Just Three Little Letters: Y.E.S.

Today, I'm still going to rave to you about how great Creative Thinkering is by talking about an important concept mentioned in the book:

The power of thinking "YES!"

I don't know how many of you remember much of your time as a wee child, but if you can get your mind to go back that far, you may remember that, in those days, nothing seemed impossible!
Needed to fit those blocks into the appropriate holes? We wouldn't stop working on that till they were finally all in!
Needed to get on top of our parents' bed? We kept climbing up those covers until we finally found ourselves nestled between them!
Wanted to get those cookies? We kept finding ways to climb the furniture to get to them (or figure the easiest way to get someone else to bring them to you...like crying your lungs out)!

And that optimism lasted until adults started beating it into our heads that we couldn't do it, that we'd never would make it (whatever it might have been). As Michalko put it: Children, before they become educated, speak a different language, a language of inclusion, a language of "what is" and "what can be." That's very different from what many of us adults automatically say, such as  "I never would have thought of that," or "Not a bad insight."

However, should we choose to relinquish our defeatist or unenthusiastic attitude and revert to that happy outlook you had when a child, all you have to do is change your vocabulary into a positive one! Because "all language, feelings, and thoughts interact with each other, and the entire accumulation of those influences creates your output and behavior," so by changing the way you speak, "your thoughts and feelings will be changed as well" and you'll generally feel better and more upbeat :)

Humanity's Tipping Point

I've just finished reading a(nother) fantasy book--Midnighters #3: Blue Noon--where one of the characters, Rex, considers the potential end of the world. For humans at least:

In the darkling part of his mind, Rex thought for a moment that perhaps this wasn't such a bad thing. Without predators to cull the herd, humanity had spread across the earth unchecked, crowding the planet beyond its resources, prideful and arrogant.
Maybe one night a year of being hunted would do them good.

Though one night a year may not seem like a lot, in this book it equates to thousands of deaths, if not millions. Granted, out of 7+ billion people, that's a pretty small number, but still.

Anyway, I know that end-of-world stories, or at least end-of-humanity stories have been quite popular lately (with zombies only being one aspect of them), and I think they do bring up an interesting point: considering we're at the top of the food chain (with nothing to cull our population growth), then how long can we continue on this path before we've outgrown our environment?

Population growth is currently at 1.14% per year. Granted, the rate has supposedly started to decline again (thanks to developed countries), but just over the 20th century the world population grew 264%, from 1.65 billion to 6 billion. Now that's not chump change.

So, since as Harvard University sociobiologist put it, "[t]he constraints of the biosphere are fixed," how many humans can our little Earth sustain? About 9 to 10 billion (according to some scientists). That's not much higher than our current level and, according to predictions, is a number that should be hit between 2040 and 2062. So in 25 to 47 years. Or relatively soon and, in most people's case, our lifetime.

Exciting news, isn't it?

So what are we to expect then? Short water supply (better start stocking up on those bottles!), short food supply (makes us feel bad about wasting 1.3 billion tonnes of food every year, doesn't it?), To make the picture a little bleaker, the 10 billion sustainability mark is assuming everyone becomes a grass-eater (vegans FTW!), so a more realistic picture would bring down that mark... Although, considering the current specie extinction rate is 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rate (aka background extinction rate: rate of extinction without human involvement), that means between 200-2,000 (on the low end) or 10,000 to 100,000 (on the higher end) species are becoming extinct, I have a feeling this constrains our biosphere parameters even further. Robot bees just aren't going to be enough to make a difference...

So all you zombie/apocalypse fan boys and girls there might get to experience survival scenarios (who knows how people would react in such a world?). As for everyone else, well, let's hope we figure something out, and soon. (I'm totally for colonizing Mars, btw!)

In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy my time with my family and friends that much more and appreciate my Christmas dinner fully (with no wastage!).

UPDATE - 2015.01.22:
Just read this article about humanity tipping the earth's ecological and weather patterns into unsafe zones, with already two large "dead zones" reported, and more to come if we keep up with our current activities (especially the production of the chemicals phosphorus and nitrogen). The scientists in charge of the study stated that we've hit 4 out of the 9 "safe operating space" boundaries, getting closer and closer to the point of no return where life won't be as friendly as it has been up until now...

Sources:
Live Science - How Many People Can Earth Support?
World Population Clock (with amazing charts!)
UNEP - Food Waste Facts
WWF - How Many Species Are We Losing?
Center For Biological Diversity - The Extinction Crisis
Robobees

On Generosity

I'm currently reading Dale Carnegie's How To Make Friends And Influence People (the version revised to match with our modern, tech-obsessed world), and am finding it truly interesting!



In it, there's a chapter talking about 'sharing the credit' for all the successes you encounter, and doing so genuinely gratefully, for then will you reinforce your relationships with people. They then use a homily to beautifully illustrate this fact:








The Sea of Galilee is teeming with fish and life. The Dead Sea is dead and devoid of life. They are both fed by the sparkling water of the River Jordan, so what's the difference? The Sea of Galilee gives all its water away. The Dead Sea keeps it all for itself. Like the Dead Sea, when we keep all that is fresh and good for ourselves, we turn our lives into a briny soup of salty tears.