I know many Gen X’ers who grew up during the late 70s 80s and came of age during the 90s wish they could have come of age during the 70s.

I grew up during the 90s and came of age during the 00s* and wish I could have come of age in the late 80s or the 90s.

I have the same fascination with 90s pop culture that some people have with 70s pop culture; I miss the early days of the internet; the largely cell phone free world;  the SNES and Sega Genesis; the pre-Bush years, pre-Reality Tv years; I miss the old the anti-globalization movement**; Seinfeld; a Star Wars without CGI where Han shot first…..I could go on and on.

Maybe we are all born a generation too late.

Or more likely, we form our dreams and goals and worldviews in our youth and by the time we become old enough to achieve them, the world has changed, and it may no longer possible to achieve them in the same way as it was when we were younger. Because we are still attached to this older type of world, we experience nostalgia.

If that’s the case, I’d argue that it’s the last two generations (X & Y) which have felt this the most strongly. The advent of communication technology has made the world change faster.

_______________

* By the way, what the hell are we calling the “00s”? The “oh’s”? The “two-thousands”? The ” ‘aughts”? We better decide quickly, since we’re almost in the ’10s. It’s hard to believe next year marks the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century.

** Remember when globalization felt like something you could actually protest against, rather than an inevitable feature of life?

Freedom is participation in power.

- Marcus Cicero

This is, in my opinion, the best definition of freedom ever arrived at. It’s simple, concrete, and should be used as a litmus test whenever some talking head starts blathering on about “freedom”: are they talking about participation in power? If not, then you would be wise to dismiss their words as mere rhetorical bullshit. Cicero’s definition of freedom is the only one that matters. Everything else is just political posturing and should be viewed with suspicion.

While Cicero is talking about political power, I also think this quote has implications beyond politics. But I’ll save that for another entry.

This sort of argument is relatively simple, but does presuppose some basic knowledge of ecology and thermodynamics. What follows is an extremely basic overview of these principles:

The Science

In any given ecosystem, species can be divided into trophic levels, or what is more commonly known as the “food chain”.* At the bottom of the food chain you have the producers, i.e. plants and other autotrophs. Next come the primary consumers, i.e. herbivores of all kinds, from insects to elephants. Above them are the secondary consumers; carnivores who eat the primary consumers. And above the secondary consumers may be a level of teritiary or even quaternary consumers (There’s also a class of decomposers, which consume the waste products of every other trophic level, but they are irrelevent for the purpose of this analysis).

That’s all simple and straightforward.  Equally simple, but perhaps not so straightforward, are the basic dynamics of what these organisms are producing and consuming: energy. The process of consumption is the flow of energy through an ecosystem. Energy enters the ecosystem as sunlight, which is converted into food by producers via photosynthesis, and is then transferred throughout the rest of the food chain by consumption.

The second law of thermodynamics stipulates that a 100% efficient transfer of energy is impossible; some energy is always lost through transference. Which means that the higher up you go on the food chain, the greater the cumulative loss of energy.

For example, herbivores usually eat only a fraction of the plants produced in a given habitat. Of the plant matter they do ingest, much of it is used as fuel for cellular respiration. Only a small amount of the original energy is available for the herbivore’s growth and development. The rest of the energy is lost (released in the form of heat) in the process of energy transference. And the amount lost by a secondary consumer is even higher. On average, only 10% of the energy at each trophic level is actually available to be stored at the next level. This means that 90% of the energy is lost at each transfer. The further removed an organism from photosynthetic production, the more energy required to support it. After a certain point, there are no more levels to a food chain simply because there isn’t enough energy to sustain another trophic level.

More concretely: let’s say you have 1000 kg. of corn. If you converted this corn to beef (i.e. by feeding it to cows), you could feed ten people. If, however, this 1000 kg of corn was consumed directly it could feed one-hundred people. You don’t need an advanced degree to see which allocation of resources is more efficient.**

The Ethics

When we speak of energy efficiency, we normally think of things like electricity and gas, not food. But we should. In terms of energy, it is much more efficient to be a primary consumer than it is to be a secondary or tertiary consumer. It costs much more in terms of resources to produce a pound of meat than it does to produce a pound of vegetation. This usually also means more pollutants and pesticides are released into the environment as part of the meat production process as well.

Simply put, eating meat is a comparatively inefficient way of tapping into the energy created by producers. Given the scale of this comparative inefficiency, meat consumption comes with a heavy environmental price tag.

In my opinion this is a stronger argument than quibbling over whether or not cows or chickens suffer as part of the process of the slaughter.** While we can’t get inside an animal’s head and quantify their experience, we can show scientifically the devastating impact of meat-eating on the environment and the associated costs and wastes built into it. To me this elicits a stronger ethical imperative to refrain from or lower our meat consumption. Even if you don’t believe animals suffer, human suffering—and the likelihood of extinction as we lurch toward (or even past) our carrying capacity–is ultimately increased by the current scale of meat consumption. As the human population increases, the strain this places on the environment increases—and we should understand this as increases the ethical cost of eating meat as well.

Disclaimer: I’m not a vegetarian, although I am an aspiring vegetarian. I have cut land animals entirely out of my diet, but I do still occasionally eat seafood. I’m working toward cutting this out as well.

_________

* – Food chains are more accurately described as a “food networks”, since they are rarely as simple, linear, and unbranched as the term “chain” implies. But for the purposes of this entry we can simplify.

** – This calculation is oversimplified to illustrate the basic principle.

*** – For the record, I think it’s pretty obvious that animals do suffer and that we should try to prevent them from suffering as much as possible. But you will always find people who are willing to argue this point.

Here is what the oracle told me:

謙 Ch’ien (Modesty)

Above: K’un, The Receptive, Earth ☷
Below: Ken, Keeping Still, Mountain ☶

The Judgement:

Modesty creates success. The superior man carries things through

The Image
Within the earth, a mountain:
Thus the superior man reduces that which is too much,
And augments that which is too little
He weighs things and makes them equal.

Nine in the third place means:
A superior man of modesty and merit
Carries things to conclusion.
Good fortune.

Commentary:
When a man does not boast of his efforts and does not count his merits a virtue, he is a man of great parts. It means that for all his merits he subordinates himself to others. Noble of nature, reverent in his conduct, the modest man is full of merit, and therefore he is able to maintain his position.

Now at first glance this might not seem very helpful in the context of a job interview. Certainly I don’t want to appear arrogant or overconfident, but at the same time appearing overly timid or “modest” is not likely to win me points with the recruiter in a highly competitive (make that desperate) job market.

While I might strive for the Confucian ideal of modesty described in the commentary in my personal life, how will this ‘modesty’ help me make a good impression on my job interview?

The answer came to me from reflecting not only on the Yijing‘s extended commentary, but also from a reading of the Daodejing.

The description of the image states that the superior man “reduces that which is too little, and augments that which is too much.” This refers in part to the relationship between the two nuclear trigrams, k’un and ken. However it also reminded me of Chapter 77 of the Daodejing:

The dao of heaven
Is like drawing a bow
Lower that which is high
Raise that which is low
Reduce that which is excessive
Add to that which is insufficient
The dao of heaven
Reduces the excessive
And adds to the insufficient

I.e., dao as a self-regulating equilibrium. It’s a cool image, but how do I embody the “dao of heaven” in this situation? And what does this have to do with modesty?

On a whim I flipped through my copy of the Daodejing and landed on Chapter 8. In the first few lines, I found my answer:

The highest goodness resembles water
Water greatly benefits myriad things without contention
It stays in places that people dislike
Therefore it is similar to dao

Reading these words, I had a flash on insight: The water here is a perfect image of “modesty”. Water always occupies the lowest place. It lowers itself, thus “benefiting myriad things” and it does so “without contention” or striving for gain.

The position I am applying for is a support position which operates more or less “behind the scenes”. It would require me to do boring and menial tasks (“places that people dislike“) that are nevertheless vital for the overall functioning of the company (“benefiting myriad things“). I would also be expected to perform these tasks without complaint (“without contention“).

The ideal candidate is somebody who is capable yet obedient, willing to take instructions and perform them skillfully and without complaint. They have to be like the man of modesty in Confucius’ commentary, who, “for all his merits, subordinates himself to others“.

In other words, the best way to be modest is not to downplay my qualifications, but to show that I can be like water.

I’ll have to see if I managed to pull this off in my interview. But even if I don’t get this position, the advice given to me by the Yi is likely to be useful in other situations.