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Frustration & Complaint, Meaning of Life

Bad Choices Are Easy To Make

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Bad Choices StewBad Choices StewBad Choices StewBad Choices StewBad Choices StewBad Choice StewBad Choice StewBad Choice StewBad Choice StewBad Choice StewBad Choices – I Have Made Many

Not long ago I read a report trying to explain the environmental impact based on the foods we buy. Yet another attempt to make me feel bad for the numerous poor choices I have made in my life time. The gist of the article made me think about how many trees I have indirectly deforested, rivers polluted, and CO2 emitted by choosing specific foods and not thinking about the consequences.

Given the number of burgers, sausages, industrial cookies and of course chocolate and cinnamon danish* I have consumed in my 5+ decades on this planet, one could roughly calculate that I personally have led to 3% of global forests being destroyed. Which is approximately the weight of 100,000 male African savanna elephants. Trust me.

Furthermore, by my rough, sleep-deprived calculations, I have emitted more tons of CO2 — and especially methane — than most central American countries have in the same period of time. Which I consider quite the accomplishment, however it doesn’t sound good on a job application nor does it make for a great conversation starter on blind dates. Trust me.

(*Note to reader: danish usually doesn’t have a plural form, it’s like water or beer or air – it’s an uncountable ethereal and tasty substance that defies logic, and supports rampant diabetes.)

Wired for Bad Choices

So many many of my bad choices to eat meats and danish, as opposed to locally grown leafy greens, are notionally based on the principle that we have free will. I chose to ingest delectable baked sugary delights that led either directly or indirectly to an oil well being drilled (what? you think petro-sugar comes from real sugar? who’s being naive now?) and I felt no guilt. Coincidentally, I also immediately felt a numbness in my left arm and a difficulty breathing for a bit, but I can’t imagine the two are related.

Was it a question of poor education or a lack of facts that led me to choose the clearly evil foodstuff? Is there a little devil over my shoulder cackling with evil laughter knowing that mother earth has descended that much closer to the abyss? Of course not. We are wired for bad choices.

Our human DNA and electrolyte-fuelled mushy gray matter lead us to seek out what we want, not always what we need. Look at poor Socrates – he wilfully drank a chalice of poison as opposed to being forced to eat a kale salad with dried cranberries and low-cal dressing, knowing the former would be far more pleasurable than the inevitable bloating and gas he would get from the meal of greens.  Granted, drinking poison impacted his dating life and earning potential, but frankly, if you had to eat a kale salad or choose death, the great hereafter isn’t a bad option.

Bad Choices Built Civilization

I am not getting into a discussion of free will versus determinism, mostly because I am not smart enough to discern the difference and it is a mood killer on first dates. Trust me.

Rather I make the argument that if we didn’t make bad choices, civilization wouldn’t have evolved as far as it has. If humans didn’t make bad choices, we wouldn’t need police, the fire department, emergency medicine doctors and nurses,  lawyers, self-help gurus, or dietitians.

Bad decisions are the cornerstone of learning and growth. How many times have you said “Oh another drink couldn’t hurt. Make it a double!” only to find yourself lying in bed the next day reaching for a painkiller that was invented because someone saw a need to reduce the searing pain of a hangover. Your bad decision led to the modern pharma industry’s feeding you meds.

Think of all the lawyers that we need because people decided to submerge toasters in water or all the prosthetics that were invented because some humans decided to stick their hands into a spinning blade? Where would personal injury lawyers be without poor decision-making? They’d be flipping burgers instead of driving Porsche SUVs.

Inescapable

Since we are bound to make bad choices, either due to faulty genetics, poor lighting, poor education, poor parental modeling, a lack of sleep, or a significant other telling us we always do the laundry wrong, I say screw it. I am going to have another danish.

Pontifically challenged and perpetually perturbed,
Augustus Johann Sebastian Druker, 16th waterboy of the Earl of Sheepshire

Day-to-Day, Frustration & Complaint, Meaning of Life

Evolution and Ugliness

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Evolution - Stanko & Tibor

Evolution & Killers

Now that I am through episode 6 of Blue Planet II, I am starting to notice several facts about evolution and the killers in the ocean. Here they are in no order of importance.

  1. First off, there are LOTS of killers in the ocean. Everybody is eating everybody else, provided they’re slightly lower on the food chain, or they just missed the class in skilled hiding. There aren’t many vegetarians in the sea, I noticed. Sure, some low-life organisms eat veggies, like the sea grass-eating sea turtles, or those lefty, kelp-nibbling fish who have to stay close to the coral reefs and shoals because they’ll get eaten 2 seconds after wandering away, since their parents never game them iPhones to stay in contact. But there’s a lot of carnivores down there.
  2. Fish evolution is not keeping up with today’s modern, fast-paced ocean life. Fish genetics are too slow to evolve to meet the crushing demands of basic survival AND being cast in yet another Sir David Attenborough-narrated documentary, where filming schedules are tight and budgets for krill limited.
  3. Education is failing today’s schools of fish. Too few learn the skills they need to succeed in the 21st century, like online banking, or self-promotion in social media, let alone wood working skills. (A  lack of opposable thumbs is not an excuse.)
  4. Many sea creatures actually use tools (not power tools, though – power cord isn’t long enough) to chase, hide, distract their prey or mate. Turns out that when we thought only humans, chimps and otters used tools to make their lives easier and justify the cost of a trip to the hardware store to buy a tool chest, we were incorrect. Ugly fish do it too.
  5. Sharks are the equivalent dumb male jocks who drive Jeeps. Totally possessive of their catch and they don’t share well. They have sycophantic, smaller fish attached to their skin. They scare off every other fish and are constantly looking for fight with lesser fish. Just like all sports jocks.
  6. Octopuses are exceptionally ugly and super intelligent. And significantly smarter than I be. Two, in fact, outscored me on standardized tests, and both are going to ivy league schools this fall if they can get funding. One octopus beat me at Scrabble AND Blackjack in the same day. Twice. There’s goes my lunch money.
  7. All ocean-dwelling creatures are so incredibly ugly that’s it’s clear there isn’t a mirror down there. Or a beauty salon or hair salon or even a barber. Clearly there is a business opportunity not being seized upon – plastic surgery for sea creatures! if there was plastic surgery for fish I’d think we’d kill fewer of them because they’d look more like characters from a Disney animated film and we’d grow emotionally attached instead of dumping trash in their waters and pouring pollutants like it was a giant toilet.

What lessons can we take away from this fact-rich list of aquatic knowledge? Stay above water if you can, stop polluting the oceans because it makes filming documentary films harder, and if you do eat fish, know that you, Mr. and Mrs. Human are at the top of the food chain, until the aliens land of course.

Fishing for meaning,
Jean-Jacques Cousteau Druker