We built the present one person, one decision, at a time. The future will be built one person, one decision, at a time.
We live in a web of possibilities. This web consists of our natural world and its resources and constraints, and the current state of support or constraint for activity that human beings have established over time.
The web of possibilities encompasses the support (or lack thereof) for the actions we want to take. It determines how easy or difficult it is to do, or not do, things.
For example, if we all decided to buy all-electric vehicles today, we could not. The web of possibility does not contain that many all-electric vehicles. Even if there were that many of them, most of us do not have enough money to buy an all-electric vehicle.
This lack of availability of all-electric vehicles is a result of choices made by individuals and the resulting choices made by other individuals over time that has encouraged or discouraged the development of all-electric vehicles and the support systems needed to allow them to become a significant presence in our transportation choices.
The same could be said about our choices concerning food: the web of possibilities contains almost no support for good nutrition in food, but pervasive support for cheap, convenient, high-sugar/high-fat foods containing little good nutrition. This is the result of the sum of each of our individual choices to buy cheap, convenient, high-sugar/high-fat foods in favor of foods that are nutritious.
The point is this: we make the future by making choices – each of us – one person, one decision, at a time.
Knowing this, perhaps we should be paying more attention to our choices? Perhaps we should begin to acknowledge that we are where we are at least in part because each of us, you and I, have made the choices we have made. Perhaps we should take responsibility for those choices.
Now.
Perhaps we can make better choices in the future?
Unless, of course, we think the net of possibilities, and the state of the world today, is just fine. In which case we should, in the words of Pat Paulson, “just keep messing around like we have been.”
What do you think?