Energy Nerd | Circular Economist
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?
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.
I was listening to this episode of John Dickson’s Undeceptions Podcast, in which he and his guests discuss Guilt. With sin being a vital part of the Christian faith, it is unsurprising that a Christian podcast will explore this topic of guilt. What is surprising to me is that the culture of victimhood that we find ourselves in today is so intertwined with the sense of guilt that is ever-present in our lives. I say it as though it’s a statement of truth, but don’t take my word here for it.
Playing the victim has become so much more acceptable, so it has become a way to avoid culpability. If you’re the victim, it’s hard to be in the wrong; in fact, you’ve probably been wronged by some perpetrator – whether it is the system or some rules and process that didn’t have you in mind or just someone else! Moreover, we are now more conscious of the ‘victim-blaming’ behaviours, so it is all the more advantageous to identify oneself with and as the victim.
Yet in trying to stave off our guilt about the conditions of life that we might have to go through, the sense that we did not live the best life we could have, we might also take away our agency. When you cast yourself as the victim, you’re just someone subject to others and everything else.
What if we don’t have to be the victim to be non-guilty?
There is a fair bit of stress that is associated with uncertainty and we know it. Yet modernity gives us a lot of tools to prepare, and make certain bits of the future which only makes us crave for more control and perhaps heighten our expectations that the uncertainty can be eliminated.
So part of our stress now comes from the expectation of certainty. We no longer how to enjoy flexibility, and embrace the dynamism that exists in uncertainty. And then when everything is under control, we find ourselves bored, craving for some kind of variation and so on.
As the aspects of work that has complete certainty slowly gets outsourced to computers, robots and perhaps even artificial intelligence, we are going to be getting the harder bits of work. The ones that require us to actually embrace uncertainty; the type that involves no one knowing the answer. We need to regain our ability to think and solve problems bit by bit as opposed to treating everything as though there has to be a right answer and we have to get it right.
We are embarrassed about our mistakes. We need to get over them, and often, we do so by avoiding them. Please don’t talk about it or revisit the experience. That can be psychologically comforting. But are we doing justice to the cost that we bear for the mistakes?
I’ve written quite a fair bit in the past about the social or culture attitude towards mistakes, and I think a lot of the ideas are still worth exploring:
All of this is so that we can build and develop wisdom, where we know how to work within and navigate a dynamic environment. The problem with theoretical approaches and specific methodologies to achieving outcomes is that they assume that there is an ordered, stable environment within which we conduct our activities. Sometimes, that is just not exactly the case.
The only time you have to say something is a feature, not a bug, is when it appears to be a flaw. The notion behind this idea is that there was an intention. That aspect of a software, or product design, or service experience was not supposed to be a flaw but an intentional part of the design. It assumes there was an intention, some objective being served.
The reason people might think it was a bug could be because:
There isn’t supposed to be a debate whether something is a feature or a bug. It should always be resolved by the one who had designed the product/service. If it was a result of something being overlooked, it is a bug, and pointing out that it could be a feature is just an excuse.
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.
The faceless corporate had been painted as the enemy of man in popular culture and broader artistic endeavour. The idea is haunting. Some kind of machinery driving its machinations through its cogs and gears to achieve some broad vague goal that sounds appealing in concept but nefarious in practice.
Of course, the reality is that it is not just the corporate that can behave and seem this way. There is the bureacracy that is a manifestation if a “government” or even a non-profit. There is also loose organisations centered on single-dimensional stuff (hobbies, interest groups, certain kind of political activism, etc).
The point is this idea of a “corporate” or some kind of machinery is anti-thetical to being human. Why would that be so? Here’s the tricky part.
We are all complex and multi-dimensional that in creating singular objectives or goals and trying to relentlessly pursue them reduces us to something less than human. And those “big entities” essentially embody this limited dimensionality compared to what life really is. Same goes with money, when we make everything in business about that. We reduce richness with riches. What a shame.
We don’t have to be anti-corporate. But we probably would do better to understand why its reach should not be all-extending.