Five Things: Climate Change, Migration, Future Plans, Right and Wrong, Dinner
It's Sunday, again.
Hello and welcome back to Five Things!
Los Angeles is burning and it seems as if the whole world is watching and fingerpointing at the same time. Nobody really knows anything, but everybody has an opinion. The comments range from “this is what happens if we ignore climate change, told you so!” to “it’s biblical”. The response to the fire shows the divisions we have in our societies. And at the same time we see how people help other people, how firefighters from Canada and Mexico rush to LA to help out, how there is so much humanity out there. Unfortunately, I don’t think this fire is the wake-up call we all need to get going to stop climate change instead of continuing to neglect it because we refuse to change the way we life, work and produce.
I have friends in LA who got evacuated and I hope they will be fine. I visited them the last time I was in LA and I even went running in a canyon nearby that’s now burning.
“The world has gone mad.” - I hope not and I sure hope we won’t run out of hope soon. And on a related note: I really cannot stand it that Trump is now on the news again 24/7.
Enjoy these Five Things!
‘We’re in a New Era’: How Climate Change Is Supercharging Disasters
“With temperatures rising around the globe and the oceans unusually warm, scientists are warning that the world has entered a dangerous new era of chaotic floods, storms and fires made worse by human-caused climate change.” - I really do not understand why we are not doing more to stop climate change as much as it is still possible.
Migration Can Work for All
“States that focus on border restrictions, mass deportations, or the abrogation of legal protections for asylum seekers will fail to solve the problem. They will simply redirect it while creating a new host of problems that will, in the long term, feed the problem rather than solve it. They will empower criminal networks and black markets while leaving their own economies worse off. The system will continue to decay.” - it’s obvious that we have to deal with immigration differently, especially when the climate change makes more and more places inhabitable.
How Do You Plan for a Future That Might Not Exist?
“It won’t be the future we imagined as kids, sketching dreams of a cute house, two kids, a dog and endless possibilities. It might not resemble the life we once envisioned so vividly. But if we allow ourselves to grieve—if we let ourselves feel the depth of the loss without resentment—we might just discover a way forward. And maybe this time, it will be a future forged in resilience, built to last, stronger for having endured the flames together.” - as a father of four I do think about where we are headed right now. A lot.
Now's the Time for Israelis to Rediscover Hannah Arendt
“People who say that it is hard to see what is right and wrong these days are actually asking if it is not okay to do wrong to the people who have done wrong to you. Morally, the answer is simply no.
What makes it so much harder to distinguish right from wrong is that, often, we don't feel like we are actually choosing. Politically, all that is generally asked of people is to do nothing. All that is asked is to accept what is going on. Only in retrospect will accepting become choosing, and merely following orders will become supporting.” - this is such a great article, but not an easy one.
You’ll Never Get Off the Dinner Treadmill
“Dinner resists optimization. It can be creative, and it can be pleasurable. None of this negates the fact that it is a grind. It will always be a grind. You will always have to think about it, unless you have someone else to think about it for you, and it will always require too much time or too much energy or too much money or some combination of the three. It is unrelenting, in the way that breathing is unrelenting. There is freedom in surrendering to this, that even in this golden age of technological progress, dinner refuses to be solved.” - I like cooking dinner, mostly. But I truly hate thinking about what to cook.
That’s it. Have a great Sunday! If you missed last Sunday’s edition of Five Things, have a look here:
— Nico