Ought

The merriam-webster dictionary’s third entry for the definition of the word “ought” says:

natural expectation

Day-by-day I continuously ask myself: “what do I have to do now?” and it has only been a recent realization to me that instead I should be asking: “what do I ought to do now?”

Before social media, contacting relatives and friends was a slow expensive process. When social media was first introduced many many people were able to interact with close friends at will and without any expense other than the expense payed for owning a digital device and an internet connection. As time passed, people quickly forgot these original motivations and social media eventually turned into the entertainment industry that we have come to know nowadays. My friends had social media accounts, my family had some, I – as a social person wanting to fit in with the people around me – also created several social media accounts. I never stopped to question the reasons why I would do this. I just glued my eyes to my phone’s screen for hours on-end, the dopamine of seeing funny and entertaining content was what kept me hooked. I used to read books during my free time, ever since owning a smart-phone I have not finished a single work of fiction. Social media had trained me that entertainment had to be experienced through quick dopamine bursts, making me completely incapable of sitting down and reading a book.

This has all changed and it all started when reading “Digital Minimalism” by Cal Newport.¹ Frankly, before reading this book, I never asked myself why exactly I used social media; I simply did because that’s what most people do. A central idea that’s exposed in this book talks about the motivations, justifications or reasons why one would use social media in the first place. The author explicitly asks the reader to meditate on this; and that I did. I want to use social media for keeping up and participating in the lives of the people who are meaningful to me. Superfluous activities to this are just that and as such I ought to not be doing them. Do I really need to be scrolling memes on Instagram? How caught-up do I have to be with Veritasium’s latest upload? Why did I even open Twitter, none of my friends or family use this?

I’ve been seeing this pattern in many other places too. I was reflecting about my exercise habits some weeks ago and realized that my health should actually be very important to me, not a “hobby” to be followed in case I have free-time. I have incorporated an exercise routine that I strictly follow, a healthier diet (not perfectly health; I still eat fried chicken and french fries every now and then) and a healthier sleeping routine. This last one absolutely baffles most people. Did you know that in order to sleep for 8 hours and still wake up at 5AM for a normal work-day you need to be going to sleep at 9PM? This also implies that you need to be, at the very latest, inside your bedsheets ready to go to sleep at 8:30PM. It usually takes me an hour to just be inside my bedsheets, read something, and fall asleep. I should not have to justify why I have to do this. Many studies have already been published confirming that people should sleep more 7 to 8 hours a day. If I do not follow this routine I get extremely painful migraines and any activity which requires me to depend on my eyes becomes excruciating. If the rest of my body had a mouth it would be screaming at me to please rest.

Today, I learned about green growth which spurred me to write this essay. A concept coined by investors that want to build industries while remaining eco-friendly. However, in order to achieve true eco-friendliness, these investors would have to create a company which fundamentally cannot grow under capitalism, let alone exist. This has led to a new term called “degrowth” which does the opposite of what any of these investors would want: make the industry smaller. Making the industry smaller would be the only way to fight climate change. Climate change is an undeniable fact, claiming otherwise is akin to claiming the sea is made out of molten hot metal and that the sky actually becomes purple at midday: an utter fallacy. Then, as residents of this moist rock floating through space, we ought to keep it habitable. Governments and industries know this but are limited by capitalism which forces all of them to grow at all costs. At the cost of me, the writer, you, the reader, the owner of the ISP which served you this website, your family and everyone dearest to you. Keeping the planet habitable to us is not something that Governments and business are allowed to do because of the shackles of capitalism. They can’t do anything except continuing to negatively affecting our climate. Many movements and organizations have started to notice this, but going against capitalism automatically grants you the “communist” label which has garnered so much bad reputation that they avoid it like the plague. But, we all know that the way to fight climate change is by stopping it at its source; for once and for all.

I could go on-and-on about more and more things that one ought to do regardless of their own personal convictions and motivations. But that would be redundant to what I’ve previously exposed and I think that the only real thing left to do is ask:

What do you ought to do?