Ask yourself, what did you produce yesterday? I mean what really you put out? Was it something solid, something that you touched, shaped, felt? Or, was it abstract, something you had hard time putting into words? Then, think about what you used while producing it. Your mobile phone you never drop off your hands? The very chair and desk you sit all the time? The pen and paper you constantly sketch? There were indirect consumptions you made in order to produce, no?. The water you drink, the dinner you have, the bed you sleep everyday, the electricity you used throughout the day, the servers you sent requests to surf on the internet…
Humans are not machines, no one expects them to work all of their time with %100 capacity. However, for the last few weeks, I became obsessed with the idea of how much we consume compared to what we produce. We need to consume to sustain our lives, that is for certain. Then, I think about how single human can’t really live on himself/herself. There are (non-abstract) products that we simply can not produce ourselves, yet, rely on them immensely. The strongest examples are electronic devices such as mobile phones, laptops/PCs, WiFi modems, all those servers that made up the internet etc. Yet another strong example would probably be underground systems and housing. Yes, it used to be possible to live without them, but not anymore with the high population we have today. The examples go on. Despite all these reliances we have to others, how much do we contribute to society? Are there some people that create more meaningful contributions compared to others? How would you measure it? The job of HR departments basically, something I know very little.
As an average human being, I believe we should try our best to sustain ourselves with our own hand-made products. I guess the first example that come to mind is preparing our own meal. Maybe, grow our own crops. Instead of relying on cargo firms, go pick what we need from production centers, learn more about how it is done. Personally, I would love to learn making wooden furnitures, imagine planning and actually manufacturing your own wooden chair and using it everyday! Or shaping glass should be fun. I recently visited a glass museum filled with aesthetically pleasing glass objects. Shaping them, coloring them, putting actual effort. Maybe, then I would be able to say, “Yes, this is what I made, the very object you hold at your hand is my doing!”
I guess this thought will never leave me, even after my student life. As an computer scientist (or engineer whatever you’d like to call it) I will almost always create abstract ideas, non-solid products, untouchable yet observable systems. I will try to model real life with software, construction simulations that mimic the results if we had really built it. I will rely heavily on these pixels I look even now, and the components that make them visible. Will I actually produce, or lie myself that I do?
No matter the answer I know one thing: we consume a lot, yet produce so little.