Chapter 9 - In the long run, Ken is dead

Time scales matter.  As Keynes famously wrote in his 1923 book "A Tract on Monetary Reform":

But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task, if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us, that when the storm is long past, the ocean is flat again.

Keynes uttered and wrote a lot of smart phrases during his life, but it is definitely the simple phrase "In the long run we are all dead" that truly stuck and continues to resonate to this day.

Economists are not alone in their search of the relevant time scale.

At some point in the future, the earth will collapse into the sun.  Or as scientists would articulate it, the most probable fate of the Earth is absorption by the Sun in about 7 to 8 billion years, after the star (Sun) has entered its red giant phase and expanded beyond the planet's (Earth's) current orbit.  And that's the long game.

Much earlier, in ("only") about 600 million years from now, the level of carbon dioxide will fall below the level needed to sustain C3 carbon fixation photosynthesis used by trees and plants. The extinction of plants will be the demise of almost all animal life, since plants are the base of the food chain on Earth.  Never mind a nuclear apocalypse or some other self-inflicted shenanigans wiping us out beforehand.

If the future is so bleak, what is one to do?  Perhaps live in the past, like a good historian?  Or perhaps one should focus solely on the moment, as the Zen Buddhists will tell you.  The history is past, the future is yet to come.  Reality consists only of the moment, so live it mindfully.  You can read more about on the Lululemon bags that you receive when you purchase their well fitted (and well priced) athletic yoga-inspired attire.

Whatever the time scale, it probably is somewhere between this very mindful moment and the long grass of humanity. But the punch line is that Ken is dead, baby.  Ken's dead.  Just like Zed.

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Chapter 10 - Hello Barbie, let's go party