Don’t swallow Polonium-210. You won’t last long, and it won’t be pleasant.
There are poisons all around us. The arsenic in your rice, the drain cleaner under your sink.
Alas, some poisons are impossible to avoid, and it’s not productive to live a life that’s poison-free. But it might be worth considering three questions when we think about poison:
- How fast does it act? There’s a difference between a bowl of brown rice and taking up BASE jumping.
- Who else does it harm? Poisons that we spread to others are less moral than the ones we expose ourselves to.
- How much does it cost to avoid? What do we have to do to our systems, our expectations and our methods to avoid this poison?
This analysis makes it clear that banning gas-powered leaf blowers is a no-brainer. They are instantly noisy and noxious, and they make more of an impact on our climate than just about any item in our garage, and they do so quickly. They harm others at least as much as they harm the user, and avoiding their use is convenient and saves money.
In addition to actual physical poisons, most of us wrestle with the emotional and spiritual poisons that are dumped in front of us every day.
Persistent systems are good at sticking around, and that’s true even when they’re bringing actual poison with them. As we seek to build a more resilient path forward, perhaps it pays to experience the short-term discomfort associated with fixing a dangerous system now rather than living with the poison it creates over time.