Hey ya! I'm hoping you have been well since our last encounter!
So, I was having a conversation with a friend recently about how people these days seem to believe in straight up MAGIC.
What I mean is people in the world seem to completely take for granted just how basic things such as water, electricity, nature, etc. operate.
I get that they know that it doesn't just happen by miracles, but a good example is with the reservoir levels in lake mead. Seeing people discuss it they're saying something like "Well, there's too much water in the east, Let's just pipe water over there. problem solved!"
Which is obviously quite silly on a super basic level. Never mind the costs or ecological impacts of doing such a thing, let's just talk the simplest form of logistics: elevation.
Look, Lake Mead has a maximum surface elevation of 1229 ft above sea level. one of the suggested places to pump water from was the great lakes, so let's look at the one containing the most water: Lake Superior. Lake superior has a surface elevation of ~600 ft. Now, being that you're a smart individual, I'm sure you can see the issue here.
WATER RUNS DOWNHILL.
Anyways, you may be thinking: What does that have to do with magic?
People just are ignorant of the details, right?
Honestly, it might be a bit of a stretch, but I think if you believe in spirits/souls, miracles, or the human race having some sort of special attributes, then it's not so impossible to look at other things in this way of kind of glossing over the details of how these things actually work.
What I mean is, you can dive down this rabbit hole of how our bodies work and find a ton of mechanical information that doesn't intuitively work with how we think of ourselves and the same could be said about the transit of water or generation of electricity. (not saying that I am outside of these belief systems, I'm just pondering the subject)
Of course, again, it could be just that most people don't care to think about how these things work to begin with.
I guess as long as your body works, you water gets to your house, and your lights turn on when you hit the switch, what does it matter how they work - right?
Maybe I have a higher degree of curiosity than average, but I find the logistics of how these things work fascinating. Especially how much thought those educated on their field have to put into making these things work. I certainly don't understand very much about any of these topics. To me, it is as much a mystery how all of these things work. I also understand that there are people out there who have extremely high degrees of understanding how things work within their specialty.
The fact that there are groups of people specializing in a particular topic making the incredible things that we take for granted work so well absolutely blows my mind. I find that so much more wonderous than knowing nothing and being upset when things don't work.
Which is, I guess, my main complaint here. Oh, the water is out or the power is out. Oh I can't connect to the internet. I need it back NOW, what do you think this is?
Yeah? well those things take a lot of work behind the scenes to happen man. It's not magic, they don't just flip a switch and it's fixed. It takes a TON of work and infrastructure to get those things piped into your home. And when something goes wrong, I'm sure it takes a ton of work to figure out what's going wrong and fix it.
Which is why I try not to get upset about it. Instead, I try to be grateful that we live in such a wonderous time where I don't have to think about where to dispose of my excrement, or whether or not I have clean water. When these things don't work correctly, yes it is not fun compared to my normal standard of living, but it's a luxury to live the way that I do and I'm not going to act like someone owes it to me to wave their magic wand to fix the problem.
They're paid for their expertise to fix stuff when things go wrong, and I'm sure they're doing their best to resolve the issue. I'm sure they are affected just the same as everyone else, and I'm sure they want their family to have the same luxuries as well.
Anyways, even if I'm not the brightest knife in the drawer, I hope you've gotten from this a little bit of gratitude towards the people who make all the magic happen around us. I have to remind myself constantly to be grateful.
Thanks for listening. Stay frosty out there!
- Guurg
Image sources:
https://www.pexels.com/@burakkostak/ https://www.pexels.com/@andy-chen-59970068/