Thou shall fly to Mars but thou shall not sing
Comparing two very different approaches to problem solving.
“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.”
Nelson Mandela
“We are all time travelers, journeying together into the future. But let us work together to make that future a place we want to visit.”
Stephen Hawking
Greetings! (and happy Good Friday to those observing Easter)
One of the greatest tensions I’ve been experiencing in recent years, and more so in the last 24 months, is between extreme pessimism and ecstatic hope. Navigating this divide requires a deep commitment to staying in contact with human darkness (including my own) and keeping an eye on what’s possible beyond the immediate horizon. On the one hand, I choose not to ignore the obvious global rise in authoritarianism (especially when it’s packaged as a three-letter acronym), but on the other hand, I want to celebrate - and be a part of - the fight for sanity, honesty and (dare I say the word) progress. I mean real progress, of course, not radical progressivism. The kind of progress that actually seeks to build things and develop people to their true potential and reduce suffering in the world. Not the kind that is determined to burn down the entire structure of civilization and ostracize those who question ideological dogma and favor distortions of reality in lieu of better outcomes.
So today I simply wish to contrast two ways of showing up in the world, as exemplified by the atrocious anti-Covid measures enacted in Shanghai and Elon Musk’s latest TED appearance. I picked these polar opposites because, in my view, they represent two very different realities of the human experience in the year 2022. More importantly, they express two very different world outlooks for the future. They might stubbornly continue to co-exist for a while.
Enjoy.
BACK TO 1989: In the name of "Zero Covid”, the Chinese megalopolis of Shanghai (which I had the chance to visit less than four years ago) has been under strict lockdown for almost two weeks, and more footage has emerged over the past few days showing what life is like for its 26 million inhabitants. Children separated from their parents. Elderly people being denied access to urgent medical care. Pets being exterminated on the streets. Exhibition halls and other facilities turned into makeshift hospitals (a.k.a. internment camps). Workers sleeping on factory floors and not allowed to go home. Residents screaming their lungs out from balconies asking for food (even delivery services are down). And the scene that appears to have been taken straight from Blade Runner: police drones flying over neighborhoods and instructing everyone to “control your soul’s desire for freedom, do not open the window or sing”.
It’s important to note that asymptomatic cases represent a whopping 97% of all positive test results, which is far higher than anywhere else in the world, where it has been closer to 50%. Nevertheless, anyone who tests positive gets dragged from their home and checked into a quarantine center. In this video clip, authorities try to evict residents from where they live, so that more space can be created to accommodate the “sick”.
But I want to be clear. The Chinese government is not the only one to have lost its compass while navigating the Covid crisis. Look at Canada. Australia. France. Even parts of the U.S. At this point everyone seems confused as to whether there are (or should be) any moral or legal guardrails when it comes to running a biosecurity state. One thing of which we can be quite certain at this point is: what happens in China does not stay in China, whether it’s a virus, a set of policies or (increasingly) a belief system.
WHAT IT TAKES: Speaking of sleeping on factory floors, here is a man who knows from experience what that is like, though for very different reasons. The co-founder of Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company and Neuralink, and potentially the future owner of Twitter, has a few stories to tell about what it really takes to succeed. This week he gave another live interview in front of a TED audience, and it got quite personal. Kudos to Chris Anderson for poking Mr. Musk where he feels a bit more ticklish.
If you do not have the time to watch the whole thing, try catching at least two segments: 32’-39’, where he talks about his fight to keep Tesla alive between 2017 and 2019, and 38’-54’, where he explores the inner workings of his own brain.
FLICK OF THE WEEK: Many environmentalists enjoy talking about “renewable energy” these days. There is no doubt that, in order to significantly mitigate the climate crisis, there are a lot of problems humans need to solve. However, as the Netflix documentary Kiss the Ground suggests, one of the biggest problems is right under your feet: the soil. Yet few people seem to be paying attention to it. Narrated by Woody Harrelson, the film explains why transitioning to regenerative agriculture could be key in rehabilitating the planet, while simultaneously invigorating a new sense of hope and optimism.