Sunday, June 04, 2006
Convincing my parents.
Today I tried convincing my dad in believing Peak Oil and he doesn't seem to be really into it. My mom seemed to be cooperative but as I kept explaining peak oil to her in Cantonese, the ideas I bring up slowly gets weaker and weaker, and I end up repeating myself. The reason why I didn't continue to engage in convincing my mom to change her habits or change the way she lives because she doesn't have capital. She doesn't have time to learn how to wipe her ass in the forest using leaves, or light the stove with rocks and sticks while others get a flame with just a turn of a knob. I didn't want to talk to them anymore about peak oil, because I noticed that change was nearly impossible for them both. First of all, they dont have money like those "tea sippers" who has the option to "not work", and are they seriously going to invest their money on a freaking windmill or take care of worms that rely on imported vegetables transported
by vehicle and plantations that use oil? Lets say we start growing crops and worms on our roof, our land lord's going to force us to tear everything down and there goes our alternative adaptive skill. Life in society is like the flow in the river, those who go against the flow will have a hard time living in the society, and as of now, changing the ways my parents routinely live can't be done. Because they don't know much english, and was raised in a poor family when they were young, they won't engage much in changing their ways.
Like I mentioned to most of my friends, my phrase in life is, "Money means more options." We can't change anything. I have a lack of faith in changing my parents, because life is hard as of now, I just don't want to make things even harder for my parents. My mom and dad believe that if it was meant to be, to die because of human ignorance and procrastination, then so be it. Let the few that survive either learn or repeat their stupid mistakes and probably start a new civilization where people don't seperate themselves from the rest of the world that intensively. In life there will always be an asshole that will ruin your day, steal the girl of your dreams, or revving their lamborghini while you ride your bike. In order for my parents to survive this peak oil situation, I have to find a way to get a resourceful job so my family wouldn't be at the bottom of the work pyramid. I would like the option to do everything a rich man can do, and I would like everyone else to have the same options also.
Analysis: Convincing my parents into changing their ways was unsuccesful, due to the reality issue of money and the amount of time they can actually spend revisting some of the adaptive skills they learned in China. Also to practise adaptive skills in New York wouldn't be the best place to be, because of the complexity of this place. It was nice for my father and mother to know that the end of most of the lower income families will be very soon. Now my mom's going to work harder in her dust filled factory hoping she can make extra money so our family has the option of surviving a economic collpase. With the money she plans to save for any emergency use, but she started doing this way before I mentioned peak oil. In my family there was always money saved in case of any emergency, like a law suit, a new house etc. With this money we just hope we can survive peak oil, having enough to survive for an extra month or so if it gets really serious. Thats all my parents have planned, using the amount of emergency money we have saved up to push our family's prosperity for the longest we possibily can. Life is unfair, and the poor beats the rich from a ratio to 100,000:1 (estimate).
by vehicle and plantations that use oil? Lets say we start growing crops and worms on our roof, our land lord's going to force us to tear everything down and there goes our alternative adaptive skill. Life in society is like the flow in the river, those who go against the flow will have a hard time living in the society, and as of now, changing the ways my parents routinely live can't be done. Because they don't know much english, and was raised in a poor family when they were young, they won't engage much in changing their ways.
Like I mentioned to most of my friends, my phrase in life is, "Money means more options." We can't change anything. I have a lack of faith in changing my parents, because life is hard as of now, I just don't want to make things even harder for my parents. My mom and dad believe that if it was meant to be, to die because of human ignorance and procrastination, then so be it. Let the few that survive either learn or repeat their stupid mistakes and probably start a new civilization where people don't seperate themselves from the rest of the world that intensively. In life there will always be an asshole that will ruin your day, steal the girl of your dreams, or revving their lamborghini while you ride your bike. In order for my parents to survive this peak oil situation, I have to find a way to get a resourceful job so my family wouldn't be at the bottom of the work pyramid. I would like the option to do everything a rich man can do, and I would like everyone else to have the same options also.
Analysis: Convincing my parents into changing their ways was unsuccesful, due to the reality issue of money and the amount of time they can actually spend revisting some of the adaptive skills they learned in China. Also to practise adaptive skills in New York wouldn't be the best place to be, because of the complexity of this place. It was nice for my father and mother to know that the end of most of the lower income families will be very soon. Now my mom's going to work harder in her dust filled factory hoping she can make extra money so our family has the option of surviving a economic collpase. With the money she plans to save for any emergency use, but she started doing this way before I mentioned peak oil. In my family there was always money saved in case of any emergency, like a law suit, a new house etc. With this money we just hope we can survive peak oil, having enough to survive for an extra month or so if it gets really serious. Thats all my parents have planned, using the amount of emergency money we have saved up to push our family's prosperity for the longest we possibily can. Life is unfair, and the poor beats the rich from a ratio to 100,000:1 (estimate).
# posted by Nian @ 7:49 PM 
