“Can I do it?” Versus “Should I do it?”

In 2001 I was attending a conference, where Dean Kamen was the keynote speaker. He pointed out, that up until recently the question for us humans was “Can we do it?”. Today, however, we are technologically so advanced, that we can do pretty much anything we put our heads to. In the Sixties, the question was “Can we put a man on the moon?” Today, we know we can. Today, the question is “Of all the millions of things we could spend our time, resources and energy to work on, what should we do?”
I think that this concept applies to me as a person as much as to us as humanity. There are so many professions I could choose, so many tasks I could occupy my time with. The question is not whether I am able do it, but whether it makes sense for me to do it.

I am a pretty good computer programmer. I used to get a lot of happiness and fulfillment out of completing some application, identifying and fixing an issue, figuring out how some process works and how it could be improved. After a while, though, that occupation lost its excitement. Today, I still like to program. However I do not treat it any longer as my life's purpose. When I listened to Dean in 2001, it crystallized for me that this is the question that would help me get ahead in my life: What is my purpose here? Just because I am able to do something, does not mean that I should.
Once I asked myself this question, the answers to my life's questions started to come. Once I looked at it that way, I soon realized, that my own comfort and survival is not good enough a purpose. It all led to where I am today: I see us humans, and myself in particular, as the tools the Universe uses to further this creation.
This new and different view-point is the core of my life-philosophy, my spiritual approach to life. It answered so many questions, helped finding understanding and acceptance, and facilitated my happiness and fulfillment...
Today, I am still programming – it is a great way to sustain myself materially, and it is beautiful and feels good to be creative and helpful on this level too. However, I understand now, that my coming to this world was to fulfill a different reason, not only to write and fix programs...

The concept, Dean explained in his speech, applies to other areas as well.

Here's an example: imagine, there is a person for whom money always was scarce. For that person the question always was, whether he can afford a particular product or service. Does he have enough money to pay for it? Then, one day, he wins a couple million dollars in the lottery. Suddenly, the question, whether he has the money, is no longer relevant.
You can see, if the only guideline that person has to help decide, whether to buy something or not, is whether there is money or not, that person will end up buying a lot of stuff, most of which he won't need. He most likely will go through his millions very quickly and, within a relatively short time, end up as poor as he was before.
Once he wins in the lottery, once scarcity changes to abundance, his guideline has to change. Now, the questions should be, does it make sense to buy this? Would it be better to buy something else? There is so much he could buy, but what, of all of that, should he really buy?

The change in his circumstances necessitated a change in his guiding question.

The same is true for our society, here in the developed countries. All the centuries leading up to today, humanity was living in scarcity. Very limited resources for food, shelter, and clothing; there was much more demand than supply for all of that. Today, however, we live in abundance. We can get pretty much anything we like, at any time, in pretty much any quantity. The circumstances have changed.
And so has the question, that we are supposed to ask ourselves. It is not anymore, whether we can afford something. The question now ought to be, whether it is appropriate to afford it? Or whether it is wise? Or the best course of action?
We drive huge SUVs because “I can afford the gas!” We are not mindful about what we use electricity for, because it is cheap and “I can afford it.”

Let's look at how we use electricity, for a moment: do you know, that any appliance in your house, that can be turned on and off with a remote, is using electricity even when it is turned off? It does. Somewhere between 5 to 15 Watts per hour! Hm. 300 million inhabitants in the US, assuming one such appliance per person at 10 Watts each, makes 3 billion Watt of electricity used for nothing but the comfort of being able to turn this thing off without getting up! BTW, the capacity of the Hoover dam, one of the US largest water power plants, is 2 billion Watts!
You see, we are asking the question: “Can we afford it?” Sure, it costs me a dollar or two a month to have those appliances work that way, I can afford that. The question we should be asking is: Should we use the electricity in that way? Isn't there anything better for which we could use this electricity, than that?

If you look at it that way, you can see, why this planet is in such a mess today! We continue to ask the wrong question. The issue of scarcity had put a lid on our ability to cause damage, Now that the circumstances have changed, now that there is abundance, we have to grow up and make good decisions out of our own motivation. That brings up a whole other topic: “responsibility”... but about that another time...

Let me close by summarizing the two points, that I wanted to ponder today:

• When the circumstances change, the guiding question needs to change too.
  
• Instead of “Can I do it?” it should be “Should I do it?”