Are we screwed, then?

I have just watched a series of interesting documentaries by Adam Curtis called The Century of the Self (4 hour long episodes orginally broadcast on BBC2 now available on Google Video). They look at the rise of Marketing and Public Relations - principally based on the work of Sigmund Freud's nephew Edward Bernays.

The thrust of the programmes is that though the development of psychological techniques for marketing Big Business has radically changed the social outlook of Western society. Rather than selling us what we need, our most basic desires can be explored and products produced to meet them - and, of course, our desires can be aroused too so that we are more open to the marketers' message.

We are reduced from citizens to consumers kept under control by inflaming our desires through advertising and then providing the material means of (temporarily) satisfying them. It is a modern version of the Roman policy of panem et circenses - bread and circuses - bemoaned by the poet Juvenal.

I've been wondering recently, after having seen An Inconvenient Truth, if we will be able to make the paradigm shift, the change of societal mindset, necessary to meet the challenge of combating the effects of global warming. To be honest, I am not optimistic. Bernays and his followers have helped form a society where the vast majority are primarily concerned with convenience, personal comfort and short-term gratification.

Are we screwed, then? I am in my early forties so I don't think that I will live to see the very worst effects of global warming in my part of the world. As its effects become ever more apparent, more, of course, will be down to help slow down the process - but it may well be too late. I have a couple of neices, both toddlers, and I wonder what the world will be like when they are old ladies. Warmer, more fractious and a lot more dangerous, I suspect.

An Inconvenient Truth II

I finally got to see Gore's movie after work today. It's very good. Al Gore is a first-rate orator and the PowerPoint presentation around which the film is based is pretty impressively put together. For someone who has had an interest in global warming, a lot of what he says is not new but it is perhaps more persuasively put than I have seen it before. A really powerful use of graphics - and even graphs and bar charts which will often kill a presentation.

I found the last quarter of the movie the most inspiring - and that was what it was intended to do. It is a call for action and a mass movement to get politicians to put voters concerns before those of big business. However there were only a dozen or so people in the theater. I suspect, unfortunately, that Gore is doing most of his preaching to the choir - but maybe he can inspire some of the choir to do their own preaching.

One other funny thing happened today - I got a phone call from a TV chat show researcher who has seen the blog and asking if I would come on the show in London on Thursday. I said OK but I would not fly. They seemed to think that making me go overland would be too much and so demured. The show was a afternoon popular (as opposed to highbrow) debate about branding. I don't really think I understand why anyone is stupid enough to spend a fortune on certain brands and probably could not have contributed much more than this in any case. I don't think they would have been really interested in the real reasons for people living the simple life. The show's producer is Endemol who make the ghastly Big Brother here in the UK.

And, in any case, I don't even own a television!

An Inconvenient Truth

Al Gore's climate change movie, An Inconvenient Truth, finally hits Belfast this weekend. It's much anticipated and the local press and radio has been trotting out local pundits on the pro and con side of the global warming argument. I haven't seen it as yet but intend to go during the coming week.

I am at a loss though to understand the vehemence with which commentators have opposed the climate change arguments put forth by Gore et al. Certainly, there are oil (and other fossil fuel) company goons who are paid to foster doubt on these issues but there are others - perhaps just political conservatives - who disbelieve the evidence just because it comes from the mouth of Al and any other liberal/left-of-centre figures.

The American neo-conservative group Project for a New American Century in an infamous paper Rebuilding America's Defenses have said that a catalysing event, a "new Pearl Harbour", will be needed to build public support behind its (corporatist and colonialist) agenda. Some conspiracy theorists see this event as being the 9/11 attack and an "inside job" by neo-conservative elements. I think that a similar paradigm shift is needed to wake people up to the reality of man-made climate change. In some respects the "new Pearl Harbour" of the left was the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans in 2005. But there will be other disasters that do not need to be organised by shadowy political or religious organisation. Just how many will there be before we can really get the leaders of the right to start worrying for the future of their own children?

I hope that the growing reality of climate change will also bring about a rethink in world politics. I hope people will soon see that it is due to effects policies that play to corporate interests that natural disasters are increasing in intensity and the fragile ecology of the planet (and some say even the human race as a whole) is threatened. Indeed such a paradigm shift has got to happen but just how long it will take and at what price will be paid for delay?

More Philanthropy

It was announced this week that the British billionaire Richard Branson has decided to donate all of the profits from the travel companies in his Virgin Group to research into sustainable energy and global warming over the next 10 years.

In many ways this is indeed great news - big business is waking up to the fact that oil is running out and trend for dirt cheap flights is destroying the planet. Branson has even gone as far as saying that short haul flights should be phased out where a train service existed. Branson's move will mean something around $3 billion dollars going into research into green airline fuel.

Branson is of course to be commended - I certainly could not see that awful gobshite Michael O'Leary of Ryanair doing anything as farsighted. But will he actually cut the number of short flights? We have got to cut down on these inexpensive short hop journeys. Branson, since he also owns a train company, will not lose out as much as some of the other low-cost airline bosses if the market is curtailed.

Personally, I think the day of low-cost flights is nearing its end - the reason is not of course that people are waking up to the tons of CO2 they pump into the atmosphere, but to the fact that oil will become so expensive over the next few years that flying will once again become an occasional luxury rather than as cheap as taking the bus. Unless, of course Branson comes up with the goods and some kind of "bio-kerosene" will fuel airplanes in the next decade.

A couple of interesting sites

Listening to the local radio news during the week I was pointed to a couple of interesting websites. despite my recent whinging about the lack of ethical programming around I do think that my local BBC station - Radio Ulster - does do a pretty good job with covering ethical issues.

The first site I came across was travelwiseni.com - a website that promotes carpooling in Northern Ireland. The idea is that people cooperate with neighbours to drive into and from work. The passengers share the fuel costs and it means there are fewer cars on the road and it costs all involved less. The show mentioned that 48% of people who drive to work do not need their car for their job. I know from cycling into work that the vast majority of cars that pass me only contain the driver. I mentioned to a colleague at work who has to pay a lot to park while he is at work that he could carshare or at least take the bus. He agreed that it would be cheaper and probably would take less time to get to work but he just couldn't give up the convenience of his own transport. It gives rise to the question of how expensive is fuel going to get before people can be weaned off their comfy automobiles into more environmentally-friendly modes of transport?

The other site that piqued my interest is entitled Food4thought - a site promoted by the British Heart Foundation. It is aimed at children and early teens. It offers basic information on the content of junk food and even suggests healthy recipes for kids to make themselves. I think this last item is very important - until people begin to care what they eat and to cook for themselves again, health problems in families and obesity in the young will not abate.

Among the interesting statistics that the site puts forward is that anyone who consumes one standard 50g bag of crisps a day will have consumed 4 1/2 litres of cooking oil over a one year period - yeuuuchh! Great promotional image too!!

Political Will

I was writing yesterday about the poor health of the less well-off here in parts of Belfast and the near impossibility of changing peoples attitudes to what they eat and consume generally. Thinking it over I realise how badly served we are by the political class in Northern Ireland (and I'm not just talking about politicians but political journalists too). Everything is reduced to fighting for tribal territory, community identity and all of that. And what is absurd is that in the end it does not matter a damn - any of it. Yet, parity of esteem, cultural recognition and so and so forth are what elections around here are fought on.

The Green Party is seen as a joke. Maybe it is, I have not lived back in Northern Ireland long enough to really see if that is the case but I am probably going to vote for them in the next election simply because no other party seems to be concerned with things like global warming, community health, erosion of the economic base by multi-nationals and the other issues I think are pressing.

In times gone past, people of a left-wing political persuasion protested that N.I. politics furthered tribal warfare when it should have been involved in class warfare. And indeed, there is truth in it - the poor of both communities were being shat upon in identical fashion. In the last few years the 'Troubles' have thankfully finally petered out and Belfast is a fairly normal place with only the kind of problems you'd find in any other regional large town in the UK or Ireland. Why then have the politicians not moved on? Why is the same sectarian tripe still being trotted out? Is it not time we began to force our politicians to rethink their priorities and look at what really matters? A united Ireland or a strengthened union with the UK will be the last of our worries if we cannot get global warming, growing obesity rates or state-sponsored corporate power under control.

Changing Attitudes

I came across an interesting tidbit of information on the radio this week. If you live in North or West Belfast you will, on average, die three years younger than if you you live in South or East Belfast. Tribal affiliation has nothing to do with this even though West and North Belfast are predominantly Nationalist and South and East predominantly Unionist. Though even this may be changing - South Belfast returned a Nationalist MP which shows a growing Nationalist population and West and North Belfast contain some significant Unionist enclaves.

No, the reason for this more likely has got something to do with class - East and South Belfast are home to the majority of the cities middle-class population. Notice I did not say that this problem is to do with poverty. Rather, the real cause of this is ignorance.

I've bemoaned before the fact that even the poorest in this city have enough to live a healthy life yet it is among the disadvantaged that smoking, alcoholism and obesity are highest. The St George's Market I wrote about last week is frequented nearly exclusively by the middle-classes from East and South Belfast and those recent immigrants who come from countries where the supermarket culture has not yet taken over and where people still buy their food from local growers. There are few or no members of the working classes of the North and West (or any other) quarters of the city. The immigrants (and perhaps even some of the middle-class shoppers) are not well-off, yet they care what food they eat and what is good for them.

Why does a whole section of our community (perhaps the majority - even the vast majority) no longer care what it eats or the harm that is done by overindulging (in food, alcohol or tobacco)? This is same in the UK and the US (although perhaps not in continental Europe so much). More inportantly, what will it actually take to wake people up to the fact that they are cutting years off their lives?

LOHAS and Voluntary Simplicity

When surfing recently I came across term I had been heretofore unfamiliar with: LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability). This is a term used by some marketing people to refer to a (supposedly) growing sector of the population of who seek to live said lifestyles and who can therefore be sold stuff to.

In many ways this is positive in that there is a recognition by at least some members of the business community that there is a market for sustainable and healthy products and an understanding too I hope that such a "market sector" will demand business be done in a just and environmentally-conscious manner.

However, I wonder if this is also not a sign too of the way in which capitalism manages to turn even its enemies into a business opportunity. It seems if we are going to combat third world poverty, global warming and factory farming there has to be a viable way for somebody to make money out of the process.

A rejection of consumerism lies at the heart of my conception of voluntary simplicity. I hate the way in which mulitnational corporation and their lapdogs in government are trying to reduce us to automata who work all there hours there are to buy what we are told we should have. I hate too being lumped into a marketing sector - reduced from a citizen to a salesman's mark.

Maybe I am being hopelessly idealistic but I do not think social justice can really become a widespread phenomenon in all our lives while there is this widespread tendency to reduce people to mere consumers. I'd love to be considered as someone who marketing goons viewed as unreachable. Some chance!

St. George's Market

I was down this morning at the Saturday "City Food and Garden Market" at St. George's Market on May St. in Belfast. It runs from c.9am to 3pm. If you haven't been, and you are in the area, it's really worth a visit. The atmosphere is so good. I bought some organic veg and fruit very cheaply - including some beautiful apples. More cheaply I reckon than the organic veg sold in the supermarkets - and you get to meet the people who grow the food you eat! I am going to do my weekly veg shop there every week.

They sell all sorts of stuff - not just veg but organic meat and locally-caught fish and seafood (if you have to eat meat and fish), Irish cheeses, olives and antipasti, all kinds of wonderful-looking bread and cakes, fair-trade teas and coffees and other fair-trade goods. There is plenty of space and lots of tables. There is even a tight little jazz band playing! Lots of people seem to come down and have breakfast before doing their Saturday shop. It's a real find!

Eco Energy

I finally got myself converted over to eco energy. No, I have not built a windmill generator in the back garden or lined the roof of my house with solar cells (we don't get enough sun here to run a 40 watt light bulb!). I'd love to do all these things, and more, but the lack of technical know-how and the lack of cash for the substantial capital outlay for systems like these, means it remains a pipe-dream for the moment anyway.

There is an alternative though. Northern Ireland Electricity has an eco energy scheme in which you can choose to have your energy supplied by a wind farm rather than a coal-fired power station. I imagine what they actually do is simply buy more wind power and feed it into the grid to the amount of electricity you use. The great thing is that it costs the same as conventional dirty energy (11.02p per unit)

A common way to buy electricity in NI is via a keypad meter. You can buy a certain amount of electricity in advance from your local corner shop (say £5 or £10) you are given a 20-digit code which you enter into the keypad and it credits you the amount. The keypad is very handy also for telling you how much you electricity you use per day, week or even month (last month I used £13.45). You can even tell the amount of Kw being used at any given time and so work out how much your individual appliances use.

It costs nothing to sign up. If more people sign up to this they power companies will begin to get the message. If you live in NI, see www.nie.co.uk to change your energy use over.

Bike Update

Well I finally did it. I finally cycled the 5 miles into and 5 miles back from work today - hopefully the start of a regular daily routine.

This may be mildly comical to seasoned simple livers and health enthusiasts but it is an important step for me in trying to live simply and ethically. Most of the things I embrace as an part of voluntarily simple life like vegetarianism, recycling, getting rid of the TV etc.are all things that have cost me little effort and I have done them on and off for years anyway. But, getting regular exercise and putting up with the discomfort of cycling (my backside is still somewhat tender as I write) is new to me. It is the first barrier I have come up against. The first time I've had to grit my teeth and refuse to give in.

Taking to the bike for me is a no-lose situation. I am a couple of stone overweight and chronically unfit. I am hoping the daily bike ride will help with that. I will be able to eliminate even the relatively small carbon debt I incur through taking public transport. Biking is free - no bus fare (which cost me c.£16.00 a week). The bike was a gift and l though I have had to buy some gear (helmet, rainsuit, puncture repare kit, lock etc.) for it, I will be able to recoup the money spent on that in a couple of week on bus fares saved.

Providing I can avoid getting myself run over, I will actually making a real lifestyle change instead of just talking about it.

Health

My 94-year-old great-aunt is ill in hospital and probably has not long to go. She is very weak but lucid and in no pain. She has lived a long, healthy and independent life - living on her own until she was taken into hospital last week. She is an intelligent and religious woman and no doubt well-prepared for her end. If only we all could get the chance to live as long a healthy and independent life as she has.

My great-aunt has never smoked or drank. As a Presbyterian she no doubt has lived a quiet and ordered life. It really does seem to be the answer to living a long and healthy life.

Voluntary Simplicity, to my mind, presents an opportunity to live a healthier lifestyle. Just because you do not spend much money certainly does not mean you cannot eat well or get slack because you can't spend money on gym membership. Quite the opposite! I eat more healthily probably than most people I I know and now that I try to walk and bike wherever I go I certainly get more exercise than I ever did before.

Luckily too I live in a country where medical treatment is affordable and, indeed , largely free. I never have to worry about health insurance. Let's hope it stays that way.

People spend so much time ignoring and even abusing their health through smoking, overeating and substance abuse. It is a great blessing and a great form of wealth. No amount of material wealth can guarantee you health (although having money can go a long way to help you in extremis). Health is a great treasure - one that will be exhausted eventually. You will get sick and you will die no matter how rich you are. My great-aunt's life and current situation reminds me how precious health is for us all and how looking after it is more important than making money or indulgence in luxury.

Voluntary Simplicity and Charity

One thing I have noticed and felt initially a little uneasy about in my own attempts to live a simpler life is that cutting down on what I spend and how much I am prepared to work to get more disposable income means that I have very little money to contribute to charity.

The generation of surplus income, it could be argued, could be used to benefit those less well-off or to help fund ecological or social justice programmes. Living a simple life could be interpreted as a bascially selfish endeavour wherein one makes sure one has enough for oneself (if even that is very little) and refuses to involve in a level of economic exchange that can also bring benefit to others.

There is something in this argument if indeed one uses simple living to merely cut one's dependency on society. However, I think that even though a person living a life of voluntary simplicity may indeed have less money to give to charity than they might otherwise if they engaged fully in the "rat race", I believe that choosing voluntary simplicity can been seen as an attempt to turn one's every act into an act of charity and a step in the direction towards reducing the need for charity in the world.

The world's second-richest man, Warren Buffet, has reported given away upwards of $37 billion of his $42 billion fortune to charity in June 2006 - the biggest charitable donation in history. I can only praise such a generous gesture - it will surely do a lot of good. But, I wonder if Mr. Buffet is really just salving his conscience. In accumulating so much wealth (through stockmarket investment) how much harm did he do? Is the charitiable work his donation will fund only undoing the effects of the injustices that the multinational capitalism that his investments fuelled have perpetrated? Without campaigning against the structures that allow injustice to flourish isn't charity only ever able to treat the symptoms and not the disease?

Simple living, for me, means living a life where the happiness of others is paramount. By actively seeking not to engage in the kind of behaviour that causes suffering to other beings I believe that one is doing better than making donations to charity. Why work within a system that causes injustice and suffering and then uses the profits of that system to try to allieviate suffering? Seems crazy to me!

More Ethical Programming

This time the other sort of ethical programming. Information is the key to living an ethical life. Most of the world is cut off from the sources of information that most of us who live connected to the internet, and who use computers, take for granted.

Even if we could provide cheap new or recondition computers for those unable to afford them, the strangle hold that big software companies like Microsoft, Adobe and others hold on the market mean the poor would not be able to put any software on them.

However there is the growing FOSS (Free Open Source Software) movement providing software free and just as good as the commercially-produced stuff. Here are some links to the best open source or otherwise free software for Micro$oft Windows. Why put any more money in Bill Gates' pocket - apparently if he spent $1,000,000 a day it would still take him 120 years to go through his vast fortune!

• Open Office - I use it all the time - really gives Microsoft Office a run for its money why pay hundreds of pounds when this does the same for nothing?
• Firefox - Wouldn't surf the web with anything else.
• Thunderbird - who needs Outlook Express?
• Audacity - Record your own stuff in WAV, MP3 and even Ogg Vorbis quality!
• HTMLKit - Best HTML editor on the planet.
• The GIMP - a graphics manipulation program rivalling Photoshop.

Have a look at opensourcewindows.org for a long list of open source software for windows, opensourcemac.com for free Apple Mac software. And if you are using Linux then you probably know all about FOSS already.