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28th April 2022 - The Middle Way ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Listening to Pratchat, a podcast about Terry Pratchett. Buddhism is often described as the middle way. Siddhartha Gautama, a Buddha was born a prince and so lived a life of comfort. That is until he realised there is more to life than pleasure. The Buddha then lived with a group of ascetics and found these practices to not be satisfying. Instead, he practised a middle way which avoids extremes of self indulgence and self mortification. This lead to his enlightenment and is shared as the Noble Eightfold path. I can be an extremely irritating person as people will ask a question, seeking a definite position and yet I offer a 'yes but no' sort of answer. Some of this is thanks to being an engineer. Have you ever tried getting an engineer to commit to something being good enough? You may get an affirmative answer eventually but there will be lots of conditional statements surrounding it. This is often the source of great frustration between programme managers who want a yes or a no and an engineer who does not feel they can commit to a yes or a no as there are factors not under their control. I do not understand the need for people to see the world in black and white when grey fits all situations. Ambiguity is a rather wonderful tool if used correctly. People try to test the waters with ethical conundrums. The answer is always 'it depends on the situation.' Murder should always be avoided unless it is the only way to prevent greater suffering. Think of an abused person who can only escape if they kill their abuser. I think most people would agree that this is ok. Yet if you asked people whether murder is bad, they would say absolutely. With the climate crisis, we need to reduce our use of fossil fuels and one such way is the use of electric vehicles. Yet electric vehicles require precious metals such as cobalt. Cobalt iron is vital for highly efficient and lightweight electrical motors. The magnets used in the rotor are likely to use samarium cobalt. Both of these help meet the thermal and weight challenges of electric propulsion but cobalt is ecologically devastating to acquire. It is mined out of the ground and over 50% of the world's supply comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo. This means it is very likely to involve child labour, funding conflicts and many other ethically undesirable activities. By using materials which are hard to source ethically, are electric vehicles the right choice? The answer is often no, but... I feel we should all embrace the middle. Nothing is absolute. Polarised politics is causing chaos and leading to contemptible muppets having undeserved power. A middle way tempers these extremes and keeps us finding the least worst way. We can all be kinder to ourselves, kinder to those we love, kinder to strangers and kinder to those we do not get along with. Try applying the middle way to your life and see what happens. Just be able to make a decision when someone asks where you want to eat!