Bare Bones Biology 087 – What Can We Do?

There is a great deal that all of us can do to give humans of the future, our grandchildren, a better life than they will have if we continue on as we are. Especially those of us in the United States. If we learn to connect the dots between what we do right now – all of our actions — and what happens in the future. In other words, if we pay close attention to causes and effects.

I learned to do this when I became one of the earlier women working in the field of science (Not technology. Science itself actually is the study of causes and effects. Technology is about making things.) So here I was trying to succeed, while the well-meaning men scientists were trying to help by telling me how to succeed. The problem for me was, at that time, what worked for the men did not work for women to succeed in science. Especially unmarried women. And the men scientists were firmly convinced it would work for women. You would think a bunch of scientists would be more logical about this, wouldn’t you, but they wouldn’t discuss anyone else’s causes and effects because they believed there weren’t any – and they “knew best.”

First I blamed myself. I watched what I did. I started to notice correlations: I do this; that happens. So I change this; something else happens. If it happens enough times, then I begin to believe it’s not my mistakes that cause something to happen – it’s just the way things are. It was how the law of cause and effect worked in that culture at that time, and the more I know about this cause and effect thing, the more power I have in my life. Not the power to change unchangeable things. The power to know what will happen, or what is most likely to happen, according to what I choose to do.

So I am a pretty good scientist. I experimented on the men, and the employer, and have been doing it ever since. It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot better than believing in the powers that be and it’s very much better than just doing what looks like it might be good, or other people think it’s good, without studying what is likely to be the result of whatever I do.

So, in terms of politics for example. We collect the things that make good sense (to us, not to our “leaders”) and the things that people are doing that are working, and those that are not working and we try to understand why — and the things that we physically can not do because of the laws of nature.

We then project everything into the future, what we want the future to be like. We do not listen to opinions but only to cause and effect realities. If we don’t understand the realities, we ask people who are qualified. Or mostly we can simply use good common sense. For example, population. How many people can be supported by one acre of our earth? The answer is we don’t know. We can research the question, but that would be a displacement activity. To avoid doing what needs to be done. We do know there is a limit. It’s only good common sense. Therefore we should factor population into all of our planning.

Nobody can work for now, because the now I just wrote is already gone. Everybody really wants to live a worthwhile life, and that means doing something that will benefit others. And we all have a responsibility to work for the future. Especially now we have the responsibility, because our problem is going to get a lot worse before it gets better – no matter what anyone does.

So our gifts are needed. They are badly needed.

Bare Bones Biology 087 – What can we Do?
KEOS FM 89.1, Bryan, Texas
Audio download available later this week
here and at http://BareBonesBiology.com