The problem with the act of writing, these days, for me, is of listening to my thoughts and determining which, if any, is clearly more emphatic and distinct than the rest. And isn’t about what I’m doing at work, since I can’t talk about that. (Unlike some Cocoa software developers, but like many other software developers, we keep our cards close to our chest. We emulate Apple in that regard.)

Outside of programming, the pre-eminent question in my mind is rather vague and abstract. How do we organize people to get them to do what’s best for everyone in the long run, instead of everyone doing what they think is best for them in the short term? How do we convince people that what they think is in their best interests probably isn’t? And who are “we”?

It’s no good for just a small number of people to do what they believe is in everyone’s best interest. While one should always do what one thinks is right, just for the sake of personal integrity, stubborn adherence to ethical principles can be a self-destructive strategy when not adjusted to the social and economic climate. Should you save the tree while letting the forest perish? Well, how do you know that the forest can be saved? How do you know what can be accomplished? You don’t; you can only define a goal and attempt to achieve it. Anyone who claims to know the likelihood of outcomes more complex than coin tosses and die rolls is a liar, a lunatic, or both.

And yet, almost everyone who gets any kind of attention makes such claims. And almost everyone else, too. We live in a world chock full of false prophets. What I’m saying is that every prophet if false. We cannot be certain about things. But we can consider possibilities. And we can at least predict problems, if not their consequences. And we can make preparations. And that’s what I want to learn to convince people to do. Make preparations together, not as independent agents. Divided we fall, and all that.

Consider all of the obvious potential problems on the horizon. Energy shortages. Food shortages. Tribal and cultural conflict exploding into war. Economic instability. High unemployment. Rising crime rates.

But how do we spend our time, money and other resources? Military research and mobilization. Trying to cure incurable diseases. Frivolous yet costly entertainment. Advertising and marketing budgets. Expensive automobiles and other superfluous status symbols. Drugs, alcohol and tobacco. Gambling. Market speculation. These are all solutions to the wrong problems.

Last night with some friends I incorrectly over-estimated the cost of the war in Iraq at two trillion dollars. That’s four times what it really is (see The Cost of War). I’m Canadian. It’s not my war. Canadians are fighting in Afghanistan, at a cost of about one billion dollars a year for the last two years (and projected for three more). Per capita, Canadians are spending maybe a tenth of what Americans are spending on spreading “freedom” and “democracy”, or their synthetic equivalents. And when it’s over, the most likely outcome is that things will revert to where they were before we got involved, except for the billions of dollars (think of that as human effort) that were sunk in a bottomless hole, never to be seen again.

It takes a lot of knowledge, a lot of courage, and a lot of creativity to come up with new solutions to new problems, instead of idiotically and fruitlessly trying to solve them with the same old broken and costly techniques. The creative potential exists, but it’s not being utilized. Most creative and innovative minds are just as caught up in short-term self-interest as the stunted and backwards minds running our governments. What’s funny is that government seems to be the place to go if you have ambition, but no talent. If you have both, you go into industry and make yourself rich selling trinkets to the natives (by which I mean the natives of Earth, i.e., those who can’t see beyond their tribal identities and tribal loyalties and tribal beliefs, from the poorest African to the wealthiest tycoon). When you can go and play the game and win and prove to yourself that you’re better than everyone else.

It’s difficult to remember that human beings are animals. That we are by and large driven by our animal passions and animal fears. The idea of human being–of conscious, reasoning individuals capable of considering problems carefully, of weighing all the evidence and making intelligent decisions–that’s more a fantasy than a reality. At any rate, exceedingly rare. The better I can remember that, the less frustrated I will be as I watch the human race continue to dig itself into a hole that we are less and less likely to get out of until after we’ve had another world war. If even then.