An Uncertain Future

This week, it was announced that Donald J. Trump will nominate Scott Pruitt as the head of the EPA. Mr. Pruitt, who gained notoriety as the Attorney General of Oklahoma, has a long track record of denying climate change and, as the New York Times states “… has been a key architect of the legal battle against Mr. Obama’s climate change policies…” He has said (on the record) that he will repeal the Paris Climate Change Agreements, accused President Obama of “waging a war on coal” and is an advocate of incorporating climate change denial into public school education.

With technology increasing and the rate of innovation ever-speeding up, we have seen a trend towards increasingly wasteful behavior – providing support for both Jevon’s Paradox and the IPAT theory (Environmental Impact has increased due to increasing population size, affluence per-capita, and increasing environmental damage from technology). Moreover, the fact that controlling any of the IPAT variables is extremely politically unpopular combined with having a populist president such as Trump makes the outlook for changing our current trends very unlikely. That said, by living mindfully and using the Reasonable Person Model, there are some extra-governmental steps that can be taken in order to decrease our consumption and give our planet a brighter future. Additionally, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that we have likely reached peak demand for Oil and other commodities – meaning that the inevitability of resource descent will aid in forcing people to change their behaviors.

In order to make the requisite changes (lowering our expectations for standards-of-living, accepting that fact that we must consume less, and developing sustainable habits) can all be made easier by shaping our behavior based on the future rather than the past. This prospection will help us see the importance of becoming a more sustainable society and implementing policies that will allow us to do so. This prospection can be made more attractive by (1) increasing people’s ability to engage in delayed gratification and increase mental vitality and (2) incentivize people to engage in this behavior by emphasizing the benefits of prospection.

Moreover, by providing people with a procedure and instructions of specific steps they can take to change their behavior, allowing people to change at their own pace, and recognizing that this change will take a long time, will all aid with pre-familiarization and allow us to make lasting, long-term changes in American Society. Importantly, we must make people feel as though their actions really do make a difference on an individual level.

While many people are skeptical as to whether or not we can create such a massive change in American society, I am hopeful. For decades, the mainstream view was that Americans would never abolish slavery, that they would never pay income tax, that women would never achieve the same rights as men, that minorities would be allowed to go to the same schools at white children, and that marriage would always be between a man and a woman. Each of these changes required people to adjust and to give up more of their individual wealth or ideology for the greater good.

Bill Clinton once said “the only way to unite this increasingly divided world would be through an alien invasion…” while Martians are not landing on Earth, the threat of Resource Descent is one that is universal to human kind – and the RPM and pre-familiarization will help us solve this threat more effectively and more peacefully as one.

Apple and Consumerism

This September, Apple released the iPhone 7, and had thousands of crazed consumers lined up to be one of the first to own this new product. The new iPhone boasts faster speeds, an advanced camera, survivability if dropped in a toilet, and the controversial loss of the headphone jack.

Despite all these fancy features, the iPhone 7 is really not so different from the original iPhone released in 2007. You can text and call someone across the globe, send pictures, and download apps. Yet, people are still obsessed with having the latest device, and are forking over hundreds of dollars to buy the new phone. Unfortunately, this reflects our society’s extreme consumerism, and flawed priorities. There is no reason for someone to buy the next iPhone when they already have a perfectly functioning one, yet in the last 9 years many people have had upwards of 4 or 5 phones!

Older generations often speak of a time of when something was broken, they fixed it. They used machines until they absolutely could not function anymore. Today, that mentality has changed. As soon as a device breaks, people insist on buying a new one. If an iPhone screen cracks, you can get a new one immediately.

This insistence for new things is incredibly wasteful, and Apple is one of the biggest drivers behind our flawed mentality. They release new products yearly with minimal changes, yet they insist that you buy all the new products by changing the charger cord adapter, or eliminating the headphone jack. Their phones are made to last only a couple of years, so people are forced to buy new ones even if they don’t want to.

While Apple is a big offender, they are just a prominent symbol of society as a whole. Individual people must make a conscious effort to consume less in order to make a change and adapt for a time of limited resources. It is difficult to resist consumerist tendencies in this day and age, but ultimately buying things only when you need them will have vast economic and environmental benefits. The technology industry won’t change unless the public changes their mindsets and tendencies. While it may be difficult to adjust your affluence, and avoid buying the next new device, it is absolutely worth it.

Uncle Sam Wants YOU to Become an Environmental Expert

Did you know that the United States has the highest waste per capita per day of any country? This simply won't stand. Exercise your patriotism and help us reduce our waste to beat countries like Germany and Canada that produce at least 0.7 less pounds of waste than us a day!

As Americans, we're obviously not here to take away your rights (we cringe at the very thought), so cost of participation will be very low; we just want you to help us win in the competition that is pre-familiarization. We all know that we are living in a biophysical scenario of resource descent, so why not adapt ourselves to this better than any other country in the world. Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman is quoted as saying, "No amount of psychological awareness will overcome people's reluctance to lower their standard of living." First of all, adaptation to our changing environment is not a decrease in our standard of living, second of all, let's prove him wrong.

To help you better understand how to help, we have come up with this equation:

I = P x A x T

I - total environmental impact from human behavior

P - population

A - affluence

T - environmental damage from technology per unit of affluence

Due to the fact that the population (P) is expected to grow significantly in the coming years (it is projected that there will be 10 billion people in 2050 and 11 billion in 2100) and we can't rely on technology (T) to do anything substantial due to Jevons Paradox, or the Rebound Effect (the assertion that increases in efficiency also tend to increase rates of consumption), we need to turn to our behaviors in order to pre-familiarize ourselves in the best way possible to our changing environment and become environmental experts. This will reduce the quantity of affluence (A), and therefore our environmental impact (I).

Our experts will help you by:

• Starting where you're at, so it doesn't matter how much prior experience you have! You can still get involved!
• Providing a variety of concrete examples on ways to act! They will provide you with cutting edge procedural knowledge that you can try out and they'll even give you feedback on your performance so you know where you stand!
• Going at your own pace so you don't become overwhelmed by new information!

They are also looking for your help and suggestions on how to be the most environmentally savvy in your area! They recognize that you love and care about your communities and therefore have a lot more local knowledge than they do, so don't be afraid to speak up! You are an invaluable resource in our victory!

We know that you are all reasonable people and that you are looking to cultivate your mental models about our environment and be effective and meaningful in your actions to win this competition and preserve our Earth, so we're just trying to make it easy for you. Here are some possible actions you can take:

• Recycle (Difficulty Level: Easy) - Don't add to landfills; get a recycling bin! Learn more about what you can recycle here: http://www.wm.com/thinkgreen/what-can-i-recycle.jsp
• Conserve Electricity (Difficulty Level: Easy) - Turn off the lights when you exit the room! Don't sleep with the television on! These are just a few simple ways to conserve electricity that will also help you love your wallet!
• Go vegan (Difficulty Level: Challenging) - This example is not for the faint of heart, but if you really like a good challenge, we highly recommend it. One pound of beef reportedly can cost as much as 1,847 gallons of water while tofu can cost only 302 gallons (Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/13/food-water-footprint_n_5952862.html). 

You can take these steps and many more to become a more sustainable being and pre-familiarize yourself to our decreasing amount of finite resources. We don't want to just wait until change is inevitable; we want to respond preemptively! Action will help you develop your skills and build your competence! Be more resourceful and frugal! Cooperate and participate with others!

Up until this point we have framed this as a competition to be the best, most environmentally savvy country, but in reality, everyone loses if we don't address this problem. If we reduce our resource consumption, everyone wins. So, in conclusion, we want YOU to become an environmental expert and good global citizen in order for us all to live symbiotically with each other and our Earth.

Patagonia's Passion for the Planet

            When Yvon Chouinard founded Patagonia, his vision was to establish a company that creates the best outdoor and recreational gear.  However, shortly after Patagonia had just opened their new Boston store, the employees working there began to complain about getting headaches.  After further investigation, the company discovered that the same air in the store was being recycled, and there was formaldehyde in the air from the cotton clothes.  This is when Patagonia began to question their business practices and changed their company mission statement:

            “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions the environmental crisis.”

This mission has led Patagonia to implement a variety of policies and initiatives to help the environment.  Patagonia turned to making all of their clothes with 100% organic cotton and only using recycled polyester.  This was only the start of these types of programs and initiatives.  Patagonia has been able to make serious changes and impacts, not only because they are a large legitimate corporation, but also because they were able to embrace and understand the Reasonable Person Model.  They have been able to support people’s effective functioning by helping them truly prospect about the future of our planet. I broke down the Reasonable Person Model into it's 3 components and how various policies and initiatives at Patagonia fulfill those...

1.     Model Building

            Patagonia knows that people need to have the opportunity to understand and explore.  Patagonia attempts to convey the message that our planet is facing severe effects because of climate change caused by humans.  They want to help people understand.  Being such a legitimate company, Patagonia has been able to teach employees, customers, and other companies about implementing sustainable practices and cleaning up their supply chain.  For example, Patagonia has paired up with Wal-Mart to teach them how to integrate environmentally friendly solutions in their supply chain.

2.     Being Effective

            In order for their message to really catch people’s attention, Patagonia’s message must be clear and coherent.  They can do this by making a strong statement.  For example, Patagonia makes the promise to donate 1% of all their sales to environmental organizations.  Another example is Black Friday, in which they donated 100% of their sales to environmental groups, bringing in more than $10 million.  By doing this, Patagonia is able to make a strong statement that they value the environment over profits and that they are not going to do "business-as-usual".

3.     Meaningful Action

            I feel Patagonia embraces this part of the Reasonable Person Model the best.  Patagonia provides employees tons of opportunities for them to feel that they are truly apart of something bigger.  For example, employees are allowed to take up to 60 days of paid leave to volunteer at a grassroots organization of their choice.  This opportunity allows employees to feel as if they are truly making a difference.  Patagonia also allows customers to feel like they are making a difference simply by buying their products.  Customers are supporting a company that they feel makes an actual impact and difference.  It is important for people to believe that they are contributing to the planet, because these small steps can lead to larger ones.  Even small efforts can make difference.  However, we know from Jevon's Paradox that as products become more efficient, there is an increased rate of consumption.  Patagonia battles this by keeping their prices higher and developing ads that say "Don't buy this jacket" to help discourage over-consumption.  They even came out with a recycling program for old Patagonia gear.

Patagonia has been able to enhance the prospection skills of their customers to make them more aware and concerned about the future of our planet.  Slowly Patagonia has made an impact by incentivizing the future, or more specifically, demonstrating the wonders of our planet and how we should preserve these for future generations to enjoy.  Even though Patagonia would be considered an expert in their field, they are able to communicate stories on an emotional level that affects most people.  This strategy has worked immensely in their favor, as they continue to be extremely successful and contribute to sustainability efforts.

How to be the best Expert

The world functions by experts of different topics working together to create the best world possible for human kind.  A person becomes an expert by continuous experience in one domain.  Through consistent, repeated work a person creates internal representations and these representations then work together to create cognitive maps.

Being a professional is beneficial because you're knowledge and experience allow you to work quickly and efficiently.  You have created maps that allow you to notice what a problem is and then predict the outcome of your various possible decisions.  An expert is more confident in their decisions than someone that only knows a bit of information about the specific domain because they have worked with this before and have seen many successes and failures.  It is important that others in the same domain become just as confident as the expert.

An expert is important in a field of work or study, but having a limited number of experts means that limited work can be done.  In the environmental field, having a limited number of experts in climate change means that only a select amount of scientists can run tests or create plans to prevent climate change.  It is important that experts pass on their knowledge and expertise to those in the same domain so that the knowledge can be passed on and built upon for many years to come.

It can be difficult for an expert to teach a novice about their domain.  Experts have such complex internal representations and cognitive maps that many simple things just come to them quickly and they do not necessarily know how to explain it to a novice.  Experts also have a wealth of knowledge and this can be overbearing on a novice trying to remember all of the things they are learning.  A novice trying to learn the science of climate change might get overwhelmed because the expert may not always take time to explain the different natural processes of the earth because the expert has worked and studied these processes for so long that it is second nature to them.  In order to solve problems such as climate change, the expert needs to learn to share their expertise with the future experts in their domain.  The novice must use directed attention to try and learn as much of the new information as possible but their directed attention can become depleted and after this they will not retain any useful information.

There are many ways for an expert to efficiently educate a novice and be the best expert possible.

1. The expert should think back to when they were learning about the domain and consider some of          the basic topics they learned and some of the things that were difficult for them.

2. The expert should get a sense of the level of knowledge that the novice has in the domain.

3. If there is a gap in basic knowledge in the novice, the expert should carefully explain the needed         information and give it in context to the domain and how it will be beneficial.

                    *Giving specific examples related to the work is beneficial

4. It is important not to overwhelm the novice, focus on between 2-7 main ideas.

5. Make sure the learning environment is good
                    *No distractions
                    *Allow for breaks and times to restore directed attention

6. The expert should use stories from their experience to help the novice relate all of the new                   information to their own life.

By doing these things, many novices will become experts in their own way.  This will allow future generations to continue working together to create a better, well functioning world that will continue to grow and prosper.

Diversity > Expertise: The Design World and Beyond

            Though the values of independence our society asserts help build us into competent, productive people, these notions often become absorbed and interpreted over time to cultivate mindsets that insist, “I alone can fix any problem”.  Self-confidence is good and needed to function well in life.  Arrogance and single-minded thinking, on the other hand, can yield unwieldy problems in circumstances that may affect many other peoples’ lives.  And so, though experts in different areas can make huge positive impacts on the world, oftentimes the best solutions are generated through collaboration with other minds from other backgrounds.

            Of course, there are bundles of benefits to developing expertise in particular subjects, both for the expert themselves and for those impacted by an expert’s work.  For experts, as they continue to expose themselves to their particular disciplines and fields of specialization, their cognitive maps of how to operate with and through such mental environments grow incredibly rich.  With time, they become increasingly skilled at discerning what details may be considered significant to given situations; they’ll shed off unneeded details and concisely compact information held in their minds.  Along with this, their frequented actions become habitual and automatic with time, as these processes come to feel so natural to them that they need no longer heed much, or any, directed attention to perform such certain activities. 

This all being said, every person holds different levels of expertise in some fashion or another, whether they be in areas and actions that may include commonplace activities, such as driving, or in skills scarce to the general public (such as welding).  Accordingly, we all hold different interests, skillsets, knowledge, and beliefs about the world for a reason—so that we can coexist and thrive through cooperation.  We humans are social, political animals who draw meaning and wellbeing from life through deep social connections to others.  Yet despite this fact of our nature, so many people maintain that only they have the power, skills, knowledge, and status to fix this or that problem.

In some cases this mindset is fine since we need to grow able to sustain and manage ourselves in the world as individuals—asking others how we should consider every action we take would be inefficient and unproductive.  However, in other larger cases, especially those that involve other people in some manner, detrimental effects could result without further consultation (e.g. an expert may assume they understand the needs and desires of the people they attempt to serve, only to find they miscalculated peoples’ concerns—ending up with a project that nobody needs or wants at all).

Let’s take a look at the world of product design to illustrate:

Product designers design objects and tools to help people operate more smoothly in their environments, so that people will not have to drain their directed attention through trying to figure out how to use items to meet their goals.  This explains why so many of the everyday objects we use take the forms and shapes that they do: the objects instructively “explain” themselves to users.  For example: the bowl shape of a coffee mug will communicate to a user that it can hold some sort of object or substance (such as hot coffee).  The handle of the mug will then lead a person to deduce the loop as a good place to grasp when using the mug (useful when trying to carry hot liquids so as to not burn one’s hands).

The process for designing products can be very long and laborious, as designers will typically follow a multi-step process that involves making numerous models for each stage they consider—this will inevitably involve a proliferation of testing and chucking results.  To produce an effective design, a designer will make many efforts to get to know their users not only at the beginning the design process, but also through to the end of production.  Designers may engage in an exercise called “empathetic reflection”, attempting to place themselves in situations their users typically face by role playing as the users themselves.  To exemplify: if a designer wants to make a knife for a one-handed person, they may try tying one hand behind their back or putting their arm in a sling while attempting to chop different kinds of food.  Along with this, of course, the designers will seek feedback and gather information from the users themselves, allowing users to explain their experiences and concerns with regards to the object(s) in consideration.  Designers may also have their clients test out their designed products throughout various steps of the project to ensure success of the design.

Here’s a video from ABC about a famous design company called IDEO (a design team that strives to hire people from all sorts of disciplines, including psychologists, artists, and engineers):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taJOV-YCieI

These ideas presented in the product design process can be seen as analogous to many other situations encountered in life, as we should always remain mindful to include and hear out the voices of others we may impact with our actions.  This will prove most effective in circumstances that allow us to gather wide-ranging, representative samples of people.  This, however, does not necessarily imply that ‘more is better’.  Rather diversity of input can create stronger, more comprehensive solutions.  This can be seen in cases where companies will seek to hire people from a diverse array of backgrounds, as just hiring more ‘good’ people will often mean hiring more people that hold the same (or very similar) cognitive maps of the problems they hope to confront.  Instead, many employers now make more efforts to seek out (intellectual) people that can provide different vantage points of situations (meaning much variation with regards to prior experiences that make up their employees’ mental maps).  With many minds included, such a diverse crowd will become wiser and reduce error in calculations (peoples’ errors end up cancelling each other out).  Moreover, additional background information generated from greatly varied perspectives can fill in gaps in knowledge and enrich mental maps for all involved.  This can, in effect, can further improve the experiences of those who are exposed to and affected by their works.