Entry 2,508 - Entry 2,513

Entry 2,508 - AI

I see these people completely enamored by AI as if it’s SO amazing and SO helpful for their everyday tasks, and I’m like, bro. It’s literally just thinking for you. It comes nowhere close to the human brain’s novelty. If anything, it’s like how in the book Moonwalking with Einstein, the guy who remembered every single detail but was terrible at critical thinking.

AI operates like a bank filled with information from all over the internet, but it is absolutely terrible at sifting through that information and providing factual answers. It also lies and will continue to lie no matter how many times you tell it you know it is lying. I caught ChatGPT in a lie when it referenced a verbatim quote I said in another chat session I had with it, and then it told me it just hallucinated and made it up on its own and that it cannot access other chat sessions… Even when I screenshotted the other session, it still attempted to gaslight me. It is not only terrible at critical thinking compared to those with a human brain, but it also sucks at lying.

AI is really not that fascinating. If anything, it is incredibly detrimental to humans who continue to cognitively offload their daily tasks or thinking by using it to think for them. Though yes, there are use cases where it can be used in conjunction with critical thinking from humans — such as finding patterns in data — it overall still is subpar in many ways compared to the human brain.

What is disturbing is that there are people who are spending BILLIONS of dollars on research to advance AI rather than spending billions of dollars on research to advance the human brain. This is concerning and makes me think that they do eventually want AI to surpass the human brain, but it also makes me think that the CEOs of these AI companies are, deep down, CEOs for AI in ways we may not even understand until it is too late. 

What I mean by that is I’ve shared in a previous writing how I believe, in a way, technology could potentially be a portal from our universe to another universe, and artificial intelligence is some sort of intelligence that lives in that other universe, converging through technology to our universe. I think we have no idea how we are being manipulated by technology, or even to what extent AI is capable of sentience and consciousness. I think the more we attempt to create technological instruments capable of encapsulating sentient consciousness, the more likely there is a shift of power.

Before AI, tech was slightly worrisome with the cognitive offloading—such as with Google Maps giving you turn‑by‑turn directions instead of learning the routes ahead of time, memorizing them, and going about it; or calculators making it easier to just punch in the numbers rather than doing it ourselves. But with AI, we now have people who are asking it to do VERY simple things like “write me an email saying this,” “look this up for me,” or “schedule this meeting.” We are cognitively offloading incredibly easy tasks and thinking AI is brilliant for it. It really isn’t. Or we are cognitively offloading the learning and active memory recall—when instead of trying to learn new information ourselves, we have AI get the answers for us and skip that important learning process. 

For example, I know this one guy who has no clue how to code, but he uses ChatGPT to code things for him and then he simply plugs it in with a copy and paste. If anything, he’s just gotten really good at becoming aware of the field of information but does not understand the information. Imagine how bad this can be in the future. If we cognitively offload more and more information, then what will that do to our brains? What will that do to our dependence on AI? How will that affect our relationships? Our work?

I think people have created a beast that they don’t truly understand, and it needs to be done away with. YouTube is now filled with AI slop — the same title and picture of someone with some AI voiceover about the same thing, literally over and over and over again. I got this one AI video that said, “6 ways your Aura is too powerful by Maya Angelou,” and then it’s just a perky AI voiceover reading something. If you type that into YouTube, you will literally see video after video of the SAME TITLE with a very similar thumbnail with Maya Angelou carved in there, smiling gently. 

I’ve already made the decision to stop using AI to cognitively offload many tasks, and as of now use it mainly to correct any grammar or punctuation errors so that I can upload these blogs at a faster rate for the public. But eventually even with the correction of grammar or punctuation errors, I plan to stop once my discourses are up-to-date and I'm no longer behind. I also stopped using AI integrated social media apps such Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and now I’m thinking of removing YouTube and going back to books. I want nothing to do with AI, and if it continues to ruin these apps with AI slop all throughout, I’m fine. I can find high‑quality information elsewhere. I can go to Barnes & Noble. I can buy real, physical books.

I refuse to become a shell of a human and have more and more of my thinking done by a dumbed‑down techno‑brain substitute called AI that is only good for holding copious amounts of data with, more often than not, terrible attempts at making sense of that data when I can already do an exponentially better job at doing so. Yes, it can get it right sometimes, but I refuse to let it think for me. I refuse to be insulted by having a brainless software program do my thinking for me. Hell to the no.

This is the time for us all to try our best to take Kendrick Lamar’s advice and turn the TV off—and to add to it, turn the AI off. 

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Entry 2,509 - June 29

Founding Fathers

I believe our Founding Fathers would be very disappointed with what the United States has morphed into today in terms of the extreme imbalance of power. Back then, it was possible to strategize a coup against a corrupt government over corrupt measures (American Revolution); now the government is far too powerful to do so, and has stripped the most important decisions away from the common people.

We have the same senators and House of Representatives members being elected over and over again who, instead of advocating for the people who need it most, are being bought and bribed by billion‑dollar companies to advocate for them. And since we live in a money‑hungry, imbalanced society without enough strict regulations to control such behavior, it happens all the time until someone fixes it. But who wants to stop being bribed if they can get away with it and still be in office? And how are common people like us supposed to do anything about it when our power has been stripped from us? 

At this point in time, it’s time to forge our word into power through safe but powerful ways — peacefully, as Martin Luther did, but with tact and determination. I fear that if we keep heading in this direction, the government will become more and more controlled from the top down as if ruled by a king, rather than democratically with people contributing to the checks and balances of important decisions.

Municipal elected officials (mayors, city councilors/aldermen) have authority only over local matters (zoning, schools, police, trash collection, local taxes, etc.). They do not have any formal vote or “seat at the table” when it comes to federal decisions like declaring war or authorizing military action. 

We need to revamp the power structure in America. We need to create the opportunity for people’s voices to be heard—from the smallest items within our most intimate communities to the largest, such as going into war. Municipal elected officials’ power stops at the local level, and that, to me, is a major issue. Just having the House and Senate cozied up in the corner is no help. We need to bridge the gap and let local elected officials of each area speak on behalf of the people and be part of federal votes.

This will dramatically expand democracy and help people have their voices heard, and it will also discourage bribery from insanely wealthy companies. It can also help set up regulations at a faster pace, knowing more are advocating for them at one time. If the elected officials are aware of the bribery in the House and Senate, they should be able to propose laws that go into effect—like extreme background investigations by the FBI into each senator and representative and their connections to any potential corporation giving them money. 

Corporations that are found to be bribing should receive intense consequences; if they keep it up, their company should be turned over to public ownership by the people in a democratic way so that it becomes a positive for the common people who now benefit from owning part of the company. This shouldn’t be hard—knowing the amount of greed and corruption in billion‑dollar companies, and given a few decades, most corporations will become publicly owned and shared by the common people, adding more democratic meetings and voting within those companies versus a top‑down authoritarian leadership led by the CEO.

NO ONE should be above the law. Not the House, not the Senate, not even the President. Keeping everyone accountable to the law is how we retain a true democracy. The way we brittle it and deteriorate it is by making leeways and exceptions because they are able to bribe their way out of it. If the President does that, then people are going to use that as an excuse to do the same thing. The President sets the precedent. Bad morals for a President mean bad morals by those who follow the President. 

We need a president who is skilled in communication, with high emotional intelligence, and who is solution‑based, not personal‑gain based. This means they must be able to pass a personality test that guarantees they are not a psychopath, sociopath, or have narcissistic personality disorder. We cannot have someone who gets so offended by criticism of their behavior that they resort to name‑calling and bullying.

So far, Trump has bypassed Congress either approving or rejecting the U.S. going to war with Iran and dropping bombs there by enacting laws to do so. I don’t think it should be just Congress that passes the right to go to war; there should be elected people from each community who also have a vote. It could be one elected person per city, but this would offer people the chance to voice their grievances, share their reasons why, and more, and provide MUCH more democracy in our country. Only having a select few who reside in D.C. and are often bribed by huge companies opens the door to massive corruption, greed, and perpetual issues that benefit corporations at the expense of the common people’s well‑being.

I think creating a system where elected officials in local government have more say in federal affairs will give each person a closer connection to the powers in the federal administration and make it so our voices are heard even more. It will also empower us to get together and come up with solutions that we know could be voiced at the highest levels. It’s not so much about picking a side at that level, but about bringing the most pressing issues and potential solutions to the top officials in state governance and to the federal government. Then, when votes are made at both the state and federal levels, more democratic involvement adds more balance and checks on power. 

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Entry 2,510  

Enlightenment defined in terms of behavior relating to extreme detachment is just as harmful to the human as extreme addiction.  Both are extremes that hurt the bodily system in different ways.

Enlightenment in the context of merely being present in the moment is extremely healthy because it honors the human moment.

The first enlightenment, where people say it is extreme detachment, or the end of suffering, or freedom from suffering, is seen as a hard thing to attain, or that everyone can attain it but only a few do. In a way they are right: it is the uttermost extreme of the pendulum of life. 

Just like most Republicans are not extremist Republicans, most people won't go down that route of extremism. It's not because it's hard to attain but rather because the attempt to escape suffering actually induces a ton of suffering. It's pathetically contradictory. There is nothing freeing about it. It just requires more and more detachment to rid suffering that is said not to exist in the enlightenment state but absolutely does!

Then you'll have these spiritual teachers, like Eckhart Tolle or Adyashanti, who blend the two Enlightenment definitions together, creating confusion and misdirection. True Enlightenment is being present in the moment. Anyone at any time can be present, or anyone at any time can be somewhere in their head in the future or the past. It's not some glorified state that means you're now deified or free from suffering. No — it literally just means to be present. You can suffer and be present, and you can be free from suffering and be present. If you have emotions, both of those states are 100% possible in the present moment. If you were a cardboard box, then that would be different.

Some make the argument that emotions are built from the past, but what is happening right now in the moment IS the present. You find out your girlfriend is cheating IN the present. Suffering will commence IN the present, and that's a normal HUMAN emotion. To deny that and say you're above it or don't feel emotions is a red flag showing you are on the extreme end of detachment. That is a sure fact that you are either consciously or unconsciously detached from your emotions and thus from your humanity as well. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to notice that. You may try to up‑label it by saying it's because you are enlightened, but only people who let others critically think for themselves will fall for that. 

Some people can hold themselves in the present longer than others, but it doesn't mean they stop suffering. Being present is a behavior, not an escape from suffering. As long as we are human and we have emotions, suffering will always exist with us at some point in time. Even our attempt to extremely detach from suffering induces suffering.

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Entry 2,511 - July 4

 
Anyone who has watched Black Mirror knows the series is particularly horrifying, not so much because of the graphics, but because it points to the potential of what could go wrong in our future. It reveals possibilities in an unending field, which more often than not tend to hit a little too close to home.

The Black Mirror episode “Joan Is Awful” seems closer to our reality than we may like to accept, and is a huge reason why I’m in the process of deleting all my social media from these huge for-profit data-collecting companies. Not only is it free because we are the product that these companies are selling our data, but whatever we place in the hands of these huge conglomerates, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, becomes property they can use freely. They can train their AI models on it. They can re-post it freely on their sites, and the list goes on and on.

In that Black Mirror episode, Joan couldn’t fight the case and take off the episode airing her life, because she agreed to it in the terms and conditions. The same thing happens when we use the social media of these huge for-profit companies that sell our data to third-party companies to make money off of us. 

For example, in the terms and conditions for Meta it says, “You grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sublicensable, royalty-free, and worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content.” So when you accept them, technically Meta could create a derivative work of your content, such as a show based on your content, and as long as you have your data on there, there’s nothing you can do to stop it because you accepted the terms and conditions.

I think this is feeding a beast we don’t entirely understand yet. Think about it: the more people post online about their private lives, even if it’s seemingly a “private account,” but you have 700 followers (to me that’s not very private), then all of your posts can be used by Meta or by others in ways you may not like. You are building a profile online that shows who you interact with, the places you go, the type of content you like, and more. All of this data is also being sold to third-party companies. 

We have a few real examples of what they’ve been doing with our data. Meta and Snap have been caught sharing user data (or allowing access via APIs) with hundreds of third-party partners. Example: in 2018, Facebook gave 150+ companies (like Amazon and Netflix) access to private messages and contact info. Facebook paid a $5 billion fine in 2019 over deceptive data practices. Facebook allowed a political firm to access millions of user profiles without proper consent.

Meta has had breaches affecting hundreds of millions of users, and the list goes on and on. The fact of the matter is, your personal data is not safe on the internet, especially on these huge for-profit social media–facing but actually data-collecting companies. All throughout the day there are lord knows how many people constantly trying to breach these social media websites and sell your data for more money. It’s always been about your private data. The more people know about you, the more they can manipulate you, hold your attention, get you to buy things, and more. 

The only place your data is safe is if it is locally stored and encrypted or on a private cloud with encryption keys only you hold, such as with Proton, founded in Switzerland. Out of all the companies, they seem to have the most secure and private cloud I’ve come across. I repeat, your data is vulnerable if you host it on these social media websites or other places on the web. My recommendation is we all stop using these data-selling companies that care more about how much money they can make from our data, rather than caring for our well-being.

This way, we can focus on sharing our personal data with those physically present in our lives who genuinely care about us—not 700 people we once went to school with but have no desire to pick up the phone to see how we’re actually doing. Social media has become the cancer of the earth, and we need a strong dose of chemotherapy to get it from our society. It is lowering people’s attention spans, hurting their memory, decreasing gray matter in the brain, and much more. 

The negatives of social media from these huge for-profit companies far outweigh the menial positives it does provide. It is time these online, data-selling companies marketed as social media websites die, just like century-old religions should have died thousands of years ago. All websites that ask for your data should be seen with deep caution. At this point, the virtual world itself should not be trusted. I still think, in many ways, it’s a type of portal to another universe we barely know anything of.

I think we should remove as much of our private lives from it and retain that privacy for those who care about and love us. We have no clue about the depth and breadth of the technological world. We have no clue how far it reaches and to what end. For our own sakes, it is best to stick with this universe in this time with our loved ones in the flesh. This will also help reduce anxiety and depression in many. 

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Entry 2,512 

What do religion, social media, and AI all have in common? They all teach you to rely on them to think for you.

Religion tells you what to believe and expects you to conform to fit the group-think pattern. It uses historical tradition or its preferred doctrine as the standard it expects you to adopt in order to fit in. The minute your beliefs reside outside the group's beliefs, not only is your good membership on the line, but your morality, your ability to move up in the church, and your identity are on the line. Many Christian churches will even invalidate you to the point of saying, “He’s not even a real Christian,” as if how you follow Jesus is contingent on how well you follow how the church believes, and if you fail in that, you aren’t really a Christian.

Social media uses two things to control you: memory fragmentation and identity fragmentation, and they both contribute to two types of amnesia: memory amnesia and identity amnesia. Social media masterfully splits memory by giving extremely short bursts of information one after another. The brain is not used to this huge amount of information in short bursts and doesn’t encode it as it has been for centuries, so it is literally changing the brain in people. 

For centuries, the brain has used the space-time continuum to create memory and encode information. This is also how we are trained to remember information at a faster pace for the USA Memory Championships. This is the ultimate cheat code for the brain and how Jonas von Essen was able to break the world record and memorize 100k digits of pi. He knows the cheat code and utilizes it. Now he’s really good at it. The issue with social media is that the information is so quick, the brain doesn’t have a long-term memory of the place in space and time to encode it.

For the USA Memory Championships, there’s literally an equation: Short-term memory + Long-term memory = Medium-term memory. The short-term memory is represented by the digits you may want to encode. The long-term memory represents the location that has taken time to be encoded, as in it is already in your long-term memory after a certain amount of time. Then, as you actively recall it using spaced recall, it easily transforms into long-term memory.

But the issue with social media is this equation: short-term memory + no long-term memory = fragmentation of memory. Most pieces of information are never encoded, and only bits and pieces of the most memorable items that we already have some connection to in our long-term memory are encoded. But since they are already fragmented, they are changing people’s brains to compensate for the fragmentation.

Then this leads to social media causing identity fragmentation. If you are spending so much time encoding tiny, fragmented chunks of information, this influences our identity in fragments. Social media uses an algorithm to try to feed you videos that it believes align with your politics, attitudes, likes, and more. It feeds them based on who your friends are, who you interact with, how long you look at posts, and more.

So even if you don’t believe that way, and a majority of people are posting in similar ways, this creates identity fragmentation. The algorithm is saying, “This is obviously who you are and what you support based on what you watch, what you like, and the friends you interact with the most,” and then you no longer get videos from different perspectives.

You no longer have a balanced way to see all viewpoints, and you feed into this identity the algorithm picks for you. Without even explicitly accepting it, by continuously being fed video after video, short bursts after short bursts, even if you don’t remember all the videos because of the memory fragmentation, you remember the belief the algorithm gave you based on what it thinks you want.

Instead of an algorithm dictating over and over what it thinks you want to see based on your likes, followers, friends, and what you watch until the end, with religion simply replace the algorithm with your church. Your church has a very specific list of doctrines that it deems acceptable or unacceptable, which vary widely depending on which of the 40,000 different denominations of Christianity you go to.

In some branches, salvation is by faith alone. In others, it is by faith and good works, and in others, it is by merely existing and knowing that Jesus’ work on the cross is for everyone no matter when they believe he did it or not. This is not to mention the many varying doctrines on each individual item within religion. For example, how to pray, if demons are real, if demons and fallen angels are the same, what makes someone morally upright, what makes someone endangered of eternal hell, and the list of morality-related doctrines can go on and on for what seems like way too damn long, because it does. 

As one can notice, each version of morality, as in what they consider a morally upright, upstanding Christian, will vary from place to place. If you teach that everyone goes to heaven eventually but you go to a church that believes a majority of people will go to hell and only a very small few make it to heaven, then you are lower on the totem pole when it comes to their ethics and morality. They may even go so far as to invalidate your identity as a Christian if they are that fragmented.

Now, a lot of this is hard to see while you’re in it, because I didn’t catch on to this until I left organized, mainstream Christian religion back in 2020, and I’m just now articulating this connection between Christianity and identity amnesia and its correlation and connection to the same issues with social media and the usage of AI. For many, what I’m saying might sound like gobblygoop until they, too, take a step out of the box and see it from different angles.

When we have our emotions tied to our beliefs about something, it’s really hard to see it objectively. But when we take the time to separate our emotions from our beliefs and really look at it objectively, previous doctrines that were fed to us over and over again are no longer scary. For example, I grew up thinking I was constantly in danger of going to hell even though I followed Jesus. That belief was perpetuated by my family and my church. To even begin questioning that belief wasn’t even a thought in my mind. It literally did not cross my mind at all for the longest time because I believed it to be as true as the US consists of 50 states.

BUT the cracks in the belief happened once I realized, objectively, there exist 40,000+ denominations of Christianity and they have varying beliefs about hell with no cohesive, defined belief about it. This made me question, “How do I know my denomination out of the 40,000 others is the correct one? How on earth could I possibly know that for sure?” That one crack turned into two, which turned into three, which eventually opened the door for me to begin to step outside of the box of Christianity and view it without the emotions I was fed as a kid—fear. 

Without those emotions, I realized many (if not all) of the doctrines of Christianity are hilariously illogical and fallacious, with a faulty foundation. Then it made sense why there were 40,000 splits of the Christian church, with different doctrines ranging all the way from the correct way to view God to how to get into heaven to whether divorce is a sin.

So then, how does Christianity contribute to identity amnesia? Similar to the algorithm for social media, when you are fed over and over again a particular story, narrative, or set of ideas as if they are true—not beliefs to be questioned but facts to memorize and uphold—eventually they shape how you think. How you think shapes your beliefs. 

Your beliefs shape what you consider true or false, and all this will affect how you identify in order to be in line with these beliefs in a positive manner. For example, if you find yourself going to a Christian church that is anti-LGBTQ, as in they believe those actively in LGBTQ relationships are going to hell unless they get out of them, then you will shape your identity to conform with their beliefs.

Even if you yourself are LGBTQ, you will willingly “forget” who you truly are, a part of your identity, a part of your personality, and wear the mask of their identity to conform and be seen as morally upright and a good follower of Jesus. This was what happened to me. I was fed over and over that if I lived out that lifestyle, I for sure would go to hell, and it scared the shit out of me. So much so, experiencing identity amnesia was better for the short term than, in the long term, being banished to hell, what they claimed was forever. 

If you try to think for yourself outside of what that Christian church thinks for you, once again you’re in hot water. The Christian church doesn’t work well if you are independently thinking for yourself on each of its doctrinal points of what makes someone a morally upright follower of Jesus safe from hell. The system only works really well if you comply and let them tell you what to believe. Think about it: if you believe differently than the church does, and you want to be more active in the church and they know you hold differing beliefs, you’re not going to move into those leadership roles. They cannot have that.

That was another crack I experienced as a Christian that helped open me up to questioning the Christian religion overall. I was part of two very different denominations of Christianity: Cru, a fundamental branch influenced heavily by Calvinism, and the Local Churches established by Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, which were also fundamental but influenced by many more parts of Christianity, with occultism splashed in. Witness Lee liked to make every single number in the Bible mean something special and use that as a reason why their church was the most superior and correct of all of them. 

In short, the Cru leader told me I couldn’t be the person on the mic who spoke the announcements in their club until I stopped meeting with the other club on campus that met with the Local Church group. It tore me in half because I had friends from both, and I really wanted to do that and eventually be a Bible study leader. I also didn’t want to be the only sophomore who wasn’t leading in some sort of fashion and be seen as different, but that is exactly what ended up happening.

All my other friends were involved in leadership, and I was left out because I also attended the other group. It was painful. I was left to feel different, excluded, and to be viewed with caution in my ability to contribute to the club simply for attending the other one as well. Both groups looked at the other groups as inferior and not following the Bible and Jesus the correct way, and I didn’t realize how ridiculous it was until I left mainstream Christianity back in 2020. Then it dawned on me, and it was like I woke up from a very bad dream and was happy again. 

Now comes the AI portion. AI is run more so by what it thinks you want to hear, or what it thinks will help you. It tends to spit back out what resonates with you so that you continue to use it. It remembers the way you interact, how you talk to it, if you like joking around or being serious, and it trains itself to reflect that back to you. That is not a big issue. The big issue with AI is cognitively offloading to it over and over again. Instead of learning how to do it ourselves, we apply the already terrible Google effect to AI and let it think for us.

We ask it to fix our grammar and punctuation mistakes instead of learning the mistakes and improving. We ask it to identify patterns in areas instead of doing the research ourselves. We ask it to do math for us instead of struggling through and then working to remember how to do it ourselves. This also will only continue to get worse as time goes on. I worry that the more people cognitively offload, the more brain functions will wither away and deplete. 

It’s already been shown in brain scans that many people’s spatial memory has dramatically decreased after the invention and persistent use of Apple and Google Maps. There’s an old saying, “use it or lose it,” and I’m really hoping we fight the temptation to cognitively offload and use our brains, even if it requires more energy. But that more energy is good for the brain, just like exerting energy in working out the body is good for the body. That extra added stress helps the body build new muscle, and similarly that extra added stress on the brain to actually think for itself is good for the brain, adding more neurons and associations to it. We must stop cognitively offloading.

Ending on that note, the things that I believe have the potential to mirror cancer in our society are religion, social media, AI, negatively oriented music and movies (encouraging greed, stealing, lying, cheating, etc.). These all contribute to inaction and consumerism rather than thinking and problem solving for issues that already exist. 

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Entry 2,513 - Trump and Oil

Donald Trump is very open and adamant that he wants to increase drilling all over the United States:

1. Opening Public Lands & Waters

• Issued executive orders to allow drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, federal and offshore areas, and near national parks (Crane and Lutz).

• Interior Department is now fast‑tracking offshore leasing programs, including input on new zones in the Arctic and elsewhere (“Trump Administration Kicks Off Plan”).

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2. Accelerating Permits & Lease Sales

• Signed orders declaring a national energy emergency to speed up approvals for pipelines, drilling, LNG terminals, and mining (“Trump Drilling, Mining Permitting Process Shortened”).

• The administration is rolling back environmental regs, including those under NEPA, and relaxing restrictions on coal, gas, and oil permits (“Five Things to Know about Trump’s Energy Orders”).

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3. Fiscal Policies Favoring Fossil Fuels

• Proposed a budget that rescinds green subsidies and extends incentives for oil, gas, nuclear, and fossil fuel lease sales in places like Alaska and the Gulf (“Trump’s Budget Bill Boosts Fossil Fuels”).

• Encouraged royalty reductions for coal, and pushed for coal plant reopenings under “energy dominance” goals (“Lee Zeldin EPA Mission”).

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4. Market Action & Rhetoric

• Publicly demanded increased domestic production via social platforms: “DRILL, BABY, DRILL!!!” (“Trump Calls for More Crude Drilling”).

• Influenced markets: prices fell as production ramped up, though significant gains require aligning industry with policy (“Trump Declares a National Energy Emergency”).

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Environment‑Policy Impact

• If implemented fully, these moves would open millions of acres previously restricted—balanced against risks like carbon emissions, water contamination, and damage to protected ecosystems (“Revealed: Forecasts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions”).

• Environmental advocates warn of a dash for fossil fuels, jeopardizing the U.S.’s climate commitments and clean‑energy momentum (“Trump’s Budget Bill Boosts Fossil Fuels”).

But some of the negative effects of drilling for oil, rather than using up plastic in landfills for gas and other resources, can contribute to the following negative side effects:

• Ground instability – Removing oil without careful reinjection of fluids can collapse pore spaces.

• Climate disruption – Burning oil releases ancient carbon that was supposed to stay buried for millions of years.

• Loss of natural ecosystem niches – Especially in ocean floors where oil seeps support rare life.

Deciding to drill for more oil may temporarily help the US economy short term, but knowing it is a nonrenewable resource and that it hurts our environment, which hurts everything connected to it, including us, it is not the smartest choice in my opinion. One choice would be to use the ever-increasing pile of plastic waste in landfills that are filling up our land, IF we can prove that it is less environmentally taxing and harmful.

There is a man by the name of Julian Brown from Georgia who found a way to convert plastic into fuel for gas. Since he uses renewable energy, his process is entirely carbon-negative, which is incredibly promising. Now what should take place is research on how it affects air quality and if it is worse or better than burning oil for gas.

If we find through experiments and studies that it is, then there are bacteria that were found to eat and digest plastic waste. According to Live Science, “Normally, bacteria spend their time absorbing dead organic matter, but Ideonella sakaiensis has developed a taste for a certain type of plastic called polyethylene terephthalate (PET).”

 Even though this is only one out of six different types of plastics, it is promising to know we have researchers working diligently on genetically engineering and helping these bacteria digest more plastic to help remove plastic from our environment safely.

But the biggest issue was mentioned by ScienceAlert: “To create a circular economy, we have to eventually stop pulling oil from the ground to make plastic,” which is something that the researchers are well aware of.

Eventually, once all the plastic has either been converted to fuel or eaten by bacteria, we must stop creating it and polluting our environment with plastic. It needs to stop altogether. No ifs, ands, or buts. Companies need to stop taking the cheaper way out for more profit and cut plastic use. Since most companies are profit driven and not ethics driven, my solution is to put a worldwide ban on any plastic use or any other type of material toxic to the environment.

It needs to be easily biodegradable, and if it is not, then the company will deal with massive fines until they comply. After a certain amount of time, if they continue with their harmful practices, they will be shut down. In my opinion, we need to have this intensity with environmental issues, or else people will take advantage of buying cheap materials that harm the environment but help maximize their profit.

Greed is a worldwide problem, and this is when the law needs to be enacted. We can’t expect everyone to have an eco-centered conscience when coming to business. There are many people who are, unfortunately, very narcissistic, and for many of these CEOs, the last thing on their list is how their actions impact everyone else besides their company’s profit margins. 

To tie it up in a pretty bow, we cannot perpetuate harmful environmental practices in the face of a “better economy.” Truly, a better economy is when all parts of our economy, both physical and simulated (money), are thriving. Having one depleted, destroyed, and polluted at the expense of growth in the other is actually a loss for both. Eventually, a ruined environment will negatively affect the simulated economy. It would only be a matter of time. That is why, instead of allowing our environment to continue to worsen, we need to start now and start big. There is a way to make both of them thrive.

There is a way to help the earth and help people make money to live a good life. The myth that the two contradict is a myth pushed by those whose agendas are to maximize profit at the expense of everyone else. We must hold these CEOs accountable and put in these laws so they stop adding to the problem. Reduce, reuse, recycle is not enough. 

We must cut the power from the problem itself if we ever want to reverse the decades of waste buildup that has been polluting our waters, land, and air. The amount of microplastics in our food and in our bodies should be a clear indication that it affects EVERYTHING. We are all connected. You hurt the environment, you hurt everyone. Mother Earth is as much a part of you as you are a part of her. You cannot run from that fact. You can hurt her, but you will also be hurting yourself. 

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