Preparing for the Future
Sep. 26th, 2006 04:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebThere is a tendency with Americans, and probably life forms in general, to hog everything they see, without regard to long-term repercussions, that is disturbing me.
I am afraid there is something about our psychology that gives us this tendency. Here are some examples.
If one is in the mood for a turkey sandwich, and gets taken to a buffet which has turkey sandwiches available, one will not generally just eat a turkey sandwich. We can't eat everything on the table because of physical limitations, but we tend to get as close as we possibly can. I know at least one person who refuses to go to buffets so that this won't happen.
I saw on a show about pets that if you feed your dog a small piece of cheese, the dog will be very happy and will make it clear that another piece of cheese would be welcome. The same happens if instead you give the dog an entire slice of cheese. The show was trying to get us to help us save our dogs from themselves by giving them several small pieces of cheese rather than several slices. I've heard that dogs tend to eat everything in their bowl, even if they end up throwing up later. I've heard that animals in the wild eat from a carcass as quickly as they can before other animals find it.
It's been shown that people tend to take a serving of something, regardless of the size of that serving. Say you have a bowl of nuts with a spoon. People will tend to take one spoonful, regardless of the size of the spoon.
Priorities, schmiorities--I want to find time to do everything. That's a philosophy I've heard and tried to adopt.
People living on Easter Island cut down every last tree. They had no place else to go to find more trees because they were in the middle of the ocean, and trees were vital to their culture.
People tend to not take the very last bit of something, until finally someone does.
Why this bothers me so much, besides the results of getting huge and needing big houses to fit all our crap into, is the way we can just run out of things. The way we use up every last one of something and then talk about the good old days. What good old days are we going to be talking about later? The good old days when we had gas? When we had edible fish? When the Texas coast wasn't at Austin, but at a mythical place called Galveston? When we used to have climate-controlled buildings? I am getting a little scared.
Of all the species, humans are probably the best at looking out for the future. But this is hard, because the future is hard to predict. Every time it seems like something bad might happen, but then it doesn't, people worry less. For example, we haven't yet been ruined by overpopulation, we haven't yet run out of gas. See, we always figure something out, so surely we'll figure something out again.
I think sometime we won't figure something out, or if we do, there will be a gap between when that happens and when we needed it. One problem I'm just now getting hit over the head with is that capitalism is not working to show us when resources are getting scarce. So long as they are still cheap to get right now, they are going to be sold cheaply. So long as they are still sold cheaply, we aren't going to see a problem.
Necessity is the mother of invention. Why can't we invent things in anticipation, instead of waiting until necessity has arrived? Surely there's some way to motivate ourselves. People have been trying alternate forms of energy capture for over 50 years, but I don't think we've gotten very far, and the progress we have made has been possible only because of a minority of hippie fruit loops. (Maybe that time they gave us means that when later we freak out and start building millions of a new kind of power plant everywhere, they won't be nuclear.)
So that's the other problem with predicting the future. All kinds of fruit loops are predicting various futures and preparing for them. And when you guess wrong, it can get you in trouble. For example, check out Merle Sneed's story of a guy who became convinced that the Rapture was going to happen on a certain date and time and that he was going straight to heaven on that day in Did the Rapture Happen? Needless to say, preparing for this view of the future was not a good idea, even though some people did try to help him: "This fellow immediately went to the boss and tried to resign his job because of his impending ascension into heaven and all. The boss, to his credit, recognized a temporary delusion when he saw it and gave the him a leave of absence, just in case the Prophet had his eternal calendar a little hosed up." (I recommend following that link, by the way.)
Sometimes the future is so obvious that we do make it a habit to prepare for it. For example, many of us brush our teeth daily, go grocery shopping before we run out of food, go to work every day even when we're not broke yet, pay our electric bill when the energy is still flowing, or return library books before the due date. So things could be worse.
No-sugar update - No worries. I did have a splitting headache this morning and took ibuprofen. It came back this afternoon and I took more. Now it's gone again.
I frequently get headaches, and ibuprofen works on them, and sometimes it takes more than one dose, so this fits right in with my normal daily life. Just like getting colds do, although they never start with lightheadedness. Nevertheless, I decided to google "sugar addiction," just to see if I'd find anything.
One source (who charms its readers by referring to us as "sick fucks") says "Withdrawal symptoms can include lethargy, tremors, headaches and depression. Generally, these effects are slightly less intense than the similar withdrawal symptoms associated with caffeine." Lethargy and headaches. Eerie.
Here's another disturbing quote, this one from pony: "My head is throbbing from sugar withdrawal. Ow.
Two things similar to last year's sugar fast:
1. Huge headache on day 3.
2. Very little hunger pangs." Today is day 3 for me. I've had the same hunger pangs I always have, though.
From another source, "The symptoms of sugar withdrawal can include headaches, fatigue, depression, drowsiness, skin eruptions, and mucus or throat discomfort. Some of these symptoms, especially the mood swings, fatigue and drowsiness, can occur on a daily basis as the blood sugar rises and falls on a high-sugar diet. . . . sugar withdrawal symptoms may last for a week or two. . . . Think of it as a voluntary case of the flu, and commit to working your way through it. In a few days it will be over, and you'll be on the other side, looking at a lifetime of health." Um, downright scary.
This idea that sugar withdrawal exists has been supported by scientists working with poor little rats with chattering teeth.
The always fabulous Wikipedia points to another source which states, "Beating sugar addiction may seem like a hopeless battle, but just like any drug addiction, you have to have a structured plan to win the war. I make no claims that it will be an easy battle. You won't be vomiting in back alleys or shivering in bed all night, but you will have the uncontrollable desire for something, anything that will give you your sugar fix."
I wonder if there are cravings, tremors, or depression in store for me later this week.
For the record, I am not a fan of addictions. These are not things I want to collect and treasure. Anything that's telling my body that it needs something that it doesn't really need, and that's telling me that it's urgent and I won't be allowed to concentrate properly until I get my fix, well, that's not my idea of a good idea. I'm not a real fan of dependencies, either. So based on that and my new-found knowledge, it seems like I should change my behavior somehow. I mean long-term, not just for one week.
The comparison to caffeine reminds me of my friend who got so sensitive to caffeine that even small fluctuations in quantity subjected him to withdrawal symptoms, so he switched to decaf. Last I heard, he still felt the urge to have coffee, but he felt that the coffee flavor of decaf allowed for a lovely placebo effect.
Now, I do crave sweets sometimes, but the cravings don't drive me to distraction. I just get something or I don't. No big deal. I've never noticed having a sugar rush either. (I might just be a bit dense.)
I'm not having cravings now, except for food in general. But are my headaches, which I've had frequently since high school at least, the result of a varying consumption of sugar? If so, am I going to be like my caffeine-addicted friend where consumption of any amount at all could lead to a withdrawal headache (three days later), or can I just keep it under a minimum and be okay? Or do I just need to keep it constant, heh heh.
Because I am absolutely not going to give up added sugar (so long as it is still available to me and I am not yet diabetic or prediabetic). There are too many delicious, fabulous, luxurious, awesome sugary creations. And although I can imagine a life with no ice cream of any kind, no pie, no cake, no donuts, no chocolates, no chocolate milk, no hot chocolate, no eclairs, no snack bars, no cookies, no pudding, no bread pudding, no yule grit (rice pudding), no sugary cereals, no quick breads, no muffins, no sweet potato casserole, no La Madeleine strawberry jam, etc., I can also imagine a postapocalyptic world (because I've read Alas, Babylon). That doesn't mean I want to go there.
I am afraid there is something about our psychology that gives us this tendency. Here are some examples.
If one is in the mood for a turkey sandwich, and gets taken to a buffet which has turkey sandwiches available, one will not generally just eat a turkey sandwich. We can't eat everything on the table because of physical limitations, but we tend to get as close as we possibly can. I know at least one person who refuses to go to buffets so that this won't happen.
I saw on a show about pets that if you feed your dog a small piece of cheese, the dog will be very happy and will make it clear that another piece of cheese would be welcome. The same happens if instead you give the dog an entire slice of cheese. The show was trying to get us to help us save our dogs from themselves by giving them several small pieces of cheese rather than several slices. I've heard that dogs tend to eat everything in their bowl, even if they end up throwing up later. I've heard that animals in the wild eat from a carcass as quickly as they can before other animals find it.
It's been shown that people tend to take a serving of something, regardless of the size of that serving. Say you have a bowl of nuts with a spoon. People will tend to take one spoonful, regardless of the size of the spoon.
Priorities, schmiorities--I want to find time to do everything. That's a philosophy I've heard and tried to adopt.
People living on Easter Island cut down every last tree. They had no place else to go to find more trees because they were in the middle of the ocean, and trees were vital to their culture.
People tend to not take the very last bit of something, until finally someone does.
Why this bothers me so much, besides the results of getting huge and needing big houses to fit all our crap into, is the way we can just run out of things. The way we use up every last one of something and then talk about the good old days. What good old days are we going to be talking about later? The good old days when we had gas? When we had edible fish? When the Texas coast wasn't at Austin, but at a mythical place called Galveston? When we used to have climate-controlled buildings? I am getting a little scared.
Of all the species, humans are probably the best at looking out for the future. But this is hard, because the future is hard to predict. Every time it seems like something bad might happen, but then it doesn't, people worry less. For example, we haven't yet been ruined by overpopulation, we haven't yet run out of gas. See, we always figure something out, so surely we'll figure something out again.
I think sometime we won't figure something out, or if we do, there will be a gap between when that happens and when we needed it. One problem I'm just now getting hit over the head with is that capitalism is not working to show us when resources are getting scarce. So long as they are still cheap to get right now, they are going to be sold cheaply. So long as they are still sold cheaply, we aren't going to see a problem.
Necessity is the mother of invention. Why can't we invent things in anticipation, instead of waiting until necessity has arrived? Surely there's some way to motivate ourselves. People have been trying alternate forms of energy capture for over 50 years, but I don't think we've gotten very far, and the progress we have made has been possible only because of a minority of hippie fruit loops. (Maybe that time they gave us means that when later we freak out and start building millions of a new kind of power plant everywhere, they won't be nuclear.)
So that's the other problem with predicting the future. All kinds of fruit loops are predicting various futures and preparing for them. And when you guess wrong, it can get you in trouble. For example, check out Merle Sneed's story of a guy who became convinced that the Rapture was going to happen on a certain date and time and that he was going straight to heaven on that day in Did the Rapture Happen? Needless to say, preparing for this view of the future was not a good idea, even though some people did try to help him: "This fellow immediately went to the boss and tried to resign his job because of his impending ascension into heaven and all. The boss, to his credit, recognized a temporary delusion when he saw it and gave the him a leave of absence, just in case the Prophet had his eternal calendar a little hosed up." (I recommend following that link, by the way.)
Sometimes the future is so obvious that we do make it a habit to prepare for it. For example, many of us brush our teeth daily, go grocery shopping before we run out of food, go to work every day even when we're not broke yet, pay our electric bill when the energy is still flowing, or return library books before the due date. So things could be worse.
No-sugar update - No worries. I did have a splitting headache this morning and took ibuprofen. It came back this afternoon and I took more. Now it's gone again.
I frequently get headaches, and ibuprofen works on them, and sometimes it takes more than one dose, so this fits right in with my normal daily life. Just like getting colds do, although they never start with lightheadedness. Nevertheless, I decided to google "sugar addiction," just to see if I'd find anything.
One source (who charms its readers by referring to us as "sick fucks") says "Withdrawal symptoms can include lethargy, tremors, headaches and depression. Generally, these effects are slightly less intense than the similar withdrawal symptoms associated with caffeine." Lethargy and headaches. Eerie.
Here's another disturbing quote, this one from pony: "My head is throbbing from sugar withdrawal. Ow.
Two things similar to last year's sugar fast:
1. Huge headache on day 3.
2. Very little hunger pangs." Today is day 3 for me. I've had the same hunger pangs I always have, though.
From another source, "The symptoms of sugar withdrawal can include headaches, fatigue, depression, drowsiness, skin eruptions, and mucus or throat discomfort. Some of these symptoms, especially the mood swings, fatigue and drowsiness, can occur on a daily basis as the blood sugar rises and falls on a high-sugar diet. . . . sugar withdrawal symptoms may last for a week or two. . . . Think of it as a voluntary case of the flu, and commit to working your way through it. In a few days it will be over, and you'll be on the other side, looking at a lifetime of health." Um, downright scary.
This idea that sugar withdrawal exists has been supported by scientists working with poor little rats with chattering teeth.
The always fabulous Wikipedia points to another source which states, "Beating sugar addiction may seem like a hopeless battle, but just like any drug addiction, you have to have a structured plan to win the war. I make no claims that it will be an easy battle. You won't be vomiting in back alleys or shivering in bed all night, but you will have the uncontrollable desire for something, anything that will give you your sugar fix."
I wonder if there are cravings, tremors, or depression in store for me later this week.
For the record, I am not a fan of addictions. These are not things I want to collect and treasure. Anything that's telling my body that it needs something that it doesn't really need, and that's telling me that it's urgent and I won't be allowed to concentrate properly until I get my fix, well, that's not my idea of a good idea. I'm not a real fan of dependencies, either. So based on that and my new-found knowledge, it seems like I should change my behavior somehow. I mean long-term, not just for one week.
The comparison to caffeine reminds me of my friend who got so sensitive to caffeine that even small fluctuations in quantity subjected him to withdrawal symptoms, so he switched to decaf. Last I heard, he still felt the urge to have coffee, but he felt that the coffee flavor of decaf allowed for a lovely placebo effect.
Now, I do crave sweets sometimes, but the cravings don't drive me to distraction. I just get something or I don't. No big deal. I've never noticed having a sugar rush either. (I might just be a bit dense.)
I'm not having cravings now, except for food in general. But are my headaches, which I've had frequently since high school at least, the result of a varying consumption of sugar? If so, am I going to be like my caffeine-addicted friend where consumption of any amount at all could lead to a withdrawal headache (three days later), or can I just keep it under a minimum and be okay? Or do I just need to keep it constant, heh heh.
Because I am absolutely not going to give up added sugar (so long as it is still available to me and I am not yet diabetic or prediabetic). There are too many delicious, fabulous, luxurious, awesome sugary creations. And although I can imagine a life with no ice cream of any kind, no pie, no cake, no donuts, no chocolates, no chocolate milk, no hot chocolate, no eclairs, no snack bars, no cookies, no pudding, no bread pudding, no yule grit (rice pudding), no sugary cereals, no quick breads, no muffins, no sweet potato casserole, no La Madeleine strawberry jam, etc., I can also imagine a postapocalyptic world (because I've read Alas, Babylon). That doesn't mean I want to go there.
Hogging resources
on 2006-09-27 03:49 pm (UTC)Interesting post, Debbie. This is one of those areas where both our irrational and rational tendencies definitely work toward bad results.
Our irrational instincts, evolved under conditions of scarcity that do not exist in the same way, urge us to take now while the taking is good. (The sight of a buffet table definitely awakens this in me; I am not one of those poor fellows who complain that a greater diversity of options paralyzes them into not being able to choose.) I find that this effect is worse when you are looking at a common source rather than your own private source. It’s easier for me to eat reasonably from my own pantry than from a buffet table, since an extra cookie eaten from my own kitchen is one cookie less to eat later (shifting the opportunity – varies in difficulty based on one’s intertemporal rate of substitution), while stopping at one cookie at a buffet means totally forgoing the opportunity of more cookies. And cookies are good right? (mmmm… calorie density) (Wait, I don’t actually even eat cookies, but whatever.)
Our rational minds lead us to over-exploit common resources since we can individually reap the benefits while spreading the costs over the entire group, including future generations (i.e. tragedy of the commons). And we have plenty of commons that are in varying degrees of trouble – water, air, fisheries, wildlife species, “green space,” quiet, darkness, the very planet. Good work is being done on technological and economic solutions to the problems these commons present (though, duh, there is a lot left to do), but there is substantial disagreement among the citizenry on what kind of solution is acceptable (e.g. yes, the current fisheries practices are unsustainable, but we can’t force this poor tribe for whom traditional fishing is an important aspect of their culture to stop pulling all the fish out of the sea, can we?; yes, water is a scarce resource that we do not charge anything like a reasonable market price, but you can’t make me pay that kind of money to water my lawn; is it appropriate for a non-authoritarian government to impose reproductive limitations on its citizenry?) and a lack of political will to do the things that are generally popular but opposed by powerful interest groups. This makes things tougher.
Also, it is actually kind of difficult in many cases to identify and quantify scarcity. For oil, for example: do we mean scarcity using existing technology or assuming improvements in our ability to extract it? There are a lot of complexities.
I agree that over-reach by doomsayers has made it hard for some people to accept the idea that something like global warming could have such a huge impact. (Paul Ehrlich, for example, has a lot to answer for, given his wide-ranging, obviously crazy, highly publicized predictions.) But I do think that at this point, most people (in the US) who are capable of being convinced by evidence do believe that global warming exists and that it is at least in part caused by human action, because credible people have continued to do real science in this area. This is good.
Anyway, so much for my little lecture. Re: withdrawal symptoms: I’ve never gone through sugar withdrawal, but I don’t know that I’ve ever cold-turkeyed on it. I have gone through caffeine withdrawal several times - when I’ve given it up completely after drinking it regularly for a long period of time - with a small degree of unpleasantness (mostly headaches), and am now basically caffeine-free, but I don’t seem to be particularly affected by withdrawal if I have a couple glasses of iced tea on occasion. (Being able to sleep in the 12 hours after drinking it is another issue.) There seems to be significant variability in one’s reactions to this stuff, so hopefully you’ll have a better time of it than your highly sensitive friend. But all this seems easy to me compared to my regular withdrawal from periodic week-long use of prescription painkillers, so it’s hard to say. (And I’m sure the recreational drug users among us could attest to the ass-kicking horribleness of withdrawal from major drugs.)
Capitalist vision
on 2006-09-28 01:49 am (UTC)Capitalism actually does surprisingly well at dealing with running out of resources, at least when the resource is 'owned' by someone. If you own something, and you know it is running out, you have two choices - sell it today, or keep it and sell it at a high price when you have the only one left. You will only choose to sell it today if you can command a high enough price that you are better off selling it and taking the money now than you would be if you deferred on selling and taking the high price later. The effect is that resource prices tend to rise well in advance of exhaustion. When a resource is not 'owned', however, and anyone can grab it, then it tends to run out because everyone knows that if they don't take it, someone else will. (This is the fish, tree, grazing land, and atmosphere problem, generally called the tragedy of the commons.) Oil has a slightly different problem - most US oil rights are leases, which can be lost if the resource isn't exploited. There can be a slow-motion commons problem in this case, as the oil company has to 'use it or lose it'. Fortunately, the Arabs don't have this problem, the government unambiguously owns it, and is exploiting it as a profit-making enterprise would.
On the nuclear issue - nuclear power is by far the best available technology, today, for solving global warming. All of the other 'hippie' solutions have fatal flaws. Geothermal and hydroelectric are very limited in geography. It is incredibly expensive to store power, so solar and wind are useless at night and when the wind isn't blowing, respectively. (Batteries are on the order of dollars per kwh - the average household uses 1000 kwh per month.)
Nuclear is safe (far more people die, per unit of power, because of coal emissions and mining, than from nuclear), clean - zero emissions, when the waste is contained, and cheap - 3-5 cents per kwh, against 6-8(minimum) for wind, and 15-20 for solar. The primary issues with nuclear are waste and accidents. Accidents can be prevented - the only truly serious one ever was Chernobyl, and it was the direct product of a horrible design only a bad government would use - for profit companies wouldn't take the risks with their own employees, leave alone lawsuits, that the Soviets did. The 'big' American one was Three Mile Island, and it involved less radiation than your typical coal plant puts out in a month.
Waste is a non-issue - once it is processed, there is a small (all of it we could ever create would fit in a single building) amount of highly radioactive waste which can be further processed into a long-term storable waste which won't be any more toxic than what is sitting in barrels out behind every chemical plant in this country. The whole 'storage' issue currently in the news is entirely driven by an irrational fear of radiation.
Nuclear proliferation also isn't a insoluble problem - we have reactors, today, which use fuel which is completely useless as a weapon. Besides, the people we need to stop emitting carbon are the US, Europe, China, and India. All of these already have nuclear weapons.