Today we embark upon another tour around the Sun on this precious spinning rock we call home. It is an honor to be among you – the great messengers of change in our time of need. Our journey this time around can be purposeful and productive if we keep in mind the quintessential human capacity that makes progress possible – hope. With it, we can rise up to face the great challenges that define our times. Simply kindle the hope that resides deep within our hearts.
I would like to take a moment to share an insight that gives me hope. Perhaps it will shed light upon your path as well.
This diary is cross-posted at Celsias.
What insight do I speak of? The realization that the core challenges we face are not dependent upon what is "real." Our challenges are not simply physical. If they were, there may be reason to fear that the obstacles are too heavy to push aside. But this is not so.
Our core challenges reside in the ideas defining our understanding of the world. And these ideas are not confined by the laws of physics. They can change more readily than the path of an avalanche or the surge of a tsunami. There is no pre-determined way that we understand the world!
One of the miraculous features of humanity is our ability to conjure abstract mental models of the world. These models – like the calendar defining today as the start of a new year – are no more physically real than the Ptolemaic ‘earth-centered’ universe. But they do have a significant impact on how we interpret the world – and thus have the power to define the ‘boundaries of possibility’ in our minds.
The significance of this observation for the ecological crisis is huge.
We often think that ecological problems reside ‘in the world’ where species face extinction, the world’s climate shifts in the direction of violence, and life-giving air, water, and soil are tainted with deadly toxins. But these travesties – true though they are – are merely a physical manifestation of a broader problem.
The broader problem goes beyond the physical – to the ethereal realm of fantasy where our thoughts can become detached from their physical origins. Some of our ideas about the world stand in the way of progress, and potentially our survival as a species.
One idea that remains popular in the West is the notion that every thought is literally a representation of something in the world. This makes sense when a person looks upon an apple and has an interior recognition in the "mind’s eye" of the concept apple.
But how then would we make sense of the thought of New Year’s Eve? It doesn’t exist in the world, but is a mental fiction many of us share as part of our understanding of time. This fiction broke down for me during the writing of this essay when a friend called from another time zone to wish me a happy new year at midnight. It was only 10 o’clock here.
We have mental models for many things. One that I am particularly concerned about is the prevalent mental model for energy production. There is a familiar understanding in the minds of many that energy is produced by burning coal, refining oil, and transporting it (in the form of electricity) over long distances to where it will be used. This mental model of energy production has been made manifest in the physical infrastructure that supplies energy to most homes in the developed world today.
The downside of our mental model for energy is that it seems natural because it has a physical manifestation. But it’s ‘naturalness’ conceals the truth that alternative models can be dreamed up. As a consequence, solutions to "the energy problem" mostly emphasize alternative fuels and "clean" technologies (for coal and oil), with little mention of other ideas about how energy could be produced.
One idea I’ve been pondering about energy production has to do with the size of human dwellings. Instead of building enormous power plants or growing agro-fuels on thousand acre lots, we could build power generators on the scale of a single home or small community. These ‘human-scale’ energy producers could be on site where the energy is used. This model would recognize that much of what we create now is wasted as it travels from somewhere far away. (Think of the oil in your gas tank that had to travel 10,000 miles under the protection of an entire fleet of war ships. So much for efficiency!)
This alternative idea can be grasped immediately. Your understanding of energy production can shift in a moment.
The take home message – and a hopeful message it is – is that our ideas about the world can change quickly. They are not bound to physical reality. It may take some time to dismantle the outdated infrastructure manifest from the ideas of yesteryear. And the new structures that emerge as our understanding shifts must be compatible with the material world if they are to work. But the challenges we face are imminently solvable because they are about ideas.
The only constraint is our capacity to dream of a better world. And the lifeblood of dreams is hope. My wish this year is that we have hope in abundance on this trip around our most beloved star, the Sun.
A new and better world awaits us.
Written by Joe Brewer, a Rockridge InstituteFellow. Founded by George Lakoff, the Rockridge Institute is a progressive political think tank reclaiming the political debate through the application of cognitive science, neuroscience, and linguistics to a broad range of concerns. The Rockridge Institute depends upon support from the progressive community.