn’t filled with legacy students and lucrative internships aren’t filled with people who’s parents know an executive at the company. That whole idea of an inside track.. the powerful helping the powerful.. none of it exists.

If we could find a way to cast aside all the nonsense… from all sides of the political spectrum… and come together to be effective for the greater good… we could probably do something pretty darn special.

Why Suicide is More Appealing Today than Yesterday

Before anyone worries too much, I’m not considering suicide. Not today anyways.

This morning was Anthony Bourdain. Not long before that was Kate Spade. And between the two, how many others? I can’t help but think that this is getting worse and not better. There’s a negative energy that’s growing in our world and it’s impacting us in some profound ways. I think these are conversations we need to have.

I can’t remember the first time I thought about suicide. I was probably quite young. It wasn’t a function of depression as much as it was an exercise in exploring the extremes. It was probably a fight with my parents, or getting picked on at school. A moment of woe is me, I bet I would matter more if they thought I had committed suicide. In grade 12, I fell for a girl and was infatuated to the nth degree. When she left me, I was convinced that I would never be happy again. There was probably some consideration of suicide, but where I landed was that I wanted to be a fire fighter or something to that effect. I figured that if I wasn’t capable of being happy, I could at least dedicate my life towards helping others. It blew over and I moved on, but the conversation of suicide remained.

In my third year of university, I dated a girl who opened up to me about having tried to commit suicide. According to her, she wasn’t dealing with a breakup very well and ended up going into the shed at the back of the house and slitting her wrists. As she tells the story, her brother stumbled in on her and took her to the hospital, saving her life. I asked to see her wrists, and saw no scars. I was asked to keep this to myself as nobody else knew besides her brother. I did my best to be supportive. When we broke up, she told me that she didn’t think she could handle another breakup like this. That she might go and do something extreme. I reached out to her brother and asked him to keep an eye on her. From what I can tell, she’s doing just fine these days.

It wasn’t something I could relate to. Even in my darker, more melodramatic moments, I wasn’t interested in taking my own life. It seemed like giving up. For better or worse, this mindset of never giving up is hardwired into me. I’d much rather go out on my shield. Maybe that’s why I’ve often thought of ways in which I would be willing to sacrifice myself.. the hero’s death. The idea was that if I was going to die, I wanted there to be as much value in my death as possible. I either wanted to die of old age among a lifetime of accomplishments, or to die in a proper blaze of glory. There was almost a mathematical element to it, if my life was worth ‘x’ and an honorable death would yield ‘x’ + 1, I’d take it.

When I started getting in over my head at the banks, I started looking for outs. I wasn’t willing to throw any more money at the problem. I wasn’t willing to quit or give up. I wasn’t willing to compromise my integrity. And I was running out of time. Part of my role at the bank included being licensed for life insurance. I remember reading that a life insurance policy would still pay out if you committed suicide, as long as more than 2 years had passed since you took out the policy and when you took your life. Hmm…

Last year, I was in a relationship with a girl who had been through a fair bit. In grade 11, she was in a head on collision with a motorcyclist and the motorcyclist didn’t make it. She went through some rough patches around that. Her family was not as supportive as they could’ve been. I knew this, but I also knew that she had been keeping something from me. I knew it was something dark, so I told her that I would be ready if she got to a point where she wanted to share. One night, we were hanging out in my car and the conversation went in that direction. Feeling like I had an opening, I asked if she spent much time thinking about death.

I told her that I think about it often. In the last 7 years, I’ve lost parents, friends, and family members… how could I not? I told her that every once in a while, when life gets to be a bit much, I think about suicide. What would it be like? How would I do it? Would I have the courage or the conviction? Would I regret it? She was surprised that I was talking about these things so calmly and openly. She opened up to me about her experiences and we had a remarkable conversation.

At first, I think she almost expected me to freak out or want to report her to a hotline. I didn’t, I just listened. And when she talked about life getting to be too much, I told her I could relate. I told her that’s when I think about it too. I told her about the conversations that take place in my head when I reach those dark corners, and then I told her about all the things that bring me back to the light. I could tell that she had never connected with someone else on this. It’s easier when you don’t have to face things alone.

After that conversation, I can’t help but think that the contemplation of suicide is a sign of a healthy, curious mind that’s going through some things. I spent most of my life thinking that people who are ‘suicidal’ are mentally weak, or damaged, or so distraught with life that I could never relate. I suspect that most people have had a similar perspective. Perhaps this is why we feel alone rather than connected when we have these kinds of thoughts. If thoughts of suicide only happened in extreme and rare cases, then perhaps it would be indicative of faulty hardware and perhaps those people should feel scared and alone. But if thoughts of suicide were had by most individuals in times of extreme duress, isn’t that something we should be aware of? Something that we should collectively acknowledge?

I’ve seen different ways of communicating what it’s like to have suicidal thoughts, none better than this by the late David Wallace,

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”

And yet the final thoughts of almost every person who has survived a jump off the Golden Gate bridge, are thoughts of regret..

‘What have I just done? I don’t want to die. God please save me. Boom.’

There’s something happening here. We need to talk about this. Posting the suicide prevention hotline to your social media account isn’t enough. Thoughts and prayers are not enough. We need to have real conversations. We need to acknowledge that suicidal thoughts have a place within a modern society like ours, and we need to do a better job of understanding why.

Unemployment rates are at all-time lows while income inequality is at an all-time high. There’s no lack of work, just a lack of income for it. With a lack of income comes a lack of opportunity.. The lack of opportunity to own your own home, or to further your education, or even to start your own family. How many of us were raised with the idea that the only thing between us and a good life was hard work? How many of us are at a point now where no matter how hard we work, we can’t seem to make any progress? And how many of us are getting a sense that these factors are largely out of our control?

That’s hopelessness.

I can’t help but think that this structural shift in equality of wealth is the underlying reason for all this pain and suffering.. it’s the root of what we’re ultimately desperate to escape. Like J. Cole said, ‘you can’t take it when you die but you can’t live without it.’ When wealth has been shifted from the many to the few, this is how it plays out. When there isn’t enough to go around, people fall back into their tribes, looking to protect their own. Rather than looking for a solution to the problem, we’re looking for someone to blame. People become quick to draw lines in the sand between us and them. Social discourse becomes hostile. Where we were connected, we are now divided. And it all starts to break down.

If we’re looking for an analogy for how this plays out, we don’t have to look far. It sounds remarkably like climate change to me. The planet is a large and complex ecosystem which tends to exist within an equilibrium. Adjusting the average temperature of the planet by a few degrees over a long period of time isn’t something that most people would notice, but that’s not all that’s changing. With a shift in temperature comes a shift in equilibrium and the path from here to there is filled with chaos. Heat waves are now keeping planes from taking off. Blizzards are lasting well into the spring. Every hurricane that comes along seems to be worse than the one before.

By shifting the distribution of wealth by a few degrees over a long period of time, a lot of people didn’t notice. But they see the mass shootings. They see the school shootings. They see the police brutality. They see the Charlottesville protests. They see the government corruption. They see how little they’re making. They see how much they owe. They see what level of health care is available to them. They see the opiates in the community. And they see that we’ve lost the ability to talk these things through. Things are heating up.

When I think about the world we live in right now, it’s not easy. Then I remind myself that for some, this path is harder than others. Then I remind myself that not everyone is equipped with the tools to deal with these things. And that’s when I think no-shit people are struggling, these are hard times. These are the times where those with nothing to lose and those with everything to lose are choosing to escape rather than endure. And I can’t help but think that this is a function of hope.