Bill Gates wrong?

Bill’s book, ‘How to Survive a Climate Change Event’ is as you might expect, from his unique perspective as CEO of a mega corporation and very wealthy, i.e. science, technology, innovation, investment capital, government funding: basically the creation of Microsoft all over again. It’s laudable but not revolutionary. Covid is currently doing a better job reducing population, personal spending and activity, damaging the drugs industry, decimating air and road travel and generally causing a world slow down. It all started long ago. Man invented farming which allowed time for dreaming and learning. Man then invented factories. Factories pay wages and profits and produce efficiently, so well in fact that the wages they paid could afford to buy the products the factories made. Obvious really, at least to us. But this ever so obvious situation caused a feedback loop. That’s where a little bit of the output is fed back into the input so, as the output increases the feedback increases the input which in turn further increases the output which, and so on. Before factories work produced only for the rich or friends and family. In the last 200 years this factory feedback loop has caused a boom in profits, wages and personal spending. We have all enjoyed the changes from horse and cart to Ford Mondeo, slate tablet to Apple iPad, Bill’s made his fortune and Elon Musk the largest ever factory. What on earth could be wrong with that? Well, as we’re finding, this almost exponential growth is not sustainable. That’s because there are hidden costs not accounted for that allow excess profits to pay higher wages that result in the afore mentioned feedback. Costs like raw materials that come free from the ground, pollution and environmental damage and human time and sweat not adequately paid for. Basically factories break the second law of thermodynamics, well at least in profitability terms. You can’t get more out than you put in. It’s just a case of humans being too clever by half. So Bill, an undoubtedly very intelligent and public spirited person, hasn’t come close to the revolution needed to solve our current riddle.

The riddle and its solution are far deeper than building a zero carbon cement factory. My life, having spanned nearly eighty years, has experienced horse and carts to very comfortable auto mobiles but its richness and happiness has not echoed those technical improvements. If it did I’d be ecstatic by now. It’s given me wonderful tools to play with, new ideas to understand, new opportunities, an excellent education and the NHS, but if I consider my happiness it’s depended on other things. Things like relationships, creativity, freedom to explore myself, achievements, and existing in a context of fun and acceptance. These bear little reliance on technological advancement.

The accepted view is we create a perception of our current surroundings as things happen; nothing strange in that. We easily compare and contrast other peoples surroundings like them having expensive jewellery or a cold. When our surroundings change quickly we compare the before and after for better or worse quite vividly, but if I try to compare my life now with how it was twenty or more years ago my attempt at comparison is far more foggy. It’s hard for me to recreate my sense of the feelings I had back then. I might look at a photograph for help but what I feel is dominated by my current emotional situation. While I cherished my first car at the time it seems like a piece of period junk now. If I’m content then expensive jewellery won’t be attractive but if I feel poor I might lust after it. All experience is coloured by my current condition, which is to be expected. My current car is far better but doesn’t carry the thrill and excitement of my first. But all this means is everything I consider as objective reality is actually based on drifting, ungrounded comparisons. I’m permanently floating on a sea without any inkling of how deep the water is or where I am in the scheme of things, if there is such a thing as the scheme of things. Luckily, being human, my conscious brain can reduce all this to, “When the fuck is this pandemic going to end?”