#79 | TripAdvisor & cocaine
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. — Plato
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. — Plato
Love begins by taking care of the closest ones – the ones at home. — Mother Teresa
A career in politics is not appealing. And if it is, it's appealing to the wrong type of people. Politics is, notwithstanding its present buckled condition, our most powerful tool. Today, it's the mockery of society in every state (aside from Denmark, Singapore, and Switzerland). Yet if we have a moral obligation to do more against societal ills, and I think we do, then higher quality, energised, and younger people should be piling into politics to reform governments and ultimately orchestrate the change we need.
I went to a lousy restaurant* last night. It was simultaneously the most expensive yet least comfortable dining experience I've had in years. Each main course was ~30$USD, which is a lot in Nairobi; each of us was served separately, at 10-minute intervals, so, in effect, we ate alone; the food took ages to come, which you'd expect allows for more time chatting, yet the music was so loud that we couldn't. A few of us asked the staff to turn the music down, then hurry the food up—and complaining isn't fun (he writes, complaining).
I sound like an old man, don't I? Well, fine. Lying in bed this morning, I wondered whether I had a moral obligation to post a hairy TripAdvisor review, with the central message being 'avoid'. If I don't post the review, others will (albeit in a small way) suffer at the hands of bad service. A review would deter others from going to the restaurant. Consequently, they would have better evenings in different places; guests would avoid arguments about 'who chose here', and couples would save their marriages. Also, guests might discover great hangouts elsewhere, such as HopHouse and Mint Shack—they might meet new friends at adjacent tables, as the music is quieter in those restaurants. The butterfly effect would flap its wings, and the world would be different.
There are consequences to my tiny TripAdvisor action. If I opt to pen a review, and if it's as scathing as I intend (which it will be—I'm sharpening my literary axe), won't it hurt the staff who were overwhelmed last night? They probably want to work in a restaurant with Henry Ford's efficiency, where people only wait minutes, not hours, to eat.
I am, I believe, obliged to share my one-star review to limit the (lowkey) suffering of others. Therefore, do I have moral obligations to do other things in my life that are more serious and impactful than bitching off about a boujie restaurant in Nairobi's CBD?
The norms of today won't be the norms of tomorrow. However, norms only change when people take action and make the change. To pick three examples at random, bloodletting, coca-cola, and enfranchisement: what was 'normal' even two hundred years ago is markedly different today.
For millennia it was common to be subject to bloodletting if you're feeling under the weather. George Washington had a sore throat on December 13 1799, and as a proponent of bloodletting, physicians drained seven pints from him the next day. He died soon after—some claim bloodletting was responsible. With a history of 3,000+ years, bloodletting was only discredited in the late 19th century! Similarly, you'd buy a coca-cola hardly a hundred years ago if you wanted some cocaine. The Coca-Cola Corporation vehemently denies using the drug in their secret formula. Yet, ever-reliable Wikipedia confirms that the drink was a "brain and nerve tonic", and coca leaves contained a small amount of Charlie. In 1903, cocaine was removed. (Interestingly, Wikipedia also purports to have the secret recipe—can anything escape Wiki's omniscience?!). Finally, undoubtedly universal suffrage was hardly considered two centuries ago. In the UK, voting rights for women (though not for those under 30) began as late as February 1918. Now it's the basis of all functioning democracies. The list of changes is endless, but these three demonstrate what's acceptable today or what is a moral virtue may be neither in the future.
Aside from bad restaurants, there are issues in the world that we can help with. If we 'should' post on TripAdvisor, so others have better evenings, don't we have a much more pressing obligation to participate in steeling humanity against existential risk? If we couldn't change much, I'd say what's the point, but, as we've seen, even the most entrenched practices and norms (bloodletting, cocaine in cold coke, unchecked aristocracies) are subject to change.
The world seems to be sliding inevitably towards a sharp cliff edge. For the first time in my life (born in ‘94), nuclear war seems plausible. The anxiety-inducing book The Precipice by Toby Ord is terrific and terrifying; Toby puts the odds of our demise at 1/6 in the next century and puts our two primary risks as a nuclear winter and unaligned AI. A nuclear winter occurs when the dust from a nuclear war gets lofted into the upper atmosphere, where it can't get 'rained' back down on us and therefore reflects the sun's rays, cooling the earth. Unaligned AI might happen as we gradually cede control of our decisions to a smarter and better informed Artificial General Intelligence. Our ambitions, values, and the way we make decisions, will have to be very closely aligned to ensure the AGI doesn't 'run a muck'. Our request for the AGI to maximise human wellbeing and the longevity of our species may (quite by accident and hardly maliciously) weigh up that the AGI can maximally achieve this objective by radically reducing the human population today! Thereby the AGI would increase the wellbeing of future humans and reduce our impact on our planet, but be detrimental to us. Our loss of control over the destiny of our species would be, in practice, an extinction event. Even if a limp and proverbially decapitated homo sapiens lives on, it would be tragic.
Politics is not an attractive career path. Very few of my friends would ever wish to go into government (and it's not cool to admit it). I know more people who want to be scuba divers. Yet, politicians, and governments, are uniquely well-placed to work on the problems we, as a species, have a moral obligation to solve, especially if it means extinction. The last couple of years have shown us the raw power of the state: first, they imposed lockdowns globally, and now we watch as Russia's government wages war in Europe. Although they are discredited and losing their dominance over national discourse, governments are no less powerful. They retain their monopoly on violence.
This is all to say that we will face some significant challenges in the coming years as a civilisation and species. In our lifetimes, we have the opportunity to solve some of these existential risks. By the time we turn eighty, the idea of nuclear winters might be unthinkable: "Can you believe that individual states, rather than the All-Mighty Intergalactic Government, had the power over fission and nuclear technologies", we might say to one another. We'll be equally shocked that anyone smoked or drove a car. It will be as shocking as bloodletting or drinking cocaine (who would drink it?!—ha). I think politics is the best vehicle for the change, and getting a younger and more talented pool of politicians will make a material difference to our outlook as a species.
*The restaurant is Mawimbi Seafood—no need to go. As per its website, you can: "CREATE LIFE-CHANGING CONNECTIONS AND MAKE UNFORGETTABLE MEMORIES AT THE WORLD'S FINEST LUXURY SEAFOOD RESTAURANT." The fish was excellent, however!
My week in books
Demian by Herman Hesse. A brilliant coming of age story of a young man encountering the universe's cruel evil, alien to his childhood home. Hesse shares the protagonist's first lies, insecurities and first loves. A quote resonated: "If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us." Link.
The Voltage Effect by John List. List was the Chief Economist of Uber and Lyft (and has an impressive CV beyond that). It's valuable to those running businesses; it goes deep into how the unicorns make business decisions, where most of us use gut and instinct. He also talks about quitting and tells the reader not to hesitate. That is the last chapter of the book, however! Link.
Kevin Kelly turns 70. This list is worth a read - it's not a book, but it's solid. Number One: "About 99% of the time, the right time is right now." Link.
Live well,
Hector