mo energy, mo problems

on anxiety and abundance

How many miles have we traveled?

They say there have been about a hundred and seventeen billion humans. That’s the total number - 117 billion.

People? A hundred thousand years ago

Farming? Twelve thousand years ago.

‘Civilization’? Six thousand years ago.

Mechanical transportation? Two hundred and fifty years ago.

Social networks, emergence of AI? ten years ago.

We are covering more ground more quickly

We are constantly speeding up.

Early peoples, how far would they move?

My guess? They were not taking flights half way around the world and back again for business or pleasure. Sure, there was migration for so many reasons. And, once a person traveled that far, it’s not likely that they were on a ‘round trip.

How far did you move from where you were born?

Humans have always migrated. They’ve never moved like this though. It takes a lot of energy go move this much.

Whether it’s food, electricity or the miracle of petroleum powered machines, we have access to more calories, more energy than every before.

Everything is energy right? All of the atoms that make up the molocules that we’re made from. It’s all energy.

And we eight billion humans living right now have access to more energy than the humans that came before us.

It takes a lot of focus and attention (energy) to manage all of this energy. It’s difficult to say if things have become more efficient. Oh sure, engines, processes and all of the machines have become much more efficient over time. They’ve become so efficient that they create more things than many people can manage. They create more things than the planet can manage.

Given how much stuff we have, how many things that we now have to deal with, it is difficult to say whether all of this ‘stuff’ is a win.

What’s more, we humans historically have had to work for scarce energy to stay warm in the winter or to eat during lean times. We were always, consistently for most of the 117 billion lives that have come before ours, spending our calories on working to get enough to keep us going.

Now?

Calories and energy are plentiful.

What’s funny?

Anxiety and depression a plentiful too. It’s almost as though that once we have dealt with one problem, we have the energy to worry about something else.

It seems when there’s excess energy, we humans end up with a bit of a mess to go with it.

How in this time of massive abundance do you manage to use every last bit of it?

How have the conveniences and efficiencies of our abundant time created new problems - mentally, emotionally, relationally or even physically?

How do you manage the energy surplus we humans currently enjoy?