Conscious abstraction

While I was sitting on the grass by some swings across from my home with Katie the other day, I noticed one of the cars on the road slow down. The driver was letting a squirrel pass. It was difficult for the driver of the car in the next lane to know why the car to its right was slowing down, and so, the driver maintained the car's speed. But just as the squirrel made it past the first car that had slowed, it got pummeled by the next one. It probably died on impact. But the impact unleashed a sound. It was the sound of a low pitched rumble you hear when a wheel passes quickly over a bump. It was the sound of a bass drum. And then the squirrel, already dead, got run over again...and again. Katie ran across the street, stopped before it, and cried, "I'm so sorry," as she picked it up by the tail and moved it off of the road.

I wonder what was going on through the squirrel's mind as it was crossing the road. Maybe it was on the way to eat something or hide it, or maybe it was about to climb up a tree it spotted. Maybe there was some other squirrel waiting on the other side for it. It is summer, after all. Maybe it was the one that casually walked up to me a few days ago while I was having dinner on the porch. I don't know. It is hard to tell with squirrels. Most of them look the same to my eyes. But I know that they are all individuals.

I had never seen any animal that large get killed in front of my eyes before. I thought to myself, "And this squirrel is another cost we accept as we drive cars that take us to where we need to be." That squirrel probably now forms part of some statistic somewhere. I can just see the title of the statistic. It is probably something like "Roadkill in the US." It probably has a breakdown of what kinds of animals are killed on the roads, and how many of them, every year...deer, chipmunks, and birds included. That statistic easily equates one squirrel is with another squirrel. A squirrel is a squirrel, and a squirrel killed on the road by a car is one of thousands, tens of thousands. In the end, their lives are boiled down to numbers, which we accept as a "cost" of our need to drive cars. It is a "cost" of our advances.

It made me think about the Herman Daly passage I quoted at length in a recent blog post. We are constantly fighting this battle of abstraction. We just don't seem to be able to grasp the abstract. Climate change happening slowly, unboundedly, over the next one hundred years? What does that mean? What does it mean if someone in Detroit is breathing toxic air? These things are far. They are abstract. And that abstractness seems to debilitate us from showing an inkling of remorse or care.

But, abstraction is an excuse, for we actively pursue abstraction when we need it to fit our goals. If I were to pick a squirrel out and tell you I was going to run it over, or if you saw a specific squirrel get run over--and had any inkling of emotion--you'd be horrified. I definitely was. But when we read a number or hear about squirrel roadkill in the US, we are less affected. The abstraction of a squirrel killed to a number takes away the essence of what the squirrel was, its entire life, and what it was on its way to doing when it was killed. The abstraction allows us to distance ourselves from our actions.

I can hear people thinking to themselves, "So is he really suggesting that we should we not drive cars just because squirrels and deer and chipmunks and flies and bees are killed by them?" The point is that most all of the choices we make we make with an understanding of the potential outcomes. Some outcomes are acceptable. The others--the violent, the distasteful--we abstract. Given that we are now being confronted with important choices that will affect our land, our water, our air, take fracking, for example, will we continue to make choices in the abstract? Or is there a way to bring our choices closer to home, to be aware of the squirrels that populate our land and the fish the water?

When specificity is a roadblock

For today, I will just quote a passage that I came across in the remarkable book, Steady -State Economics: The Economics of Biophysical Equilibrium and Moral Growth (1974), by the ecological economist Herman E. Daly. Please let me know what you think.

Why do we insist on ignoring the ethical character of so many major economic decisions? Why this compulsion to substitute mechanical calculation for responsible value judgment? Perhaps it's because our mechanistic paradigm has reduced values and ethics to mere matters of personal taste, about which it is useless to argue. Quality involves difficult judgments and imposes self-definition and responsibility. Quantity involves merely counting and arithmetical operations that give everyone the same answer and impose no responsibility. Thus university deans make promotion decisions by counting words published and number of citations rather than by attempting a qualitative judgment about the true worth of a scholar's work, which is bound to cause some disagreement. Counting is an easy way out--a retreat from the responsibility of thinking and evaluating quality.

An especially important role in the quantitative short-circuiting of responsibility is played by randomness. Randomness is, in fact, an excellent moral scapegoat. Consider that some 50,000 Americans are killed annually by the automobile. Suppose that the specific identities of these people were known in advance. To save 50,000 specific individuals, we might lower speed limits drastically and return to bicycles for local transportation. To save 50,000 unknown, randomly determined individuals, we do nothing. If a soldier kills specific women and children at close range with a rifle we are horrified; if a bomber pilot kills many more women and children, whose numbers are predictable but whose identities are unknown before the fact, we are only vaguely upset...'Thou shalt not kill thy specific identified brother, but mayest murder random persons at will, in order to achieve thy 'progress,' however shallowly defined.' How much economic growth is based on this expanded version of the shorter, less sophisticated commandment?...We cannot throw responsibility for such collective existential decisions on to the moral scapegoat of randomness with its phony numerical calculations.

The way in which these phony calculations work is via "economies of ignorance and scale," as John U. G. Adams ("...And How Much For Your Grandmother?" Environment and Planning, Vol. 6, 1974) has scathingly illustrated. Consider what happens when we apply the concept of Pareto efficiency to the cost-benefit analysis of a project involving the predictable loss of life. Let Vj be te compensatory money payment to individual j to make him indifferent to the proposed project. That is, if j is to be hurt by the project, then Vj is what he must be paid to accept it, and it carries a minus sign.; if j is to be benefited, Vj is what he must be paid to forgo the project, and it carries a plus sign. If the algebraic sum for all individuals is positive, then there is a potential Pareto improvement; that is, the winners could compensate the loser and still be better off.

Suppose now that individual j would be killed as a result of the project. Consistency with the Pareto criterion requires that he be compensated for the loss of life according to his own valuation. Since most people would put a very high or even infinite cash value on the remaining years of lives, the result is that any project involving predictable loss of specific lives would fail the test of Pareto improvement and could not be justified by cost-benefit analysis. This is so even if more lives are saved than lost by the project, since there is no way for those saved to compensate those killed, and any cancelling out by the analyst of lives saved against lives lost violates the Pareto rule of no interpersonal comparisons.

It is obvious that many projects justified by cost-benefit analysis do result in the predictable loss of life. This is true for any projects that increase air or ground traffic, radiation exposure, or air pollution, for example. What allows cost-benefit analysts to "justify" such projects? It is essentially the fact that we never know in advance the identities of the specific people who will be killed. Th result is that we never have to compensate anyone for his certain loss of life but instead we must compensate everyone for the additional risk to which he is exposed as a result of the project (E. J. Mishan, "Evaluation of Life and Limb: A Theoretical Approach," Journal of Political Economy, July/August 1971). If the population is large, the individual risk becomes very small, perhaps below the minimum sensible, so that everyone is indifferent to such a negligible risk and no compensation at all is required, and the project passes with honors.

Note that in theory we have passes from a case requiring infinite compensation to a case requiring zero compensation, simply by throwing away information, that is, by remaining ignorant of the specific identities of the victims. This is odd, to say the least. In practice, of course, we never have the specific identities of victims beforehand, but that fact does not resolve the theoretical anomaly. The population subset most at risk could often be specified but usually is not, so that the risk often appears more diluted than it really is.

On the importance of problem definition

I have written at length (more than thirty posts) on the issue of problem definition. I want to come back to this issue now, particularly because I was made to think about this during a wonderful discussion that I had yesterday.

I gave a presentation yesterday titled Why do we waste? An ethic of trash, waste, pollution and degradation to a group of mechanical engineering graduate students. (I had given this same presentation last semester to the Graham Doctoral Fellows.) In this presentation, I talk about the perceptions of trash, and whether trash is a natural outcome of "modernisation."

"Modernisation" has given us many, many things, including this keyboard I am using to type this blog, as well as pharmaceuticals and drugs. Various tensions are brought out when the issue of medicine is raised...always. The medical field is probably the most environmentally impactful field of all, with copious amounts of radioactive materials, chemicals, gloves, plastics, metals and paper used. A few of my medical school friends have mentioned this, too. We got involved in a discussion about whether there is "beneficial" trash and waste, i.e. the trash and waste that is produced in making a machine that detects cancer, or the trash and waste that goes into making drugs. This is of course a difficult issue, and one that people may come to loggerheads to. It all comes down to our ethic, whether we place humans at the center of our ethic (anthropocentric), or whether we place the environment and everything that constitutes it at the center of our ethic (biocentric, for example). If we say that humans are the most important thing, period, then it is not surprising that such an ethic will lead us down a path that may result in blowing apart a mountain or damming a river to save a human life. Would we drain an ocean to save a life? Where is it we draw the line? This question is overwhelming, and there is no answer to it. But, I believe it is important to think about, because the outcomes that result from our ethic have major implications.

When we think of medicine, we think of the human impacts of the endeavour. But just as with everything else we do nowadays, guided by anthropocentrism (and Western elitism), we undertake the endeavour at the potential expense of that which sustains us - the rivers, the land, and the air.

A life of its own

I just arrived here at the Fishbowl after listening to a talk by Dr. Condoleeza Rice. Yes, the Dr. Condoleeza Rice. (A wonderful way to get you riled up! Try it for yourself!) She mentioned how Japan will not be able to "grow [economically] unfortunately" for a little bit, because of the earthquake and tsunami. Along the same lines, I was reading an article from The New Yorker, Aftershocks, by Evan Osnos, in which he describes how the Japanese have dealt with the recent natural events that have impacted their country. He wrote at length about his interactions with Yukio Okamoto, a former diplomat and high-ranking adviser to Prime Ministers of Japan, who now runs a political and economic consultancy called Okamoto Associates. Osnos asked Okamoto how he thought the events would alter Japan's sense of self. Okamoto replied,

“We were not humble enough to Mother Nature. We were building reactors on the basis of the most hideous earthquake in the Edo period, which was magnitude 8.5. Many experts expected a large earthquake would come, but not 9.0. Nobody said 9.0. Japan was in a euphoric slumber for two decades. Our life has been so comfortable, we became introverted. We forgot the need for struggle, during which time many top positions were taken over by Chinese and Korean companies. It’s too soon to say, with us still facing the threat of nuclear reactors, but perhaps, eventually, this sense of crisis will be the push to the back of many Japanese, and we will regain the strength of the sixties and seventies, when we had a concrete goal. So no doubt our economy will slip down, but then we may bounce back.” (emphases added)

I found it incredibly fascinating how Dr. Rice almost exactly shared Okamoto's viewpoint - that the Japanese are defined by their economy. Well, it may not be shocking that in fact most people and countries of the world are defined by their economies, and their abilities to "compete" in this "globalised world." Our identities as individuals have been tied to large, ecologically destructive social constructs such as economy.

There seems to be a tendency to let our lives slip beyond our control. Of course most of us are a part of society, and we are in a way bound by our emotional and physical relationships to people and places. In a sense, the defined social norms and the constraints put upon society by external factors (like weather, for example) are thrust upon us as individuals, and we are obliged to partake in collective effort, particularly if we want to be accepted. At the same time, society has created constructs, such as economy, that have allowed different sorts of interactions among individuals and smaller groups of people in society. We have somehow been taught or told that it is a duty to participate in the economy, that shopping is the only way we can make change, and that we "vote by our dollar." It is telling how we have let a completely man-made construct take on a life of its own, such that it is this vague, ill-defined, and irrational construct that defines who we are as individuals and collections of individuals. (Many people have placed immense faith in concepts such as economy, and have been let down, not surprisingly. What has happened over the past few years, especially with "bubbles," is now being better understood by terrific journalists and investigators.)

I believe it is important to realise that it is not me, or you, or us, that are defined by such constructs. At an even larger scale, the value of the environment and our relationships to it are not defined by such constructs. Our value in this world, and the value of the world, is not set by people at the Federal Reserve or some government agency. Rather it is you, me, and us that lend legitimacy and credence to these constructs, and it is you, me, and us that define these social constructs, and the bounds of operability and validity of these constructs. It is not surprising then that something like the economy is only a small part of our society, and that it cannot be placed at the same level as society, the environment, or as us, as individuals. Japan is more than its economy, and its ability to make cars. It is a land with a culture, with a history, with nature and trees and flowers.

On the human scale

The way our society is structured is such that we try to maximise "efficiency." (I, as well as a guest blogger, have written about this concept of efficiency, and what we lose because of it, here, here, here, here, here and here.) What this leads to, under current notions of economics ("free-market" capitalism with its baseless assumptions of perfect competition, no barriers to entry, perfect information, etc. etc.) and building, is called economies of scale. What this basically results in is the ability to produce the most amount of something for the maximised possible monetary profit. What this also ends up doing, however, is something that is a shared story across the country, and most of the world - the conglomeration of smaller entities into bigger and bigger and bigger and meaner entities - corporate takeovers, industrial farms, massive financial companies too big to fail, etc. We have "globalised" almost everything imaginable - companies, manufacturing, growing, and disease. What we end up creating are entities with "lives" of their own, so big and powerful that smaller humans can get trampled along the way, without redress and remorse. In many places across the country, our buildings have shown similar trends over time. Take a look at this picture of the built environment in downtown Detroit, and how it has changed over time.

 

Apart from the obvious increase in vacant land, we observe that the size of structures, in general, has increased over time. We have ended up building bigger and bigger structures that have a tendency to make one walking through it or standing beside it insignificant. Of course, many of these structures are visual manifestations of institutions and organisations I just described. What this tells me is that we value the lives of careless institutions and organisations over the lives of the humans, plants, animals and nature that guarantee their existence.

Such scales are seen in landfills, too. Here are some pictures and numbers about some of the largest landfills in the nation (you can read the articles here and here).

What I think is necessary to address when talking about issues of our impact on the environment is a look at scale. It is absolutely not possible to tread lightly with big things. Big tractors compact soil, oxen do not. Big power plants require massive amounts of fossil fuels, while living with less energy wouldn't necessitate the rape of mountains. Big buildings take a lot to erect, while smaller ones recognise our place in the world and the grander scheme of things.

How we undervalue

I am taking a break from writing about boycotts to make sure I can capture in words some fleeting thoughts. Much of what I have been writing about over the past eight months has been about value - how we value objects that have embodied in them tremendous amounts of effort and resources, how we value the resources that provide us the capacity to make these objects, and how we value social interactions (here, here, here, here for starters). Trash lies at the heart of each of these valuations; indeed, trash is the result of our undervaluation of these things. An undervaluation of these things allows us the liberty to treat people and nature as we please, without care and respect.

We have a tendency, almost a knack, to undervalue almost everything that surrounds us - people, place, object, and nature. We undervalue the kindness and love of our parents, we undervalue the smile and eye contact of people we walk blindly by, we undervalue the beauty of a snowy morning, and we undervalue an untamed river. We think of everything in the world as fungible, people included (That is why people deem it fit to kill other people or put other people in harms way, especially in conflict. To such people, a person is just a person, and there is nothing more to him. Not all of the experiences that that person has been through, or the conversations and friendships that that person has had. Nothing. Especially in conflict, people are fungible.) That's the only way we can assign monetary value to all of these things - a well raised child can provide $X more for our economy than one that was raised in the inner city and grew up with gangs, a snowy morning (like the one recently in Seattle) probably caused us to lose a lot of economic value (gosh, if people can't go to work, then, then, gosh, we are losing money!), a mighty river, if tamed, can provide jobs to many hundreds or thousands of people, and generate economic gain. The only reason why Transocean did such a inept job at drilling the BP-Macondo well was because they (and the government) undervalued the impact a blowout would have on the ocean, the fish, the birds, and the people of the Gulf.

 

What is the value of this fish and the water around it? (Photo by Joel Sartore from here.)

Indeed, due to the complexities of systems around us, both natural and man-made, we will never be able to assign any accurate value to anything in this world - we will continue to undervalue everything, because no one is willing to say that a life, or a river, or a rock, or an experience is priceless. What if we had the humility to not assign monetary value to something? What if the only way we could value was through observation, feeling and emotion? I must admit, at times it is overwhelming to me now to see a neatly stacked pile of plastic containers, knowing full well that within the day, they will be on their way to a landfill.

(Speaking of value, here's an article about how much of what investment bankers do is socially worthless.)

Developing an ethic of trash

This project has so far tried to understand the reasons we accept and condone trash creation. I have tried to describe what it might take to create a paradigm shift in how we relate to people if trash creation was not an option. A problem such as trash is created based on where we define our "center of the universe." What is it we value? Do we value our time over others' time? Do we value our lives over the lives of other creatures? Do we value our lives over the lives of mountains, watersheds and the atmosphere? Do we value our wants over the wants and needs of others? What is evident to me, which may be fairly obvious, is that as with most environmental problems, trash is a problem of anthropocentrism. As soon as we take a step back and look at how we have conducted ourselves, we will realise that our anthropocentrism has led to a lack of respect for things that we deem "extraneous" to our daily activities. Why care about the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch when you have a job, that although is extremely boring, is paying to keep the fridge stocked with food? I know everyone says that of course we think only about ourselves in our day to day lives. But creating trash seems like the one tangible (visually, and in smell) environmentally damaging thing that we do daily and everywhere near and dear to our places of living, working and being human. We store trash in our homes, garages and backyards. There are trash cans on the corners of streets, overflowing with double-cupped Starbucks cups and plastic wrappers. Yet our valuations of efficiency, convenience and life deem trash creation legitimate and almost necessary.

But this is how the "industrialised" and "developed" countries conduct themselves. How about "underdeveloped," "Third World," "developing" countries? What must they be going through? Well, let's take the example of Tuvalu, the paradise-like island nation in the Pacific. Tuvalu is a nation that may not exist in a few years, because of rising sea levels due to you know what. But apparently, another environmental disaster seems like it will beat our rising levels - trash. Hmm...it seems like they are having the same problems that we in the West are having. I just came across an article from Radio New Zealand International saying the following about Tuvalu: "Discarded waste is strewn everywhere: plastic, metal, old appliances, rusted out cars, fridges." If I am reading this very recent article correctly, their drive to have the "luxuries" that the West has - plastics, appliances, and cars is what may result in their demise. (Why would people need cars on an island of 10 square miles?) So it is indeed a Western-derived ethic of anthropocentrism that leads to trash. I can attest to the fact that the amount of trash in India has increased (geometrically? exponentially?) in the past 10 years, and this has coincided with a marked Westernisation of India and its culture, customs and mindsets.

The one way we can adequately address the issue of trash is by redefining the "center of our universe," not by building more incinerators that pollute our air and water, not by digging more landfills. We must ask the question - What is it that we stand for?

What plastic bags say about how we live

Sarang sent me an article from the NYTimes, about how California is increasingly looking to ban the use of plastic bags, encouraging people to bring their own bags. That's terrific. But why have we come to a point where it is necessary to legislate common sense? I mean, doesn't it make complete sense to have a bag made out of cloth (say, an old dress) that you can use for years, rather than have some paper or plastic bag that tears, the handle of which may break at inopportune times, rendering the bag useless? No, convenience trumps all! A plastic bag represents something new, untouched, just for us to use once, maybe twice. It represents where we'd like to be - not here. It represents a sort of detachment from where we are, and what we are doing. It represents our obsession with cleanliness - totally sterile. It represents a sort of cavalier mentality, in which we can use what we need, get what we want out of it, and move on to the next thing. A plastic bag? Who knows where it came from? It looks like all of the other plastic bags that were produced from some oil from somewhere. No, these bags represent what else is out there. Why save one? Can a plastic bag have any sentimental value to anyone? Can it age with you? Can you pass it on to your child? Move on to the next frontier, lest we be left behind. Left behind with an old piece of cloth, a school uniform that performed its duty, until its master grew out of it. A piece of cloth that can be washed and reused, many a time, and be folded, without making irritating sounds and crunchy noises.