One of the major shifts in my thinking has been to be mindful of the resources that I have an "excess of". In tech, I see all the time: "storage is cheap, just store everything", "hardware is cheap, don't bother optimizing". We have done so much to improve efficiency, pricing and storage, but as a result we are just using more and more. And then, as a result, my computer still heats up into an oven when opening a Google design blog post that contains only text and pictures. This phenomena of using more resources despite increased efficiency is also called Jevons Paradox: when the cost for a resource drops, if the demand is price elastic, the overall quantity of what we use increases. This happens all the time; the term was specifically coined in reference to our usage of oil. It seems that when a resource becomes cheap, we stop handling the resource with care. For example, it used to be that we really needed to care about performance, now we care far less, and as a result older devices become obsolete faster.
This paradox makes it likely that given the finite resources we have, increased efficiency alone will not stop global warming.
Another phenomena I have observed is: small inefficiencies might seem like they don't matter, but they add up and become a big problem. One person throwing plastic into the ocean does not cause any issues, but when everyone does it then it becomes a problem. Yet all the time we tend to not care about the small damages we cause, because the focus is always on the "biggest problems". Especially a business-minded person tries to look at where they can make the biggest impact, and tries to stay laser focused on that goal. That means that secondary goals like "the environment" or "worker's rights" fall by the wayside. Yet, these issues matter but because of how essentially all hierarchical structures operate, the objective as a manager is basically deciding where to allocate funds, and all departments need more funding.
There is this obsession in finding what is the one thing that can make the largest impact, yet in this multifaceted and complex world we live in, such reasoning leads to important topics falling by the wayside.
I also think when we argue like this, it makes it really easy to shift blame: a small country can point to a larger country and argue that whatever they do to combat climate change doesn't matter as long as the larger country continues to pollute; an individual can point to systemic issues to argue that whatever resources they use don't matter as long as the systemic issues are not solved. They are just "a drop in the ocean", and I think this contributes to the extremely wasteful attitude that ends up leading to Jevon's Paradox.
I do not have a societal solution, but I do not think prioritizing time this way works if we are to coexist. On a personal level I have adopted an attitude of radically caring for the resources I use. This attitude means: not leaving the faucet running, turning off the lights before leaving the room, avoiding plastics, recycling, not wasting CPU cycles, not wasting storage. I have no illusion that I alone doing this will solve climate change, but I do think if we all adopt this philosophy, it would make a big difference.
Today we are in Lofou, a small village located 20 minutes north of Paramytha. It is another dreamy place that has preserved its beautiful stone architecture. In the café-restaurant that we sit at, a calm and cool atmosphere gives peace. We are surrounded by books, ceramics, dried plants, wood, art, the blue sky, and a green garden.
I have Javier Darío Restrepo’s Pensamientos: Discursos de ética y periodismo with me, which I read from a beautifully and simply designed armchair. Pensamientos reminds me of home. Life feels joyful.
Fig 1. Cosy hearth at Lofou.
And yet, whenever I pull up a map, I am reminded that we are now just off the coast of Lebanon. Perhaps an hour-long flight from Gaza. If I zoom out, I notice that we are on the same longitude as Ukraine, we share the same time zone.
I was born surrounded by violence. In Bogotá, you are always on your guard, even if the city is safer now than what it used to be, and a whole lot safer than what other parts of Colombia are still like today. Being here now, in this idyllic village, the contrast feels stark.
During a brief period in my early adulthood, (outright) war between nations went from feeling unthinkable to almost inevitable. I know this isn’t true, violence and injustice have been and continue to be ever-present. The turn of the century was incredibly bloody for Colombia with the "war on drugs." But it does feel that now there has been a broader mental shift: that before war and violence were somehow more unacceptable globally, and so different actors undertook violence in slyer and stealthier ways. Political discourse around military attacks and violent action was not so forthright. Some people may say, as has been said about Trump, “at least they’re being honest now, showing their true colors.”
However, I disagree. I think that the fact that a full-scale war was “unthinkable” for many people was a good thing. The fact that we have mental red lines is important, even if humanity does not always live up to these standards. To me, the goal should be to denounce and expose the ways governments, businesses, and individuals get around what is deemed just or right, and the ways in which hypocracy takes shape. We should hold leaders accountable for lofty speech promoting peace and tolerance, make them meet the standard, instead of giving in and making war and violence an “acceptable” and “inevitable” part of our everyday in the name of "honesty."
For a long time, I’ve felt a natural pull towards pacifism. However, I understood well the people who critiqued it, we need to defend ourselves from those who commit harm after all, don’t we? We need to be able to fight back, right? What’s the alternative?
While I don’t have any answers, I have realized I need to listen to that instinct that protests against violence, conflict, and war. It is an instinct that has been coupled with a life-long interest in literature and art that expresses and describes the ravages of systematized violence: from Primo Levi, Tim O’Brien and Harper Lee to Maryse Condé, Alain Resnais, and Isabel Allende. It was first the memoirs from Holocaust survivors followed by the accounts of the military dictatorships in South America and then the testimony of the brutality of slavery in the Caribbean that have over time constructed my conviction in justice, freedom, and accountability, but also at the same time, for nunca más.
“Never again” is always associated with World War II, but in Colombia, never again continues to be called for even as Colombians continue to suffer and die every day due to ongoing violence. Our “armed conflict” is unique in the way that the categories of victims and victimizer are not always so neatly separated. It is as the writer Rodolfo Celis Serrano describes in his autobiographic short text on life in the Usme neighborhood of Bogotá: there are things that he did while living under the threat of violence that still bring him shame and guilt. Celis was displaced from his home, a victim of the armed groups that took over the territory, and yet he himself complicates the category of “victim” by highlighting his own guilt. In Colombia, we have to reckon with reintegrating combatants and civilians of all types into peaceful communal living, while at the same time trying to balance this with the pursuit of justice and accountability.
And there are so many Colombian thinkers, artists, and activists that have been working through the inherent paradoxes of prolonged systemic violence for years.
One of them was Javier Darío Restrepo, who I am currently reading. For my next log entry, I want to reflect on Restrepo’s writing along with the work of Jean Giono, another author who I also read and rediscovered this month.
Their writing has given me much to think about what peace means, as real action and not just a “utopian” concept. In their writing, I’ve found that same visceral rejection to war and violence that I feel—that war is senseless at its core, even with all the justifications that we try to dress it up with. In their writing, I’ve also confirmed that this rejection of war does not entail sacrificing strong convictions about rights and wrongs, it doesn’t equal apathy or “neutrality” in the face of cruelty, injustice, and inhumanity.
“El carácter del conflicto, su prolongación en el tiempo, la complejidad y multitud de los elementos en juego, el constante juego de la desinformación—que no es accidental sino parte de la táctica guerrera—, crean una atmósfera de confusión tal que la gente muere todos los días sin saber por qué muere”. – Javier Darío Restrepo, Pensamientos (p. 221)
« Il faut sinon se moquer, en tout cas se méfier des bâtisseurs d’avenir. Surtout quand pour battre l’avenir des hommes à naître, ils ont besoin de faire mourir des hommes vivants. » – Jean Giono, Refus d’obéissance (p. 14)
