I have recently come in contact with a few stories about sustainability and repair-ability that have sparked some thought on this topic that I would want to put to paper here.

I believe this is becoming more and more a theme in the mind of many. The production of ever more things in combination with the growing need to "consume" the things that are produced seems to have dire consequences on the environment and also our mental health.

I think that it just may be possible, that for many of the people in industrialized societies not working / not having to work is devastating. People think of their profession as a defining characteristic of their Identity and social status within society. Giving that up would mean a collapse of the own identity besides anything else. Of course without the necessity to work full time for a living and with so much of our time working we would need to fill a suddenly expanding void of time with something that we truly want to do.

Maybe there are people that are capable of going out to parties every evening and sleeping off the ensuing hangover the next morning. I cold definitely not and either way that kind of alcoholism would take care of the people involved sooner or later. Or maybe I am wrong.

I do truly wonder, what the super-wealthy do all day, the people that can afford next to anything. That could literally fly half way across the planet to a different tropical resort every weekend and still not burn a hole in their pocket. There is only so much comfort to be had. And that comfort realistically can't cost more than some of the most sophisticated machines mankind has produced. I mean some of them could literally buy a cruise ship as their private yacht and still have enough for the aforementioned travels every weekend.

If it is true what is said about most already wealthy people, they simply continue with what they where doing before hand. Sure, they retire early and read a lot, but these things are not fundamentally tied to billions of dollars in their pension fund. Of course some things no matter what are luxuries. But "running a Company building rockets because I am in a good old cock off with one of my friends to see who has the bigger rocket" really does not need to be every ones, or even anyones hobby.

These things are enabled through our massive increase of production. There is a product for close to everything. And maybe even a mass produced one at that. This is in stark contrast to what was the case only a hundred years ago.

Now, with computers having become truly pervasive during this last pandemic, and only becoming more so. Everything has seemed to pick up pace even more than it already has. I find this stressful. I will have to adapt to ever changing circumstances throughout my hopefully somewhat long life. I will never have the luxury of simply learning a trade and being able to stick with that trade for more or less the time to my retirement.

It may very well be interconnected, the race for "better/further/faster" and the increase in strain on our mental state, a constant rise in perceived threat and with that a rise in stress and short sightedness, and the worsening fate of our environment.

The question that I have started to ask is: Can it actually be different? I mean I can imagine a world that works the way I hope it would, with care and foresight and such, but in reality there are always more pressing issues at hand for almost everybody. This security to plan months or even years into the future is currently only a privilege for very few, the ones that can afford to outsource the running of their everyday life to other people.

Those People have warned of the coming pandemic and have been fairly vocal about it, only to then be washed up in conspiracy theories about how the only way they could have seen that sort of thing coming is if they where the ones that started it all. Human psychology is something rather mysterious and the real problem standing in the way of a better future.

If there is a concerted effort that truly has the resources of a large number of people, then nothing seems impossible, heck people flew to the moon with the tech of the sixties in just under ten years. I bet it is possible to combat climate change or a pandemic if there was really the unilateral ambition to actually do that. But humans themselves stand in the way of that.

And this makes me wonder, if this alternative world that I hope will someday come to be is, and always will be nothing but a daydream. For the way things are going the people that have the resources to actually change anything are aware that the current way things are going has brought them there in the first place and are more interested in other things anyway.

So is there really a choice that humanity has, is humanity even a thing? Or is it in itself only an idea with a life of it's own trying to stay in the minds of people? And in reality the thing that we call "humanity" is a blundering mess unaware of itself or its surroundings Only taking into account pressures of abstract ideas that have taken enough of a hold in enough of peoples heads to effect actual change in behaviour of enough of the population that it becomes something of a force of nature itself? Can humanity truly become self aware, organizing and realizing itself in the social construct of us, it's parts, so that we can instantiate it in institutions and organisations so that these in turn make us act (more or less) in unison? How will that look like, how will it work? How will it incorporate the age old human traits like greed and self interest in such a way as that they are the drivers of progress in a direction that betters the lives of all of it's members? Is that even possible, do we have the time and energy to communicate the necessary information to the necessary people in such a way that it is acted upon? Do we actually have a common goal, or is that yet another illusion?

Human ingenuity is a force to be reckoned with, if it is coordinated and incentivized cohesively. That coordination is a truly difficult problem. The feedback mechanisms the willingness to listen and compromise, and work out what truly matters to each of us is the challenge that will enable solutions to the problems that face this not yet self aware "organism" that is our society through which each of us can influence the world.