On an afternoon of a pre-pandemic workday, I was riding a nearly empty subway in downtown Washington DC. Such an experience of riding a bus or a train to work and school feels as if it happened a very long time ago. Generally speaking, poor and physically disadvantaged workers in their daily commute are the mainstays of public transportation in America. For international visitors, the accessibility and affordability of mass transit determines a city’s popularity for tourism. But locals make fun of the national capital’s subway system, saying it is like the divisive politics in Congress—poor performance, expensive and short-sighted. Riding on the problematic subway, daily commuters seem to have the greatest tolerance and say nothing, a typical example of silent majority.
On that afternoon, I saw a paper bag of McDonald’s at the corner of the train door. An empty plastic cup was rolling on the floor as the train door closed and open. An African American young woman entered my car and sat by the train door. The train moved along a few stops. As the doors once again opened, the woman bent down to grab the empty plastic cup and the deserted paper bag of McDonald’s with her. She got off the train in a hurry.
I cannot forget what I saw. Someone who was not supposed to bring food and beverage onboard had violated the passengers’ regulations. And what’s worse, that passenger left the trash behind on the train. No one, including me, in that train car minded that our shared environment was polluted. Until that young lady appeared, no one who had disembarked had the slightest motivation to do what that young lady did.
In hindsight, I wonder if we are like monkeys that we emulate what we see and what we are exposed to. On that train with the McDonald’s bag and plastic cup, nobody would want to do something healthful to our shared environment. To humans, it was a disappointment. I was one of those indifferent mortals. The trash on the train had a free ride in the most expensive metro system in the country. That cup was so happy that it rolled by many hubristic feet.
A few weeks ago, I attended the first virtual alumni event in my alma mater, Virginia Tech. I had the opportunity to learn a broader meaning of ESG, which stands for Environmental, Social and Governance. Sustainability professionals from business, government, and nonprofits, gathered online to share ESG practices in their organizations. I was the writer of the event. Click here for the full article.
A screenshot of my write-up about the alumni virtual event.
My schoolmate Ryan Hathaway who works for the U.S. Department of the Interior cited author Bill Bryson’s words about humans’ poor management of the planet. I can’t agree more. While we are training artificial intelligence (AI) to conduct deep learning about humans, aren’t we also analyzing and unpacking AI’s smarter-than-me brainwork? Monkey see, monkey do. Who is the monkey here? The AI robots? Or human beings?
Monkey see, monkey do. Monkeys imitate while humans can emulate. Learners emulate by observing the results of what others do and the environment, such as the relevant properties of tools and the goals of others. I take pleasure in comparing e-commerce markets in China and the US. Thanks to the SARS outbreak in 2003, China’s Alibaba-Taobao, JD.com and alike could rise to the occasion and establish a business-to-consumer (B2C) ecosystem. E-commerce platforms significantly helped tens of millions of Chinese consumers to get what they need during the epidemic while practicing social distancing and regional lockdowns. A classic example of turning a crisis into an opportunity. I can’t say Amazon emulates China’s Alibaba-Taobao but I often find strategic similarity between them to expand their markets.
Tech firms outside China have since followed suit to build and expand their B2C ecosystems. The Covid-19 pandemic has put global e-commerce on steroids. Everything that we eat, use and give away for free or for sale has its online presence. As said in my previous op-ed essay, to some extent, the large public companies in America are running a similar model whose supply chain planning is synonymous to China’s central planning. I’m delighted to have a deep dive on techno-nationalism and technology competition with economist Keyu Jin from London School of Economics.
With respect to boosting companies’ ESG performance, I think circular economy should be put on the negotiation table high and center for all institutions and sectors. Disappointingly, at COP26, a UN summit on climate change, world leaders failed to discuss how to stop overconsumption and promote a circular economy. The Covid-19 pandemic is like a shot in the arm to help big tech firms grow financially unstoppable. These firms even make us more dependent on the current fossil-fuel powered Internet of Things (IoT) and services. As eco-friendly consumers, we are encouraged to buy goods and services from the good actors in clean energy transition and circular economy.
Why it matters to look into the ESG performance of big tech?
An analysis by Cambridge University suggests bitcoin uses more electricity annually than the whole of Argentina. You may have heard of the buzzword “bitcoin mining.” It is the process of creating new bitcoin by solving a computational puzzle. This mining process is power-hungry, involving heavy computer calculations to verify transactions. Data centers that are responsible for storing and processing the vast amounts of information needed to run the digital economy are also power hungry. On average, as much as 40% of a data center’s power consumption goes toward cooling the servers. So, it’s not hard to imagine as the Earth’s temperature is rising, we’ll consume more electricity for cooling. We can’t ignore the trade-offs in the environmental, social, and economic aspects to the e-commerce sector.
Confucius once said, “By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.” Although its Chinese origin is controversial, I find the quote useful for me to learn from others in order to improve myself. Monkey see, monkey do. That young woman who took the trash out of the train left a deep impression on me. Two days ago, I volunteered to pick up recyclable scraps in my neighborhood. They were blown away by a strong wind overnight before the recycle truck arrived the following morning. Looking back, I would do it again for a better living environment.
“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.(我們可以通過三種方法來學習智慧：首先，通過反思，這是最崇高的。其次，通過模仿，這是最簡單的；第三點是經驗，那是最痛苦的。)“
If you know only one language and you’re going to travel to a new destination where nobody understands your language, you’re most likely to be introduced to one of the few frequently-used survival phrases. “Thank you” is definitely one of them. I remember when I was in Japan as a tourist, the locals were so pleased to hear me saying “ありがとうございました,” meaning “thank you” in Japanese. My Eastern Asian appearance and polite temperament could easily gain some points of closeness from the locals. I was lucky to meet friendly Japanese acquaintances, too. They usually continued to speak Japanese at a normal speed to me. I repeated saying “thank you” in Japanese and bowed my way out.
Saying “Thank You” is an ice-breaker. Recently I had a professional cleaning crew to my home for a job. The crew was composed of four Hispanic women. Only the head understood a little English. And thank goodness, I also know a few words of Spanish, among which is “Muchas Gracias!” So when I bumped into a cleaner in the kitchen, I acknowledged her hard work and said “muchas gracias” to her. She smiled back to me. I felt good that I could practice Spanish with a native speaker. At least she understood my poor pronunciation.
“You’re a very kind person,” said the head in English to me. I was taken aback by her compliment and I must have looked bewildered.
“Not many people appreciate our work and say ‘thank you’ to us,” she said. “We have many clients with big houses and it takes us more time to clean their homes. They don’t talk to us knowing we’re not good English speakers.”
This was my first time to have a cleaning crew to the house. But it was definitely not the first time I spoke to a Hispanic worker in English about their low-pay job, dangerous work condition and their impression about life in the United States. (The term “American life” is too broad especially Mexicans are also Americans.) Fortunately, their English is better than my Spanish.
I didn’t know my “muchas gracias” meant so much to almost every Hispanic worker that had been to my house over the years to help me solve a long list of homeowner’s problems. In fact I admire their stamina and professionalism. With their skills and labor they’ve earned every penny they deserve. I empathize the true honor of being a skilled professional on them. I joked with the cleaner that she made more good money than I did as I was between jobs.
Believe it or not. It was my appreciation for other administrative professionals so I gained appreciation back from them. During my job search, I notice that administrative professionals have been truly underappreciated. When I was administrative assistant in a low-profile company in America, I was surprised that my supervisors were thoughtful to celebrate the annual Administrative Professionals Day, which usually falls in April, together with me and my counterparts. In my supervisor’s view, my role was comparable to an office manager in Hong Kong. But in the U.S., an administrative assistant is often considered to be a less-educated, uninspiring person—most likely a woman—in a dead-end position to management. As a passionate linguist, I certainly have spent a lot of time studying the language of the job ads for this pathetic role in comparison with those for the leadership positions. The unwritten secretarial stigma remains today in 2021. And I want to say, without the backbone office managers, none of a team in an institution, an organization or a company will function smoothly.
I say “thank you” many times to the receptionists at a doctor’s office, the assistants of my professors, the human resources specialists that I encounter, and to myself as a former administrator. If you’d like to say “thank you” to your administrative colleagues and know how fortunate you are to have them in your team, Robert Katz’s 1974 article in the Harvard Business Review is still current and true. Administrative assistants are not just women and men who bring a cup of coffee to your desk, print files, make phone calls and run errands for you. They’re visionary angels and our reliable sources in our professional life. Thank you, office angels!
One more month I will come to an end of the second year of the pandemic. As I told my friends at home and abroad, what are the odds for me to live through a pandemic? As of November 1, more than five million people around the world are dead in the Covid-19 pandemic. Many more people are either depressed or suffering suicidal thoughts as a result of the loss of loved ones and job insecurity. That number globally is underreported.
I say thank you to the medical professionals and volunteers who have saved lives, including the lives of non-humans, and positively changed other people’s life in the past two years, . Whether the life you’ve saved is a Covid patient or a patient of other diseases, working in such a stressful environment for such a long time, I can empathize with your burnout. Hug a tree if you can. I find my deepening connection with Mother Nature is the most grateful thing I discover in the Year of Healing.
If the Covid-19 vaccines were not free to all U.S. citizens, lots of underprivileged people and working professionals who don’t have employer-sponsored healthcare plans would remain vulnerable to the contagious viral disease. Good job to my elected officials and their administrative experts, thank you! I’m grateful that I have my free booster shot. I’m also thankful that my vaccine record is easily accessible electronically. Data transparency is what we need to increase public faith in governance, optimize resources and lower costs in a finite world.
It’s humanity’s misfortune that the rich world cannot take the lead to set an unprecedented example for an equitable and eco-friendly civilization in the 21st century. After all, the developed countries have the most wealth and conveniences in modern times; their citizens have more chronic diseases resulting from unhealthy diets and lifestyles than the people from countries that have malnutrition and a poor living environment. Why can’t the rich world switch to an economy focused on self-realization and self-perfection through altruism? Even though I find kids on the street of Accra, Ghana, are happier playing football than those in the wealthy neighborhoods in the U.S. who are addicted to their digital devices, depression is a common mental problem in both rich and poor countries.
https://youtu.be/K9l3R24R96g
Depression is everywhere among people we meet every day whether or not we know them. Simon Sinek said in the video that as we gain a position in seniority, people will treat us better. The perks we get is meant for the position we hold and for the level we have achieved. I resonate with his viewpoint. I have worked for accomplished senior professionals. Some are my positive role models while a few are the ones that I don’t want to become. (BTW, I don’t support using Styrofoam cups for coffee. How about bring your own cup?)
I might have my bias about working professionals in America. Who doesn’t have a bias or two? As a minority in this country, my own experience as a victim of discrimination would not mean to anyone who lacks empathy and compassion. My sensitivity of discrimination is no different from my Caucasian friend and my Black British friend who visited me in China years ago and told me Chinese people stared at them in public and asked them taboo questions to a Westerner such as age, marriage and salary. However, I told them that they got the full-time job with a foreigner’s pay which was three times higher than a Chinese teacher’s salary. Why did educated foreigners get higher pay in China? I often asked. Why can’t Chinese professionals be treated like a royal in an English-speaking country?
During my job search this year, I had the front row seat to experience diversity washing across sectors in America, including science-based institutions and NGOs with household names. Bureaucracy and red tapes abound. China has them. The U.S. has them. Guanxi（關係）, literally meaning relationships and networking in Chinese, does not only do magic to a person’s career in a Chinese society but also in many societies that pursue fairness and transparency. My late parents used to say I must get up where I fall on my own. I’m grateful that I’m becoming a better human in each fall in my life. I can’t change biases and misconception in our society about who I am. I can change mine about others. Thank you to my parents.
I am grateful that I’ve found my healthy path to live and learn with a kid’s curiosity. I lost my birth mother but I have reconnected with another mother named Mother Nature since the outbreak of Covid-19. It’s beyond my comprehension why a child’s world can be so pure and simple whereas an adult’s world is so competitive and complicated. Albert Einstein famously said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Rabindranath Tagore also said, “It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple.”
Being simple is what I would like my writing to be. However, the more I learn, the easier I am lost in the complexity of our algorithm-driven world. No wonder it is difficult for me to achieve simple writing. I blame that for the fact that the more educated people are, the harder it is for them to simplify their way of thinking, writing and speaking. The basic skills of human interaction are chipped away by the conveniences that the Internet of Things have brought to us. I often joke with my friends who ask me what is carbon tax and how does it work in China. “You’d need to ask a supercomputer instead of a simpleton like me,” I say. Generally speaking, simple people know how to solve problem easily. Complicated people know how to create problems for themselves.
“When you are not in touch with your feelings it can be hard to distinguish between a healthy attraction and an unhealthy addiction. But if you can get in touch with your childlike qualities, your body will let you know if you are making the right choices and if your feelings are genuine.”
—Dr. Bernie Siegel
What Dr. Siegel has said echoes with the Chinese phrase, “赤子之心,” meaning a pure heart of a newborn baby. I’m grateful that my childlike heart is not dead yet. If the world leaders had a child’s heart to make a decision for the future of their young and unborn citizens, perhaps they will be more liked by their citizens and voters. They will find common ground much bigger than what they are hardwired to believe as an adult. After all, no matter what long-term decision they make today, the results usually won’t occur after their death. If hiring managers had a child’s heart to select talents, perhaps they won’t rely so much more on algorithms and computation than their human curiosity and empathy. If ordinary people like you and me have a child’s heart, perhaps we will be more grateful for what we have, instead of lamenting what we don’t have.
Thanksgiving can happen every day. Be thankful to others lifts me up. I have two videos to share as my gratitude to people who have helped me get through tough times in 2021. Our blue planet is getting warmer, unfortunately. I hope the feeling of human connection is also getting warmer, too. I feel encouraged and motivated when I watch nine-year-old Enael in the video asking good questions to French Climate Ambassador Stéphane Crouzat, and when kids in Egypt started an art project and made music out of recycled waste. Thank you for hanging on with me.
A herd of wandering Asian elephants cross a river using a highway in southwestern China’s Yunnan province on August 8, 2021. Source: The Associated Press.
This June, a herd of wild Asian elephants were spotted wandering in Kunming, the host city of the COP15 on biodiversity in southwestern China. They traveled more than 500 kilometers (approx. 310 miles) northward from a national nature reserve at the border between China and Laos. During those few months, every move that the fifteen wandering elephants took was under close watch by the local authorities and the social media users. If you’re familiar with the giant panda cam at the National Zoo and its viral sensation with the Washingtonians, it’s not hard for you to feel the excitement of Chinese viewers, conservationists and official task forces about the unusual human-wildlife coexistence in a non-enclosure setting.
By this August, residents in Kunming finally could take a deep breath of relief as the herd left urbanized southwestern China, heading for their habitat after a year-long journey. A Chinese official report shows a substantial number of manpower and technologies was deployed in the effort of protecting wandering elephants and human life. They are: 25,000 police and staff employed, 1,500 vehicles, 900 drones, 180 tons of food, and 150,000 people have been evacuated. China’s state-run English-language TV network played an important role in informing the public about wildlife protection with the help of advanced technology and community-based participation and engagement.
The conservation story of the Asian elephants is a dramatic overture to Kunming’s role as a host city of COP15 on diversity. Perhaps the incident also brings the Chinese urban dwellers, who live in the forest of concrete buildings and who are bewildered by wildlife, a great educational opportunity about endangered species. Asian elephants are even more endangered than their African cousins. The biggest threat to their survival isn’t poaching but habitat loss, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
If we think about our childhood, it’s not difficult to find that animals and plants are often main characters in our children’s books or imaginary friends that we would want to make. Zoos are the must-go playgrounds for children. That’s because it’s exciting to see animals especially observing the way they move, communicate and interact. The colorful world of animals and plants mesmerize not only children but adults like me as well. The more I integrate science education into my artistry of writing, the more I identify with the axiom that all of us are primarily made up of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, and a pinch of Genghis Khan. If we learn to appreciate the beauty of Mother Nature and understand humanity’s attachment to Mother Nature is like the power cables to our electronic devices, how could we do harm to her and trample her comfort zones?
From plastic waste to electronic waste, from overconsumption to poor regulatory oversight of Earth’s natural resources, the human-induced environmental change gives rise to the loss of biodiversity. Biodiversity includes not only species that are rare, threatened, or endangered. From humans to organisms such as microbes, fungi, and invertebrates, every living thing is an integral part of biological diversity. Yes, humans are part of this interdependent earth system. Humans rely on biodiversity to survive and our social and economic systems are embedded within the Earth system.
This is the last essay of the COP15 Series, among which I call for a bolder long-term plan in “A 450-Year Strategic Plan” and I also pinpoint the substantial impact of sustained leadership and international cooperation on global wildlife trade in “China Leadership in Sustainability.” I’m enthusiastic about creating an equitable and sustainable world for all living beings. Do you remember in my previous essay I cited neuroscientist Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett’s view on believing is seeing? If you believe in something, you are giving it power over your action. Leveraging education and experience in human development will bring positive results in biodiversity protection.
As a Chinese saying goes, “He who ties the bell has to untie it himself (解鈴還須繫鈴人).” It means the responsibility for solving a problem should fall on the person who created it. To tackle the wicked problem of preventing biodiversity loss, investment-directed education and research for people of all ages at a global level is paramount. In my case study of the Bengal tigers conservation by the World Wildlife Fund-India, local villagers in remote areas that cannot access grid electricity are given incentives to build solar micro-grids to meet their energy needs. Instead of entering the forest to collect fuel wood, agricultural waste and dung, villagers and small businesses can operate after dark with the stable electricity supply from the microgrids. These microgrids also power the streetlights on the forest fringe to deter wildlife from entering villages at night.
Underprivileged people need education and incentives to do the right things to protect wildlife. They also need responsible leaders and empathetic leadership. Here, I find “The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review” illuminating. I’m blessed that I can read and write. As a polyglot, I’m even grateful that I can communicate with great minds from different cultures. It’s education that has changed my life. And I have my social obligation to tell anyone that never overlook the power of education. Learning from a distinguished economist strengthens my belief in my proposed “Mother Nature First, Self Second” principle to make responsible consumer decision.
In fact, classical philosophers from the East and the West somehow share astoundingly similar views on human virtues and ethical cultivation. I think we can apply them to our ethics of biodiversity protection. For instance, if we believe what Aristotle’s virtue theory described that “If we can just focus on being good people, the right actions will follow, effortlessly,” we will behave and act responsibly to meet our existential needs while simultaneously be mindful of our negative impact on the planetary health.
Ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius (4th century BCE) shared similar views on human virtues that “humans have innate but incipient tendencies toward benevolence (仁rén), righteousness (義yì), wisdom (智zhì), and propriety (禮lĭ).” If we believe that we can achieve net zero emissions by 2050, we will put our hearts and souls to make the impossible possible. If we believe that humans should learn to coexist with nature, we will do as what we believe.
Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” In many cases, religious leaders have become environmental influencers, championing nature-based solutions that experts say are crucial to saving the ecosystems that underpin human society. Led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030 is a global call to collective action of restoring damaged and destroyed ecosystems. I am pleased to see many success stories around the world about this faith-based approach. It’s like Bill Gates’ theory of scaling up climate action by using more clean energy-produced goods and services to lower energy innovation costs, a reinforcing feedback loop is evident in biodiversity protection as well. The more success stories we share and learn from, the better and faster we can prevent the loss of biodiversity. The more emphasis on the complementary benefits instead of a competition between humanities education and STEM education, the better human beings we are to maintain a sustainable relationship between humans and wildlife.
Adopting new technologies to scale up desirable outcomes is techno-optimism. There are many deep-rooted socio-economic issues caused by our ancestors that cannot be solved by new technologies alone. Have you read the children’s book “Wild Symphony (2020)” by Dan Brown? It’s a fun book to read and it’s my first time to read a book that requires engagement with my smarter-than-me mobile phone. Readers can listen to the music that played with different music instruments and by different animal characters on their devices. All they need to do is to download a mobile phone application and scan the image in the book. I later learn that this technology is called augmented reality (AR). AR adds digital elements to a live view often by using the camera on a smartphone. If you’re a Snapchat user or a Pokemon game player, you’ve had the AR experience before.
Well, if new technologies can bring back extinct species alive in our reading experience of a book, a debate has already crossed my mind: Will conservationists and wildlife lovers feel encouraged by more people are engaged in human-wildlife education through new technologies? Or will they feel concerned that new technologies in publishing might dismiss the real urgency of restoring the fragile ecosystems through real life conservation experience? It appears to me that whether it’s COP15 on biodiversity or COP26 on climate change, human beings truly need to understand their own species before they can solve the wicked problems thoroughly caused by their own actions, that is, the human activities, a frequently-used term by many scientists and experts. Will Alexander Pope’s “An Essay on Man (1733)” shed light on contemporaries in the Anthropocene?
Sustainable development is also known as sustainability, or eco-development. The term originated from the Brundtland Report (1987), which for the first time defined sustainability as to “meet the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.” Sustainability needs sustained maintenance and commitment. It also needs long-term and mid-term planning. Most importantly, responsible leadership and a “Mother Nature First, Self Second” mindset for consumer behavior changes are necessary.
Diversity in eco-development starts from respect of differences.
As for human impact on biodiversity, China and its role in illicit wildlife trade may jump into many people’s mind. Where there is a market there is a supply chain. In my childhood I saw and visited those markets and restaurants in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau that sold wildlife and food products processed from them. Some wild animals and plants were dead and ready to be made into herbal medicines; others, in particular wild animals, were kept alive in cages and tanks. In many documentary films, including the recent Netflix documentary film “Seaspiracy (2021),” about wildlife trade, those seafood markets in Hong Kong and shark’s fins in Chinese culinary delicacies are a must-have scene. China is often perceived and projected as a bad actor in wildlife protection, at least in the English-speaking world.
As I wrote in my previous op-ed piece, this is the power of storytelling. I also watched some Chinese language documentary films on China’s efforts to protect wildlife. They are very encouraging and well-done. Will the English-speaking audience buy that?
As neuroscientist Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, author of “How Emotions Are Made (2017),” wrote: “People like to say that seeing is believing, but affective realism demonstrates that believing is seeing. The world often takes a backseat to your predictions. (It’s still in the car, so to speak, but is mostly a passenger.) And as you’re about to learn right now, this arrangement is not limited to vision.”
What we believe is a main determinant of what we want to see. Humanity has long believed that we can conquer all obstacles from inclement weather events to wildlife that we believe we can dominate, possess and even abuse. A study shows, the world’s 7.6 billion people represent just 0.01% of all living things on Earth, but since the dawn of civilization, humanity has caused the loss of 83% of all wild mammals and half of plants, while livestock kept by humans abounds.
This is only a snippet of how humans-wildlife relation has been developed. The human-human relation is even more complex, partly because humans have emotions, language and memory. Like new technologies, emotions, language, and memory are double-edged swords. If we disrespect, and in some occasions even despise, differences between two individuals, nasty languages and hostile sentiments ensue. That’s how spiteful and fear-based thinking is formed and leave a mark in our memory. Domination is a way to demonstrate and confirm to the actor that she can conquer her fear.
The actors of protecting wildlife are humans. Not animals. Animals don’t negotiate with their enemies before they fight to the death for food source, habitats and mates. So, if the actors of protecting wildlife are humans, can these actors coexist and respect differences between one another?
If we can tell the difference of an apple from a pear, that’s only because an apple looks and tastes very differently from a pear. Recognizing differences allows us to cherish diversity and appreciate our individual uniqueness. And our fear-based thinking will likely to be reduced and our emotions and memory are happier because of our acceptance of kindness, gratitude and love.
If you believe me, China is like any nation on its learning curve about biodiversity protection. China is learning from its mistakes and making amends for the loss of biodiversity. Why don’t the Western countries embrace their values for transparency and accountability by welcoming China, instead of isolation, to constructive dialogues? Stoking fear only worsens tensions and slows progress on interest-based negotiation and collective impact. The basic rule of thumb in literary writing—“show, don’t tell”—may shed light on building a transparent and accountable international community. It is worrisome that the U.S. hit new low in global corruption index in 2020, according to Transparency International. How to rebuild trust in a human-to-human or country-to-country relationship? Show, don’t tell. When watching the U.S. is confronting the greatest strain to its fundamental cohesion since the Civil War, how would China not be (overly) assertive to its clampdown on tech firms and wealth inequality? Show, don’t tell. The comparison of responsible leadership between two huge developing countries, China and India, is evident, in terms of eradicating extreme poverty, curbing industrial pollution, and lower the cost of solar energy worldwide.
After all, as Bill Gates and other environmentalists from the developing countries have pointed out, rich countries have outsourced emissions-heavy manufacturing to poor ones. Desperate people do desperate things. Poor people are less likely to join wildlife trafficking if their livelihoods are stable and rewarding. Most importantly, if they receive education opportunities equal to what their counterparts receive in the rich countries and have incentives to live sustainably in their own countries, they will understand the importance of protecting their land, water, air, and wildlife biodiversity. Unfortunately, when you suffer from poverty and hunger, you have to compromise and even sacrifice yourself for unethical affairs. In this case, when China first started its economic reform between the 1980s and 2000s, the country was poverty-stricken, especially in remote rural areas where wildlife trafficking thrived. China produced a lot of goods and services for the rich countries at an affordable price, but also paid the hefty price for today’s deterioration of the environment including the destruction of ecosystems and the extinction of wildlife. India is another example for this environmental sacrifice for economic growth. Respect the differences and examine the upstream as well as the downstream of the supply chain in wildlife trade.
Sustained leadership and cooperation may slow down the Sixth Mass Extinction.
Some scientists believe a sixth mass extinction of biodiversity has now begun. The previous five times in the long history of life on Earth were caused by massive volcanic eruptions, deep ice ages, meteorite impacts and clashing continents. A study suggests only 3% of the world’s land remains ecologically intact with healthy populations of all its original animals and undisturbed habitat.
Scientific studies show four of nine planetary boundaries have been crossed as a result of human activity. They are: climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land-system change, and altered biogeochemical cycles (phosphorus and nitrogen). Two of these, climate change and biosphere integrity, are what the scientists call “core boundaries.” In other words, human civilizations are facing unprecedented risks unless we respect the planetary boundaries and pivot to a safe operating space for humanity at a global level.
In the U.S. outdated policies are not the only problem to scale up sustainability efforts. The election cycle in the federal, state and local level creates uncertainty for long-term research and development. If you ask any civil servant, they’d tell you public policies are apolitical and meant to be taken effect for a very long time. They’d also tell you they are not politicians either. But from an outsider’s perspective, how sustainable is it for a sitting president to ban a number of environmental and trade policies and then have his successor revive some of them? The back-and-forth, back-and-forth do-and-undo policies are like child’s play. And it takes so much time and taxpayers’ dollars to go through the court system to “right the wrong” in a metaphorical way made by the previous administration. Not to mention that the polarization of lawmakers and political appointees not only runs deep in the legislative branch but also in the judicial branch. Trust building and restoration seems to be as urgent a need as fixing the biodiversity crisis on the Planet. Time will run out soon to rescue endangered species in current inhabitable ecosystems.
Responsible leadership is evident in China’s response to the Covid pandemic. Nationalistic public trust in the central government has never been higher after the US-China trade war kicked off and after the release of senior Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.
When the world is keeping distance from China, it only makes China more determined to develop its own technological independence, business ecosystem and oversight mechanisms. Look at China’s space exploration. Had former Congressman Frank Wolf of Virginia not further strengthened the US-China space isolation by rejecting China’s request for international partnership for a space station, would the history of China’s rapid development in space programs have been rewritten? Does the universe need another powerful space polluter?
If I were a fish in the sea or a bird in the sky, I would definitely endorse the scientific findings by human species suggesting the U.S. military is a bigger polluter than as many as 140 countries. And the powerful exercises at sea harm marine mammals. Not to mention how much natural resources are exploited and destroyed to supply the increased demand of military buildup and space expeditions from the two world powers. Where is the human respect for planetary boundaries in space exploration for education and scientific research only?
Wild animals and plants don’t know borders. If they’re found in ecosystems in which they don’t belong, they would be considered as invasive species by humans. It’s a myth to me that humans can accept global trade, and that nature provides us with goods and services, yet humans can’t accept invasive species. Does that mean the goods and services provided by foreign natural resources are invasive?
The same issue comes with water management. Where there is water there are living things. Water also doesn’t know boundaries. Can you say clearly the school of fish swimming everywhere in the South China Sea is Chinese or the Philippines’ property? If the upstream of the Mekong River gets polluted, it would impact the flora and fauna downstream. How should we reduce humans-wildlife and human-human conflicts and turn differences into opportunities for sustained cooperation?
For a very long time, I’ve been puzzled why the U.S. doesn’t impose American values on Palestine, Cuba, Venezuela, Azerbaijan and North Korea, for instance, as forcefully as it has on China. In recent years, out of curiosity I tune into pro-Taiwan independence rhetoric. I notice that the so-called China Hands and top advisors about China affairs are likely to be Taiwan sympathizers and China dissidents. The biography of John Service in the McCarthy era sheds light on today’s anti-China sentiment in the post-truth politics. There is history to support and even amplify such beliefs that China is an untrustworthy global market player with big aggressive ambition. Do you see the words I use here? Untrustworthy, global, aggressive, and ambition. It takes a bad actor to know another bad actor.
The anti-communism sentiment of today’s Cuban immigrants and their descendants in Florida, who hold a grudge against a person or a group of people for generations, is similar. Their brains have been hardwired and even reinforced by fear. That fear is familiar to me but as an immigrant, I learn to free myself with forgiveness and worship my cultural heritage while respect others. China is not Cuba, nor the former Soviet Union. Respect differences and embrace diversity. The apple-pear analogy is applicable here. Even under the name of apple, there are many types of apples, aren’t there?
The isolation of China is no different from the isolation of North Korea (even though N.K. chooses to be isolated). The free world is living in fear all the time because no one knows what the isolated country’s next move will be. Transparency and accountability are the effective way to manage nature capital at the global level. And the free world needs to include diversity of governance, political values, beliefs and ideologies in order to reduce the risks of conflicts in all forms.
China is a huge country that also holds very different values from the U.S.-led Western values. Straddling two cultures, I find the expression “Western values” confusing. If the U.S. and its allies around the globe take pride in these values such as democracy, individualism, Christianity, capitalism and human rights, shouldn’t these values be labeled as universal values? Japan and South Korea are not Western countries. If the phrase “Western values” indicate its origin of the ancient Greeks and Romans, modern scholars and writers cannot find such idea as “Western values” in the thought of the ancient Greeks, the traditions of Roman law or New Testament moral ideals. In fact, the expression “Western values” does not appear in English until the middle of the 20th century. China embraces democracy and individualism that are not widely recognized by the world. The word “democracy” is derived from the Greek dēmokratia, which means “rule by the people.” China and the U.S. have different interpretations of the “will of the people,” don’t they?
The positive note is China is a nation that is willing to learn from other advanced countries. There are more translated works from foreign languages in Chinese language reading communities than the number of translated works from Chinese language in the U.S.-led English reading societies. Sustained US-China cooperation to protect wildlife will be as monumental to future generations as launching a spaceship to an unknown planet. The international community is facing a trust crisis. The clock is ticking.
Take a pause, and ask yourself: at this minute how many endangered species are on the brink of extinction? How many more coral reefs are dying out? How many whales and deep sea creatures can escape illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing?
Some silver linings in China’s efforts to protect biodiversity bring hopes.
Just days before COP15, China published its first White Paper on biodiversity, making biodiversity conservation a national strategy. The government-led long-term conservation mechanisms will be facilitated by enterprises with public participation [English | Chinese]. As China is transitioning to a data economy at a faster pace than that in the U.S., data transparency will make the global wildlife trade more difficult. A Chinese study shows public attitudes in China have shifted substantially to favor stricter regulations on the wildlife trade and a willingness to stop consuming wildlife.
China’s wildlife consumption ban was enacted in February 2020, soon after the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan. Public awareness and support of wildlife conservation is for sure more noticeable and still on the rise compared to the grassroots momentum in my childhood. According to the White Paper, the Chinese authorities aim to provide ecological protection funding for Southeast Asia, Africa and elsewhere. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) is a good leader in combatting wildlife crime. If the US-China relation is serious about joint effort to protect wildlife, China will learn a lot from the FWS to improve governance and accountability, and vice versa.
Time is running against us for climate action and protecting endangered species. We should not isolate any country from international cooperation. The longer we keep distance from one another, the more fearful we become. The more fearful we become, the more threatening moves we will do to others to secure a false sense of security. The only solution is to make peace with your neighbors and your enemies. (Note: I believe “enemy” is a word for the animal world. In my world of inclusion, I follow what William Butler Yeats once said, “There are no strangers here; only friends you haven’t yet met.”) Protecting wildlife is also an art of making peace between human wants and the rights of nature. Wildlife doesn’t need human beings but human beings need to learn to coexist, but not dominate, wildlife. That’s the essence of sustainability.
“Protecting biodiversity is just as important and critical to the survival of mankind as stabilizing the climate. Species protection and climate are interdependent.“
—Klaus Töpfer, former executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (1998-2006)
It is estimated that 1.6 billion disposable masks found in the ocean in 2020 will take 450 years to degrade. (Source: Visual Capitalist)
If you believe the Covid-19 pandemic is an illuminating lesson for humanity, if you find solidarity in the just released “São Paulo Declaration on Planetary Health” in the Lancet, one of world’s oldest medical journals, congratulations! You’ve progressed. Your responsible consumer behavior change to embrace “Mother Nature First, Self Second” will likely be remembered by future generations as one of the best case studies for evolutionary anthropology 2.0 in the Anthropocene, the age of mankind. For example, I am working my way to add the prefix “eco-” to many English words that I know. I remember nearly two years ago in my op-ed piece “Unintended Rewilding” I had written this foresight:
“COVID-19 is a test run for humanity to survive in a virtual-dependent world, e-clinic, e-grocer, e-library, e-market, e-school, e-office, e-recital, e-trade, e-cinema, as many e- affixes you can think of.”
Now, I would suggest every human being who can read and write put the prefix “eco-” before every noun or gerund that you deem you cannot live without. I begin to think about eco-reading, eco-travel, eco-clothing, eco-banking, eco-produce, eco-dairy, eco-kitchen, eco-shampoo, eco-municipal waste, eco-electronic waste, and my vocabulary goes on and on. While the world is anticipating COP26 in Glasgow (Oct 31-Nov 12) to tackle climate crisis and scale up finance and international regulatory cooperation, another COP (short for Conference of the Parties) may require more urgent attention from humanity.
This fall (Oct 11-15), Kunming, China, hosts the COP15 on biological diversity. This major United Nations biodiversity summit has been delayed three times due to the pandemic, and it will be held in two phases. Governments will meet face-to-face in the second session between April 25-May 8, 2022 in Kunming to set this decade’s targets for the global biodiversity framework. Why not go bolder? How about a 450-year plan?
A study shows an estimated 1.6 billion disposable face masks, which is equivalent to roughly 5,500 tons of plastic pollution, ended up in our oceans in 2020. It will take more than four centuries for the single-use plastic to decompose in the ocean, hence the need for a very long-term strategic plan. The Covid pandemic has not ended yet. We are still wearing masks. Machines on the mask production lines are still churning. That means, we will continue to produce more disposable face masks on a daily basis. For the sake of building a sustainable future for humans and non-human species, why not start making a 450-year strategic plan for your bloodline, philanthropic foundations, small and medium enterprises, supply chains, Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) metrics, public policies, and even diplomatic ties? (My fingers are crossed for Kiribati and other low-lying island countries alike to remain on the satellite map four centuries later!)
When we talk about diversity in 2021, especially in the U.S., we immediately associate the word with race and ethnicity. But to this amateur linguist, diversity means more than that. As a legal immigrant, I’m still learning American culture every day. I don’t understand why institutions and companies to which I submitted my resume have updated their official websites these months with images of African American professionals to highlight workplace diversity, but there is little change, to my knowledge, in terms of their hiring process and business practices. Even under the big racial pool of African Americans, there are mixed-races, first-generation immigrants, and U.S. nationals whose ancestors come from different parts of the world. Where is the representation of other minority groups on these websites? In environmental sustainability, we have a word called “greenwashing,” meaning disinformation and misinterpretation by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image. When the word “diversity” is misused and abused by apathetic organizations, may I use “Diversity Washing” to label these organizations?
When we talk about biological diversity, we must integrate the long-standing experience from the indigenous peoples in humanity-centered design. This is my rationale open for discussion, and perhaps criticism, too. First and foremost, comprising less than 5% of the world’s population, indigenous people protect 80% of global biodiversity. Unfortunately, they’re also one of the most vulnerable groups to the adverse effects of climate crisis. They need new technologies and public and private investments in nature-based solutions and education so as to help them get out of poverty and restore biodiversity in order to live more sustainably. They have beautiful folk tales about Mother Nature to mobilize and incentivize urbanites from a-tale-of-two-cities-like municipalities and forgetful suburbanites like me to build community-based climate resilience.
Science tells us what to do, but arts make us want to do. The power of storytelling—you can’t ignore the significance of the humanities and yet craftspeople are often given cold shoulder by STEM-focused employers. Perhaps that explains why we rely on AI to communicate with us for we’re losing our linguistic intelligence and free will. I have plenty of firsthand experience on this topic that I’m afraid I won’t go deep dive here. (Reading Recommendation: “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (2010)” by Nicholas Carr.)
Second, we have plenty of unsustainable e-waste. I’d suggest new technologies or ESG disclosure standards to include a criterion of managing the existing and future electronic waste. As for creating technological design specialized for biodiversity conservation and engagement, why not consult the indigenous peoples and bring their expertise into innovation labs? Why not scale up ecomimicry in indigenous resource management?
We’re in a data economy as if we’ve already drowned in a pool of data, and we’re still insatiable for more data to persuade ourselves to act or not. Although I’m a techno skeptic, I’m not against technocrats like Bill Gates who propels industries and markets to pivot to net zero emissions by 2050. The alignment of global climate action and leadership is what COP26 has a high hope to tackle. It’s also a reason that I think ordinary folks like you and I will benefit from having an individual sustainability plan for a longer term. A 450-Year Strategic Plan for biodiversity conservation and waste management is a necessity, given the fact that we can’t wean away completely from fossil fuels for a while. (Reading Recommendation: “How to Avoid A Climate Disaster (2021)” by Bill Gates.)
Gates encourages us to use more clean energy-produced goods and services to drive down research and development costs for clean energy innovation. However, as much as we have high hopes for new technologies, if we don’t manage our electronic waste more responsibly, our climate action is counter-productive. We’re living in a finite world. Water and energy are intertwined. Energy innovation can’t develop without the use of water. Even the process of recycling needs energy and water. Don’t you see why indigenous peoples are fighting for their arable land and pristine water? Do you know Singapore has launched the world’s first nationwide e-waste management system?
Gates used simple language in his book to explain climate solutions and challenges ahead. I applaud his visionary leadership and lifelong passion for charity. My study of indigenous peoples in sustainable living led me to Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, a leading indigenous environmental scientist. I find Gates’ focus on philanthropy represents, in a broad sense, Dr. Kimmerer’s “Gift Economy,” in which “gratitude and reciprocity are the currency of a gift economy.”
If my proposed principle of “Mother Nature First, Self Second” is applicable, if we accept the concepts (rewiring our hardwiring brains is needed!) that by doing more “eco-” consumer behavior changes, we add value to the goods and services in basic economics, perhaps restoring the loss of biodiversity is truly an opportunity to create a love-based economic mechanism, as opposed to the scarcity-based thinking derived from basic economics. If we embrace diversity, why not adopt Dr. Kimmerer’s gift economy alongside with the entrenched practices of free market economy? They serve two different purposes of reinforcing feedback loops. For rich countries and advanced developing countries like China, it’s about time to embrace love-based gift economy and eco-friendly foreign investments. China’s pledge to stop funding the construction of new coal-fired power projects overseas definitely is a “game-changer.”
If humanity can come to terms with our own devil of greed and dominance exacerbated by irreversible biodiversity loss, COP15 could be another game-changer for international cooperation and making amends for the “tragedy of commons,” an economic term to describe individuals with access to a shared resource (also called “a common”) act in their own interest and, in doing so, ultimately deplete the resource. Indigenous peoples have taught me the seven-generation stewardship which urges the current generation of humans to live and work for the benefit of the seventh generation into the future. A 450-Year Strategic Plan is no longer a topic for science fiction writers. It’s also for you and me to plan, act and achieve self-efficacy. A Spanish company, Bionicia, has found a sustainable solution to address the face masks disposal problem that will take 450 years for the ocean to decompose. Welcome aboard to a diverse world that embraces love-based diversity but not washing it away with lip service.
“Everything that we have now is the result of our ancestors who handed forth to us our language, the preservation of the land, our way of life and the songs and dances. So now we will maintain those and carry those on for future generations.”
If you’re like me following U.S. President George Washington’s footstep to experiment with the process of close study and imitation of the teachers of your choice, if you feel encouraged as much as I do by a famous Chinese saying that goes: “With three men walking together, there is always a teacher among them.(三人行，必有我师焉。),” you might be able to turn your tedious work day into a delicious one like a feast for your brain. I don’t need to agree with everything and anything professed by my teachers. As Bruce Lee once said, “Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless and add what is specifically your own.”
Encounter 1
A total coincident allows me to come across a senior official’s name in my news reading. His remark sticks in my head like a piece of gum on the sole of my shoe. I’m upset by the message but not the speaker. He said the U.S. federal government spends more on diabetes treatment each year—$160 billion—than the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s annual budget.
As a forward-thinking foodie, I begin to think if human health is a biologically and chemically self-regulated equilibrium, what we take in from foods and drinks should play a fundamental role in determining what sort of body waste discharged from our body. For a normal person, if we are on meds in a third of our lifespan, given the fact that we live longer now, we’re literally putting an external force to maintain this equilibrium of human health, disrupting the self-regulated mechanism. There’re always exceptions. For example, some medications are necessary to save lives due to natural causes such as birth defects and hereditary health issues. But healthy diets are the best medicines to humans, I don’t think medical professionals will disagree with me. And where does our food come from? The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a map to answer this question. And the World Resources Institute presents a colorful menu of solutions for global citizens like you and me.
So, the senior U.S. official who made that sticky remark is Tom Vilsack, current Secretary of Agriculture under the Biden Administration. He understands profoundly the rural problems. To my surprise, he’s an empathic Yinzer, a nickname for someone from Pittsburgh. (Speaking of cultural identity, because of postgraduate education I identify myself as an educated Yinzer, too. So was Rachel Carson, our famous Chatham U. alumna. Aha, the world suddenly becomes smaller virtually.)
Encounter 2
“What you’re measuring is what you should not be measuring because you got the wrong model. So evidence-based policies are all very good. But evidences are built on wrong models, and that is really misleading.”
—Sir Partha Dasgupta, Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Cambridge
I remember the first chapter in Henry David Thoreau’s masterwork, “Walden (1854),” was dedicated to economy. When I read it the first time, I didn’t quite understand why the author would structure his book this way. Why does economy play an important role in our life? Last year I re-read the book with sustainable development and climate crisis in mind, I had a clearer understanding. I was a witness to scarcity, one of the keywords in the definition of economics. Just as described in many online resources for dummies, economics is the study of how humans make decisions in the face of scarcity. Anything and everything in a market is implicitly defined as scarce. Scarcity is a concept created by humans, and of course, the measurement of scarcity is based on human wants. In Thoreau’s simplistic world with Mother Nature, the author outlined “the necessaries of life for man” including food, shelter, clothing, and fuel. He wrote: “. . . for not till we have secured these are we prepared to entertain the true problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success.”
But how do we secure these “necessaries of life for man”? Economists understood a long time ago that we are living in a finite world. According to Sir Partha Dasgupta, a distinguished British economist, the things we want to know have not been measured. When our goods and services are measurable, they become manageable. Sadly, Sir Dasgupta said humans have neglected the whole class of goods and services in our diverse ecosystems. Our time is short, both in the sense of human lifespan and of meeting greenhouse gas emissions goal set in the Paris Climate Agreement.
Can we simultaneously reduce consumption and minimize waste? There is great potential of reducing food waste. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency provides good tips on its website how motivated individual can do-it-yourself to practice a trendy lifestyle of reduce-reuse-recycle. And below the video is about a thought-provoking dialogue between that eminent economist and a religious leader. Sir Partha Dasgupta from the University of Cambridge and Dr. Rowan Williams share their perspectives on poverty, natural capital and the climate crisis. This is where I’m introduced to a growing economic theory called ecological economics.
Personally, if I want to develop self-reliance, understanding how our society works economically is of importance. Sustainability has three main pillars—economic, social and environmental. No better time than now that we need to study, formally and informally, ecological economics to troubleshoot unsustainable practices, including changing consumer behavior, in these three interconnected domains.
Globally, the public has misunderstood that economics mainly involves money and financial instruments. But I can tell you based on my limited reading, when politics, philosophy and economics come together, they’re like three resourceful teachers who can inform and guide us to develop self-reliance. I may be biased but I think the increased focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) is too narrow to define what science truly is. Do you know political science is a science, so is economics? Both of them are social science dealing with different, but oftentimes overlapping, systems and relationships between individuals and societies. My earlier posting about “Reimaging A Crisis” explains why it’s important to apply systems thinking to understand the wicked problem such as climate change.
Encounter 3
The internet has made my virtual learning possible. I wish more underprivileged children and adults around the world would have the luxury of the same learning opportunity. Both in China and the U.S. I’ve met people who I regard as teachers, and who received little formal education. Several teachers of mine who don’t have advanced degrees fare even better than those with a PhD. To my knowledge, there is a longstanding stigma around vocational and non-traditional education in these two big countries. If tenure is the ultimate career goal for academic professionals with advanced degrees, how competitive it would be for many to-be and post doctorate degree candidates? While the human capital in America’s higher education is so expensive, how can domestic youths afford higher education without the need to pay off loans after graduation? How can fund-chasing universities not suffer financially during the Covid pandemic due to the significant reduction of the number of rich foreign students on their campuses? Isn’t this an economic phenomenon of scarcity?
According to Article 26 in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, education is a human right. Education should not become a financial burden for everyone and a privilege marker for those who can afford it. As the internet is transforming the fields of medicine and education, the universal call for free access to wireless internet will increase. An inclusive labor market in white-collar industries should welcome both Book Smarts and Street Smarts from all walks of life. I respect Book Smarts but also admire self-taught Street Smarts, starting from our founding father President George Washington.
Since I’ve introduced solutions journalism to shed light on the innovative industry of turning waste into treasure, I can’t finish this article without mentioning these three success stories from different parts of the world.
Kuwait — the country has one of the world’s largest landfill for old vehicle tires. It recently hired a recycling contractor to clean up the dump site by turning the used tires into consumer products such as flooring tiles. Scrap tires are a major environmental problem worldwide due to the chemicals they can release.
Mexico — in this video we’ll see how Styrofoam, which is made from polystyrene (聚苯乙烯) plastic, is being recycled economically. Styrofoam is approximate 95 percent air. This makes the substance ideal for use as a packing material.
Hong Kong — This video hit home. I miss my Cantonese food culture. We’ll see a local recycling startup to collect used Styrofoam boxes in a seafood market. An on-site machine in a truck can melt the Styrofoam instantly by removing the air from the boxes. By reducing the size of the bulky white stuff, the truck can collect more used boxes in a single trip. The resulting liquids will be shipped to a recycling facility, distilled, and made into picture frames and computer mouses. Nothing is more exciting than seeing a green hope for the future.
As a movie fan, I normally won’t pick to see well-received franchise movies like the Marvel series or the classic Bond movies. I know I will catch up these movies when I am on a plane flying across the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean. They are my anxiolytic meds on long-distance flights. (I have terrible in-flight experience with domestic U.S. airlines. I won’t torture you with my story.) But with the Covid pandemic in sight and my uncertainty about who will provide me with paid holidays, I can only dream about my bucket list of international travel destinations. Filled with exuberance and expectation, I watched in theater the latest Marvel movie, “Shang-Chi and The Legend of Ten Rings (2021).” If you know the Chinese language, you might have figured out my transliteration of “Shang-Chi (尚氣),” meaning “noble energy” in English. Shang-Chi is the short form of the movie title and the protagonist’s Chinese name. Thanks to the gracious offer of free admission tickets from my family, this movie buff who is experimenting with the concept of mindful conservatism had a chance to dream big and nobly with the big screen this fall.
The movie “Shang-Chi” is Marvel Studio’s first East Asian superhero film. To my surprise, it smashed the Labor Day box office record over the first weekend of its release. Its success reminds me of two other American superhero films—“Black Panther (2018)” and “Wonder Woman (2017).” Both of them from cast to cinematography have sated minority groups’ appetite for relatable cultural identity in popular culture. Precisely, the African American culture and gender equity. Cultural identity is a powerful concept because we are born with it and we spend our entire life searching for a sense of belonging which is greatly influenced by cultural identity. As a result of our nonlinear life circumstances and external uncertainties, our feeling for that sense of belonging changes over time.
In my case, after I move to America, my understanding about American everyday life is constantly in conflict with what I used to learn from American expats in China and what I was told by the Chinese society. And this internal conflict has intensified in the past two years. Climatic disaster induced by human activities, US-China trade war, the Covid pandemic, China’s successive clampdown on social media and Chinese academics, I witnessed all these historical events unfolding from a safe distance. My cultural identity of a first-generation immigrant from China is even under question. Who am I? Why am I here? In my view, the usually scary topics—war, weather and Washington—that would frighten Wall Street investors have their Chinese counterpart as well. Who says the U.S. and China are not in some sort of war? Who can deny China’s hefty economic losses and losses of life caused by natural disasters this year? Who doesn’t agree that the war-like pandemic has changed our everyday life significantly? Today’s China is steering farther away from the one-of-a-kind, world-leading splendor of arts and culture in the 8th century Tang dynasty, a true epic of Chinese noble energy.
There is a reason behind my surprise by the good reception of the movie “Shang-Chi.” Disney’s live-action film “Mulan (2020)” was a flop, partly because it was released online during the Covid pandemic. But the deteriorating US-China relation is partly to blame. If you ask any civilians in China or in America, a large number of them will tell you they’re not interested in politics. Nevertheless, they’re greatly influenced willy-nilly by the politicized opinions disseminated by spiteful people and by machines that are programmed by spiteful masterminds. It’s saddened to see the good work that the officials of both countries are trying to achieve to make peace and promote cooperation is sabotaged by self-interest instigators. They are comparable to the evil Dweller-in-Darkness in the movie “Shang-Chi.” By the depiction of classical English literature, statesmen and diplomats were admirable professions with noble energy. Where is this trait embodied in today’s American elected officials?
A scene in “Shang-Chi” left a deep impression on me. When the Dark Gate to the evil Dweller-in-Darkness’s world was about to be sealed off by Wenwu, father of the protagonist Shang-Chi, the people of the Ten Rings who were led by Wenwu and their opponent, the villagers of Ta Lo, agreed to join forces to fight the minions that fled from Dweller-in-Darkness’s world. I’m not sure if I’m influenced by, or even wary of, our time of political correctness. That impressive scene triggered the peacemaking neurons in my brain, and I somehow related the message to an ambitious and yet amiable prospect of US-China cooperation to fight against their mutual enemies—the Covid pandemic and adverse effects of climate change. Will my imagination invigorated by noble energy be put out by unimaginative toxicity of the anti-US sentiment?
Cultural identity can unify people but it can also divide people. Our offices, churches and social media groups are popular locales for the formation and solidification of various cultural identities. There is some truth that when you’re in a profession long enough, your temperament is influenced by your occupation and work environment. An athletic coach may not sit through an official’s long-winded speech. A librarian may not stand the noise from the trading floor in NY Stock Exchange. If you are a political person, everything you see is prone to be politicized. This is how some statesmen survive in a dog-eat-dog, less-reported work environment. In China, the increasing pressure from the censors on creative art professionals is a death sentence to a culture group that advocates nonviolent freedom of expression.
After I pivoted to the field of sustainable development, I noticed the gradual change of my perception to become more holistic and healthful. Have I found my sense of belonging in my newfound profession? Am I developing a new roadmap in my brain for neuroplasticity, the ability of neural networks in my brain to make new connections? Like acquiring a new language, practice makes perfect. The more often I practice mindful conservatism, the more likely that I make sound judgment about the environmental impact of my consumption on the market economy. I compare this positive, minute change to the transformative noble energy.
The Asian stereotypes remain in “Shang-Chi” but it’s the first step for Hollywood film producers to connect with a minority group. This is why breaking boundaries matters. And the relatively positive review about this movie speaks for itself. The saying—“If it bleeds, it leads”—is a formula for many American reporters. That is, if a story involves a brutal death or conflict, it is likely to get higher ratings. Sensationalizing stories of drama and violence is like sowing salt on the wound of the victims. I find it rude to disrespect the cultural identity of your subject matter, whether it is an individual or a collective entity. An accusatory tone in news reporting about China is not uncommon. Sadly, Chinese state media and their cyber supporters are following the footstep of some American counterparts who incite distrust and hatred among innocent people. I can’t wait for a sequel of “Shang-Chi” to calm me with more noble energy. The Chinese music in the movie is beautiful. Together with amazing visual effects, sound effects, plot, costume, I see why I’d have chosen this film if I were on a plane, strapped in a cramped seat in the herd class of the plane and accompanied with nonstop humming of the plane engine. I had a fantastic ride of noble energy in the theater.
These days people are suspicious of incoming calls on their cellphones. Unless the number is registered in your phone book or you’re notified beforehand that you’ll be reached by phone at a certain time of the day, many people, I’m not surprised to learn, will ignore phone calls from a stranger. Recently, I missed such a phone call. To my surprise, the unknown caller left a voice message. So I was curious to retrieve the voice message. Out came a half-hearted, stiff male voice, saying “Sorry, you did not reveal yourself to be human, goodbye.”
It does sound creepy. Even now when I relive that moment, I still feel goosebumps. But I was intrigued by the misstatement. How can I prove it wrong? Well, under the influence of a rational but curious mind, I traced back the phone number with the help of the powerful search engine spelt with the capital letter G. (No need for me to advertise this tech giant for free by spelling out its name.) I found the full version with a female voice of the voice message originated from the same phone number. If you want to hear, click here. If I’m not human, I shouldn’t have felt goosebumps, should I?
If I’m not human, I won’t be vulnerable to visible diseases and disasters and hidden post-disaster mental trauma. But hold that thought. Our applications and software in the Internet of Things (IoT) are also vulnerable to bugs and cybersecurity threats. These implications are no small costs financially, psychologically and socially. Do we need to buy health insurance for the IoT like we do for our bodies and minds? Will the insurers be responsible for the lifecycle of the IoT in which insurees—both consumers and manufacturers—have incentives to participate in a circular economy? After all, a circular economy is to achieve economic growth by eventually decoupling from resource consumption.
In my lifetime I may only experience the partial decoupling between economic growth and materials, but I’m living in the golden period of this transition that some historians call the “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” or in the belligerent pundits’ view, the early stage of an ongoing world war that is dominated by cyber and finance. I’m not an expert of war affairs. However, my reading of bits and pieces of “The Art of War (孫子兵法),” an ancient Chinese classic about military treatise dating from roughly 5th century BC, informs myself about a fact that contemporary mortals not only fail to apply the essence of this classic work and alike to modern life and livelihood, but also are slow to modernize our classical view, which is passed down by our ancestors without being examined and refined by state-of-the-art science. Haven’t you heard of a saying that humans’ brains are hardwired?
“Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting. (是故百戰百勝，非善之善也；不戰而屈人之兵，善之善者也。)”
—Sunzi, “The Art of War” | 摘自《孙子兵法·谋攻篇》
Indeed, according to neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, the human brain wires itself to the social reality it finds itself in. This ability is one of the most important evolutionary advantages humans have as a species. However, Dr. Barrett also warns that every individual bears some responsibility for others because your action shapes other people’s concepts and behaviors. In neurological sense, we create the environment that turns genes on and off to wire other people’s brains, including the brains of the next generation.
So should I feel flattered because the robo call said I didn’t reveal myself to be human? That means I’m not restricted to human physiological limits and the hardwiring nature of a human brain. But since I can write coherently with empathy, I know this is a false presumption. Furthermore, my systems thinking enables me to visualize scenarios of the future more accurately. My op-ed series about the Covid-19 pandemic three months ago seems to have presented a valid caveat. It’s a known fact that we cannot minimize the adverse effects of the pandemic without a concerted effort from all nations around the world. The non-vaccinated herd immunity only makes our goal of ending the pandemic farther and more complex. Last Monday (August 30), the World Health Organization added a new coronavirus variant to its watchlist of “variants of interest.” The Mu variant, also known as B.1.621, was first found in Columbia. It is reported that the Mu variant has been detected more than 39 countries and it possesses a cluster of mutations that may be less susceptible to the immune protection provided by the Covid vaccines.
I’m also, perhaps, a human of antiquity. I take pleasure in writing cursive letters and reading books in three dimensions. That is, I prefer turning the pages, jump chapters, highlight sentences, and write notes in a bundle of bound pages that is protected by a cover. If I want to be a better human, I need to learn to love others like I love myself. Love Mother Nature as if she’s a selfless human with love. Reflecting on the blessing of Martin Luther King that:
“Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.”
I’m inviting you to a free concert for all global citizens this September. Check out here for details. This global event reminds me of the bestselling pop song in the 1980s. If you were a little human like me back then, you must have heard this song called “We Are the World.” Fighting the Covid pandemic and climate crisis, we, the human race, have never felt so strongly and urgently that “we are the world, we are the children. [. . .] We’re saving our own lives. It’s true we’ll make a better day, just you and me.”
——
(***This piece of writing marks the 100th piece in this op-ed column since its inception online. I’ve never expected that I could regularly share my ideas with the public. Oftentimes I prefer writing to and for myself like a hobby. I’m indebted to my family and several friends whom I’ve never met. They encourage me to write with my shoshin (初心), a beginner’s mind. Most importantly, I’ve never expected that my writing can influence prospective employers to whom I submitted my resume to modify their websites, online programs and new job postings. I wasn’t an ideal candidate for them but I was at least once shortlisted. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been easy for me to spot the similarities in diction between their website literature and my op-ed writing. Pardon my linguistic sensitivity and analytical specificity.
That said, the best reward for a volunteer writer like myself is to practice my communication skills in writing while helping others. Your success is my success. This sentence may sound trite but I’ve said this to a few acquaintances including my former colleagues and classmates. And now I say (write) the same to you, who find my writing informative and inspiring. If you’re interested in brainstorming with me virtually, would you like to connect me via LinkedIn? Sustainable development needs sustainable professional friendship as well. Your career will give me a new perspective. (Who knows? We might be living in the same neck of the woods, I’d love to invite you to my house for tea.) Thank you for your support. Please share the sources you learn with the underserved communities and responsible leaders who pledge to make a difference for the better. The more positive change humans make, the better-off the habitats of animals and plants will be. They’ll sustain our food chain and the health of Mother Nature on which we rely.
Writing to me is a journey of soul searching and discovery of my beloved Mother Nature. I read an interesting article in which the author argues that positive psychology is the end of economics. I begin to lean toward this argument because in my view, in order to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3 to ensure health and well-being for all at all ages, human beings must address both material and spiritual inequity. As Robert William Fogel, the Nobel laureate economist once wrote, “Spiritual (or immaterial) inequity is now as great a problem as material inequity, perhaps even greater.” His words echo Viktor Frankl’s remark a half-century earlier. The Austrian neurologist and author of the landmark “Man’s Search for Meaning” said, “People have enough to live, but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning.” Ending on this quote, I’m glad that I’m a socially-conscious-and-environmentally-friendly human being through and through to share this 100th piece with you.***)
“As Arthur C. Clarke has observed: ‘How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is ocean.’ Nearly three-quarters of the Earth’s surface is sea. . .”
—James Lovelock
A year ago I wrote a piece titled “Ocean Love” while I was fascinated by the international Blue Carbon Initiative in my grad school study about sustainable development. A year later, as I read this piece again after a road trip to the Atlantic Ocean, I have more faith in the blue recovery than before. Simply because we human beings can’t survive without healthy oceans. Nevertheless, the oceans of the Earth can exist without us.
The ocean plays a leading role in the Earth’s climate. Warm ocean waters provide the energy to fuel storm systems that provide fresh water vital to all living things. In grade school geography, I’ve learned that about three quarters of the Earth is water, leaving only one quarter as land. Given the fact that our shorelines around the globe are eroding fast and furious and ocean acidification resulting from the burning of fossil fuels is threatening marine biodiversity and our food security, does this ratio still stand today?
The blue recovery, or the blue economy if you’d prefer the World Bank’s term, that aims to restore marine ecosystems and promote the sustainable use of ocean resources is a financial leverage to turn adverse effects of climate change into long-term benefits. For some years both the U.S. and China have boasted their own “blue Silicon Valley”—in Monterey Bay, California and Qingdao, Shandong—dedicated to driving innovation in the two superpowers’ blue economies. In other words, on land we need green recovery; at sea we also need blue recovery. I second Michel Serres, a French philosopher and mathematician’s viewpoint that climate change is an economic issue. Climate action can be viewed as an economic action that requires global standardization with diversity and inclusion in mind.
Taking a layman’s look into China’s green finance policies from renewable energy projects and water treatment plants to waste management facilities and the newly-launched national carbon trading scheme, we cannot disagree that these initiatives are public-private partnership efforts to promote long-term growth, precisely, the economic activities of sustainable development.
Action speaks louder than words. I still remember this line in the script of my undergrad speech contest. Regardless of the effectiveness of these economic actions taken place in China—some may still be in the beta stage while others may have impressed the world, I haven’t seen other emerging markets that might test the waters of green finance have aroused quake-shaking attention to the developed countries like China has.
If China was not the world’s most populous country and one of the world’s top five largest countries in total area, do you think China’s economic development would have as much global impact? The size of a country is like the size of a person. For a small person, he or she has a disadvantage to impress their love interests and future employers in many cultures. Big-size countries tend to have bigger say in global affairs and even get “excused” for not following international rules. For instance, Russia is illegally occupying Ukraine’s Crimea, the U.S. is closing an illegal 20-year war in Afghanistan, and China’s key role in recycling the world’s electronic waste is now shifting to low-income developing countries such as Ghana and Bangladesh. China’s foreign investment includes building coal-fired power plants and exploiting natural resources abroad. Poor countries with unstable governments such as Laos and South Sudan perhaps will never recover from the loss of biodiversity and deforestation. Can poor countries say no to foreign money if they have to monetize natural resources and wildlife excessively?
If history is a lesson for humanity, I can see that humans are taking resources from Mother Nature faster than she can conserve or replace them. With the help of new technologies, humans can exploit natural resources faster in greater amounts. Can we switch the gear to slow down our pace of consumption? Can we manage our nonrenewable resources like we do with our retirement benefits? Can we let Mother Nature take a break from time to time without asking so much from her for providing us goods and services? Can you start from today to reduce, reuse and recycle? Our favorite Sir David Attenborough has narrated the timely documentary film “The Year Earth Changed” about how wildlife responded to a year of global lockdown of 2020.
Many of us who don’t live or work by the sea may think very little about how life-threatening marine litter is to our survival until the time for summer vacation comes or our favorite seafood is sold at a higher price due to scarcity. This summer when I revisited the Atlantic Ocean, I noticed the shoreline had changed. Higher sand dunes were built as a measure to reduce erosion and damage of coastal homes and facilities. I couldn’t find as many of the big seashells as I used to. The sand was so scorching hot that I had to put on my flip-flops instead of walking barefoot when I walk on it.
Marine litter reminds me of a new phrase I learn from reading Donovan Hohn’s investigative nonfiction book “Moby-Duck.” The word is “garbage patches,” meaning the convergence zones in the ocean where currents converge and spiral inward, collecting what’s floating on the surface. Hohn’s book which was published a decade ago revisited an even older environmental case. A massive container ship mishap in 1992 led to 28,000 plastic bath toys lost at sea. The plague of plastic in the ocean is not a new example of humans impact on the environment. In fact, according to marine scientists, one can see concentrated marine debris, mostly plastic, in the most famous garbage patch located in the North Pacific Gyre between Hawaii and California.
Well, are human beings one of, if not the most, polluting living creatures on earth? On land we have unsustainable amounts of electronic waste, at sea we have marine debris, and even in space we have space debris. In economics, there is a central principle called “fungibility,” meaning the ability of a good or asset to be interchanged with other individual goods or assets of the same type. That’s to say, if I can’t get a chocolate ice-cream, I can still get a strawberry one. The powerful Google search engine can provide many alternatives under the keyword “smoking substitutes.” So, with the help of new technologies, if marine debris can become a valuable commodity like a pirate’s treasure chest, will there be more daredevils set sail to these garbage patches? Do not complain we need more data. We’ve already known about how detrimental marine litter is to our food security and marine biodiversity. Can we start from today to stop leaving garbage behind after our seaside vacation? Most important, can we design a mechanism similar to a carbon trading scheme to reinvest and reuse the plastic marine debris?
We often hear the wish that if the big member states of the United Nations can work together on the basis of human and wildlife coexistence to deal with sustainable development issues, small countries like Kiribati in the same grouping of “Vulnerable Member States of the United Nations” will have a fair chance of not only making ends meet but leapfrogging with the help of new technologies into a sustainable economy.
And while these elephant member states are flexing their muscles to decide other small countries’ fate, nature-based solutions to climate change—these are low-cost, big-return investments—will help every community, especially the underserved and vulnerable people to buy time. Above all, if our mind is set to do good deeds for Mother Nature, starting from today you can change your lifestyle to live more healthily and happily. Facing the dual crises—the Covid pandemic and climate change, we all need to be a combat optimist, no?
“The Earth existed without our unimaginable ancestors, could well exist today without us, will exist tomorrow or later still, without any of our possible descendants, whereas we cannot exist without it. Thus we must indeed place things in the center and us at the periphery, or better still, things all around and us within them like parasites.“
Data centers and their electricity use. Source: Nature
Mamma Mia (a hand gesture of frustration). How penetrating technology is in every facet of our life during the Covid pandemic! In China, the rapid change of digital lifestyle is invasive. Without a smartphone, you probably feel like a lost soul in a Chinese city. If the pandemic continues in full force due to the uneven vaccine roll-out around the world, China’s color-based “health code” system that relies on mobile technology and big data may be a tradeoff for global citizens to return to pre-pandemic overseas travel. As I learn to coexist with Covid, will I see the cabin crew created by artificial intelligence in the near future? In fact, the other day when I was using Google Maps, it suddenly occurred to me if I still knew how to read a physical map. Will I be rejected if I enter a store in the U.S. like I have experienced in China because I don’t have a mobile application to pay? Will my American e-lifestyle gradually follow suit?
I see more Amazon Prime trucks than ever on our highways this year. I actually welcome Amazon’s practice to reward its members if they opt for package and delivery consolidation. I’m also thrilled to learn that DHL Express buys 12 electric cargo planes for sustainable aviation. Why doesn’t Uber Eats do the same to encourage returned customers for the same restaurant to recycle takeout plastic containers? Why shouldn’t local governments customize plastic bag taxes to reward constituents and merchants who have reduced the use of plastic bags and impose extra fees on those who refuse to cut back on individual plastic pollution?
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
—Socrates
“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.” (「知之為知之，不知為不知，是知也。」)
—Confucius (孔子)
Thanks to Socrates and Confucius, I have to admit my ignorance of the large electricity consumption of the data centers. A data center stores and shares applications and data. The pandemic is benefiting many hyperscale data center operators as demand for cloud and digital services has skyrocketed. I read an old article about data center electricity use from Nature, a British scientific journal, and listened to its audio report (see below).
My takeaway is while we’re doing what we can to lower the carbon footprint of many businesses, shall we also encourage large data companies to source their electricity from renewable energy? Energy efficiency and energy conservation should go hand in hand. Likewise, climate adaptation and climate mitigation also should go hand in hand.
There are many floods and droughts with great intensity around the world this summer. They provide many case studies for scientists but no lessons learned for ignorant people of different socioeconomic status. What I take heed of is not how advanced our technology is but how limited resources are when disasters hit us. The recent flood in Zhengzhou, China led to a citywide blackout. In a nearly cashless society seen in China where people turn to their mobile phones for e-payment, locals couldn’t do the simple transactions with cash in a convenience store. Perhaps in the face of the increase of extreme weather, we need to reconsider if the phase-out of the FM radio network, landline telephones, candles and matches and a cashless environment are wise, especially for the underprivileged and seniors who live alone, to deal with natural disasters. How long can batteries last to support the flashlight on the phone in a blackout?
I also remember the massive blackout in New York City during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. People scrambled to libraries and public shelters to charge their phones. Such unexpected blackout phenomenon is seen in flood-stricken Zhengzhou in 2021 as well as in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s latest movie “In the Heights (2021).” How prepared are we for a record-breaking heat wave and hurricane season?
Mamma Mia (a hand gesture of reconciliation). If I have to name at least one writer’s block, I’d blame my slow-processing brain for not being able to convey my immediate ideas about Mother Nature. Her health is declining faster than my pea brain can absorb the latest scientific findings. Exponential technologies enable us to monitor and measure data in a granular way. At times, I think elites and intellectuals are competing for the best, fastest and most accurate award for their scientific findings. In 2014 the science journal Nature reported that the number of scientific papers published has been doubling every nine years since the end of the Second World War. Has the human brain and its complexity grown as fast as new technologies? How can we keep up with the fast pace of scientific reports? Do scientists consider collaborating with engineers and application developers or perhaps with artists and filmmakers? Can media professionals become volunteer educators to guide the social media-addicted public to improve their well-being? I’ll share my view about the importance of humanity-centered design in the following paragraphs.
One of the most authoritative climate reports is from World Meteorological Organization. In its “State of the Global Climate 2020” report, scientists concluded that despite setbacks from the Covid pandemic, global greenhouse gas emissions increased in 2020. Just like what we expect to see in Tokyo Summer Olympics, human beings love record breaking. The last decade, 2011-2020, is also the warmest on record. No doubt. We are heading for an irreversible future. My parody of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic motto—Faster, Higher, Stronger and Together—to forecast Mother Nature’s declining health impacted by climate crisis is “Warmer, Dryer and Fewer.”
Take my recent case study of myself interacting with my smart phone for example. I always believe my phone is so much smarter than I that I often decline its software update notification. Why do I need to use the latest feature? Why can’t I stay happy with the application that I just grasped? Why does the MS Windows on my laptop update automatically and set “allowed” on services by default? I literally have to google “how to disable” this or that on my latest edition of Windows. Our machines—big or small—are recording our online behaviors and making decision for us without asking. Mamma Mia. Mamma Mia.
This is why our technology needs to evolve from human-centered design to humanity-centered design. If the user is required to keep up to date with the latest version of software willy-nilly, the psychological, social and political side effects will snowball, and eventually they will hurt not only the user but also the developer. The documentary-drama “The Social Dilemma (2020)” explores these side effects.
If you prefer fiction, I’d recommend an old Hollywood blockbuster “Demolition Man (1993)” starring Sylevester Stallone, Wesley Snipes and Sandra Bullock. Together with the documentary film “The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52 (2021),” I find resonance in both movies with respect to my theory of human beings as guardians and destroyers of their own species. If you think the 1993 film is futuristic nonsense, I’m sad for you. Just looking around how the techno-geopolitics is playing out around the world, young people and unborn human beings may not have a full grasp yet of how terrible we—their adult leaders and friends, parents and grandparents—have left a dangerous, non-negotiable world to them. Thanks to aggressive technological business practices, for instance, our minors would rather believe they’ve lived by watching Ryan, a popular young Youtuber, to play with his toys instead of playing with their own toys as part of a life experience. I’ve also seen parents are giving electronic devices to their kids in restaurants just to quiet them down. Is this the contemporary definition of “human connection” of parenthood?
The movie of “Demolition Man” also explores the subject of big corporation monopoly and artificial reproduction. No more spoilers. I’m not a sci-fi writer but I’m an open-minded thinker. Can you imagine that humans are evolving into a new shape because we don’t use some parts of our body anymore? For example, we think less and use our eyes more often to visualize all sorts of experience on the screen. So the future humans will have a small brain, big eyes, a smaller nose and mouth—simply because we live in a singleton society that rejects body contacts. Ironically, teleconferencing and steaming videos won’t allow me to have a writer’s block. There’ll be too many YouTubers dying for a writer to write about them.
Mamma Mia (a hand gesture of pleading). The global loss of biodiversity and extinctions may never be recovered. If you are a fish, you won’t realize you’re living in the water until one day the water that envelopes you—the fish—is all gone. I pray for world peace and I ponder:
What if learning to coexist with Mother Nature is a state of mind not a science?
If you’re interested in knowing why humanity-centered design is the key to designing the best solutions to complex global problems, check out this video (click here) by Don Norman. (Video transcript is available in the end of this article.)
I never question the wisdom of mankind but I do question how technology is amplifying the mistrust and fear of people. Without advanced technology, Socrates and Confucius were almost on the same wavelength of how ignorant they were. Both of them were known for imparting knowledge to their pupils through dialogue. Perhaps in-person teaching and learning cannot be replaced completely by Zoom classroom and online teaching.
If the world is pitch dark in a massive blackout, can we keep calm and help one another? Our global response to the Covid pandemic shed some light. Shall we have more in-person dialogue instead? Can we think about how to coexist with others including non-human species and machines? What about improving our well-being by strengthening a social safety net for all? It’s never too late for us to make a good decision that will benefit not only ourselves but our successors who are also the guardians of this planet.
Don Norman's VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
00:00:00 --> 00:00:31
Hi, I'm Don Norman, and over the many, many decades that I've been alive, I've transformed myself from – well, in the beginning, a technology nerd, and all I cared about was the latest circuit design and the latest new device or the latest new technology. And I've changed to now where I'm worried more and more and more about the state of the world,
00:00:31 --> 00:01:03
about the many societal issues that we are facing. Some of them are political. Some of them are economic. Some of them have to do with education, hunger, food, pure water, sanitation – major issues. How do we address them? Design is a mechanism because designers do things. They go out and they change the world. But we have to move design from designing small, simple things to designing systems, to designing political systems,
00:01:03 --> 00:01:33
to designing solutions to clean water and education and healthcare. How do we do that? Well, over the years I've come to develop something which is now called *human-centered design*. But we're talking about these big problems. It goes beyond individual people. So, is it really human-centered? Well, I could argue that, yeah, it's human-centered because suppose we say we focus
00:01:33 --> 00:02:00
on the tasks or the activities or the community or the full needs, it's still all about people in the end but it's bigger than human-centered. So, lately, I've been entertaining the idea of letting HCD stand, not for human-centered design, but maybe *humanity-centered design*. Now, some people even criticize that, saying, "Well, shouldn't you be designing for the environment?
00:02:00 --> 00:02:33
And that's not part of humanity." You could kind of argue it is because the reason we have to worry about the environment is because humanity – humans have destroyed the environment. But, I don't know. We have to find a way that really tackles the most important problems, but it has to be small enough that we can manage to do something. There are other issues. One is, I'm concerned about the way that we do design where experts come in and study. And send out the anthropologists. Understand what's going on.
00:02:33 --> 00:03:01
And come back with proposals that we present to the people who live there. And I think that's the wrong way; that's a dictatorship. That's the privileged people coming in and helping the poor underprivileged people. On top of that, most of us, we live in a *monoculture*. We live in a highly educated, usually a Western technology, Western-based philosophy. And the "Western" includes, though, the developing nations in the East – in Asia, for example.
00:03:01 --> 00:03:31
But because we're all learning from the same universities and we're reading the same books and we're going to the same conferences and we're talking to each other, so we all tend to be a *monoculture*. We all think the same way, and that can be a danger. Any monoculture is bad. Planting the same plants all over is very efficient until a disease comes and wipes them all out at once; whereas if we had many, many different plants, one disease couldn't wipe them all out; monocultures are dangerous.
00:03:31 --> 00:04:04
If we all tend to think the same way, it's not working well. Or it's not very robust and resilient when something happens. Now, there are other problems, too. The economic systems of the world, I think, are in bad shape. Adam Smith wrote this wonderful book called "The Wealth of Nations," in which he talked about the invisible hand of the market that can lead to wonderful results, and just like when ants are all doing their little things, no ant is intelligent,
00:04:04 --> 00:04:31
but the combination of millions of ants are incredibly intelligent. And that's what Smith was talking about; except that gets corrupted, and, in fact, in his book he talked about the different ways that this could be corrupted by people colluding, trying to work the system to their own private benefit. And that's happened in the world now. Too much of our economic system is being diverted from the rich and wealthy
00:04:31 --> 00:05:01
to the rich and wealthy, as opposed to everybody else. And so, we have huge discrepancies in availability of resources between the very wealthy and the very deprived. The political systems are also damaged. And, you know, the internet today has become the internet of lies. How do we know what's true and what's not true? How do we do evidence-based thinking? Evidence-based decision-making?
00:05:01 --> 00:05:30
Too much of what we do is based on hearsay, anecdotes, folk tales, rumors, and downright lies where people are deliberately trying to misinform us so we might do something that is harmful for us and perhaps good for them. So, there are many, many different issues in this world, and I am concerned about all of them. But I obviously can't address all of them. But what I can do is to try to band together with other people who might be addressing these similar issues,
00:05:30 --> 00:06:03
because I believe that we must change many things in this world. We must change the economic model we're following. We must change the dependence upon a monoculture where we all tend to think similar ways and similar thoughts and we're ignoring a lot of the cultures that come from the non-Western technological traditions – cultures that are very valuable and could teach us a tremendous amount of things. So, that's what I worry about, that's what I lose sleep over, and that's what I hope to work on for the few decades remaining in my life.
