I've been having a lot of thought lately about the act of giving up. A lot of was going on in our cities 50 years ago and since is the act of giving up. Here was this thing, this social urban life that we had created for millenia over and over again, around the world. And we walked away. We just became frustrated with our construct and we gave up. We moved out, left them to rot, and ... forgot. We decided to be guided into a false representation of urbaness, sanitized, distant and cold.
The popular history regarding this I think really glosses over a lot of things. I didn't live during those times, of course. I can only look at the urban anthropological evidence and see the pain left behind. It is easy for us to see the bandages. Some see the scars. I'm nothing special, to be sure, but when I look at our cities -- and I've looked at many -- I see the pain that is still there.
Cities, to me, are living things. The beauty they have is that they outlive us, by generations. They are the thing, the non-human thing at least, that we leave behind, for others to enjoy. And every wound that we give them is perhaps, bandaged up by the next behind us.
Our cities 50 years ago were really horrible places to live, I think. We look back now and see old images of what looked like thriving metros, full of little shops and bussling with people. But those are only the photographs. It must have been conditions which we, living today, can't begin to understand. Why else would carve them up and destroy every essence of realness that was once there? If they were so wonderful, why would we walk away?
Photographs are images, and images only. Your shoebox (or your hard drive) I'm sure is filled with images where everyone looks happy. But I doubt they are, inside the back alleys of the mind, pressed inside the tenaments of the frontal lobe, choked with the mental pollution that comes from waking up everyday.
Obviously, our collective love affair with the city was all for naught. We too quickly ran away from them when things were bad and ran into ourselves, our perfect homes and perfect lives. Perfectly separated from having to deal with other people and all the shit that comes with that. Now we've come to delude ourselves that cities are about glamour, entertainment and wealth. But they are not. That is the city that we don't try to get to know, the one we take out on the weekend, but never discover the true essence of it.
We gave up.
06 March 2008
04 March 2008
Killing Us Softly
We're pretty funny, I think.
About 100 years ago we unlocked this amazing energy source, oil. It's really efficient and because it's fairly primitive (just light it on fire), the technology can spread easily. It doesn't require advanced degrees or complex ways of seeing it. No. It's intuitive and fit our Victorian mindset (at the time) pretty well. Take this stuff, burn it. Oil is pre-science. We've tried to upgrade it to our modern world, but it's very last century.
Oil is liquid. All the other stuff we found (aside from oils derived from animals, which has to go through a process that isn't as direct and is far more constrained in its supply) wasn't as liquid. We had to dig for little coal rocks. Trees can be wiped out in a generation and take two to return the same energy production. Oil, well, oil can be dug and the inherent pressure alone allows us to pump it anywhere.
Basic economic theory holds that when there is vast abundance of anything, it gets used up wastefully. This hold true for oil as sure as it does human affection or fame. If you don't appreciate what you have, you'll loose it. Religion and philosophy have told us this for millena.
It took the earth millions of years to store up this energy. And while some call for the end of oil, who knows where we'll find more. But we do know that we've burnt a lot of it, most of it at some ungodly level of efficency. (My brand new water heater -- which runs on natural gas -- oil's cousin -- has an efficency level of 52%. That's like getting a paycheck for $1,000, then taking $480 and setting it ablaze.)
But energy is never created or destroyed, right? Correct. All that wasted energy did end up somewhere else. Some of it in the form of cash for those taking large profits on inefficently designed machines that use the energy (instead of paying people to make the machines more efficent). Some of it in our national GDP because our input energy costs were lower than our competitors, fueling economic growth. Most of it though is floating around us, in the form of pollution.
We have an amazingly inefficent and primitive economic system that places sole value on growth. There is no other measure. So because of this, our "lifestyle" is also about growth and consumption. Massive consumption. But we don't pay for it, at least not with a quantified cost. They are all hidden. In children's asthma and the melting ice caps. In the loss of species. And all the other things environmential types say we've destroyed.
And since most of the oil in the world is under the feet of those we don't really agree with, and since we think we can make fuel from food (like our bodies?), we seek to instituionalize those ideas and pass laws making that sort of production easy and cheap (at least to those doing it directly).
Our society reminds me of the laptop computer. Laptops are amazing, right? All this power in this little box. But its achilles heel is the battery. Another 100 year old technology powering this very 21st century concept. We have a pretty modern society, but its fuel is pre-science, pre-rationality, pre-post-modern. We might as well have real horses under the hoods of Porsches. Oil isn't that far removed.
So when we start using food to prop up an unsustainable system that BOUND TO FAIL, it isn't surprising that we start sending out massive ripples in our interconnected economy.
Luckily, mainstream media (at least the big newspapers) aren't idiots like those making policy. I just want to say THANK YOU New York Times. Not that anyone will listen, but you guys got it out there. And you got it right. Bless you.
One last thought. We erased blantant racism with the institutionalized version about 30 years ago. Hide it behind the "policies". For the past 10 years, when that form of racism started to be uncovered, we've moved it to economic racism. So yeah, feel guilty. It's your fault after all. And mine too.
Priced Out of the Market
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/opinion/03mon1.html
About 100 years ago we unlocked this amazing energy source, oil. It's really efficient and because it's fairly primitive (just light it on fire), the technology can spread easily. It doesn't require advanced degrees or complex ways of seeing it. No. It's intuitive and fit our Victorian mindset (at the time) pretty well. Take this stuff, burn it. Oil is pre-science. We've tried to upgrade it to our modern world, but it's very last century.
Oil is liquid. All the other stuff we found (aside from oils derived from animals, which has to go through a process that isn't as direct and is far more constrained in its supply) wasn't as liquid. We had to dig for little coal rocks. Trees can be wiped out in a generation and take two to return the same energy production. Oil, well, oil can be dug and the inherent pressure alone allows us to pump it anywhere.
Basic economic theory holds that when there is vast abundance of anything, it gets used up wastefully. This hold true for oil as sure as it does human affection or fame. If you don't appreciate what you have, you'll loose it. Religion and philosophy have told us this for millena.
It took the earth millions of years to store up this energy. And while some call for the end of oil, who knows where we'll find more. But we do know that we've burnt a lot of it, most of it at some ungodly level of efficency. (My brand new water heater -- which runs on natural gas -- oil's cousin -- has an efficency level of 52%. That's like getting a paycheck for $1,000, then taking $480 and setting it ablaze.)
But energy is never created or destroyed, right? Correct. All that wasted energy did end up somewhere else. Some of it in the form of cash for those taking large profits on inefficently designed machines that use the energy (instead of paying people to make the machines more efficent). Some of it in our national GDP because our input energy costs were lower than our competitors, fueling economic growth. Most of it though is floating around us, in the form of pollution.
We have an amazingly inefficent and primitive economic system that places sole value on growth. There is no other measure. So because of this, our "lifestyle" is also about growth and consumption. Massive consumption. But we don't pay for it, at least not with a quantified cost. They are all hidden. In children's asthma and the melting ice caps. In the loss of species. And all the other things environmential types say we've destroyed.
And since most of the oil in the world is under the feet of those we don't really agree with, and since we think we can make fuel from food (like our bodies?), we seek to instituionalize those ideas and pass laws making that sort of production easy and cheap (at least to those doing it directly).
Our society reminds me of the laptop computer. Laptops are amazing, right? All this power in this little box. But its achilles heel is the battery. Another 100 year old technology powering this very 21st century concept. We have a pretty modern society, but its fuel is pre-science, pre-rationality, pre-post-modern. We might as well have real horses under the hoods of Porsches. Oil isn't that far removed.
So when we start using food to prop up an unsustainable system that BOUND TO FAIL, it isn't surprising that we start sending out massive ripples in our interconnected economy.
Luckily, mainstream media (at least the big newspapers) aren't idiots like those making policy. I just want to say THANK YOU New York Times. Not that anyone will listen, but you guys got it out there. And you got it right. Bless you.
One last thought. We erased blantant racism with the institutionalized version about 30 years ago. Hide it behind the "policies". For the past 10 years, when that form of racism started to be uncovered, we've moved it to economic racism. So yeah, feel guilty. It's your fault after all. And mine too.
Priced Out of the Market
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/opinion/03mon1.html
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