World of Youthful Idealism

Imagine a mountain made of gold. This process involves forming a hybrid between two familiar things being a mountain and gold. Our minds have the ability to form these hybrids between almost anything. This is not a new thought but bear with me. First of when we speak of creative processes, we do not mean creative as in creating new but rather creative as in forming new hybrids through combination. Creative processes are nothing more but the combination of existing impressions and experiences.

Forming hybrids is not just possible between two objects but can also be between experience and current situation. By doing this the human can form a hybrid which is the prediction of how the future will look like. If we as humans are threatened by a lion but have used fire before to repel it, we can form the hybrid of experience and current situation. This hybrid will show us that the lion will run away and with this knowledge we light the torch. The ability to form both kinds of hybrids so between impressions and between experience does not seem to be a feature only humans possess. Other animals will stay away from places where they repeatedly experienced pain forming the same hybrids as humans, however humans do have two advantages. First, we can form very complex hybrids, almost so complex that one might confuse them with something new, but it remains solely a hybrid. Imagine how many parts and hybrids are necessary to conceive a concept such as God. Second the ability to communicate experience and impressions as well as the consequently formed hybrids in a fairly effective way which enables us to form the hybrid of the mountain of gold without ever having to have seen mountains or gold. Someone can simply tell us how it looks and feels and how much it weighs and so on. Being able to form complex hybrids made of different parts and communicate them could therefore be the reason why humans were able to “outperform” all other animals.

It is however also a tool to explain human development. Coming back to the hybrid of God, which hybrids does that actually involve? If we consider the life and consequent beliefs of early tribal communities (these beliefs exist until today having avoided to form large civilizations and surviving both colonialism and globalization) we find that humans, see themselves within the cycle of nature despite maybe having a slightly set apart role. To put it simple sometimes the lion gets the human and sometimes the human gets the lion. Moreover, there was much that was unexplainable and needed explanation, so God filled that gap. These represented both parts of nature so humans and all other animals and plants. We can see remnants of these primal gods both in south American civilizations as well as Egypt and even in Greek mythology. Here however humans are the centre of control. It is in some way the only period where humans thought they were actually on top (well with the exception of the gods). The Greek Gods are as human as it gets but the fact that they have more power. This is because some natural events were still unexplainable, they were however put under the domain of human gods: Poseidon controlled the see and storms; Demeter made the plants grow and so on. The belief that humanity was above nature translated to the Gods in the sense that they were outside of nature controlling it. There was still a remnant of the more primal Gods including the God Pan as well as Dryads, Nymphs and some other I cannot think of right now. They were by definition the spirits of nature but at the same time were in a very real sense a bit of the spirit of nature remaining in the perception of the world. The shift in the perception of the human role on within the cycles of this planet changed the experience of humans and therefore the hybrids they would form. Therefore, when humans were conquering nature and perceived most things to be about humans the Gods, they formed reflected this. The consolidation of this thought happens during in the early years of the Roman Empire. Nymphs and Dryads are almost completely gone and those gods closer to nature like Poseidon have fallen out of favour. However, we see a last shift that has shaped much of the world today.

With the start of Philosophy and sciences in civilizations around the Mediterranean Sea the role in which humans see themselves in changes again. We see that more abstract concepts of rationality and logic gain more traction. Moreover, humans realize that apart from the animal or the flood there are also more abstract forces the human has not yet conquered such as time and space. Whereas in Greek and Roman Mythology the Gods conquered nature, in monotheistic religions God conquered these abstract concepts being transcendent and eternal as well as omniscient and omnipotent and well the last one would be omnibenevolent, but I feel like in most cases that is quite a long stretch. The human is centre of creation but only in the imagine of God not like God and therefore we do not have complete rationality, we do not always do good, and we die. Our state is our actual experience, humans are often good and fairy rational that is true. This was only possible by establishing these abstract concepts of eternity or omniscience which we do not fully fulfil and create a hybrid that can. In this case monotheistic Gods. Interesting is that as humans we are not even able to create this kind of abstract entity of God in our thought because we do not know what omniscience really means. If there were a God (which I cannot disprove) it would probably be impossible to grasp anything of it which for some reason most religions also admit only to then give a concrete description why God’s omniscient and omnibenevolent nature mean that people cannot get an abortion. Aristotle’s understanding of God is a good example of which experience, and perception, was necessary to form the idea of God. His thought of God being a Prime mover who initiated everything and keeps it moving was the first time this perception of God was voiced and gained traction around the Mediterranean. 400 years later this idea was incorporated into monotheistic religion.

A quick side note: there were plenty of earlier examples of all these kinds of religions I am merely mentioned the ones that I know well enough to write about and that seem relevant to the argument. If you know something about Buddhism or Hinduism or whatever other religion, see if the experience of the people who initiated the religion was reflected within it and how Gods changed over time due to a change in human experience and the role, they saw themselves in.

This leads us to the religions of modern times. Here it gets much more complex, and I do not want to make this much longer so I will include this in the conclusion and come back to it another day. Using the experience of humans to explain or predict future development of human societies can be a valuable tool. Studies on narratives employ this tactic to some extent but looking at narratives is equivalent with looking at hybrids, it ignores however that these are already limited by the experience and impressions that can be used to form them. When considering modern religions like early capitalism or growthism that worship capital accumulation and growth as the new prime mover, this framework of looking at the experience and impressions of people and the consequent hybrids that can and are being formed could be a valuable addition to studies involving narratives as their core research method.

Quick last word: I just thought of this and did not know where to put it. Philosophy or more broadly speaking structured thought and pondering are nothing but combination of existing experience to gain new insights. The idea that philosophy will be able to produce a perfect ethical code is therefore just as impossible as it was for humans to create a perfect God. But we can get close to it I guess and always adapt out understanding to our current experience.

I am currently rereading some of the Capital by Marx however just now for the first time drew a connection from Marx’s theory of the average workday to climate protection and environmentalism. I will outline my thoughts which boil down to what is essentially an argument for solidarity, support and protection for our planet from a Marxist school of thought. This would require us to reduce our use of resources and emissions to a degree were our world can naturally recover itself to a normal state (what is currently known as earths overshoot day). The goal is not a to provide justification to anything nor should it be understood as a call to action. What follows is simply an interesting game of thought.

Marx argues the following. The capitalist who owns a factory wants to have it running all day since any time it is not running the capitalist is paying for it (rent, energy, tax) without producing anything. During the industrialization Marx sees this proven by a steady increase in both the average workday as well as the number of workers (involving women and children in production). However, Marx argues that eventually the savvy worker notices that the if he (or she for that matter but Marx was quite sexist unfortunately and at the time it was mostly he) works above a certain number of hours each day the employees body wears down and cannot recover thus stealing time and money from the employer. Essentially if a worker works 16 hours each day for let’s say 100$ he will only be able to work until he is on average 40 years old. Assuming that the worker is working 300 days a year and he is currently 18 that will add up to a total of 660,000$. If the worker were to work only for 12 hours, he would only earn 75$ per day however would have sufficient time to recover enabling the worker to work until he is 60. This would leave him with a total income of 945,000$. The capitalist does not care about the individual worker if they are replaceable and the wage per hour is the same and will therefore push to consume the workers time that he is able to work as quick as possible. As already mentioned however the savvy worker does these calculations and discovers that if he were to work less, he would earn more and therefore the capitalist is stealing from him. This is illustrated by the fact that if the worker does work more, he is not compensated for the loss of what is in this example 285,00$. Consequently, workers will demand an average workday enforced by the government limiting the time they can work each day to an amount that leaves the worker enough time to eat, sleep, socialize or simply put recover to a normal state of mind and body. Marx points out that this development too can be seen especially in the development of labour rights in England, and it continues until today.

Marx argues we achieved this average workday through the antagonistic relation between those who own the capital or the capitalist and those whose only capital is their body and therefore the workers.  Also, the development of this thought has continued until today with countries like Iceland experimenting with a 4-day workweek. We have come to terms with the fact that having people work for too long hours is not just morally questionable but also in violation of their contract since the capitalist or today the employer is stealing time and therefore money from the worker or employee. So, what does this have to do with climate change and environmentalism?

Just like for the capitalist any hour the factory is not running because the workers have off leads to expenses without producing anything, the same goes for the environment. If there are fish to catch or forests to cut down and someone is willing to buy it, any square inch of unused land is to the capitalist unused profit. We see expressions of this in the decimation of the Amazonian rainforest or the literal stealing of coast and rivers sand for construction. Like the worker this exploitation of our planet has led to a situation where the planet cannot recover to a normal state. We ran through our yearly budget of resources on July 26^th in 2021 meaning that everything we consumed after this day was stolen from earth. This leads firstly to the issue of contract and second the one of voice.

The issue of contract is necessary to show that we are actually stealing from earth. The capitalist can only steal because he entered a contract with the worker and is violating it by stealing the workers lifetime and consequently total income by cutting down on recovery time. There is however no explicit contract with earth. Instead, there is an implicit one all animals except the human seem to be able to follow by pure nature. In nature you are entitled to all resources available but that in most cases leads to self-balancing effects that eventually always ensure that the local or global environment will recover. Humans do not follow this law instinctively anymore and today we often ignore it. We violate the contract by consuming more than the planet can recover from. With that we break the contract and therefore steal from earth. We need a government enforced average workday for our planet.

The issue of voice is the one that will define how we will deal with climate protection in the future. There is one problem that earth has, which is unlike the worker it cannot voice its opinions to us directly. Instead, there are natural barriers in place to prevent this extreme exploitation of the planet, it is rebelling against us which manifests in droughts and floods and hurricanes.

Solidarity and support are at the core of any labour movement. This usually only goes as far as to include other minorities to their struggle for justice who also have nothing but their body as capital. In this spirit I think Marxist theory might require labour movements in specific but also humanity in general to stand up and give a voice to the most oppressed, exploited, and underrepresented entity of this planet which is earth itself. In that sense: “Workers of the world unite” – Greta Thunberg.

*Some concluding thoughts. I might elaborate further on this later especially the idea of a natural contract with earth can be expanded. Still thinking this way about climate change and the action necessary against it could offer justification for many regulations intended to limit our theft from the planet. There is a lot to of further discussion possible but for now I’ll leave the work to you.

What to expect

Here you will get some more or less unfiltered thoughts of a student from Europe. From creative takes on systems that are so deeply engraved that many won’t even consider alternatives anymore to the workings of our story driven mind. I will show you how I think things were, are, and should be – there will be a lot of thinking. To train the muscles of our mind and imagine what might be possible.

Instead of me explaining let’s start with a short story that should illustrate well what I’m on about:

It is early morning, Jess wakes up. Her clear eyes pop open and stare to the ceiling for a split second before she takes a deep breath and hurriedly gets out of bed. It is an important day for her she knows that. The first day of what is most certainly the most important year of her life. Her backpack is standing in the corner of the room. It is fully packed and after getting ready she unpacks everything to go through her list one last time. It is the fifth time in the past three days. Clothes, food, sanitary, some tools, a tiny book, Jess stops, her shoulders sink, and she suddenly looks much smaller in her room. The book reveals pictures of her family and friends and although Jess has not yet left, she already feels thousands of miles away. Jess will leave following an old tradition. After centuries of war and conflict it was decided that each belief gets their own country. Elysia is one of them, where people believe in Mercury, the God of trade. Everyone in the world can choose to travel all continents but only when they turn 21 and not indefinite. She can go everywhere without interference, learn about different ways of life, ideals, beliefs, political, economic or religious systems. Many choose to stay home, too afraid of what lies beyond the borders of Elysia, but Jess is brave. She wants to see the world, experience all facets and possibilities within it. Although she is nervous about this idea of leaving it is also liberating, what might be out there, what creative or maybe even absurd things? Jess wants to know everything and so she sets her foot over the Elysian border. May the journey begin.

Just like Jess, I want us to embark on a journey leaving our comfortable thoughts behind and look beyond. To think freely and creatively about the state of the world and our role within it as well as the possibilities that lie ahead, only limited by our imagination.

“Everything we want to do, we can afford.” –  Dagobert Duck

(If I pick up a quote I like I will add it at the end. Dagobert Duck did not say this though, Keynes did. Pay attention!)

Imagine a mountain made of gold. This process involves forming a hybrid between two familiar things being a mountain and gold. Our minds have the ability to form these hybrids between almost anything. This is not a new thought but bear with me. First of when we speak of creative processes, we do not mean creative as in creating new but rather creative as in forming new hybrids through combination. Creative processes are nothing more but the combination of existing impressions and experiences.

Forming hybrids is not just possible between two objects but can also be between experience and current situation. By doing this the human can form a hybrid which is the prediction of how the future will look like. If we as humans are threatened by a lion but have used fire before to repel it, we can form the hybrid of experience and current situation. This hybrid will show us that the lion will run away and with this knowledge we light the torch. The ability to form both kinds of hybrids so between impressions and between experience does not seem to be a feature only humans possess. Other animals will stay away from places where they repeatedly experienced pain forming the same hybrids as humans, however humans do have two advantages. First, we can form very complex hybrids, almost so complex that one might confuse them with something new, but it remains solely a hybrid. Imagine how many parts and hybrids are necessary to conceive a concept such as God. Second the ability to communicate experience and impressions as well as the consequently formed hybrids in a fairly effective way which enables us to form the hybrid of the mountain of gold without ever having to have seen mountains or gold. Someone can simply tell us how it looks and feels and how much it weighs and so on. Being able to form complex hybrids made of different parts and communicate them could therefore be the reason why humans were able to “outperform” all other animals.

It is however also a tool to explain human development. Coming back to the hybrid of God, which hybrids does that actually involve? If we consider the life and consequent beliefs of early tribal communities (these beliefs exist until today having avoided to form large civilizations and surviving both colonialism and globalization) we find that humans, see themselves within the cycle of nature despite maybe having a slightly set apart role. To put it simple sometimes the lion gets the human and sometimes the human gets the lion. Moreover, there was much that was unexplainable and needed explanation, so God filled that gap. These represented both parts of nature so humans and all other animals and plants. We can see remnants of these primal gods both in south American civilizations as well as Egypt and even in Greek mythology. Here however humans are the centre of control. It is in some way the only period where humans thought they were actually on top (well with the exception of the gods). The Greek Gods are as human as it gets but the fact that they have more power. This is because some natural events were still unexplainable, they were however put under the domain of human gods: Poseidon controlled the see and storms; Demeter made the plants grow and so on. The belief that humanity was above nature translated to the Gods in the sense that they were outside of nature controlling it. There was still a remnant of the more primal Gods including the God Pan as well as Dryads, Nymphs and some other I cannot think of right now. They were by definition the spirits of nature but at the same time were in a very real sense a bit of the spirit of nature remaining in the perception of the world. The shift in the perception of the human role on within the cycles of this planet changed the experience of humans and therefore the hybrids they would form. Therefore, when humans were conquering nature and perceived most things to be about humans the Gods, they formed reflected this. The consolidation of this thought happens during in the early years of the Roman Empire. Nymphs and Dryads are almost completely gone and those gods closer to nature like Poseidon have fallen out of favour. However, we see a last shift that has shaped much of the world today.

With the start of Philosophy and sciences in civilizations around the Mediterranean Sea the role in which humans see themselves in changes again. We see that more abstract concepts of rationality and logic gain more traction. Moreover, humans realize that apart from the animal or the flood there are also more abstract forces the human has not yet conquered such as time and space. Whereas in Greek and Roman Mythology the Gods conquered nature, in monotheistic religions God conquered these abstract concepts being transcendent and eternal as well as omniscient and omnipotent and well the last one would be omnibenevolent, but I feel like in most cases that is quite a long stretch. The human is centre of creation but only in the imagine of God not like God and therefore we do not have complete rationality, we do not always do good, and we die. Our state is our actual experience, humans are often good and fairy rational that is true. This was only possible by establishing these abstract concepts of eternity or omniscience which we do not fully fulfil and create a hybrid that can. In this case monotheistic Gods. Interesting is that as humans we are not even able to create this kind of abstract entity of God in our thought because we do not know what omniscience really means. If there were a God (which I cannot disprove) it would probably be impossible to grasp anything of it which for some reason most religions also admit only to then give a concrete description why God’s omniscient and omnibenevolent nature mean that people cannot get an abortion. Aristotle’s understanding of God is a good example of which experience, and perception, was necessary to form the idea of God. His thought of God being a Prime mover who initiated everything and keeps it moving was the first time this perception of God was voiced and gained traction around the Mediterranean. 400 years later this idea was incorporated into monotheistic religion.

A quick side note: there were plenty of earlier examples of all these kinds of religions I am merely mentioned the ones that I know well enough to write about and that seem relevant to the argument. If you know something about Buddhism or Hinduism or whatever other religion, see if the experience of the people who initiated the religion was reflected within it and how Gods changed over time due to a change in human experience and the role, they saw themselves in.

This leads us to the religions of modern times. Here it gets much more complex, and I do not want to make this much longer so I will include this in the conclusion and come back to it another day. Using the experience of humans to explain or predict future development of human societies can be a valuable tool. Studies on narratives employ this tactic to some extent but looking at narratives is equivalent with looking at hybrids, it ignores however that these are already limited by the experience and impressions that can be used to form them. When considering modern religions like early capitalism or growthism that worship capital accumulation and growth as the new prime mover, this framework of looking at the experience and impressions of people and the consequent hybrids that can and are being formed could be a valuable addition to studies involving narratives as their core research method.

Quick last word: I just thought of this and did not know where to put it. Philosophy or more broadly speaking structured thought and pondering are nothing but combination of existing experience to gain new insights. The idea that philosophy will be able to produce a perfect ethical code is therefore just as impossible as it was for humans to create a perfect God. But we can get close to it I guess and always adapt out understanding to our current experience.

I am currently rereading some of the Capital by Marx however just now for the first time drew a connection from Marx’s theory of the average workday to climate protection and environmentalism. I will outline my thoughts which boil down to what is essentially an argument for solidarity, support and protection for our planet from a Marxist school of thought. This would require us to reduce our use of resources and emissions to a degree were our world can naturally recover itself to a normal state (what is currently known as earths overshoot day). The goal is not a to provide justification to anything nor should it be understood as a call to action. What follows is simply an interesting game of thought.

Marx argues the following. The capitalist who owns a factory wants to have it running all day since any time it is not running the capitalist is paying for it (rent, energy, tax) without producing anything. During the industrialization Marx sees this proven by a steady increase in both the average workday as well as the number of workers (involving women and children in production). However, Marx argues that eventually the savvy worker notices that the if he (or she for that matter but Marx was quite sexist unfortunately and at the time it was mostly he) works above a certain number of hours each day the employees body wears down and cannot recover thus stealing time and money from the employer. Essentially if a worker works 16 hours each day for let’s say 100$ he will only be able to work until he is on average 40 years old. Assuming that the worker is working 300 days a year and he is currently 18 that will add up to a total of 660,000$. If the worker were to work only for 12 hours, he would only earn 75$ per day however would have sufficient time to recover enabling the worker to work until he is 60. This would leave him with a total income of 945,000$. The capitalist does not care about the individual worker if they are replaceable and the wage per hour is the same and will therefore push to consume the workers time that he is able to work as quick as possible. As already mentioned however the savvy worker does these calculations and discovers that if he were to work less, he would earn more and therefore the capitalist is stealing from him. This is illustrated by the fact that if the worker does work more, he is not compensated for the loss of what is in this example 285,00$. Consequently, workers will demand an average workday enforced by the government limiting the time they can work each day to an amount that leaves the worker enough time to eat, sleep, socialize or simply put recover to a normal state of mind and body. Marx points out that this development too can be seen especially in the development of labour rights in England, and it continues until today.

Marx argues we achieved this average workday through the antagonistic relation between those who own the capital or the capitalist and those whose only capital is their body and therefore the workers.  Also, the development of this thought has continued until today with countries like Iceland experimenting with a 4-day workweek. We have come to terms with the fact that having people work for too long hours is not just morally questionable but also in violation of their contract since the capitalist or today the employer is stealing time and therefore money from the worker or employee. So, what does this have to do with climate change and environmentalism?

Just like for the capitalist any hour the factory is not running because the workers have off leads to expenses without producing anything, the same goes for the environment. If there are fish to catch or forests to cut down and someone is willing to buy it, any square inch of unused land is to the capitalist unused profit. We see expressions of this in the decimation of the Amazonian rainforest or the literal stealing of coast and rivers sand for construction. Like the worker this exploitation of our planet has led to a situation where the planet cannot recover to a normal state. We ran through our yearly budget of resources on July 26^th in 2021 meaning that everything we consumed after this day was stolen from earth. This leads firstly to the issue of contract and second the one of voice.

The issue of contract is necessary to show that we are actually stealing from earth. The capitalist can only steal because he entered a contract with the worker and is violating it by stealing the workers lifetime and consequently total income by cutting down on recovery time. There is however no explicit contract with earth. Instead, there is an implicit one all animals except the human seem to be able to follow by pure nature. In nature you are entitled to all resources available but that in most cases leads to self-balancing effects that eventually always ensure that the local or global environment will recover. Humans do not follow this law instinctively anymore and today we often ignore it. We violate the contract by consuming more than the planet can recover from. With that we break the contract and therefore steal from earth. We need a government enforced average workday for our planet.

The issue of voice is the one that will define how we will deal with climate protection in the future. There is one problem that earth has, which is unlike the worker it cannot voice its opinions to us directly. Instead, there are natural barriers in place to prevent this extreme exploitation of the planet, it is rebelling against us which manifests in droughts and floods and hurricanes.

Solidarity and support are at the core of any labour movement. This usually only goes as far as to include other minorities to their struggle for justice who also have nothing but their body as capital. In this spirit I think Marxist theory might require labour movements in specific but also humanity in general to stand up and give a voice to the most oppressed, exploited, and underrepresented entity of this planet which is earth itself. In that sense: “Workers of the world unite” – Greta Thunberg.

*Some concluding thoughts. I might elaborate further on this later especially the idea of a natural contract with earth can be expanded. Still thinking this way about climate change and the action necessary against it could offer justification for many regulations intended to limit our theft from the planet. There is a lot to of further discussion possible but for now I’ll leave the work to you.

What to expect

Here you will get some more or less unfiltered thoughts of a student from Europe. From creative takes on systems that are so deeply engraved that many won’t even consider alternatives anymore to the workings of our story driven mind. I will show you how I think things were, are, and should be – there will be a lot of thinking. To train the muscles of our mind and imagine what might be possible.

Instead of me explaining let’s start with a short story that should illustrate well what I’m on about:

It is early morning, Jess wakes up. Her clear eyes pop open and stare to the ceiling for a split second before she takes a deep breath and hurriedly gets out of bed. It is an important day for her she knows that. The first day of what is most certainly the most important year of her life. Her backpack is standing in the corner of the room. It is fully packed and after getting ready she unpacks everything to go through her list one last time. It is the fifth time in the past three days. Clothes, food, sanitary, some tools, a tiny book, Jess stops, her shoulders sink, and she suddenly looks much smaller in her room. The book reveals pictures of her family and friends and although Jess has not yet left, she already feels thousands of miles away. Jess will leave following an old tradition. After centuries of war and conflict it was decided that each belief gets their own country. Elysia is one of them, where people believe in Mercury, the God of trade. Everyone in the world can choose to travel all continents but only when they turn 21 and not indefinite. She can go everywhere without interference, learn about different ways of life, ideals, beliefs, political, economic or religious systems. Many choose to stay home, too afraid of what lies beyond the borders of Elysia, but Jess is brave. She wants to see the world, experience all facets and possibilities within it. Although she is nervous about this idea of leaving it is also liberating, what might be out there, what creative or maybe even absurd things? Jess wants to know everything and so she sets her foot over the Elysian border. May the journey begin.

Just like Jess, I want us to embark on a journey leaving our comfortable thoughts behind and look beyond. To think freely and creatively about the state of the world and our role within it as well as the possibilities that lie ahead, only limited by our imagination.

“Everything we want to do, we can afford.” –  Dagobert Duck

(If I pick up a quote I like I will add it at the end. Dagobert Duck did not say this though, Keynes did. Pay attention!)