Energy Nerd | Circular Economist
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This might be the first time tears have welled in my eyes as I read a news article. I was moved, perhaps, by the judge’s humanity. There was so much latent grief embedded in the case itself: the unreconciled relationship, unexpressed emotions, pent-up difficulties, and struggles that weren’t understood.
How different would the world be if we brought more of our humanity to our work, our relationships and our lives?
Amongst Christians, perhaps even non-Christians, people know of this story about Jesus feeding of five thousand. And this really large scale miracle work probably pushed His name out far and wide during those times.
What I realised is how that story about God feeding many with a little (that was a small gift) isn’t something new. In 2 Kings 4, through Elisha, God brought about a small miracle of multiplying food for men.
“Then a man came from Baal Shalisha, and brought the man of God bread of the firstfruits, twenty loaves of barley bread, and newly ripened grain in his knapsack. And he said, “Give it to the people, that they may eat.” But his servant said, “What? Shall I set this before one hundred men?” He said again, “Give it to the people, that they may eat; for thus says the Lord: ‘They shall eat and have some left over.’ ” So he set it before them; and they ate and had some left over, according to the word of the Lord.”
– II Kings 4:42-44 NKJV
My heart was moved after reading this passage, realising how much Jesus was even amplifying some of the grace shown to Israel by God in earlier episodes. The feeding of the five thousand in my mind now is no longer just about Jesus’ compassion and provision. It is another imprint of God’s unchanging love for His people through the ages.
Jesus’ ministry during the 3 years when He was active really amazing brings out the person of God within a short time. To say He lived and fulfilled scriptures was one thing, but when you really study the scriptures further, it just amazes you how much Jesus truly did that. And even more so, that life was one that taught and enriched our understanding of God.
Having the desire to emulate Christ is good, but it cannot be done without understanding. And the only proper way to gain understanding besides living out life and experiencing it, is through the word of God.
Charlie Munger once said of the legal profession that it was very much like a pie-eating contest where the winner gets to eat more pie.
I laughed at that.
Because many other professions are the same. The capable staff gets more work to do; and having proven himself, gets promoted into handling more responsibilities.
But for most part, workaholics love their pie.
And to a large extent, for some, they don’t care about winning or losing at pie-eating. What matters to them is they get to eat pie.
Maybe that appreciation for work is what we need. Not to obsess so much over the winning or losing but instead, focus on the pie. And when the pie is no longer tasty, you quit. Because there wasn’t so much at stake to begin with.
I’m not sure if it’s just me, but these days, when I’m walking in public spaces, I get really tense and stressed when people approach me to try and get me to do something. Something inside me feels like they are stealing my attention and time without my permission. Yet, at the same time, I do want to be kind and empathise with the person working hard on the street.
Someone asked whether God forgives every single sin conceivable or possible. Most likely, the person asking the question thinks of ‘sin’ as some immoral, atrocious deed. As Christians, we see sin as inherently a rebellion against God and His order.
So, I’d answer that God, indeed, can forgive every single sin. And He has shown that by sending Christ to die on the cross. He made Christ pay the price for every sin.
The follow-on question, of course, is, “So why isn’t everyone saved?”
That is because I’d continue, “Every sin is forgiven, but not every sinner is repentant.”
The modern narrative about wrong-doing and forgiveness is such that forgiveness is an antidote against resentment, as if the forgiveness is for the victim or recipient of the wrongdoing, rather than the wrongdoer. And then that’s it; we say nothing about the wrong-doer or the part he/she has. Apologies? Making a restitution? What if that is beyond the person? The very least is repentance. Repentance is an appreciation of what sin constitutes, acknowledgement of culpability, and recognising the forgiveness for what it is, and subsequently being liberated from the guilt.
Growing up in a church kindergarten and then attending bible study as a child, I always had the impression that David, the king of Israel who properly ‘unified’ the Israelites after the period of Judges was a blessed man with a well-celebrated life.
Yet when you really read through the books of 2 Samuel and also the Psalms, you begin to see the flaws of David as a man, the countless mistakes he had made. He clearly became very depressed in different junctures of his life, whether it was during the time he was escaping from Saul’s pursuit, or dealing with the betrayal of his son. Nevertheless, he was described as a man after God’s own heart – evident from the occasions he bounced back from having acknowledged his great sins, accepted the consequences, and reconciling with God, each time he made the mistakes and sought to repent.
And skeptical scholar of history and the bible you might wonder why David is held up as a model or given so much credit. I think the exposure and place that David had was not so much a matter of giving him credit as he pointing to God and His ways.
David’s as he was simply a man chosen by God who had responded to God in ways that a very human, but faithful follower would. The achievements of David actually laid the foundation for the reign of Solomon that by secular standards would have been much more impressive than David’s reign.
From a secular perspective, Solomon would be held up more but he wasn’t. This was because we see so often that even though Solomon was given wisdom by God, he seemed to trust in his own wisdom more than God. And to that extent, most of his reign and his behaviours did little to point towards God. The book of Ecclesiastes, brings up the struggles, deep depression and sense of futility that exists in a reality without God.
There is so much to learn from David with regards to his approach towards struggles and challenges in life; because for most part, we allow ourselves to be like Solomon, going into a downward spiral of rationalising one brutal fact after another, ending with the declaration ‘vanity of vanities’. Depression is something Christians can face and there is nothing to be ashamed of. Whether in riches, or in poverty, through great circumstances or poor, the issues around mental health can strike us. Nevertheless, our response matters. And we can spiral out of control when we are not responding with the spiritual resources that our faith grants us.
In public finance, there are multiple approaches to determining how to use the public budget. There will always be the standard expenditures that will have to be costed in, the overheads to cover the public service.
Then there are past liabilities that will need to be paid for. But then, each time, the government can make a decision whether those liabilities are still worth their while to continue financing.
After which, we determine the infrastructure and other investments essential for development of the society. When it comes to investing into infrastructure, the government will definitely need to meet needs, but they might have to ask themselves what kind of social benefits are generated in order to work out whether the price tag for fulfilling those needs make sense.
This is the realm of externalities. And the reason we care about that is because the free market would not. If private benefits exceed private costs, then the free market will find its own means of fulfilling those needs. When there are externalities, the government has to step in. From a business point of view, where there are negative externalities, it is a revenue-opportunity for the government. And where there are positive externalities, the ruling political party can get some political mileage out of it.
Such is the interaction across politics and economics that is worth a bit more attention.
You bought an expensive foie gras meal and paid for it but can’t finish it. So who foots the bill?
If you finish it and get sick as a result? Is the doctor’s fee part of your foie gras bill?
If you don’t finish, and it goes into a food waste heap that requires public subsidy to manage and clean up, are the taxpayers footing your bill?
Would knowing all that change your decision to buy that foie gras meal?
What if you knew the future path of your choices? Who would you allow to foot the bill? How far ahead would you care about the consequences of your actions?
This is a story about externalities, cost and consequences. Who should care? Who should we care for? How much should we care? No one teaches us all these? We have to work them out and make decisions.
What does a job mean for you? What is work to you?
It used to be just tasks or collection of tasks that had to be done. The tasks were easily connected to the end goals.
Then things got complex and the tasks were clear but it felt more distant from the ultimate outcomes that the whole lot of people were trying to achieve.
Finally we did away with task-based identification of the work and changed parts of the work to be based on creating some kind of outcomes. In trying to connect the outcomes to the person, we lost the clarity on the specific tasks required. That can lead to undisciplined exhaustion of energies and burn out.
On the other hand, for all the jobs where tasks can be clearly specified, technology has been used to displace human workers. Leaving humans to only supervise or check through the results. In fact, at some point even the quality checks can be automated.
Where does that leave us? What does that mean about the future of work?
The future of work can be meaningful if we resume our human role of caring for who the outcome of work is for, and the manner in which the work is done. We carve out that higher role for ourselves by being capable of continuous improvement that focuses on the final objective of the work itself – the satisfaction of the user.
I’ve taken to riding the bicycle more frequently and in the beginning, I’ve often sought to ride really quickly and reduce the time spent between points as far as possible. I basically wanted the bike to be almost my teleportation device. And the reason I preferred it over public transport was not just because it was cheaper, but that I could control where I wanted to go, and when – up to a certain extent at least.
But what is interesting is that I observed even if I was going at very high speeds, my commuting time hardly changed all that much. A couple of seconds, handful of minutes sometimes, but it requires you to maintain a high speed over long segments of the journey which may not be easy to achieve because of terrain changes, and need to navigate traffic.
And I thought about the formula that we learnt in Primary school:
Distance = Speed x Time
And if you rearrange it, then you get
Time = Distance/Speed
So, assuming the distance is fixed for every journey, the only way to reduce the time spent is to increase your speed. But because it is the denominator, if your speed is already relatively high, the amount of time you can reduce by increasing it by a little is really minuscule and perhaps often not worth it. And as a rider on a bike, you could probably calculate how much energy you need to exert to achieve a particular speed over flat ground, and work out the optimal trade-off between energy and speed that will provide a suitable time for your journey.
If you substitute distance for anything else; such as work to be accomplished, or widgets to be produced, and so forth, you recognise that the principle that applies to speed remains the same. There is only this much the rushing would help you reduce the time spent. The excess energy put into rushing will have diminishing marginal returns and it would probably be squandered, and you find yourself drained significantly just to reduce the time when perhaps that amount of speed is not necessary.
For a Singaporean like me who tends to be impatient and wants things to be fast or rushed, grasping this principle is quite precious because it forces you to recognise the limits of using your energies to rush things and compress time. There is a natural limit to it, and we probably ought not to try too hard to challenge that limit. Even if you encounter someone unreasonable who tries to compress it further, you would do well not too be too caught up with their attempts at squandering excess energy to pressure you. Allow this insight, this understanding to dissipate their pressure and negative energies on you.