We Didn't Have a Clue

Back in another lifetime, I was a teacher, sort of. I was a teacher who didn't know what he was doing. Nobody else had a clue either. Before I was a teacher, I spent seventeen years in school learning some things I didn't particularly want to know. After graduation, I thought I knew chemistry. After a day of teaching, I found I was mistaken, but I wanted to make it interesting for my students, so I learned some chemistry. I still didn't have a clue. 

Now that I am retired and have time to think, I might have a clue.

But it isn't just about chemistry. When I meet ex-students, I ask them if they made use of the chemistry I taught them. Usually, they did not. One alumnus admitted that all he remembered from my class was "life is what you make of it." That sounds like something I would say on a Friday afternoon to get the kids started on their weekend assignment. To be honest, that aphorism wasn't quite correct. According to Irving Berlin, "Life is 10% what you make it and 90% how you take it." Maybe Irving had a clue, but I think there's more to it.

From where I stand in this lifetime, life is not just taking care of business and spending what you earn having fun. Correct me if I'm wrong. Taking care of business, I used to teach titration of acids. Can you describe how to measure the concentration of a solution of sulphuric acid? Remember? No? You really didn't want to know, did you. Yet you may recall something engaging but incidental to the lesson like who was sitting next to you or the smell of the classroom or the teacher's name. Maybe it's a clue.

In my case I can see Mr. Hamilton (aka Hammy) doing a demonstration because there were too many kids for hands-on lab work. First he pipetted the acid into a flask. Next the bottom fell out of the flask and we learned some interesting new words. Finally he got busy with rubber gloves and a sponge: just an average day in chemistry class, a bit of what was on the curriculum and a lot of what was not. That was sixty-four years ago, but I can still remember.

The real curriculum is easy to miss and we keep tripping over it by accident without noticing that it is a clue.

Here is the clue:

Life is 1% what happens to you, 
9% what you do with what you get, and
90% cleaning up your mess.

***************

P.S.

It's thermodynamics. I don't really understand thermodynamics, but I have a clue. You can't do anything without making a mess. That is known as the Second Law. We ignore this principle to arrange the world the way we want it, and thereby create messes that must either be hidden or exported or diluted or cleaned up later. An example: extracting, transporting, refining and burning petroleum to move things around with cars and trucks leaves orphan wells, tailings ponds, climate change, acidification of the oceans, dementia for those living too close to highways. Cheap fuel leaves expensive messes to be cleaned up later by people who don't have a say because they don't have a clue or they don't live in the country making the mess or they haven't been born yet. 

The economy ignores the Second Law for immediate local profit. Don't listen to the clueless rhetoric from those protecting their privilege and wealth. Being clueless is not going to work much longer. The mess will accumulate until we who are making the mess cannot escape its consequences: wildfires, monster storms, floods, droughts, sea level rise. We will clean up the mess or become the mess. The Second Law will not help with this project. Even cleaning up a mess makes a mess. And we didn't have a clue.

*****************

Telling the Truth About Fossil Fuels: David Suzuki and Ian Hannington, July 4, 2024