On the timescales of change

In a drink with a friend recently, we referenced that sense which all people in late middle age seem to get, that the younger generation is up against a huge array of problems, and we are not envious. Also a reflection on the likelihood that every generation of people in late middle age ever, has always felt the same. 

It is a thing of some relief that youth do not always see it that way. For them, the challenges are exciting mountains to be tackled, and their agile limbs and mental dexterity, they still trust enough to consider such things do-able. With that enthusiasm so endearing of the young, problems are embraced with hopefulness that the change is possible. Who are we to argue? I suspect we once felt the same, and things were achieved on that premise. Perhaps not the ideals we imagined, but progress of sorts. 

Neither have we given up from our place further down the career path, and we still work for those things we always did, but the years have a way of moderating expectations of the size of success. Things have a way of taking longer than we imagined, and of being harder than we imagined, and of being vastly more complicated than we imagined.

It is undeniable that many challenges are big ones. As many commentators have noted, so much of our society is predicated on ongoing growth in certain things, and yet we are all up against the simple fact that we are nestled between the freezing vacuum of space and the seething furnace of our planetary interior, floating on a thin crust within a thin blue line. Within this absurdly thin gravitationally controlled envelope protected by a habitually varying magnetic field, all life on Earth has persisted - since its inception out of mystery some billions of years ago. Yet as surely as for a Tupperware lunchbox, it is a finite volume container.

The simple reality of volume of the container imposes limits on growth. We, and all life, are in a very real sense restricted to it. Fungi will not somehow send out their tendrils from Earth unassisted to grab hold of the Moon or asteroids or Venus and start to thrive there. Our planet is finite. Our biosphere even more so. 

For all that it is a welcoming host. Though we are grappling with increasing signs of climate change and other environmental challenges, the planet is still overwhelmingly benign to us. It would be foolish to presume that status can persist no matter what, yet it is also valid to recognise its robustness so far. If the problem is real – and we can’t poop in the garden indefinitely and expect no smell – then so too is the fact that time (to change) is on our side, sort of, without taking it for granted.

Amongst all this we are confronted with that great mystery of time and what it is, and the brevity of our own lifetimes. Passions rage from day to day on social media on this or on that, but as no shortage of sages have observed through the ages – as for man[kind] – his days are like grass. Similarly, our days a mist that appear for a little while then vanish. Biblical verses yes, but you don’t have to possess a faith to perceive the truth of it. We aren’t around for long as individuals in the grand scheme of things. As long as man and woman have looked to the ocean, stood on a hilltop, or stared upwards to the heavens, they have managed to grasp something of their own smallness. Modern insights into both the craziness of the quantum realm and the vastness (and weirdness) of spacetime continue to reveal to us what a tiny spectrum of actual reality that thing we call human experience is. 

Amidst all this, it’s also impossible to look at what humanity has achieved and not think, wow, well, good things can happen. Every time I look at the nullschool earth atmospheric model website, updated hourly (https://earth.nullschool.net/) I can’t help contemplating this. The level of sophistication we have regarding our perception of our planet is at an all-time peak. Is that going to grow inexorably or is it too restricted by confinement? How many data centres and internet cables and desktop PC’s can the world fit in? How much information can we reasonably store within our biosphere? How much of it can we digest and work in human lifetimes? What will the year 2756 look like? Who of us can ever know?

Almost always the inhabited Earth is in need of change. That is probably one of its few constants. That is true at least, if we hold to the premise that human suffering is to be avoided. Every generation has dealt with its fair share of problems. Yet we are gluttons for punishment when it comes to unrealistic deadlines. Also in our expectations of consensus. To be fair it is a problem of two halves. Setting unambitious targets that produce only minuscule benefit are to be avoided as well.  Yet setting targets which we know to be unachievable almost instantly, is setting everyone up for a psychological fall. It risks generating that sense that it is all a waste of time, that nothing can be done.  It is not an admission of defeat to recognise that we also need to plan for damage that happens before solutions are found.

We are conditioned by our own biological clock, and we are also conditioned by our own perceptions of what is possible. These can fall into the too pessimistic or too optimistic, but thankfully with the range of personality that characterises humanity, we manage to muddle through somewhere in the reality-approximating middle. Technology per-se is no panacea that can cure everything given enough time, and that many believe so is a function of the extraordinary century we have been privileged to witness. Yet there are physical laws, constraints, boundaries, that limit things, and growths we have witnessed in our time are not assured of continuance. History teaches us that emphatically, repeatedly. 

Technology will not somehow magically make the bad stuff all go away without fundamental root change in how we do (and value) stuff. It can help, to be sure, but there are limits. For example, to those who place their hopes on interplanetary colonisation, there are realities to deal with, of distance, aridity, raw material paucity, food security, temperature, muscular and skeletal atrophy, lack of protection from radiation. Who knows how human beings would cope on decade scales with never truly being able to go outside - except in protective bubbles of various size shape and form? More than that, the realities of who will pay for it. At any meaningful scale we are practically bound to the confines of our Earth for the foreseeable future, whatever that phrase means.

Amongst all the varieties of opinion on what needs to change, things have a way of becoming clear in the end. Sometimes it happens sooner rather than later, but always it takes time. Sometimes within single human lifespans, sometimes not. On our three score and ten working life timescales – we grow frustrated sometimes that our views, or the actions we profess, aren’t necessarily taken up. 

We need not panic or become despondent. The truth does have a way of outing in the end, and when it does in its historical patterns of fits and starts, change has a way of gaining momentum. Usually somebody somewhere gets the adjustment right, or at least better, and they gain the ascendancy in some way, and others copy.  Admittedly that’s harder and riskier when the problem is with something big and global that we all share, like the ocean, or the atmosphere, nevertheless these are big things that are robust for a while as we navigate better routes and yes, wander down a false trail or two. And regional improvements can be had first, before it spreads globally, so that regions still have a domestic incentive to address these changes even as neighbours don’t.

The big unknown I suppose, often, is how bad things have to get before change is truly mobilised and catalysed. The secondary unknown driving that is how many places will be willing to try doing things differently, unilaterally, with the competitive risk that entails. Somewhere will though. Somewhere things get bad enough fast enough, for change to make obvious sense. Or somewhere simply enlightened that goes for it - it happens sometimes. Whether we see that happen in our lifetimes or not on selected issues, the old keep calm and carry-on cliché is not a bad one. One foot in front of the other. Do the best we can with whatever understanding we have before us and maybe we just might surprise ourselves in the long run. Even if we don’t, giving it our best shot still seems like the preferred option.

Apart from anything else, there is nothing more we can do. And if others differ from us in perception of what needs to happen, we needn’t fret too much. None of us are gifted with perfect perception. Sometimes false trails are gone down, and none of us are immune. It would be good if we could avoid them more, but there will always be some of those before the best path becomes clearer. Truth and time are closer companions than we give them credit for.