HUMAN NATURE

Humans are all confused about human nature. On the one hand we understand that in some ways we are like animals and have similar needs for food, shelter, and reproduction. But then we want to claim that we are not like animals because we are “civilized”. But the concept of being civilized means that we aren’t like animals at all and therefore have very different needs and expectations.

This leads us to do all sorts of crazy things and adopt some very conflicting attitudes. For example, as civilized animals we need food to survive, but routinely do things that endanger our food supply in the name of ease, efficiency, or profit. We grow more food than we need to make money which cannot be eaten. We create shelters, not just for our lives, but for our separate work, play, recreation and storage of things. Animals would mostly be appalled. And then we have turned reproduction into entertainment, and made it a matter of civilized correctness that everyone must get to participate regardless of fitness or wasted effort between identical genders. And lastly, as civilized animals we think that we should live infinitely, even in a finite world, and that people should not necessarily be held accountable for their actions. The animal world is singularly unforgiving.

Human success as an animal relies, not on strength, speed, tooth or claw. Instead it lies in intelligence, family groups and culture. Yet we are busy destroying the family group and our brains in our excesses.

You may wonder what this has to do with making America productive. But before anyone can produce anything, they have to decide what it is they should produce. And their concepts of why they are alive, what is their purpose in being alive and what they hope to accomplish will dictate to a great extent what they choose to produce. If we do not think clearly about the issue of human nature, we will not think clearly about what we produce.

The point is many people do not think clearly about who they are or why they exist. When that happens they may willingly embark on production activities that make no sense or that may actually hurt them in the process. Are you an animal? Or are you something different, something special, whether we call that civilized or divine (“a little lower than the angels”)? That will make huge difference about what you choose to produce.

MAKING DO

Is the human race is running out of water? Is the human race making too much carbon dioxide? Is the human race running out of energy? Is the human race is running out of air?

Nonsense! There is the same amount of water that there has always been. It may well be in different places. It may contain new materials that didn’t use to be there. But we haven’t “run out” of any water. Similarly, we don’t have too much carbon dioxide. The amount of carbon in the world hasn’t increased. It has obviously changed forms and moved from place to place, but the amount is the same.

Yes, it matters how we use language. For example, running out of water is a condition that sounds like it requires using less water. In fact, what it requires is to find new ways of cleaning up what we have, recycling, and distributing it more evenly. We may not be able to take cheap water out of ground water anymore, but the same amount is somewhere. It will just take some effort to get it.

Why are the only suggestions about greenhouse gasses about limiting their production? Carbon dioxide is naturally produced and has always been. What normally happens is that the carbon dioxide is recycled into living plants. So why doesn’t anyone suggest promoting plant production instead? Kind of makes me wonder.

We are not out of energy. We are running out of cheap stored energy known as petroleum. But the amount of energy available is more or less stable and comes from the sun. That doesn’t even mean that solar energy is the only energy available. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the Universe and when it burns it forms water vapor. Hmmm. Aren’t we running out of water?

Will life be more complicated in the future? Yea, probably. And maybe more expensive. But should we make more laws, or make better questions. Should we make more regulations or more solutions? I know what I’m going to make!

A POST-INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

With the advent of the industrial revolution a pattern of production was established that was successful under the circumstances of that time. I wonder if it is still valid.

For the last 100 or so years we have extracted raw products, shipped them long distances to a centralized place where the raw product was formed into a manufactured product. Then the manufactured goods were reshipped back out to many different destinations for sale. The shipping of raw products in bulk was efficient enough to make the advantages of centralized manufacturing profitable.

Reshipping was less efficient because of the many destinations involved, and because there was additional weight for packaging, record keeping for multiple items, and sales expenses. But while energy was cheap the system worked.

But what happens when shipping is no longer inexpensive? Shipping raw product to central locations, only to be manufactured, repackaged and reshipped may not be the most cost efficient way to do business because of the transportation costs.

Is there another way? What if manufacturing were decentralized and greater care was taken in shipping the raw product? What if careful efficient routes were developed for raw products that would drop off product as it was transported for regional distribution? This would reduce the amount of product in volume and weight as deliveries were made, and thereby reduce the expense of shipping raw product overall.

Then, what if, instead of having huge central-manufacturing plants, numerous mini-plants were built across the country in various regions. Then only the finished product needed in the region would need to be manufactured, and shipping finished product could be restricted to local regions. This would greatly reduce shipping costs for finished products.

While this may seem to have little to do with bees and agriculture, I think it does. You see, that is the model of our capitalistic country for the first hundred and fifty years of its existence. Small farms created the products that served a region. The raw products were sent too many small manufacturing enterprises that served a region, sometimes single families. Shipping of product on all ends of production, manufacturing, and consumption was kept to a minimum. That worked because transportation costs were expensive and inefficient. Without petroleum power, electricity, refrigeration and highways, shipping was just inefficient.

I believe that the industrial revolution was possible because of inexpensive energy. In the future, perhaps near future, the price of transportation is going to increase substantially due to increases in the cost of energy. Petroleum may yet last for many years. Sources such as coal, natural gas, wind power, hydroelectric power, solar and others will certainly be developed. However, the tremendous capital expenses required for these sources of energy is going to make the cost of transpiration continue to increase.

If the industrial paradigm is based upon inexpensive transportation, and if transportation continues to increase in cost, then the only alternative would seem to be a new industrial revolution structured in a far more decentralized manner. Perhaps the family farm will become economically feasible again, along with family manufacturing plants scattered across the nation. The computer is a general purpose machine, so perhaps it could lead us to regional general purpose manufacturing facilities.

WHAT SHOULD WE MAKE?

Let’s begin with vandalism. If one person, or a group, wrecks a private home it is a crime. However, if one person, or a group, destroys a community it is often called progress. There is much oil shale in my part of the world. Many people think we can make it into oil and thereby save our way of life. Of course, the industry needed to make it into oil would destroy the present way of life for all who live here. But I suppose it will happen eventually, just as it has in West Virginia, Kentucky, and other places, because there is so much money to be made.

If I build a home with a wife and children, and put us up in a little house with a garden out back, it is not considered a very big accomplishment by the world. Everyone does that. But if I build a large plant that employees many people to extract oil from shale, and which destroys the way of life that the family enjoyed, it is considered a great accomplishment indeed.

It’s always interesting to me that so often people who want to change things, are seldom the people affected by the changes. The men who own the oil shale plant won’t live there. The politician who passes laws governing land seldom lives on the land that he passes the laws about.

It was decided years ago that the efficient way to get things done was to make the same thing, in the same way, at the same time, in the same place. It was called the industrial revolution. It has a made a lot of money. But making money isn’t making something. It is making an idea. We don’t have words to differentiate between making objects that exist in the real world, and making mental or abstract things.

Making war is not making at all. Making laws are not things but ideas. Making love at least has the potential to make life. Making music is a physical sound wave. Making noise is more about making, than making trouble.

What about making people? It’s a long process that requires more than making the body. It requires making a brain, a mind, a spirit, a person. So look how we do it. Every must learn the same things (standards), in the same way (school), at the same time (math at 10:00 AM), and in the same place. We even have to learn the things we learn within the same time frame. It is not the same thing to learn chemistry as it is to learn chemistry in sixteen weeks. But that is what the government routinely requires. It’s the industrial way.

Okay. So what should we make? What do you think you should make?

WHO MAKES THINGS

Who makes things?

A person makes something, and thereby produces.

The individual may act alone, or as part of a group of people with a common product, but after everything else is said, it is a single person who produces.

Ask anyone what they do and they will tell you their title. But ask them what they make, or produce, and you will get a very confusing answer. Often they won’t know.

They may know what their organization makes, but they themselves may not think of what they do as making anything.

Besides not recognizing the fact that we don’t make anything but only remake raw products, we also do not think of most of our jobs as making anything.

What if each of us begins to ask ourselves, even if our bosses won’t, “What do I make?” Can we answer that question? If not, we are not producing.

How do you make something?

Ask any artisan how to make something and they will be glad to tell you. They are proud of their skill.

If you ask them how to acquire the skill they will tell you to make something using that skill. Duh!

Make something. Work at it every day. At the same time. All day if you can. Work at it for 20 minutes if not. Just show up and make something.

Sounds way too easy, huh?

So once you know what you make, could you make sure that you make it at least once every day.

Why we like to believe that producing is hard?

Is producing hard? Sure. Is it simple? Yes!

We like to think that raising production is difficult so that we have a reason to not produce. It also gives us a reason to feel good about what we do get done.

We like to think that what we do is hard and hard things have value. But the more we convince ourselves that it is hard the more we may dread doing it. We don’t like to do hard things.

If producing takes sweat, time, concentration, effort, or patience we have a lot of reasons to not do it. It isn’t easy. Easy is the opposite of hard.

But it is simple. Once you know what you produce and how to do it, it just means “do it”. Every day. All day. As much as you can. Put off the title to your job as much as possible and produce what you produce.

Man, I hate that.

HOW TO MAKE AMERICA PRODUCTIVE AGAIN

Who makes things? It is part of human hubris to ask that question because it assumes that only the things humans make are worth being called “made”. In fact, humans make almost nothing. Instead we remake what exists into new forms and uses. But as far as I can tell no human makes a raw product, we simply remake. I wish there was a more honest word for what we do.

I checked the thesaurus for synonyms of “make” but none of the words particularly describe our activities in changing raw products into some other thing. What we actually do is remake materials into new forms and uses. But none of the words in the thesaurus for “remake” actually describe what humans do either.

And what does it mean to make, or remake, something. Is it only the person who puts his hand to the raw product and changes it, or is the person who thought of the process a “maker” also? What about the person who designed the product; are they “makers”? Is the person who saw the design and the process and believed that it could work and so financed the operation, are they “makers”? And is the person who simply grows the products a “maker”, or a kind of miner?

Making is not always the same as production, yet we use the same word for extracting coal, growing crops, assembling cars, or manufacturing widgets. Making, mining and growing are not the same things, but they all seem productive. Even writers and musicians produce, but do they make? As I set out to make suggestions for how to make America productive, am I making anything at all? I am first beset by confusion over what it even means to make and produce.

This is the year 2011. It has been a busy holiday and I am just getting back to business, if one can call it that. My first post of the New Year was about time. Nothing to creative about that I suppose. But back in November of 2010 I wrote a blog about how America has moved from a production society to a consumption society. In that post I said I would follow up with one about how Americans might reverse that trend.

Was that ever presumptuous?! I have been thinking about that promise for over two months now and decided that there is so much to be said that suggestions for making America productive should become my theme for 2011. I don’t intend to neglect the bees. It turns out that bees are one way we can be productive, and at the same time save the world. It isn’t too much to ask is it?

THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE

          “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times . . . .”  No, wait! That’s already taken.  How about, “To everything there is a season . . . .”  What?  That’s already been used too?  Then how about, “The time of your life”?  I know it’s a cliché, but I really mean the “time” of your life.  Our lifetime’s take place at certain rhythms that are sometimes obscured and forgotten in our modern world that is driven by technology.  It might be interesting to know how things happen through biological time.

One of the fastest things that happen in your body is the transmission of information along your neurons.  The rate is variable depending on a lot of factors.  In peripheral nerves from your big toe to your spinal cord information can transfer as fast as 225 miles per hour, or 330 ft/sec.  That’s about the fastest thing that happens in your body.

Some muscles work quickly and some work slowly.  There are muscles in your body that can take several minutes to contract.   Then, there are your eyelid muscles.  They can contract in about 1/300^th of a second.  That is what makes a wink so deadly.  A wink can happen so fast that you aren’t really sure if the winker actually winked at the winkee, or not.  Then what is the winkee to do?  But maybe winking is old fashioned.  Does anyone wink anymore?  Obviously not at me.

          Emptying your stomach can take anywhere from fifteen minutes, if all you put in it was water, to up to six hours, if you ate a big, greasy, pepperoni pizza.  Yes, the pepperoni can still be there at 2:00 am!  The time it takes, on average, for food to move entirely through your digestive track, from start to, shall we say, finish, is about 12 hours.  If you hurry things along much faster than that, there isn’t time for your body to remove enough water from the food.  Then you will have, what are politely called, loose stools. 

          Did you know that if you get less than eight hours of sleep, all your immune cells are measurably less effective.  Certain cells that attack and engulf foreign invaders loose efficiency with the loss of only one hour of sleep.  Other cells secrete antibodies when you get sick.  Even if you are healthy and well rested, it can take up to two or three weeks to produce enough antibodies to be effective.  That’s why they say that if you eat right and get plenty of rest, you can get well in two weeks.  But if you don’t, it’s going to take fourteen days.

          The truly-magic number in human, biological time is six weeks.  That probably doesn’t sound familiar to you.  But consider these facts.  Wound healing generally takes about six weeks.  Obviously the timing depends on the wound, but even minor surgery requires about six weeks to repair the damaged capillary bed.  And guess how long it generally takes to remove all the nicotine from the body after you quit smoking.  About six weeks.  If you start a new training regimen, it will take about six weeks to grow new muscle.  If you start learning a new skill, like playing a new song on a musical instrument, it will take about six weeks to master.  It even takes about six weeks to metabolize 5 lbs. of fat.  Six weeks is such a universal estimate of biological function in humans that I have decided to name this time frame a new unit of time called a “hexachron”. 

          Though we coordinate our lives around a twenty-four-hour clock, a seven-day week, a thirty-day month and a fifty-two-week year, biological time is something else entirely.  The biological “time” cycle is most often about six weeks, a hexachron.  And you only have a little less than nine hexachrons left this year.