Forget what you know, to see what is there

Take off. The power that is generated to hurl a rocket into space and escape the gravity of the earth is phenomenal. It was always considered impossible, but it has now been done. Many times. Some say arrogance, some say inspiration. Who cares if the motivation for some pioneers of space flight was arrogance. 

When I see a huge metal bullet packed full of jet fuel hurtling through the sky and away from the earth, I am so inspired. This thing that I am totally connected with, that I live and breathe each and every single day, is no longer a constant. It is no longer the only thing that I can understand and comprehend. In that, thee is immense power and untold clarity.

They say that the fish is the last to understand the water that it swims in. That is because it has no reference for the context, and there is nothing to contrast it with. Thus it believes that the water is constant.

Now I look to the sky, and it is not an untold story. It is now within my reach. And because it is in my reach means that I can conceptualise the water that I swim in. The solidness of earth, the permanency of earth. 

How do we consider that the little things that we as humans do on the face of the planet have impact if we cannot see the bigger picture? But as we stretch out to see the earth in the context of the rest of the solar system, then it is becoming clearer that the things we do on the individual and micro scale affect the macro scale and the population level.

I can see the position of the environmentalist movement, who claim that to survive, we must curb growth and conserve the precious resources that we have. I also see the position of the industrialists and the capitalists, who believe that growth and development will solve the problems and the market will find a way to optimise the outcomes. 

Inside of each of these arguments is the same outcome, but they see vastly different ways of achieving it. The environmentalists consider that expansion and growth is negative if it is achieved it using the same approaches that we have already used to get this far. The industrial capitalists would not disagree.

Both do not know. They are keen to see things change, albeit in different directions. The environmentalists are not keen to go back to the dark ages, and the industrial capitalists concur. So how do we get there?

Having your cake and eating it too

What good is having cake if you cannot eat it? There is no purpose in having something which cannot be enjoyed. Thus the value is to have the cake and to eat it too. We all want the best that life has to offer for us. We do not want to suffer and go hungry. Can we have our cake and eat it too?

Of course, but we must first challenge and address all of the untold assumptions that have been baked into the way that we look at the world and at our life. Do we need to send power in wires along every street in every city in the world, or is there another way? Can we combine efficiency with new technology to limit power use, and therefore minimise the use of brown coal to fire the power station furnaces? Is there another way that we can approach the problems that we now see as 'the way things are'? 

I think the answer to all these questions is a categorical yes. We may not know the answer right now, but that does not mean it does not exist.