Culture Crunch?

Looking at the news recently, I noticed a common theme in the news that they choose to report. This is obvious when it comes to the Olympics but not so obvious when they talk about the credit crunch and environmental issues.
The common theme is of course competition, which then led me to think about how ‘natural’ it is to be competitive. I tried one of my local surveys asking “do you think we are born competitive?” Most men said yes, but interestingly most women said no. (Stockholm Syndrome? See below.)
One answer that I liked is that we are born ‘neutral’. This, as another commented, may be wishful thinking. I actually think that competitiveness is a mutation of our self-preservation or survival instinct, which is why it is held so tightly. The distinction is that competition involves power over. Survival can be win-win. Maybe the next question to ask is do you believe people are born bad? We need all these laws if they are, but do not if there not. It’s that old nature/nurture thing.
Capitalism has been predicted to fail by many but it still seems to survive so maybe our culturally infused competitiveness is the fuel that perpetuates it. The activities of the banking world, as far as I know, are not illegal (wishful thinking again) and yet we are now questioning their greed. (Don’t get me started about PPP’s).
Here lies the dilemma. We laud ‘winners’ (back to the news) and yet now say some are winning too much. Ask a businessman what he feels about these bankers and he will say they are ‘too greedy’ and yet this same man may own a chain of shops, say 20. Another businessman may say that is too many and greedy. So where do we draw the line? It seems that we are constantly looking for ways to deal with this contradiction, which to my mind has no solution, within capitalism. Also new laws have to keep being passed to prevent people exploiting and abusing by finding loopholes in systems, in whichever area of life they are involved in. This moves us further and further away from being spontaneously human, and of course is driven by the need to win. This generates a massive burden to the legal system and it’s getting more and more complex just to keep civilisation going under the weight of all this legislation, as nuances are found and slowly blocked, always after the horse has bolted.
I listen to Radio 4 and hear programs daily that are all manifestations of disaffection from society, from increased teenage pregnancies, child unhappiness and drug consumption, both pharmaceutical and recreational. Virtually all the programs have a potential solution in understanding, by noting where the hidden competitiveness comes in and the subsequent consequences, from children lacking their loving needs because of the needs of parents working long hours, for example. ‘Sustainable economic growth’ has always been a similar contradiction. When you have your “observing subtle competition” head on, you see it everywhere from couples bickering to siblings squabbling and the loud, loud silence.
Now that in nearly every respect we are nationalising our banks maybe the word socialism will creep back into our language, not that I am advocating a return to the past. At least the word socialism, and for that matter communism include references to human qualities, whereas capitalism is derived from a big pile of money. I have also heard recently that for every ‘successful’ person there are many in the world, that suffer as a result, and there will be no peace anywhere until we become more equitable.
I also have realized in my questioning that many believe that capitalism is access to the market where like a street market you have a free choice to buy or sell. This of course is not the case and many are defending capitalism with a misunderstanding of what it actually is. I even heard one guy on the radio say that if we didn’t have capitalism we would all have to drive around in Trabants.(old unreliable Russian cars, incidentally made with paper mache bodywork.)
So if there are going to be changes ahead and major ones at that, I feel that it is at first essential to know what we are dealing with and get real, as the banks are now, having to do. This will also help those that are holding on to old thinking to make a new choice. Hopefully we will also begin to see the reality of the damage we are doing to the environment, which is undoubtably connected to the financial system. Depleted resources will soon begin to become apparent.
A criticism of all the above is that this is just an ideal, where humans cooperate, recognise each other for their qualities and feel more secure wherever they are. I think this is the essence of what it is to be human and more than ever now are the characteristics of survival. On a global scale competition is now futile as resources are either used up or destroyed in its wake. George Monbiots article in the Guardian on the 14th October 2008, stated that this was the end of the Easter Island and the Mayan civilisations as they chopped down the last trees in order to satisfy the competing leaders desire for larger memorials to their name.
I think we are all been hood winked into our current existence with coercive
half-truths that we hold up with some kind of integrity. Like “The Stockholm Syndrome” we have learnt to get on with our captors in order to honour our primary need for survival. I have yet to meet a mechanic who believes in man made global warming. One defends what one does!
Even if I am wrong and over millions of years that we have evolved to be naturally competitive then we need to learn fast, how to become cooperative. Ethically this is the only choice. As Amory Lovins of The Rocky Mountain Institute says ‘we don’t need environmentalists but cultural repair people.’ Change the culture the environment will follow!
So, how about a new ism that puts all people first, taking the best bits of social, communal and the marketplace and working together cooperatively? Humanism? Peopleism? Freedomism? Lifeism? Culturism? Answers on a postcard?

Forgotten Embodied Energy?

I recently saw a feature on a television morning news program declaring that dishwashers were more environmentally friendly than using a bowl to wash up in because over a week they used less hot water. This 'rough' science did not include the manufacture of the machine, the transport from China and the disposal/ recycling of it, nor take into account the production and environmental impact of those, clean all surface, dishwasher tablets. The humble washing up bowl and a squirt of Ecover came a poor second.

This week the government announced in the budget, that there was to be a new car tax banding, based on the emissions of your car. This is designed to be an incentive to buy a less emitting car. On the surface, this seems laudable but after some thought it occurred to me that if you are in a position to buy a £40,000 4 wheel drive etc would an extra £200 a year in road tax make you choose a smaller/ more efficient model. I doubt it. If you did, your old emitting car would be passed along to someone else thats probably not in a position to buy a new car. This in turn means that his car is also passed along. This of course happens all the time but are we in danger of creating cars that are old before their time, and do not fulfill their potential lifespan. We actually end up with more cars. I know of someone who recently bought a 9 year Rover with 50,000 miles on the clock with MOT for £50.

Now thinking about the embodied energy of making a car and disposing/recycling of it, as in the dishwasher example above, are we actually creating more emissions by producing new cars rather than keeping the existing ones going. We have a 19 year old Peugeot 205 which is still one of the most fuel efficient cars around (including newer models) so we keep that going! We are being penalized for this. We are also providing business for our local mechanics. This, I admit is mainly because we are not in a position to buy a new low emission BMW.

This then led me think about 'generating' income, generating being the key word as we would use in the context of heat or electricity. Money has in itself embodied energy. Stuff has to be done and produced in order to generate it. If you trace the source of all income and follow it back far enough,(even, money on money, trading) you probably arrive at someone digging a hole in the ground and then using vast quantities of energy to produce metal and then something like a BMW or dishwasher, plus the inherent pollution at every collection of resource and manufacturing process. Even the service industry is just another layer away from supporting more product. Of course, this is all by degree and if you take the example of Susan teaching Yoga locally where most walk, the footprint is very light. Mind you she is not going to be able to buy the BMW!

So if you buy a new BMW there is a lot more history and future going on than reducing its current emissions. I would suggest that that its emissions would only be 1 of a factor of 3, the others being the embodied energy of the car and the other the money to buy it. These remain a constant. Wouldn't it be far easier for government to legislate to make all new cars to be of a new low emission level in the same way as the new 6* rating for the thermal efficiency of housing. Mind you that still hasn't been implemented and new houses are still being built to less than a 1* rating. As an aside, the garage at Morertonhampstead, that does MOT's, is not happy because he has to pay £5000 for new equipment to measure the minimal output from the new BMW's. His current machine dosen't even register that there is a car there!

Cuba would be good place to compare Britain with as its probably the only place in the world where the number of cars in existence has gone down and I expect their emissions too. I suspect our overall emissions are actually going up.

Maybe money has a double whammy, with a footprint when you earn it and a footprint when you spend it. I suspect I'm counting the same energy twice.
Still money makes the world go round and that takes some doing!


P.S. If you are fed up with Radio 1,2,3 and 4 and would like a real alternative there is now Resonance FM 104.4 available via the internet. Its is run by London Musicians Collective. I'm especially pleased that the Radio 3 'Mixing It' guys are back at 9pm on a Wednesday with the brilliantly renamed 'Where's the Skill in that'. An eclectic mix of new music.