If Everyone Awakens Will We Starve? (blog)

[Dave Kaminski]

Use this thread to discuss the following entry from Steve Pavlina's blog:

If Everyone Awakens Will We All Starve?

[Dave Kaminski]

Train up to do something more valuable.

How do you think value is calculated?

[WanderingOak]

Originally Posted by Dave Kaminski

Train up to do something more valuable.

How do you think value is calculated?

In this context, value would be something personally fulfilling that is beneficial to society as a whole. Two that come immediately to mind for me are food production and craftsmanship, because they are both tasks that I enjoy. Yes, I actually gain satisfaction out of planting seeds in the earth and working with wood, so both tasks definitely have 'value' to me. Either one of these has considerably more 'value', both to myself and society, than software enterprise license management, which is what I am currently paid to do for a living.

Food production has been automated, although not for the better, IMHO. As many here have already noted, the automation of the meat industry has resulted in nightmarish feedlot practices. Also, automation of food distribution was the main reason for the e-coli outbreak in spinach a few months ago. Given a choice, I think I would probably be more of a gardener than a farmer, producing some of my own food, while also supporting local CSA and farmer's markets. I know there are several communities in the US that view farming as a very fulfilling endeavor, so I don't think we will starve due to lack of food production.

OTOH, I am not sure if craftsmanship can be automated (beyond the use of basic power tools), or even if it should be attempted. Part of what separates craftsmanship from mere millwork (which is automated) is the fact that there is actual 'craft' involved. Rather than producing a merely functional piece of furniture (for example), the craftsman produces a work of art, that in many cases, also serves a practical purpose. This is one directon that I think my purpose is taking me in. I am sure there are many people out there whose purpose involves art and the creation of beauty, so I would hope that we would not suffer due to the loss of craftsmanship either.

[stephencp]

How do we determine value?

The easiest, most obvious answer is what someone will pay for it. There's a ton of libertarian literature out there on this, however I"d like to hear what everyone has to say against this philosophy.

Stephen
Power-Book Library: Free personal development, success, inspiration and motivational classics
Personality and Growth Bookshelf

[b5fish]

How can I justify cleaning my house, when I might spend that same time writing an article that will be just what someone needed to make a major, positive life-changing decision? In terms of overall impact, there’s no comparison. By any stretch of the imagination, I’m far better off writing than cleaning.

The justification is simple.
You have forgotten to consider what the person cleaning your house could otherwise contribute to society.
If we were all to suddenly awaken, then for you to decide whether you should clean your house, or hire someone else to do it, would go like this:
iff [(personal potential contribution to society) - (personal contribution due to cleaning your house)] > [(potential contribution of third party to society) - (contribution of third party due to cleaning your house)] then hire someone else to clean your else, else clean it yourself
In the real world, this calculation is more or less useless, as there will most likely always be someone willing to trade their time for money.
Even if we all awoke, it's a calculation that needs to be done by the person doing the cleaning moreso than the person wanting the cleaning done; if no one wants to clean your house, you will obviously have to do it yourself.

So, let's look at a few possible reasons why a person would willingly clean another person's house, when they feel their time could be better spent doing something else.
One reason would be that they genuinely feel you are making a larger contribution to society than they would have.
Another would be potential non-financial gains of cleaning your house, for example, having an opportunity to speak with you, and to learn from you.
A third may be that they are your roommate, and cleaning up after you simply seems like part of cleaning up after themselves to them.

It is also worth noting that a smaller immediate impact can yield a higher net gain.
One way this is possible is through personal development.
If the cleaner were to use the time for personal development, as opposed to the home owner using it for anything they please, the cleaner might not make as large of an immediate contribution, but may enable themselves to make larger contributions in the future.

Just my two cents.
All of it is currently meaningless, but if we're doing an exercise into the hypothetical, then why not?

[eternomi]

Interestingly it looks like the process of automation and the process of human awakening may be keeping pace with each other. The more we automate our menial tasks, the more time we have to make a larger contribution. Automation also gives us time for introspection, meditation, journaling, deep conversation, and lots of other awareness-raising pursuits.

Except, most people don't wanna do any of this! They want everything to be automated so that they can just live in paradise for ever! Then again, most never reach to that point. The ones who do realize that you can't perpetuate paradise because it gets boring, and they go back to doing stuff... but this time not because they have to, but because they want to. It would be great if more and more people could reach this point and work because they want to.

As we begin to enjoy the intrinsic rewards of purpose-centered living, we look for ways to free up more time to do what we love most. We therefore attach more value to automation.

A lot of stuff we automated or are trying to automate did not have to exist in the first place! Since you follow Dave Pollard's blog How to Save the World , I am sure you are familiar with his pitches that most of what we created is just so we can support the billions of people on the planet! And the reason why billions of people exist in the first place is because 1) we relied on the automation process to carry us all more than we should have, 2) irresponsible/unaware acts in the name of God (just keep reproducing, food is infinite) and under the assumption of omnipotence of human beings (everything is created for the human beings)

Furthermore, as we become more purpose-centered, we lose interest in idle distractions and destructive addictions. We cut the fluff from our lives. This reduces demand for products and services of low social value, increasing the chance that some of those resources will be reinvested in worthwhile automation.

Again, most of the stuff you want to cut off was invented to perpetuate the new life style in the first place! It's not like people woke up one day and said "I think we should really invent some fast food and caffeinated, sugar-rich drinks!". Someone automated (very badly) the process of feeding people since most people had less and less time to cook for themselves. Someone automated agriculture because noone had time for growing food for themselves. Now we have to opt for food that has been grown many miles away, has to sit in warehouses and trucks before we can even get our hands on them..

As you can see, you cannot really automate away these processes because they are already the results of automation!!

Thankfully this is slowly changing, but it won't be fully adopted until people realize you can't just rely on a central source for your needs. You gotta setup your own local networks and provide for each other.. Some of the centralization has to be taken down and put in place at a more local scale.. Hopefully government will face the same consequence eventually.. If you look at nature, it does not have a centrally governing body, but somehow things are ticking along just fine!

If we consider humanity as an organism, perhaps these are just the growing pains.. Hopefully we will solve these problems before they kill us... Makes you wonder how billions of cells managed to form the bodies we call plants, animals and our own bodies! Now we gotta do it at the humanity level.

What might be possible is to go back to our roots. Automation is still needed, but at smaller scales so that I can grow my own food, for example, but not have to spend my entire time doing it... Same thing for cooking, cleaning, etc.. Is it possible? I don't know, but clearly mass-automation is causing more trouble than providing solutions. Not to mention, perhaps there is in fact value in doing these things personally! For example, I prefer doing physical work in the yard to going to the gym... I prefer cooking my own food fresh to eating out. Am I wasting my time? or engaging in healthy activities which I actually enjoy?

Maybe automation is overrated and it is just the flip side of the "materialism" coin. Let's use your logic Steve, and imagine we automated everything and everyone has an abundance of everything.. Then what? People will go back to creationism, expressionism, and doing things for fun, right? Perhaps the key then is to make the "menial tasks" enjoyable again, not trying to eliminate them completely!.. or in the least, remove the idea from people's minds that some are born to enjoy life and others are born to support the lifestyles of the former...

[Paul C]

Originally Posted by eternomi

What might be possible is to go back to our roots. Automation is still needed, but at smaller scales so that I can grow my own food, for example, but not have to spend my entire time doing it... Same thing for cooking, cleaning, etc.. Is it possible? I don't know, but clearly mass-automation is causing more trouble than providing solutions. Not to mention, perhaps there is in fact value in doing these things personally! For example, I prefer doing physical work in the yard to going to the gym... I prefer cooking my own food fresh to eating out. Am I wasting my time? or engaging in healthy activities which I actually enjoy?

I agree about going back to your roots. And I already have a few ideas as to have this could be done without having to spend a large amount of your time in doing it.

For example, the general layout of suburbia could be designed in such a way that every 5 or so homes could share a vegetable garden/ fruit trees, etc. In which each household would take their turn in maintaining the food production, in a continuous cycle. Although everyone would need to be willing to give up at least a little of their time to carry out this task (and from I've heard, a vegetable garden doesn't need a huge amount of attention to maintain). As well as this, local farmers would be encouraged to continue what they do without being muscled out by larger competition. Certain laws would need to exist though to keep this stable I guess.

It could really just be a matter of a difference in mindset and change of environment that could encourage humanity to have a reverence for nature and being self-sustainable, especially if all the resources to do so were free to the public (that would be the ideal, at least)

I see this as a great way in causing people to become more self-dependent. And would encourage a larger part of the population to return to cooking there on meals, growing there own food, crafting there own things and creating stronger family units.