Hope for humanity

Like anyone else who reads the news, I just have to roll my eyes at how over the top things have been lately. For example, In two days, I saw two articles describing how two 11-year old boys got their father's guns and shot and killed some other kid with it. That is really depressing.

So I wanted to share with you something positive, fun and interesting. Three things actually, that give me hope for humanity.

The rate of population growth is slowing
The birth rate is slowing and eventually will start to drop. While following links to see where they will lead, you know, serendipity, I found a really cool article about world population growth on Slate. The article goes into some real depth exploring the trends of our population growth. The most interesting finding is this nugget here:

A somewhat more arcane milestone, meanwhile, generated no media coverage at all: It took humankind 13 years to add its 7 billionth. That’s longer than the 12 years it took to add the 6 billionth—the first time in human history that interval had grown. (The 2 billionth, 3 billionth, 4 billionth, and 5 billionth took 123, 33, 14, and 13 years, respectively.) In other words, the rate of global population growth has slowed. And it’s expected to keep slowing. Indeed, according to experts’ best estimates, the total population of Earth will stop growing within the lifespan of people alive today.

The growth of the world population is slowing. Eventually it will stop growing and go in reverse. Birthrates around the world are already shrinking. By 2200, the world population is projected to fall by half. The biggest and most breathtaking cause of this decline in birth rates? Education.

Educate girls and they get interested in careers, delaying childbearing until they are planted in their careers. As the world becomes more educated, girls grow up into women with a job and a family, but it's a smaller family.

A great example of this education comes from MTV show, 16 and Pregnant. CNN has documented how birth rates declined by simply showing adolescents what life is like if you're 16 and pregnant. And that is just one example. The more we educate our kids, the better choices they will make for themselves and the planet.

Why is this so important? Because human habitation of the earth has done more damage to it than the worst nuclear power plant accident. With a smaller population we can leave a better world for our kids.

Solar power is trending in a big way
Solar City just introduced solar panels with 22% efficiency. And they're not the only company to introduce greater efficiency in solar panels. Industry wide, solar power efficiency has been on an inexorable trend towards lower costs, greater efficiency and better access for a decade. Trends all around solar power are positive.

Cost per watt of installed capacity are falling below $3. Panel efficiencies are rising. Inverter manufacturers are taking notice and building capacity to meet demand and increase efficiencies. Inverters allow your home to accept the DC power from the solar panels and converts the current to AC power at rough 95% efficiencies.

Banks are taking notice, too. They are working to capture the solar power loan market and all the subsidies that go with solar power installations. This market is already taking off. Solar power went from rare to occasional. In a decade or less, solar power will be a requirement, not an option when choosing a home to buy, so sellers get ready.

The internet is becoming the common consciousness of humanity
Never before have we seen a technology bring the world together. The internet has fomented a literacy revolution. More people are reading today than ever before. Kids are learning to type just to be able to use the internet. I took a typing class in high school and thought I'd be a sheet metal worker, never thinking I'd need to know how to type. Now I'm glad I got it. Kids are reading, typing and learning on the internet.

It's not just the kids, too. Adults are finding work that uses the internet. I myself have a job where I use the internet everyday to connect to customers and assist them with their computers. It is actually becoming difficult to find a job that does not require use of email, a browser and a network. Unless you want to do landscaping. Well, even then, if you run a landscaping business, you need the internet to promote it.

We have witnessed an explosion of content, sharing of information and discourse like we've never seen before, too. 24 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Here is a page of stats on the internet. We've gone from just a few users in 1995 (I got started in 1993), to 3.2 billion today.

Everything on the internet has an IP address. That is, an Internet Protocol address. There are two versions of IP in use today, IPv4 and IPv6. IPv4 is a 32-bit addressing system that provides for more than 4 billion addresses. We've run out of the address space that's been allocated to the United States. Other countries are bound to report the same thing soon.

So the engineers came up with IPv6, a 128-bit addressing system. How many addresses are available with that? According to Wikipedia, approximately 3.4×1038 addresses, or more than 7.9×1028 times as many as IPv4. With IPv6, we're not going to run out of addresses for the foreseeable future.

The internet allows for everything to be connected, for people to communicate, share, and participate in political discourse. The internet has been a bonding force for humanity like no other. It has no borders, no owner, no end.

A connected world, with a smaller, more educated population, using solar power for all the energy we could ever want. That gives me hope for humanity.

Heavy Traffic

For much of my life, I've been able to position myself such that I avoid the rush hour traffic. I was able to time shift, get short commutes or simply avoid the beaten path. My shortest commute was 8 minutes. That was a cool commute, but that was in Utah, not in Southern California.

In SoCal, everything is spread out. In 2007, I bought a new car and in that first year alone, I put 24,000 miles on my car. Long commutes, grilling in traffic, running errands, visiting family. It all adds up.

I used to commute from Costa Mesa to Carson, California, every work day. It sucked. From Costa Mesa to Seal Beach, everything was fine. Pass the 605 and then I join the line of people going to a county where the Board of Supervisors admitted that for the previous twenty years, they had no coherent plan for transportation. And it showed.

Sitting in traffic is boring so when I'm there, looking at the next car, my mind is looking for something to do. So I play this guessing game, pretending that I'm using my intuition to figure out which lane will go faster. I was commuting alone so I smiled with glee when the diamond lane got clogged. But when that was clear as the sky, I got busy guessing lanes.

I was a lane changer in heavy or slow traffic. I did this to pass the time. Eventually I got to my destination, but it really was a slow moving detention. It wasn't made any better by listening to NPR, or what I like to call, "resentment radio". I call it resentment radio because they talk about the stock market as if most people own stocks. Here? In America? Not really. And if we do, our 401k is going sideways.

Then NPR goes on and on about American foreign policy. Every day, they're talking about Israel as if Israel is always right. What about us? Why aren't they reporting on US? Well, they are. They're talking about who just got appointed to that plush job with the FCC in DC. What is the Fed going to do next? Who cares? But if I want to hear about us, I will have to wait for This American Life.

Anyway, I'm sitting in traffic and guessing lanes and feeling the frustration. Then for what seemed like an eternity, I'm in lane 3 and I'm stopped while watching 30 or 40 cars go by in lanes 2 and 4. What is going on up there? Did someone drop a quarter and stop to pick it up? I was furious that I could not get out of the lane that was stopped!

Then something clicked in my head. I don't know exactly what happened, but I heard a voice or something like that say, "This isn't working. Let's try something else."

So I took a few deep breaths to decide what to do. This is important. The brain uses 10 times more oxygen than any other organ in the body. When under stress, remember to breathe, everything follows.

Then I said the following words: "I accept everything exactly as it is right now." 

Again.

And again.

And again.

I started repeating that sentence over and over, like a mantra. A few minutes later, I forgot what I was pissed about. Traffic started flowing again. I could see my exit. I was done.

There is something about acceptance that calms the mind. Once we can accept our circumstances, we can do something about them. Until we accept them, we can do nothing but bitch and complain. But once we accept it, well, then the brain goes to work, meaningful work.

The brain operates in two modes. The first one, the one we're really familiar with is the left side, the side of judgement. Left and right, right and wrong, black and white. The left side uses logic and words to make sense of reality. There is no grey area.

The right side is that gray area, with more than fifty shades. The right side is a continuously adjusting targeting system. You pick a target, a goal, and the right side will get you there. Did you miss? Don't worry, the right side doesn't get upset about missing. The right side will adjust and try again until the target or goal is achieved.

My goal was to stop the torture in traffic. The left side was too busy judging the situation and the right side was listening to music. Neither side was fully engaged in reality until I said those magic words, "I accept everything exactly as it is right now." Once I accepted reality, I became fully engaged in my existence. I didn't even have to click my heels.

Now I could make some meaningful choices. I could change how I think about my situation. I could change my behavior. Funny thing about changing behavior, other people tend to change in response to that behavior. It's not like they have a choice about it. Input and output are related. Change the stimulus and you will change the response.

Whatever change you want to make in your life, it must start with acceptance of everything in your life exactly as it is. You don't have to like it, acceptance is all that is needed. From that point on, harmony with the world around you is a lot easier to find. Even when sitting in traffic.