G. K. Chesterton on Enjoying Daily Life

Someone writing around 1930 that civilization might be in ruins in about fifteen years, is worth paying attention to even nearly a century later.  One such person was Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), whose biography by Maisie Ward I have been reading lately. 

 

Chesterton was unquestionably a genius, but of a type that we are unfamiliar with today.  In our science-besotted age, we cannot conceive of geniuses other than the Albert Einstein type:  the scientific or technological wizard whose superiority is manifested by the fact that nobody except perhaps a few other geniuses can understand what he or she is doing. 

 

Chesterton wasn't that kind of genius.  He was a genius for the masses.  His gift was to take everyday things that everyone knew about—sunrises, beer, family affection, work—and look at them in a paradoxical way that made people sit up and see them in a new light.  He called himself a journalist, and if writing enough published material to fill a bookshelf several feet long with one's collected works qualifies you to be a journalist, he was not wrong to do so.

 

But he was so much more than that:  philosopher, theologian, controversialist, debater, radio personality, and apologist for Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular.  Believe it or not, he wrote many things that reflect on current issues in engineering ethics, and I'd like to focus on one quote in particular.

 

Toward the end of his life, he looked around the England that he loved, and saw how people were being drawn toward what we would now call electronic media (back then, mainly radio and especially sound movies) as a distraction from everyday life.  The very word "boredom" dates only from the early 1800s, and seems to be a peculiarly modern malady.  By the 1930s, Chesterton saw a danger in the fact that ordinary life, without spicing it up with a distraction that called for the observer to do nothing more than sit back and watch, was seen as increasingly boring.  This insight led him to pen the following words, which are quoted from the extensive biography of Chesterton by his friend Maisie Ward:

 

"Unless we can bring men back to enjoying the daily life which moderns call a dull life, our whole civilization will be in ruins in about fifteen years.  Whenever anybody proposes anything really practical, to solve the economic evil today, the answer always is that the solution would not work, because the modern town populations would think life dull.  That is because they are entirely unacquainted with life.  They know nothing but distractions from life; dreams which may be found in the cinema; that is, brief oblivions of life . . . . Unless we can make daybreak and daily bread and the creative secrets of labour interesting in themselves, there will fall on all our civilisations a fatigue which is the one disease from which civilisations do not recover.  So died the great Pagan civilisation; of bread and circuses and forgetfulness of the household gods."

 

The "economic evil" of which he spoke meant the Great Depression of the 1930s, which was arguably harsher in England than in the United States.  What he called for in this passage was not any innovations in technology.  While he was in favor of the good which advances in science and technology can produce, he saw that when people are provided with distractions that let them forget about the daily task at hand, they all too often choose the distraction over the task.

 

This is an ethical issue, and cannot be evaded with the old saw that "technology is neutral—the good and bad lies in how you use it."  Moving to today, vast fortunes and huge industries rely on the power of smartphone-enabled technology to divert the attention of billions into channels that profit corporations while delivering distractions that waste time at best.  And one of the harms it causes is the tidal wave of depression sweeping over the children and youth of the world—a tidal wave that Australia is attempting to sweep back with their recently-enacted ban on social media for anyone under 16, which took effect on Dec. 10.

 

I'm pretty sure that Chesterton, once he understood what social media is about, would be in favor of that ban.  He might even go so far as to recommend that every smartphone on earth be subjected to the treatment that a Houston private school gives every phone that is confiscated from students who violate their school-day ban on them:  slicing in two with a diamond saw. 

 

But the problem isn't just the phones:  it's what we have allowed the phones to do to our psyches.  When was the last time you sat outside for more than five minutes and did not look at your phone, but instead looked at the world around you?  Perhaps it's a busy cityscape.  Perhaps it's a field of wheat in the countryside.  Perhaps it's a forest.  But unless you live in Antarctica or on a desert island, there is life and there are other people around to observe and wonder at. 

 

That was the kind of thing that Chesterton himself could do regardless of where he was, whether in the dullest, dingiest part of London or in the beauty of his countryside home in Beaconsfield.  And appreciation for the ordinary aspects of real life is what he saw lacking in the lives of his fellow citizens of England in the 1930s, just fifteen short years before the devastation at the end of World War II.

 

I'm no prophet, and recycling old prophecies usually doesn't work.  But if mass distraction is a sign of civilizational breakdown, and Chesterton called it right in the 1930s, we should at least pause to consider whether radical-seeming steps such as the one Australia is taking may save us from a breakup that will not be World War III, exactly, but might be just as devastating.  Already, the political systems of many countries have suffered tremendous damage from the pernicious influence of social media.  And worse effects may come. 

 

If the tide is to be turned, it will happen as one person at a time learns how to use technology as a tool, and not allow it to be a master.  Put down the phone and spend time with the real world this Christmas—and with people you love.

 

Sources:  The quote above is from Chapter 21 of Maisie Ward's Gilbert Keith Chesterton, originally published in 1942.  The Kindle edition I'm reading lacks page numbers or references to the source in Chesterton's voluminous writings. 

Pros and Cons of Proposed Fuel Economy Standards

 

That's not a very exciting headline, perhaps.  But the Trump administration's proposed changes to the so-called Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) rules have already drawn criticism from many quarters.  The Environmental Defense Fund, for example, claims in a headline that the changes will "cost Americans more for gas, weaken national security, and increase pollution."  If it's so bad, why is the administration doing it? 

 

At the news conference announcing the proposal, Trump was surrounded by representatives of several domestic automakers, who favor the move.  It is actually a further step in a series of actions that Trump has taken to step back from the Biden administration's CAFE standards.

 

Under the previous administration, each automaker had to ensure that the average "fleet" economy (all their current model-year production, basically) measured in miles per gallon, had to increase by 2% per year.  (Electric vehicles are assigned an equivalent value of fuel economy on the order of 140 MPG.)  Companies not meeting the standards pay fines or purchase credits from firms who exceed them. 

 

Already, the Trump administration has ceased levying the associated fines under the spending bill recently passed by Congress.  They are now proposing to lower the 2% figure to 0.5%, and roll back the "baseline" from which the percentages are calculated to 2022. 

 

Let's compare two cases:  the former policy with fines and the 2% rate versus the proposed policy.  And let's see how various constituencies are affected by the two cases.

 

In the former Biden-administration case, automakers faced the fact that in less than 10 years, the CAFE standards would require raising their average fuel economy by 20%.  Any time an engineering system has some of its performance mandated by law, engineers eventually run up against another law:  physical law.  While modern automobiles differ in thousands of ways from the typical 1955 car—computer-controlled engines, greater use of plastic for reduced weight, etc.—there is still only so much energy in a gallon of gasoline.  And beyond a certain point, the accessible design space shrinks as the required fuel economy rises.  What the old CAFE standards were doing in practice was to compel the auto industry to move toward smaller, lighter cars and more electric vehicles.

 

Yes, that would save people money in fuel costs, and make the U. S. more energy-independent, and reduce our carbon footprint.  But it also makes cars somewhat more expensive, at least at first, and gradually would eliminate certain larger sizes that consumers might want to buy.  So for automakers, the old rules meant compulsory redesigns against fundamental constraints that might eventually eliminate whole classes of vehicles.  For consumers, they meant more limited choices of somewhat more expensive cars, although ones that would be slightly cheaper to run.  And for the environment, it meant slower increases in carbon and other emissions, which are good things. 

 

The proposed reduction in CAFE increases to 0.5% means that the time to get to 20% higher than at present goes from 10 years to 36 years.  And in any case, there are no longer fines for violating the standards, so they are essentially an aspirational goal with no teeth in them.  Under the proposed rules, automakers will no longer be obliged to make cars steadily more fuel-efficient unless consumers ask for that.  Consumers will have a wider choice of cars that won't be more expensive simply because of the CAFE standards.  And while presumably we will have more carbon emissions than if the old standards were retained, unexpected advances in electric-vehicle technology may change this picture.

 

For example, in the December issue of Physics Today, the umbrella publication of the American Institute of Physics, researchers describe their work on solid-state lithium batteries that could vastly out-perform current lithium-ion batteries.  One radical improvement they hope to make is to replace the current graphite anodes, which can absorb only one lithium ion for every six carbon atoms, with solid-lithium ones, which raises the charge capacity of the anode by a factor of ten.  There are problems with solid-state battery technology, but if they are overcome, it might be possible to manufacture electric vehicles that are both cheaper to buy than gasoline-powered ones and travel farther on a charge. 

 

And if consumers are presented with such a choice, it's quite likely that the internal-combustion-engine-powered vehicles would be relegated to specialist uses in construction, etc., leaving most of the field to electric vehicles.  That would come about not because of any government mandate, but because competitive forces in the marketplace produced innovations that consumers genuinely want, and have the byproduct of increasing CAFE mileage and reducing pollution.

 

Obviously, there's no guarantee that solid-state batteries or any other innovation will ever make all-electric vehicles outperform gas-guzzlers in all significant ways:  first cost, performance (including range), and per-mile costs, including power and maintenance.  But it could happen, just as we saw a huge reduction in carbon emissions from power plants when coal was replaced by cheaper abundant natural gas, due not mainly to government mandates but to the privately-funded development of fracking technology. 

 

You can't count on these serendipitous things happening.  But it's equally short-sighted to think that the only good things that go on in a market are government-mandated changes. 

 

The CAFE changes proposed by the Trump administration are still open to comments before they are implemented.  I'm not holding my breath that the current regime will take negative comments into consideration, but it might happen.  Perhaps what is most harmful in this whole situation is the every-four-year policy shifts that manufacturers have been trying to deal with, as Obama was replaced by Trump, who was replaced by Biden, who was replaced by Trump again.  But a small-r republican form of government, as messy as it is, is better than being dictated to by a small group of powerful individuals with no term limits, which is how China is governed.  And for now, it looks like we may be reverting to more of a free-market model in the auto industry.  Consumers and manufacturers should enjoy it while they can, because it may not last. 

 

Sources:  I referred to an NPR report on the Trump administration proposed CAFE-standard changes at https://www.npr.org/2025/12/03/nx-s1-5630389/trump-administration-rolls-back-fuel-economy-standards.  I also referred to a webpage of the Environmental Defense Fund at https://www.edf.org/media/trump-administration-announces-plan-weaken-fuel-economy-standards-cars-and-trucks.  The Physics Today article "Solid-State Batteries:  Hype, Hope, and Hurdles" by S. Muy, K. Hatzell, S. Meng, and Y. Shao-Horn appeared on pp. 40-46 of the December 2025 issue.

The Hong Kong Apartment Complex Fire

 

In the afternoon of Wednesday, November 26, it was windy in the part of Hong Kong where eight 31-story apartment towers called Wang Fuk Court were undergoing renovations.  As has been the custom for hundreds of years, exterior scaffolding made of bamboo was erected around the towers.  To prevent damage to the single-pane windows of the complex, workers had covered the windows with foam-plastic sheets.  Nylon safety nets surrounded the scaffolding.  What could go wrong?

 

The world found out when an unknown cause started a fire in the lower level of one of the scaffolds.  The flames quickly spread from high winds to the flammable plastic sheets over the windows.  Burning debris and flames spread from tower to tower until seven of the eight towers were engulfed.  About 40% of the residents were over 65, and the fire alarms in many of the buildings were later found to be out of order.

 

For the next day or so, the fire defeated efforts of thousands of firefighters to control it.  As of this writing, the confirmed death toll stands at 146, with dozens more missing.  About 4,600 people lived in the complex, so many got out alive.  But many others, probably including most of those who needed mobility assistance to escape, didn't make it.

 

News reports are calling this tragedy a "man-made disaster," and I couldn't agree more.  Authorities have arrested several officials of the construction company in charge of the renovations, Prestige Construction and Engineering Company, and have halted the firm's work on all other projects in order to conduct safety inspections. 

 

Whoever made the choice of protective window panels may have chosen low cost over safety.  In any event, that choice directly contributed to the fire perhaps more than anything else, although final conclusions will have to await a thorough investigation.  The use of nylon for safety netting and bamboo for scaffolding are also questionable, although China has a centuries-old tradition of bamboo scaffolding that has only recently come into question as metal scaffolding gradually supplants it.  Photos of the scene after the disaster seem to indicate that the scaffolding largely stayed in place, but was charred to the point of being structurally unsound.

 

As soon as I learned of this fire, I thought of the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London.  In that disaster, a refrigerator caught fire in a lower apartment and the flames spread to flammable exterior insulating sheathing that had been installed in an upgrade some years before.  The fire propagated behind the sheathing and was difficult to extinguish, and before it was all over, 72 people died and many more were injured.  Again, negligent planning and a failure to take account of the flammability of exterior sheathing was at fault, just as it appears to be in the Wang Fuk Court fire.

 

Engineering ethics requires imagination of a particularly informed type:  imagination bolstered by in-depth technical knowledge.  Engineers sometimes have a reputation for being dour pessimists who always jump to the worst-case scenario of a given situation.  But in the case of the Hong Kong fire, engineers were not pessimistic enough.  Nobody apparently imagined what would happen if one of the plastic window-sheathing panels caught fire, especially if it was on a lower floor of a building that happened to be upwind of most of the others on a blustery day. 

 

It's possible that workers were instructed not to smoke or to engage in operations that might lead to a fire.  That's all very well, but not everybody follows instructions. And even the best-intentioned workers can be using equipment that shorts out or otherwise becomes a source of ignition.  Good safety practitioners imagine that something statistically unlikely will nevertheless go wrong, and then draw conclusions from that premise. 

 

Judging from the number of residents listed and the casualty list, it's possible that about 5% of the listed residents died in the fire.  That means that 95% escaped either with no injuries or non-life-threatening ones, while however losing most of their worldly possessions.  No one I know would like to go through an unplanned experience that will strip you of your things and lead to a one-in-twenty chance of death.  So while fire escapes and other built-in safety features allowed most residents to escape the flames, over a hundred didn't.

 

Major renovation projects are routinely inspected by civil authorities, and I can't imagine that this project was an exception.  If a construction firm neglects to take due safety precautions, it is the civil authority's responsibility to step in and halt work if necessary in order for safety hazards to be addressed.  This obviously wasn't done. 

 

I don't know the nature of safety inspection services in Hong Kong, but among those to be held accountable should be whoever permitted the work to proceed.  Such officials can be subject to corruption pressures, and until a tragedy like this occurs, no light is shed on the fact that corners are being cut by paying off inspectors.  I have no reason to believe that this was the case here, but it is certainly an avenue worth investigating.

 

Disasters like this one can have the silver lining of making future safety regulations and inspections much more rigorous.  As the investigations proceed and the chain of causation is revealed, Hong Kong engineers, construction firms, and officials can all learn valuable lessons that are driven home by the horrible example of what can go wrong if safety measures are neglected.  My sympathy is with those who lost loved ones in the fire.  And my hope is that nobody anywhere in the world puts flammable sheathing on high-rises ever again.

 

Sources:  I referred to a BBC report at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxe9r7wjgro, a report from the news outlet livemint.com at https://www.livemint.com/news/world/hong-kong-apartment-fire-death-toll-climbs-to-146-probe-reveals-fire-code-violations-11764496767266.html, and the Wikipedia article "Grenfell Tower fire.