confusedpuppy

I had to leave the automation industry because othe reckless waste of resources the automation industry requires. It was becoming an unbearable burden on my mind.

I thought I was being smart by using this company as a way to quickly get my electrical apprenticeship completed. Get in, get out then find somewhere quiet to live. Instead, I got used up and discarded while the entire time being treated like the dirt under a pile of shit. My prize for attempting to game capitalism, even in the smallest of ways.

Since my youth, I had been lectured in school about the dangers of climate change. The only news I ever gave any attention to was environmental news. When I was in my early/mid 20's, I made many changes to my lifestyle and future plans based on the fact that my elder years would be on a planet ruined by industrialization.

But everything is happening faster than expected. When COVID entered the global scene in 2020 and I saw the disorganized and uncooperative response from governments and corporations, I entered a state of existential dread. Once again, my future plans were cut short. Very short. By emotionally stunted children in positions of power. And the near future these very same people are creating is just depressing.

I don't do much these days. I keep it simple. I don't feel bad about how little I do. Small as it seems, doing less makes me feel less disgusted by my impacts on this planet. The way I look at it, if capitalism always demands positive accumulation of productivity and resources then the opposite, doing less, is a radical act of defiance against capitalism itself. I don't need this justification, it just amuses me. I'm much happier now by doing less because doing less makes me content. On top of that, my mind is plagued with a lot less guilt knowing I'm not actively working against the environment for the sake of making a paycheck.

I got into Arduino through my electrical apprenticeship. We had an electronics course to teach us electrical flow, sensors and boolean logic with integrated circuits. I was working on a project for lights and lighting patterns. Also had a couple other smaller ideas but eventually gave up on all of them.

My world view at the time was being challenged and changing rapidly. It's far to easy to get lost in tech crazes because there's always something new to distract you from the truly destructive nature of tech.

I kept a couple parts but sold off everything else for the price of a lunch. The person who bought everything from me was a teacher and said his students would appreciated the box of parts. I didn't feel so bad since they would get used instead of collecting dust.

I've since been focusing on less tech related interests. I'm attempting to work towards a minimal tilling garden. I maintain my own bicycle. I've recently picked up whittling. I have a bunch of untreated wood I can use and the wood shavings can be used in my garden. I am working towards simplicity after burning out hard from technology related complexity.

I never planned on staying in the automation industry for long, planned to complete my apprenticeship and run. Management delayed my apprenticeship and then covid further delayed things. All the new revelations of abuse, waste and destruction ate at me pretty hard and little voice in my head wouldn't stop screaming at me to get out. In an attempt to offset the damage feel like I caused, I planned to get fired and somehow took down the HR manager with me on the way out. Still got my severance pay and a ban from a large, international automation corporation. Maybe I didn't offset my damages but it was still very satisfying.

If I was only focusing on the end product, industrial plastics would seem logical. The issue I have is that it takes an incredible amount of resources it takes overall.

Extracting, refining, forming, shipping, and right down to installation requires a lot of energy and waste. Forming a wire requires heat for the metals and plastics involved. Metal and plastics are heavy and require more fuel to transport it around. Often shrink wrap is used in transportation. Shrink wrap is worthless after a single use and it takes a lot of plastic wrap to safely secure a load cables on on a skid. Installation creates a lot of waste that rarely gets recycled.

Any electronic devices involved are always shipped in single use plastic wrap. This is to ensure no moisture damage in storage and transit. All those devices are likely to be shipped with other devices that require even more plastic wrap.

Often when a line becomes discontinued, many of those dirty and used cables do not get reused. The new assembly line that comes in to take it's place will be built with new cables. A company does not care about reusing old material, they want as little downtime as possible and so installing from new materials will be preferred.

This is all just one trade within many trades that help create and automated assembly lines. Each trade has their own use of fossil fuels. It adds up really quickly.

I strongly believe that we can not technology our way out of this situation. I believe it's a completely unsustainable path to continue on.

Rarely do I see talk of doing less as an action for dealing with the climate crisis. Less work, less transporting, less consumption, less expectations. Rarely do I see discussions of creating stronger, local communities as a form of dealing with the climate crisis. Often the main answer to the climate crisis is more technology without questioning how to create, sustain, maintain or recycle all that tech.

If I am wrong, I'm wrong. I am merely reacting to the situation I found myself in and the things I've observed in those situations. If you think my view is extreme, it's because I now believe the unsustainable use of resources to keep our trades and tech going is absurdly extreme.

If the world truly wants to use tech to deal with the climate crisis, it would have to address the waste and dependency on fossil fuels. Ignoring it will do nothing but hasten our current declining climate health.

As a covid lockdown hobby, I got an Arduino starter kit. I found myself buying all these little parts for these projects that I had thought up. I ended up losing interest in Arduino because of all the cheap and tiny bits that get made in China and shipped to the rest of the world. All those tiny parts must be shipped in more disposal packages that help protect the parts from moisture and shock.

There's so much energy and waste involved in all these tiny parts and integrated circuits when you look at the whole picture of manufacturing, packaging and shipping.

Robots, technology and open hardware/software concepts are all really interesting. It just gets hard to justify the environmental impact of all this fun tech.

I probably meant up to 600 voltage. After I went out of my way to get fired from that awful place, I quit my apprenticeship and left the absolute toxic culture of the trades world behind.

Also found it hard to justify being an electrician when electric cables need plastic insulation. Hard to separate electrical needs from the oil industry when the insulating material comes from the oil industry.

I used to work in automation and it's amazing how much waste is created just in the process of creating an automated assembly line.

My company built lines that required power to motors and devices than used up to 600 volts of power. Computers and sensors everywhere. The newer lines tend to have so much more crammed into them to increase production of units. More robots and tools means more power required. Power was usually not shut off during any downtime unless we were working on something that needed to be disconnected.

The automation field is pretty amazing until I stepped back to really notice how wasteful and unsustainable automation is.

I had to leave the industry. It's become clear to me that automation is far too destructive to the environment. Corporations and businesses have no care to make automation cleaner or more sustainable.

I don't know how people can expect automation to create more green energy equipment when automation itself is so dirty and demanding.

I've had the opportunity to live in Australia and had a chance to learn of the indigenous people there. Their stories and history. I made an effort to learn a bit more about how life was like before colonialists. Or at least what we were able to learn about life before colonialism as a lot of that information is filtered through colonialist eyes.

When I returned home to Canada, I was able to unpack all that I learned from the treatment of Australian indigenous people and apply that perspective to the Canadian Indigenous people. Honouring the land doesn't simply mean how we treat our food or living sustainably. It includes the nature bound history and stories that communities have created and shared as it moved forward in history. A story of a volcano that was so destructive could live on for many human generations to come as it becomes a crucial story of the peoples that lived in that area. Breaking away from modern perspectives on human histories is difficult because there's so much nuance that never gets recorded.

I don't know how fair it is to compare pre-colonialist indigenous people's behaviour to post colonialism. There are a lot of factors and skewed perspectives that need to be understood before I could talk more on that. From what I have learned, I also don't think it's fair to judge indigenous people's behaviours to new technologies that was introduced after the arrival of Europeans. I feel it's somewhere on the level of blaming children for the problems of today when it's always been the adults who exploited and crafted everything there is today. I don't believe the indigenous people's ignorance to their own genocide should be their blame. This is just my perspective on things and I still have lots to learn regarding indigenous people and their history. I can always be wrong.

I also feel you quoted me unfairly. Later in that same paragraph I try to express that pre-colonialist life would not be easy, that it would be short and harsher and full of it's own unique challenges. I'd prefer a short and intense life with daily struggles compared to a long, drawn out existence maintaining complex machines and worrying about the future. But that's just me.

I remember when cottagecore first came into my worldview. By this time, it seemed to have already been an established aesthetic.

It gave off the same vibes as minimalism to me. A white washed, mass marketed solution for a busy world wanting simplicity. Commodified to show how simple a person can be. Another form of perversion and exploitation of simplicity by capitalism. Just like anything capitalism touches, it sucked every bit of meaning, soul and passion out of the concept of simplicity to sell more soulless junk.

I do agree that behind the aesthetics is a real yearning for simplicity. Technology is abstract and complex. For every bit of technology we add in our lives, it's yet another layer of abstraction and complexity ontop countless more layers of abstraction and complexity. To me it feels like I am maintaining maintenance for abstract and complex ideas that I barely understand.

If this sounds like the ramblings of a crazy person talking in circles then you are beginning to understand why I feel so insane. I hate it.

I often fantasize about what life would have been like as a pre-colonialist indigenous person. Living in a way that honoured nature instead of controlling it. Observing and learning from nature. A closer connection to plants, animals and everything that lives. I don't mean to romanticize this way of life. It has it's challenges and limitations. It would be a harsher and possibly shorter life. I would give up all the modern technology for fewer simple tools, a smaller local community and a closer connection to the land and the life it offers. I want my story of a short, intense and meaningful life to shown on my skin through the scars and tattoos I have collected throughout it.

I feel both minimalism and cottagecore both offer modern approaches to simplicity and fail to properly address the disconnect between modern living and nature. Even before being perverted by capitalism. I'd prefer moving forward a combination of modern understanding and indigenous land practices. Reconnecting with community and nature.

I want people to feel joy the same joy I felt after I created a healthy, living pile of soil for my veggies to grow in. I've felt more satisfaction from that than fron any object I've ever bought.

Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times.

If I'm understanding you, this is about leadership? Is leadership what separates strong men from weak men? Is it solely men in leadership positions that define strong/weak men? Are men in leading role the only source of indicating good times/bad times?

It seem like anyone who is not a man and not strong has very little input if this statement believed to be true.

What is a strong or weak man? Who defined what it is to be a strong or weak man? Why are men the only indicator of a good or bad times? Do the experiences and perspectives of people who are not strong men provide no insight in to what are considered good or bad times?

I would like to know the goal of posting a broad statement such as this. It just seems like a statement to create more personal and "weaker" enemies. Having more enemies sounds exhausting. Or maybe I'm reading into it wrong.

Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, president of the ANA, said the negative workplace effects associated with staffing shortages require “meaningful and lasting solutions to be implemented immediately: eliminating mandatory overtime, enforceable workplace violence prevention plans, providing mental health and wellness resources for nurses [and] transparency of nurse reimbursement.”

How would bringing in more people solve anything when the core issues causing this extreme burnout are not being addressed?

I think all that extra money going to the CEO could be redirected to the nurses and their needs to prevent burnout. That would be an effective approach.

It's much easier to understand that shorter, milder winters means you can make people be even more productive. Now winter can't slow down that road widening project.