Are things getting better and does it matter? Everything is fine.

This relativistic argument has emerged many times in this blog so gets its own page now.

If things are getting better then our children will enjoy better lives than us. And their children even better than them.

But, problem. It means that I am expected to live my whole life in far worse conditions than my grand-children, and my children is worse conditions than them.

Does this mean that my whole life is therefore worse? This is the dangerous implication of the development idea.

Usually we spin that the other way. My life is much better than the past and we celebrate the improvements.

But it seems those improvements don't exist, because compared with the future they are actually worse.

So it means that how "good" things are depends entirely on how you look at it, and not in the actual state of affairs.

So "Development" is just a way of looking at things, it isn't a real state of affairs at all and it has no bearing on our lives!

We can be happy regardless the state of development, or perhaps better we just ignore the development idea. This means that all countries, and all people rich or poor can live equal lives since the difference lies only in how they think about things.

This is the final death knell of "Materialism." It does not matter what your state of affairs, it makes no difference.

And this ends obsessive resource use. There is no need for technological innovation or progress, no need to better ourselves or improve things. Everything is just fine, it has always been so.

BUT and big but. This does not end anything. Mankind is creative, we have innate desire to be better and to end suffering and wrongs. This does not change. Life goes on. What changes is that we realise that measuring our happiness based upon whether things are better or worse is a myth. Things are always better and worse it just depends how you look at them.

The Myth of Population causing ecological crisis: how and why to enjoy poverty

Capitalism is about growth. Easy to find resources are cheap and more likely to have technology created around them to create profit and provide investment for capitalists. Essentially a version of Parkinson's Law exists for Capitalism. Rather than "work expands so as to fill the available time" the whole success of capitalism rests on "exploitation expands so as to fill the available resources." As a result regardless the human population size capitalism will use up the world's resources.

Growth is usually regarded positively and called "development." But this is a spin on a deeply dangerous and damaging philosophy designed to support a global oligarchy of investors who are able to derive a free income from "returns on investment" relieving them from having to work.

Capitalist/Development spin notes the "benefits" that people in developed countries enjoy like increased life expectancy, health and technology. But it never looks more deeply at what makes "life" itself.

As argued at length in this blog, a simple relativistic argument illustrates the problem with the Development way of thinking. Development is only good when we compare with the Past. But our children will enjoy a better life that us, which means it makes our life worse compared with the Future. If we can live a whole life in worse conditions than the Future then how important really was development? While arbitrary for humans, development has very real costs for the environment that can't be ignored. 

Some "facts" on the population myth using global biocapacity data from Global Footprint Network. This data probably doesn't mean much, but it will indicate the idea here that development and capitalism is the problem not population.

Currently the world uses 141% of the available bioproductivity of the planet.

If we all lived like UK then that would rise to 400% (so economic development is a very bad idea because it is not sustainable).

If we all lived like Eritreans then that number would fall to 25% of global productivity. The current human population would only use 1/4 of the planets renewable resources. Alternatively we could increase the population 4x if we were prepared to live like Eritreans. Ironically I am both prepared to live like an Eritrean and not have children so I'm doubly "wealthy."

While in relative human terms Capitalism has improved things, it has filled the global space incredibly efficiently. In a matter of a century it has grown to use all the annual biocapacity and a further 41% from fossil resources.

But in absolute terms this strength is its weakness: creating a population of humans whose needs are as large and damaging as possible. It was the very worse system that humans could have developed, but it is the one which supports the aristocratic divide best enabling a small population of people to exploit the mass better than ever before.

By contrast pre-capitalist societies like Eritrea enable their population to live on a 1/16 the resources of the UK. Critics will say that Eritreans live in poverty and are not happy, but this is obviously nonsense. Eritreans live like they have done for thousands of years, and more like humans have lived for millions of years. If humans have always been unhappy then its a failure of evolution if nothing else that we didn't adapt to our environment better. What is much more likely is that modern ways of thinking have changed us and started the need for a struggle to adapt our environment toward our new ways of thinking. This is the real nature of Modernity.

In retrospect its a massive shame the Eritreans didn't start evangelising their wise way of life 500 years ago and invade and colonise the very backward West. And its a very sad shame than many brainwashed Eritreans today feasting on media images think that they are poor and backward in global terms rather than the people who actually hold the keys to the future. It is them who should be teaching us how to live our life happily with less, rather than us teaching them how to live their lives with more.

There is a Chinese saying that it is harder for a rich man to live in a poor man's house than for a poor man to live in a rich man's house. This simple statement explains why development is only ever one way, and also illustrates perfectly the power and wisdom of the poor man. The poor man can live happily in both rich and poor houses, while the rich man has trapped himself in luxury finding it hard to step outside. The rich may think they are powerful, but as irony is always very ironic it is the rich in fact who have the least freedom and the greatest dependency on wealth. The world needs above all other things to learn the joy of poverty and the freedom that grants. This is the message of all the religions, told thousand of the years ago and long before the West's continual ignoring of wisdom began to cause irreparable damage and make this lesson ever more pertinent.

How to enjoy poverty in fact should be the name of this blog!

The Importance of Being Good

It's a rather hackneyed point that we should be good. Its a rather uncool point that we should be good.

You don't see gangsters or many of the heroes in films actually being that good.

The value of being good is also dressed in much mediaeval mythology about punishment in hells, or bad karma and general suffering one way or another being the cost of sin.

But the fundamental truth is that the cost of not being good is actually personal suffering. This is the definition of what is bad: that which causes personal suffering. How foolish all the "cool" gangsters seem down the track when their lives are full of suffering.

When we are suffering however being good seems impossible. It is painful and hard to correct ourselves and even peace seems like a suffering as it only exposes the extent of our pain and suffering. It is easier to be bad, to heap on the suffering in an attempt to block it all out. Self harm, harm of others becomes attractive as it briefly disguises our inner pain.

Even the mental illness that eventually arises is a mechanism to hide the pain, to distract us into other imaginary self made suffering that at least is our own creation.

Mental illness eventually become psychiatric as our brain adapts to these patterns in behaviour that have developed to escape our own suffering.

It is a self perpetuating cycle however, and the only way out is to start dropping in good drop by drop, painful step by painful step to dilute and eventually flush out all the bad. A journey of perhaps many days, months, years even potentially lifetimes. But it is the only way. Every step of goodness is a step toward genuine peace and happiness and freedom from suffering. Like a stream cutting through the rocks of a gorge it is a path best done in tiny steps. Trying to do an enormous good deed in the hope of clearing our suffering may do a lot, but if our expectations are too high we will end up disappointed. We do not know how deep our suffering goes and how far we must dig and wash to clear away the weeds and dirty from which pour suffering grows.

When we turn and become commited to the walk out of suffering our direction changes and that is the single most fundamental move. This is the difference between a mere mortal and a saint. A saint despite the suffering, despite the wrongs they have committed, and despite the challenges that await them is commited to keep walking through the storm. That is all there is to it. Don't give up being good, even when every bad things and harsh sufferings hit us; even when being good seems to only make us hurt more: head down keep walking. No storm lasts forever.

Now one immediate problem is that people around us will probably try to drag us down. If we have good friends they will support us, and this is a good measure of good friends. But chances are we will experience resistance from out peer group. No one not committed to goodness likes to be shown up. If you warn someone who enjoys smoking that it may cause cancer, chances are they really don't want to face this. If we wish to change people, like the effort to change our self it is gently and in small but determined steps. We certainly do not wear a badge and start criticising our neighbours. This will make our own journey much harder. However if we are strong and well supported, perhaps there is a role for us as an evangelist of goodness (not necessarily with doctrine attached like Christianity or Islam or Buddhism etc) but simply as a reminder and encourager of people that the path to a happy life is one of good steps.

Caveat: I said that the definition of badness was that which causes personal suffering. This is how it appears when we are (most likely) looking at the world from our own perspective. But obviously as our goodness grows we begin to look at the world more and more from outside ourselves. We begin to see the suffering that badness creates not just in us but in other people. Develop to become an agent whose goal is to just end suffering regardless whether it is ours or others. In Buddhism this a a powerful and advanced step called the Bodhissatva. But we don't need doctrine and names the path remains the same for all people from all cultures and backgrounds.