Leading twenty-first century lives with Stone Age minds

When it comes down to living, we live because of what is around us, and we are less influenced by what is far away. The water that I drink needs to be here for me to drink it, and although the water in the Aral Sea was probably once here, it is not here now, and therefore, in some sense, I am unaffected by it.

It is likely that most of us think that our immediacy is most important to us - spatially, temporally, and emotionally. We generally care more about where we live than where we don't live, now as opposed to the future, and those closest to us, our friends and family, than those we've never met. Just a few hundred years ago, the bounds of our influence were defined by our immediacy. If we couldn't interact with people that lived thousands of miles away, or even just a hundred miles away, there was likely no way to influence those lives.

But today, the extent of our influence is the entire world. We have this influence, whether we like it or not. This influence has led to many great things (say maybe the spread of various rights for humans), but many destructive things, things that we have trouble even wrapping our minds around (like global poverty, like climate change). Unfortunately, our ethics and behaviour, which have caused the massive problems that face us, are wholly inadequate when dealing with these problems. We still end up focused on our immediacy; we still don't sympathise with people in the Maldives, whose home will be under sea in just a few years.

It is likely that over the past few hundred years of industrialisation and globalisation, our brains haven't changed much - evolutionarily, a few hundred or a few thousand years is nothing. While we have new knowledge about the world, while we have built planes and trains and automobiles and buildings and bridges, our ability to really and truly conceptualise the problems that face us and do anything about them rarely takes us further than our immediacy. And so, as Jon Kabat-Zinn has said, we lead twenty-first century lives with Stone Age minds. 

This means that what we need to do is limit our influence on those (people, trees, fish) we aren't able to sympathise with by expanding our ethical framework to encompass everything in this world. What this likely results in for our lives is an intense localisation - of space, of time, of emotion. We need to bring back the bounds of our influence (influence that results in ecological degradation) close to home, so that we see it and feel it, here and now. And that'll really make us think about and do something about our influence.

On our obligation to nature

I wonder whether the state of society and environment that we are faced with has been inevitable since the very beginning of the human species. We are faced with massive challenges of health and futurity. All the world and all the species that comprise it are at stake. Glaciers and watersheds and trees are at stake. These are the systems that support us, and that nurture us in ways we are unable to fully understand. The Earth will of course continue to exist with our without us, regardless of the environmental destruction we are causing through our careless behaviour. Yet I wonder, are humans behaving in a way that is natural? Are consolidation, economy and industrialisation natural outcomes of our mental capacities? Is the consequent environmental degradation associated with those social constructs a natural outcome?

I think back to defining moments in our history, and wonder whether it just had to be this way. We have been evolutionarily graced with mental capacities and abilities to communicate and feel emotions (not to say that other species aren't graced with these features), as well as the ability to used these abilities to dominate our landscapes and ecosystems. Therefore I wonder whether environmental degradation by a species capable of thinking a natural thing. I think we can trace the roots of much environmental harm to the settling of people. People chose to spend time in a single place, and plant a seed, and hope that it grew into a plant that fed them, rather than let nature do that for them. Yet hunter-gatherers survived for many hundreds of thousands of years, successfully. I would not be typing this blog post if they didn't survive. These groups of people were social, and they had customs and rituals. They would move around in search for what nature provided them. In fact, with agriculture, we have in some sense tried to play nature. Agriculture of course has led to segregation of efforts, and time to do things other than search for food. If you think along the lines that I have, this inevitably leads you down the road of humans extracting too much from a place, and not being in harmony with a place that is expansive. Wants inevitably grew over time, and contact with people from elsewhere made us want what they had. People from one place set out to conquer people from another place, with weapons and violence. They did so because they wanted the control of resources to satisfy their wants. Time passed, and consolidation of power happened because people have been able to use coercive power to wield control. Consolidation happened not only in government, but also in the the ability to provide necessities of life - water, food and shelter. All of this has led to environmental harm, as I've discussed previously in the blog.

Many might say from a religious or ethical standpoint that nature was created for us, and therefore our control over it is axiomatic. Some might say that we are just another animal species, and that since we've been graced with such amazing capacities, we are just implementing those capacities in a way that ensures our survival and comfort and pleasure. Yet I do feel that we cannot think of ourselves as just another species out to survive for ourselves. The argument of survival of the fittest just doesn't hold water in our world. I believe, as Wendell Berry has alluded, that there comes a point in the spectrum of mental and emotional capacities that we assume the burden of obligation - the obligation to be kind and respectful and caring to what it is that sustains us; we have an obligation to nature. Our societies and communities are full of obligations and defined by them - taxes and trust and e-mails and phone calls. In some sense, we cannot call ourselves human if these obligations didn't exist. So why not make the logical leap to an obligation to nature? Such an obligation will not allow us to think that what we do - clear cut forests, build massive artificial lakes, construct tall buildings - is natural. Progress in the way we've defined it cannot be assumed to be natural. Our mental and emotional capacities place on us the burden of defining our societies and communities and priorities with reverence, consideration, respect and wonder for all it is that surrounds us. We are obliged to do so.

On paper and communication

One of the rules I set for myself at the beginning of this project is that any trash that is generated because of someone gifting something to me will not be considered my trash. When someone gives you something as special as a gift, it is hard to say no to accepting it. To me, a gift is given to convey thought, love, spirit and appreciation. Not accepting a gift, I imagine, can hurt someone's feelings, especially if they didn't know that I was trying to create as little trash as possible. It may be a different story if the person gifting knew what I was trying to do, but that is a different story. In the end, I have made a trade-off, a significant one; I have traded in trying to not create trash, whether it is mine or someone else's, for the appreciation and kindness someone is willing to show me. This is by no means an easy trade-off, and such situations always make me think and reconsider my stance. The point is that, as a conversation between Matthew and I alluded to, we make trade-offs every day, as resolute we may be in our stances on issues. Many times, especially when making choices related to the environment, it is difficult to know what may be the lesser of two evils. I would say, in general, that if you are in such a decision-making place, it is probably better to avoid anything in which you have to make such a decision. But here now arises a quite difficult question - how do I feel about paper vs. a computer?

As many of you may know, I am technologically challenged, but this is not a bad thing. I have definitely been able to get done what I have needed to get done, especially in the laboratory, with the little skill I may have. I much prefer paper and pencil over computer screen and keyboard when it comes to reading and writing. Much of what we read and learn nowadays is on a computer screen, and that includes personal messages from other people and pictures from the National Geographic. The University of Michigan has been on a quest to digitise its entire library, which consists of millions of books, and billions of pages. I envision a future in which people grow up readings solely on their Nook or Kindle, without ever touching a piece of paper. But there is something wonderful about receiving a letter in the mail, or opening up your favourite magazine, especially if the magazine is beautifully edited and laid out. When taking notes in class or during a discussion, there is a definitiveness and uniqueness in the act of putting pencil (or pen if you please) to paper - no one in the world has my handwriting (although my sister's is very similar), and no one will be able to replicate exactly what I have written down. (With computers, Times New Roman here is definitely Times New Roman there.) There is a bond with the paper, and although it is not scientifically measurable, I contend that emotions are more adequately conveyed by paper than by computer.

But what about the environmental impact of paper? Paper can be made from trees that haven't been grown ethically or sustainably, and bleaching paper produces dioxins. This is an extremely difficult consideration, made more difficult by the fact that by 2014, as David Owen wrote in The New Yorker about Jevon's Paradox, the amount of energy used by the US computer network each year alone will be equivalent to the amount of electrical energy consumption in the entire country of Australia each year. This is besides the continued environmental and social impacts of resource extraction. So there is clearly a significant decision to be made - paper or computer? I vote for paper.

War and the Environment - Depleted uranium, a radioactive waste

While talking to Matt the other night, the topic of depleted uranium came up. Depleted uranium is a byproduct, in essence a waste, of uranium enrichment processes for nuclear fuel and nuclear arms. I am sure you would not be terribly surprised to hear that the US and other nations produce vast amounts of depleted uranium, given that nuclear reactors are now commonplace. What I am sure you will find shocking, just as I did last week, is that depleted uranium, a radioactive waste substance with a physical half-life of 4+ billion years, and a biological half life of 15 days, has been used as ammunition in Iraq, as well as in Serbia (please click here, here, here and here). Depleted uranium is denser than lead, and therefore can more readily penetrate armour, making it particularly useful to violence. While making it much easier to blow the "enemy" up, it can also be aerosolised into sub-micron size dust that is easily inhalable. The US has used several thousand tonnes of depleted uranium in Iraq. I do like to think that I believe in the precautionary principle - if I don't know whether or not something is harmful, especially considering my judgement and gut instinct, I won't do it. (Of course, the world has thrown the precautionary principle out of the window with most environmental and public health harms.) Any level-minded person would think that any sort of radioactive substance, which is a byproduct of human activity, is likely to be environmentally damaging and toxic to both humans as well as plants and animals. (Of course, there is natural radioactivity.) It is therefore not surprising to me that investigative reports by the BBC (do not click there if you are queasy) have shown that depleted uranium has caused increased levels of cancer in new born babies in Iraq. Efforts to make toxicity information public were, of course, stamped down upon.

I think it is particularly telling of the morality and ethics of a government and state to use obviously toxic materials in war. What is more toxic than these materials is the fact that war itself is accepted and condonable. These last few posts have been dealing as much with peace as they have been with the environment, and these two issues are not mutually independent. A society and culture that condones violence to the environment, to the land, air and water that sustains it, is likely to use violence as a means to an end in dealing with other creations of our environment, namely humans. Peace with humans will only come out of a sustained and thoughtful peace with our environment - an environment that is thought of as a life-sustaining force, greater in emotional and spiritual value than any priceless monetary value we may be able to comprehend.

On appreciation

It's that time of year when the past, present, and future surround us and when many of us are around our family and old friends. These are people that we've known all of our lives, and have influenced significantly who we are today. It is important we appreciate their efforts, past, present and future. Our lives are a summation of past experiences, emotions and thoughts that have made us who we are in the present, and primed us for the future. The future beckons, and this time of year is also marked with new - a New Year, new commitments and resolutions, and importantly (from an environmental, emotional and economic standpoint), new things - toys, phones, electronics and appliances. (And along with the new objects come old tales - of injustice, of environmental degradation, and of trash from wrapping and packaging.) But as Lia mentioned in her post last week, what can be lost in the excitement of the new, of the untouched, of the virgin, of the forthcoming, is a reflection on what we have already, and an appreciation for it. The emotion of this time of year can help us here; it easy to take a look - inward and outward - at the accumulation that has put us, our families, our communities and our environment, in the positions they are in today. It is important to be grateful for and appreciate the investments of time, money, effort, love and natural resouces that have gone into the many objects we take for granted, and to make full use of them before we look to the new. I do believe that we can continue to develop mentally, emotionally and ethically with these objects, before needing to move on to the next fad. It is time to reflect, and it is time to appreciate.

What we lose through "efficiency"

As an engineer that works in a combustion laboratory, I am constantly surrounded by the miracles of modern machinery. Let me tell you about some of the things around my lab. There exists a vacuum pump that can pull a large volume to near vacuum, to a pressure lower than exists at the higher reaches of the atmosphere. There exist fast-acting solenoid valves that have an open-shut cycle time of 2 milliseconds to capture with high accuracy and precision small volumes of gas to understand how fuels break down. There exist computers that can solve systems of very stiff differential equations to understand chemical kinetics. There exists lasers that emit photons with high spatial and temporal coherence. All of these gadgets, gizmos and machinery are made to operate as "efficiently" as possible - use the least amount of energy to get a certain amount of work out. This seems wonderful - planes now fly on 40% less fuel per kilometre than they did 40 years ago. Efficiency can work marvels with engineering, and in some sense, "save" the environment. But it can also wreak havoc on the environment and more primal attributes of our world.

My thoughts are flowing at this moment primarily through food, but one may apply this thought process to other forms of human behaviour. In our attempt to increase output of food, we have turned to fossil fuels and chemicals and genetically modified seeds to allow increased yields (although this is completely debatable, and more likely than not false) given the size of a plot. Wendell Berry and Michael Pollan eloquently speak to the degradation of land, the waste of farming operations, and the lives of ecosystems that are ruined because of industrial agriculture. But Chef Dan Barber lends another perspective to the voices speaking out against industrial agriculture. On Being, he speaks to something food has lost over time due to excessive chemical and biological modification - flavour. Indeed, flavour, an essential quality of food, is nowhere talked about amongst large scale agribusinesses and farmers. As I have written about previously, food, when cooked with love and thought, using the right ingredients, can open up minds and hearts, and remind people of days gone by. In our quest to produce large amounts of food for increasingly lower costs to the customer (although the true costs are not billed, nor are calculable), the social aspect of food surrounding thought, smell, taste and emotion has been systematically neglected and carelessly snipped out of the DNA, both of the food and of our culture. With the loss of native species of crops, plants and animals, these things no longer survive in our collective memories. In the end, bland tasting tomatoes are shipped thousands of miles to be served as poor substitutes to the miraculous tastes of nature...generating trash along the way.

Compassion, "networking" and activism

It is funny how you might start thinking of something, and then realise that there are so many conversations going on pertaining to your thoughts, that you can't believe it is coincidence...

The other day I was wondering at what point people feel compelled to take action against a problem. Since then, I have listened to a wonderful conversation between Krista Tippett, the host of Being, and Nicholas Kristof (a journalist for the New York Times), about compassion and journalism. Also, in this week's New Yorker, I read Malcolm Gladwell railing against the ability of new social media and "networking" sites such as Facebook and Twitter to galvanise real support for essential activism and dissent. Both of these speak to the question I was thinking of...

Nicholas Kristof has traveled the world documenting various atrocities, in particular social ones. He had been writing for many years about "missing" girls in China, up to 40,000 per year, but stories such as the booting out of a red-tailed hawk from a building in New York City (which is still of course a legitimate story) seemed to be getting the page space he was vying for. He started looking into the neurology of compassion and empathy, and realised this: as long as people cannot make an emotional connection to a problem, they are not going to do anything about it. This may seem trivial and obvious, but it is something that all of us trying to get people to be vociferous and active, especially in the environment and social realms, have to grapple with, and probably are not doing a good enough job at. Once we make an emotional connection, we can use that as a portal to bolster our cause with more "rational" information, like numbers and facts. But another interesting part of the conversation dealt with "compassion fatigue." Kristof and Tippett spoke about this fatigue in relation to social problems, but it is easily extrapolated to any problem. Broadly, compassion fatigue is the point at which people feel the problem is too big for them to make a real impact. In one study, people were shown a picture of a starving young girl in Mali, and asked to donate money to help her. People gladly did. When shown a picture of a young boy, also starving, people gladly donated money to help him. However, when shown a picture of both of them together, donations dropped. It was at this point, the problem affecting just one more than one person, at which people felt the problem to be too big. Imagine donating for millions of starving people...

Many of you know that I am not a proponent of technology and "networking," and never have been one. Well, I guess there is more than one person other than Wendell Berry, that shares (partially) similar sentiments, Malcolm Gladwell. The subtitle of his recent piece is "Why the revolution will not be tweeted." He contends that social media cannot provide what social change has always required. Gladwell takes on the example of the Civil Rights Movement, in particular the Woolworth's sit-in that took place on 1 February, 1960. The sit-in movement in the South generated such a crescendo that it was impossible for the perpetrators of racism to continue their ways. The Civil Rights Movement, which was full of high-risk activism, was based around "strong ties" and true personal connections to the problem and activism. Social media "activism," on the other hand, is always based around "weak ties." Although it might be much easier to spread the word about something nowadays, the connections made with people are much more superficial. That is why 1,282,339 members of the Save Darfur Coalition may not accomplish much. Gladwell contends, "Facebook activism succeeds not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice. We are a long way from the lunch counters of Greensboro." Further, social media activism is diffuse, with very little central authority, in stark contrast to the almost militant activism of the Civil Rights Movement. Where is the individual responsibility when you are a member of a Facebook group? And if you really feel something is a problem, how come I am not hearing about forceful action being taken? Gladwell feels that there is but very little "high-risk" activism taking place today. David Helfenbein of the Huffington Post disagrees.

I do tend to agree with Gladwell that today's "activism" is digital, diffuse, unemotional and unconnected. I know someone very high up at the University that feels the same way.

On Freedom and Progress

One of the important concerns I have with large-scale, broad, and fundamental concepts is the problem of defining what these mean. "Sustainability" has come to mean so many things to so many people. For example, companies like BP and Anglo-American have kidnapped the word to mean things that legitimise what they do to consumers of their products. People may think that simply changing their incandescents to compact fluorescents makes them "sustainable." As I mentioned in the last post, it seems imperative that we have some common notions of what these issues, sentiments, and values mean, in order to have more than adequate solutions to them.

I have read some wonderful articles in Orion recently, one talking about freedom (by Jay Griffiths), and one about progress (Derrick Jensen). Griffiths elaborates on human freedoms, and how freedom has become a justification for opposing any sort of environmental restrictions. Freedom is defined as the rich and powerful people and corporations define it; they are free to throw punches, but freedom is not the freedom of the powerless to protect themselves from being hurt by those punches. Further, our current notions of what is good, i.e. values like ambition, pride, speed, and success are what Griffiths calls unfettered traits or emotions. These are contrasted with fettered emotions - "...in honesty you are bound to tell the truth. You are tied by respect, you are linked by love, you are tethered by kindness to kinship with nature, and restrained by a sense of justice and law." Further, what are the rights and freedoms of our rivers, watersheds, trees, air and rocks? They indeed have the freedom to exist. They have the right to not be treated violently by humans. Our unfettered emotions and traits fall squarely against these rights and freedoms. Yet, progress is defined by our unfettered emotions and traits. The current notion of progress is beautifully articulated by Jensen. He asks, "Why have we come to assume that "progress" is always good?" There are always at least two sides that judge whether progress is good. Those that think the progress is good, and those whose rights and wishes and culture and history may be trampled upon by those who think progress is good. Example given: "For the perpetrators of the United States Holocaust, the development of railroads to move men and his machines was "good" and "useful" and "helpful." From the perspective of the Dakota, Naajo, Hopi, Modoc, Squamish, and others, not so good. From the perspective of bison, prarie dogs, timber wolves, redwoods, Douglas firs and others, not so good." Wendell Berry contends that the notion of progress necessarily implies a hatred of where we are - we need to be somewhere else. Furthermore, progress (of science, technology, and "knowledge") takes away the freedom of the thing we study and learn about, from the perspective of that thing. In the end, we will just find a way to categorize it, and possibly exploit it. Jensen cites Lewis Mumford (1970) - "The chief premise common to both technology and science is the notion that there are no desirable limits to the increase of knowledge, of material goods, of environmental control; that quantitative productivity is an end in itself, and that every means should be used to further expansion."

What do you think?