Avatar

With the holidays and vacation time, I haven't been paying much attention to my blog. I did however, recently see a movie with an unexpected message: Avatar. When I first heard about this movie I expected an alien plot and cool special effects. Little did I know that upon leaving the movie theater, I would feel even more inspired to protect our planet and all the earthlings living here.

The best part of the movie though, was what my Mom said to me in the lobby after it was over. I can't quote her, but she said something along the lines of: it was sad, we're doing the same thing to our planet. This made me feel better. I'm not crazy! I'm not trying to find messages about saving the planet everywhere I go, those messages are actually there!

What I really want to know is what they do with those 3D glasses after we all drop them in the "recycling" box. I really hope they are cleaning them and then handing them out again. Otherwise, I'm not so sure I'm going to buy into the whole 3D movie trend that seems to have come out of nowhere.

Better-World-O-Matic

I think about "saving the world" quite often, but I really mean "make the world a better place". That has a much more positive connotation. But of course, "a better place" can be interpreted many different ways, and can be different depending on who you talk to.

Who really doesn't want the world to be a better place? The real question is: what would make the world better? The other question is: how do you involve everyone so that the "better world" is somewhere that everyone wants to be? That of course, creates another question: is it possible for everyone to be happy with the world?

Is it possible for everyone to be happy with the world?
Say we could create an computer program that would rearrange the world into exactly the way we wanted it. We could remove war and replant rainforests in a single install. How would you form a committee to make the decisions on what to do/not do. If that seems easy (get rid of bad things and add good things), then why can't we do that in our actual world? If that seems hard (very complex decisions), why does that happen? If we can figure out why, we can make a lot more progress and/or realize that we're working towards an impossible goal.

My guess is that it would be hard. Replanting rainforests sounds easy, but our program would have to reclaim the land from the farmers who cut the trees down to grow more food for our constantly growing human population. I'd hate to the be the one to create flow charts for the program. So who decides that we need to limit our population? Who decides that it's wrong or right for people to cut down trees to grow food? What happens with the farmers if they can't run their farms anymore?

How do you involve everyone so that the "better world" is somewhere that everyone wants to be?
We'll probably never get 100% agreement that we need to stop expanding the human race. Therefore, we can't decide that more agriculture to support hungry people (literally, as in people without food) is good or bad. As a result, we don't know if we should be cutting down rainforests to grow more food.

The answer to both of the above question is that you will never make everyone happy. Glenn Beck (the king of negativity) is a good example of a normal human, times 100 of course. Deep inside, everyone wants the world to be the way they think is best. Give a person unbiased facts (don't watch Fox) and they will use that information coupled with their experiences to come up with an opinion. If Glen Beck got what he wanted, he would screw over lots of other people in the world. If everyone got what they wanted, our personal desires would conflict with a lot of other people's.

This is the problem we have with our country currently. Everyone thinks they deserve what they want, and they don't care that it is negatively impacting other earthlings. We use and throw away electronics without thinking, while people in China deal with the toxic chemicals. We drive SUV's and mow down forests for our cul-de-sacs while native animals get driven away on paths toward extinction.

I guess the solution is to get everyone to realize that we all have to make sacrifices. No one is better than anyone else, even if you have more money and a fancy job title. If we all learned that we need to give up a little for the greater good, we'd be a lot better off. Alternatively, you can keep thinking that everyone's ability to make a better life for themselves means you can turn your back on those that clearly aren't getting a fair shot. I know what I vote for.

Sustainability != Environmental Protection

This video (thanks Mike!), combined with recent conversations at work, have convinced me to further examine the possibility of being both an IT/security person and someone who wants to make a difference in the world. It sounds good, it sounds feasible, however I have a very hard time relating the two seemingly separate roles.

The possibility of helping clients with making their IT departments more sustainable sounds awesome in theory. However, the issue that I've been running into is that sustainability isn't just about protecting the environment, it's more than that. Social responsibility is a big component that, in my opinion, must be included in sustainability. We may end up having a great air quality one day, but we also need to make sure people's basic human rights are met.

Increased virtualization and more efficient HVAC designs for data centers are great. Reducing our impact on the Earth is a step in the right direction. I can help clients with that. But what I cannot figure out is how to help an IT department tackle the social responsibility component. Perhaps that's representative of the fact that I myself do not know how to best make a difference in my own career on social justice issues.

Have I forgotten how to be an IT person? Computers were designed to solve problems. It should be easy to use computers to solve these world issues, right? I think I need to just geek out for a while and figure out how to do this...

While I Buy Expensive Organic Food...

5.7% of American households have adults that are hungry, but don't eat because there isn't enough money. Out of this percentage, there are over a half million households that have children that go hungry. In most cases, these are families with a single mother.

This is all according to a USDA report on hunger in America. The biggest reason for this was unemployment rates, which obviously have skyrocketed in the past year.

Hunger and homelessness are issues that we must face, perhaps before we can fully realize a sustainable future. The question is, is it our society's lack of concern over sustainability that is the cause? Do we need big screen TV's while people don't have food? Do we need to shop at organic food stores, when people are eating McDonald's? No one's perfect, and that means me too. How do we figure out what is most important in the world and put our effort towards that? Is it personal happiness, it is the earth, or is it equal rights to basic human needs? I'll say the obvious (it's everything), but that's very difficult to handle on a daily, operational basis.

In reading "Beyond Civilization" by Daniel Quinn, I cannot help but think about programs. Programs to end hunger, or homelessness. Put on by the government or NPO's. They're merely sticks in a river headed the wrong direction. Maybe those sticks are logs that are big enough to divert the river. I suspect, however, that we need to change that river's direction and think about our relationship with the world in a different way.

And I guess that's the real answer. We need an overhaul of the way we relate to the world. At least that's my opinion, I'm trying to change the way I relate to the world. It's not so much about the stuff we have as it is about our relationships with other humans and living beings on earth. It's a tough journey, and I'm not exactly sure where it's going to take me, but I'm ready to go.

Another Reason Why I Don't Like Sports

USA Today had a story yesterday about the amount of money college football coaches make. Some were making around $4 million a year. Just like the bank executives pulling millions of dollars a year while people's homes are being foreclosed on, these coaches make millions of dollars, while millions of people can't afford to even go to college.

I understand that our economy is based upon the concept that if you work hard, you can make a lot of money. The only problem is that not everyone has an equal shot. Good luck becomming one of those coaches without first going to college. I just can't believe I live in a world where dudes that tell other dudes where to go on a grass field make millions of dollars. Let's put our money where it really matters: educating our country. I promise we'll get a whole lot more value in education than we will in made up games. Maybe I'm biased though, I do quite dislike football.