Week 8: Economic Alternatives to Endless Growth Consumption

This week's theme is how we may rethink how we measure success and happiness, and introduces the course's core concept of Plentitude. My seminar actually focused on the ideas introduced this week so naturally I'm a Week 8 master. Naturally.

Anyway, we ran out of time, and I ran out of time so I'll be reproducing some of the stuff we would have presented.

First we had to examine Gross National Happiness.com. Bhutan is a small South Asian state that is primarily Buddist. They developed the concept of GNH, believing that progress should also include non-economic aspects concerning well being. It’s purpose is to help the government determine the causes of unhappiness among their population so as to devise better policies. I really like the idea of using this sort of qualitative data for decision making and would like to see it implemented in other governments in the future. Here's a little diagram from the website showing the different elements that contribute to happiness.

I love this thing. This thing is great.

Also, I remember someone giving a presentation in class for their end of the year project which insinuated that once we all go back to nature, all our mental and emotional problems would be absolved. That's not so! Among many different classes of society, there are different reasons that may cause one to be unhappy! Unhappiness can't be solved with only one element, GNH revolves the concept of happiness being multidimensional.

Next was an article for The Sydney Morning Herald called A Palmy Balm for the Financial Crisis by Kirk Hoffman. The main thing we were supposed to get from this I'm assuming is that the value we place on money...is kind of arbitrary! It arose out of the formation of city states and larger urban centers, because using a form of currency with set values ended up being more efficient than the gift economy or barter when lots of people are involved. But with new technology, there appears to be some gift economy action making its way back into how we distribute goods. One example is peer to peer file sharing.

Market economy, don't be hatin'.

I've always thought the concept of interest was a little arbitrary, too. It's basically the implementation of the idea that "time is money" and money received today is preferred to money received in the future. They are tied to the country's economic situation and how the government would like the citizenry to act. By managing the interest rates, the government communicates whether cash money is more or less valuable in the current economic situation than money stored in savings accounts and other things.

Speaking of the gift economy, I ran out of time with my Plentitude end of the year presentation too...as evidenced by this blog, I talk and research too much...Anyway, my topic was pay-as-you-can cafes, which are restaurants in which you can trade volunteer and kitchen work for meals if you don't have enough money on you. It's based on gift economics, in which goods and services are freely given for some non-formally agreed but culturally regulated reciprocation. Many establishments are socially and environmentally conscious  so food is usually obtained from local sources and many have a garden on grounds. Some people may criticize this model or look down on it; you can't really earn huge profits with an idea like this. But earning huge profits is not the point. The point is that the value of food and labour can be expressed in different ways other than money.

Anyway, I was going to compare three establishments and how they went about the concept of pay-as-you-can pricing differently, but instead, I'll link to some of my sources, which I found interesting:

How Much Should You Charge? - An interview taking about different pricing schemes

Restaurant depends on kindness of strangers - A news article about the One World Cafe

SAME making a difference - A news article about So All May Eat

One World, Everybody Eats - OWEE's main website

Pay-What-You-Want has Patrons Perplexed - A news article about Panera's adoption of this pricing scheme.

Then we had to look at Peter Victor's Questioning Economic Growth. It reminded us that economic growth wasn't always the goal in economic policy. Our economy's obsession with bolstering business in order to increase the well being of the population has likely well overstayed it's welcome as a policy.

Then we were to watch a video presenting Juliet Schor's concept of Plentitude. She also has a blog that she keeps about the concept, which I looked through as well. I decided to do some extra research, I think this video of a lecture she did on the concept to be very useful and informative! Blogger is being stupid dumb so I'll post a link to a recording of the lecture I found on Vimeo:

Juliet Schor: Plentitude.

This screenshot is here to make this area more eye-catching, meaning you should really watch this video.

Lastly was another flashy video, this time presenting Tim Kasser's (Remember him?) High Price of Materialism. I have a quote from Tim Kasser from an interview he did.

...trying to make a lot of money, to have a lot of nice possessions…we call these goals “extrinsic” because they are focused on external rewards and other people’s opinions. In contrast, intrinsic goals include aims such as personal growth, accepting one’s self...they are likely to satisfy inherent psychological needs that psychological theories suggest all people have.

This concept appeared in his research paper as well. Anyway, we constantly receive messages about how a good life can be attained through material goods. We know from previous weeks that lots and lots of money being spent on advertising in all its forms and it's become really pervasive. This causes people to adopt materialistic values, meaning they center their lives on acquiring possessions and earning money and building their social status. This attitude influences our social relationships as well. In his research paper, as well as our Professor's, they determined that when materialistic values increase, pro-social behaviour and concern for the environment  decreases.

The video suggests determining why people act this way to direct progress. The main reason seems to be the relationship between insecurity and media influence. The video suggests blocking and muting advertisements, campaigning to remove ads from public spaces and promoting intrinsic values. These include personal growth, strengthening friendship and family ties, and aiming to improve the world. He suggests one’s lifestyle should reflect one’s intrinsic values and one can do this by finding meaningful work, spending time with people you care about, and taking part in volunteer work. He says that government policy should also reflect intrinsic values, much like Bhutan and their Gross National Happiness. He ends by saying commercialism and consumerism are powerful, but making changes to our personal lives can help break their hold.

Week 7: Linking Television, Materialism and the Environment

There...were a lot of things presented this week. Mainly, I believe, about how Television has the ability to distort our realities and encourages materialistic values, which in turn, make us more self-conscious and insecure.

This week, we were to look at an article called Gramsci's interpretation of fascism by Walter L. Adamson. Antonio Gramsci was a writer and political theorist and founder of the Communist Party of Italy. He is most famous for introducing the concept of cultural hegemony and for being imprisoned by Mussolini for his ideas.

And also for being totes adorbs.

In his concept of cultural hegemony, the ruling class imposes their values on society through their culture, thus forming the social norms for all classes. The core of these imposed values is that the status-quo is beneficial and unavoidable. In a previous week, Ronald Wright stated that our society's flaws stem from how civilization began to form due to the development of agriculture, particular the trend of having power concentrated in a relatively small amount of people and the exaltation of stability and the status-quo. Particularly the return to status-quo is a goal or end result I find in a lot of entertainment media showing up in tropes like Status Quo is God and World-Healing Wave.

Next up was a research paper by our professor, titled Shop 'til We Drop? Television, Materialism and Attitudes About the Natural Environment. Both this paper and Tim Kasser and Kennon M. Sheldon's Of Wealth and Death: Materialism, Mortality Science and Consumption Behaviour conclude that larger amounts of television viewing result in an increase in materialistic values. (Materialistic in this sense meaning that the more one owns, the better off one is.) This increase in materialistic values then has further negative results such as less concern for the environment.

Professor J. Good used a national (American, I think) mail survey with a random sampling distribution, with a focus on the environment. Age of the people who responded tended to be in the 50's and 60's and most were male overall and living in suburban areas, despite random sampling. In this report, one should note the biases of age and social class in comparison to a hypothetical sample with more varied participation. Perhaps  in future research, different mediums for gathering information can be explored. She concludes that it is because of a lack of coverage in prime-time television for environmental issues, and the large presence of advertising. Since there is no promotion of materialistic values in television programming, materialistic influence can be attributed to advertising. However, differences in values corresponded with differences in viewing habits concerning the content. These conclusions were supported with mathematical regression analysis, which I appreciate seeing. But it also reminds me how I'm unfamiliar with techniques concerning the measurement of qualitative data except for dummy variables; I'm sure I would make a poor researcher.

Kasser and Kennon used a different approach, using an experimental situation game to monitor the reactions of the people involved (Study 2) and analyzing the answers of an essay question (Study 1). They based their tests on the concept that when people undergo stressful situations such as poverty and fear of death results in insecurity that manifests as materialistic behaviour. They present terror-management theory, which hypothesizes that in the face of death, people adopt prominent cultural worldviews for justification of their lives and become more defensive of their views when contested. I've always wondered what this theory was called; I come across the idea every now and again, especially when reading about religious extremism. Thus, they hypothesize that people living in materialistic cultures adopt and defend materialistic values when insecure.

There was nearly twice as many females as males in their sample for Study 1, and all were students from a small Midwestern American College. This may have resulted in a gender, age, class and background bias in comparison to a hypothetical nationwide random sample. However, none of their regressions ended up significant when determining whether or not fear of death had an effect on things like valuation of future possessions and the like. I don't know if this is relevant, but when working with equations with more than one variable in them, multicollinearity (strong relations between independent/predictor variables) may lead to lack of significance, among other things. I've personally found re-defining what you're looking for and the info you gather might also help, sometimes.

In the second study, gender was a little more evenly represented, even though females still outnumbered males. This time, the sample was gathered in a larger Midwestern college and was conducted among psychology students. The possibility of participants having different cultural background and the more even ratio of females to males help even out the bias that existed in the first sample. But the bias in this sample is different from the first; psychology students would have a little more insight and knowledge about experiments of this type. However, the relation between mortality-salience and consumption was deemed significant and people more preoccupied with death consumed more.

I'm surprised I remembered all this analysis stuff from my research classes.

After we were to look at the Greenpeace website, specifically one dealing with threats to the forest. Guess what the Conservative Lorax has to say about that, Greenpeace!

Then we looked at a transcript of a of a lecture by Stuart Hall, also called Representation and the Media. The ideas he talks about suggests that television has a lot of power, and it does this through how it represents things like race or sexuality or world events. In a way, representation gives these things meaning. It can be defined as both the presence or absence of things. And thus, television has the power to distort our perception of reality.The little bit about racism at the beginning of the transcript reminded me of the most recent episode of one of my favourite online shows:

Nostalgia Chick's review of...Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs.

She can't believe people would still defend this...piece of work. Neither can I.

Week 6: The Endless Growth Economy

This week, we were introduced the idea that our exploitation of resources is unsustainable.  I will go into that concept a little later on. The Millennium Assessment was presented as proof of our exploitation. We are introduced to this idea through Cresell and Thomas's article, the Talented Mr. Madoff. Here, the case of Bernard Madoff was presented. He was a charismatic and wealthy financier with a lot of influence who ended up cheating many investors with a type of Pyramid Scheme called a Ponzi scheme. In a Ponzi scheme, an "investment opportunity" is presented to investors that promises high or steady returns, to make it especially attractive. However, the money investors receive does not come from profits but from the investments of other investors. We also looked at David P. Barash's article We Are All Madoffs. In this article, our relationship to the Earth is likened to a Ponzi scheme.

In this quote by Barash, the similarities between Madoff's exploitation :

Everybody hates Bernard Madoff, and for good reason. He bilked hundreds—thousands—of people out of billions, perhaps tens of billions, of dollars, destroyed numerous life savings, ruined the future prospects of many of those who had trusted him, all the while living in ostentatious, and, it is now painfully clear, despicable luxury.

Lookit that despicable face.

 I personally think our relationship with the Earth resembles a Ponzi scheme, but in a different way. Our resources are exploited by a number of large companies with little regard to sustainability or our future, so only a relatively small proportion of the population can live in luxury. In a way, we are all Madoffs. However, the Earth isn't really like the investors he fooled. The Earth did not consciously invest in us, so that it may get some perceived amount of return. We do not pay the Earth back with some sort of gain taken from some other source than it was expecting. In a way, we are like the unwitting investors, too. The stock market is pretty much integral to modern business, and it is built on the perception of companies and the estimations and expectations of their profits. Investment itself is based on practices that are not sustainable and returns that may not exist. The Ponzi scheme is within our society and that is what hurts the Earth.

I did a bit of research on the sustainable extraction of resources for a class; I still remember what I talked about. Specifically, I studied the collapse of cod populations in Newfoundland, and the rules that had to be implemented in order to prevent that catastrophe from happening again.When John Cabot came across Newfoundland in 1497, the bay was teeming with cod. Over-fishing rendered Newfoundland's cod population extinct by the 1980's. Due to the depletion of Newfoundland's cod population, the industry was effectively frozen with a moratorium on boats in 1980, and then on licenses the following year. Property rights had to be implemented to prevent over-fishing of cod.

The ocean can be defined as a common pool resource, which sets it apart from other types because it would be extremely costly or impossible to exclude people from partaking in it's use. However, the amount that can be used by each individual is inherently ill-defined  leading to overuse and depletion. This dilemma is called the “Tragedy of the Commons”, in which an individual thinks of only increasing the size of his harvest since the negative effects of their exploitation isn't directly or immediately felt. Since the ocean was traditionally treated as common property, causing Canadian cod fishers to fish extensively in order to compete with both each other and foreign fishers in Canadian waters.

My literature suggested the implementation of Individual Transferable Quotas, similar to Carbon Credits, In this system, each licensed fisher would purchase coupons representing the amount of fish he would be allowed to catch. Only a limited number of these official coupons would be released. A system would be put in place to ensure the trading and selling of these coupons, so fishers could determine who needs what among themselves. With careful monitoring and good participation, the system is supposed to encourage sustainable use of resources. I personally think the credit system has a lot of potential and would like to see more of it in use.

A world where we have to be told how to share... Perhaps it the same as it's ever been.

Week 5: Indicators of Our Culture of Consumption

According to today's seminar, some people have seen the blogs of others. Now everyone knows I'm an arrogant asshole.

Now I'm gunna talk some about my wonderful end-of-year projects from the past.

The first article we had to look at this week is The Rise and Fall of Consumer Cultures by Erik Assadourian. It reinforces the ideas of week 3. Basically, the excessive consumerism that is encouraged and we now think is normal is actually a relatively unnatural development which has its roots in the weakening and conquering of North America's native population. However, he ends on a positive note, mentioning some trends in human behavior that are moving back to sustainability.

The book name drops a documentary called The Age of Stupid. Inspired by Steven Soderberg's Traffic, in which the individual tales from a number of different people to tell a larger tale, dealing with the "War on Drugs" The Age of Stupid focuses on consumerism and how it effects different people in different societies.
Here's an animated clip from the documentary:

I noticed the spice traders were speaking French...but the Spice Trade was primarily regulated by the Portuguese and then the British and Dutch through the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company respectively. I had to do a lot of research for a presentation about them, so I just notice things like that.

More specifically, the DEIC or VOC was one of the first multinational companies in the world.Before its formation, companies were formed before and dissolved after voyages but the VOC lasted nearly 200 years. The VOC was given the ability to issue stocks and pursue military and political operations by the Dutch government and through the military and politics, the VOC was able to establish a monopoly on spices from Indonesia. And by military exploits, I mean massacres and by politics, I mean pitting the native princes against each other.

Results were boats full of swag.

Next, we had to look at Facts and Figures on E-Waste and Recycling as presented by the Electronics Take Back Coalition.Technology is seen as providing the solutions to all our problems and improving life, but not everyone is aware that electronics consist of poisonous or hard-to-recycle material. We have the technology to recycle it safely.  However, many companies would rather export the waste to developing nations rather than shoulder the cost. In these developing countries, they don't have the equipment or technology to recycle electronics properly, so the population is exposed to harmful substances when taking electronics apart for disposal. I remember taking a Communications class when I was a 3rd year student and my topic for the end of the year was E-Waste. I was fascinated by the subject, but unfortunately, my teammates decided it would be a good idea to try to appeal to the professor and thus, half the presentation ended up being devoted to showing why Apple was better than Microsoft because it was more Earth friendly.

Our professor saw right through them. Never been more embarrassed in my life.

Also, after the whole Foxconn thing, I doubt anyone would want to try to convince a class that Apple is anything-friendly.

I will never forgive my ex-teammates. Ever.

Next, we were to focus on the work of Richard Louv, primarily his excerpt from his book Last Child in the Woods and a video presenting the concept of Nature Deficit Disorder. He describes his childhood being one filled with natural play, which he contrasts with the past-times of his kids. What sparked this was his young son asking him why things were "more fun" when his father was a boy. Since I was a kid, I always wanted to engage in natural play, but I was never let out further than my backyard for most of my childhood. Stranger danger, you see. One of the educational books our mother got for us was about a kid who would regularly take walks in the forest and it was all about the animals and plants he saw there. Another told stories about different camping trips. I used to entertain the thought of just heading out across the road into the woods where I would find interesting things, just like the kid in the book.

Which brings me to one of my favourite comics of all time: Calvin and Hobbes. Not only is it clever and well designed, a great deal of natural play is depicted. Calvin's free time is usually playing outside, interacting with nature and using his expansive imagination. A good number of the strips take place either at his tree house, jumping into a pond, taking walks in the woods, or sliding down hills in the winter. Even as an adult, a part of me envies Calvin's childhood, even the parts designed to "build character". This is the last strip of the comic. It's unusual, since most of the strips consist of a joke about childhood behaviour or some social critique, but there's something very wistful about this.

Fruity Rumpus Narcissist Factory Part 2.5

Now for something somewhat related to what I've been talking about. I remember earlier in the course the professor mentioning that having an entry devoted to a piece of art of your making, specifically poetry. Then I remember I piece I wrote when I was a teenager about the ideas we have been talking about in class and particularly what I've typed concerning the ideas of the previous couple of weeks...also because I haven`t completed another piece since then. The prompt was to start with a quote from Shakespeare`s Hamlet and I think...it`s still pretty good, so i`ll reproduce it here:

Physics

The time is out of joint
As a prince once said it was
Turning back as the clocks begin to drip
Into a barren age.
If the stones were to soften,
The would certainly tell of it.

We try to walk forward
With our bodies frozen still
Paralyzed by a wall of silk
We wove it ourselves, you know.
Like a worm in a horse`s pelt.

And we sit; chained and masked.
They seem so easy to break
For they were spun from our bodies.
They are such lovely chains,
and you can hardly notice
Treachery consuming the sun.

If you're wondering what I'm babbling about, you can check out Salvador Dali's The Persistence of Memory, The Legend of the Silkworm-Horse, and of course Ragnarok, Treachery being the translation of Skoll, the wolf that follows the sun trying to eat it in Norse Mythology.

...

Week 4: Stories and Consumption in the 21th Century

Ok, no more long posts. I promise. Mostly because I am practically 1200% done.

First off is an article originally published in Pediatrics called: Children, Adolescents and Television. In in, increased exposure to television is linked to obesity, self-esteem problems, violence and other assorted social problems, stemming from the fact that kids have trouble determining fantasy from reality at a young age. I was practically raised on television, even if it was mostly educational when I was a kid, so I wouldn't know if there would be a difference between me as I am now and a me that didn't watch as much television. I just know that even when very young, I vastly preferred and used rating systems to determine what I felt would be appropriate for me to watch than censorship methods like v-chips. Trying to prevent me from doing anything just made me determined to get around it. (It was usually access to videogames I snuck around for.) Where I usually find myself on the internet, common wisdom places responsibility on the parents for teaching children the difference between fantasy and reality and how to process the messages they receive.

I also know that coming across an airing on Tiny Toons was like finding the Holy Grail for little me. If only I could tell time back then so I could know when it was on...

It just so happens, educating your kids about critical thinking and media literacy is what the second reading is all about. It is a website hosted by The US National Library of Medicine called Impact of media use on children and youth. It talks not only about what problems can be caused by excessive television watching and video game playing (and uh, internet-ing, too...I guess), but it also talks about where the influence comes from. For instance, television watching encourages obesity since it takes away time from being active. In contrast, programming itself is responsible for distortions in perception of things like violence and sex among children and teenagers. Anyway, lots of good info and advice here for parents and other invested parties.

Then we were supposed to look at Facebook's info site for advertising on it. Yep, companies on twitter and facebook are certainly a thing...being as annoying as ever. But I know that there are plenty of websites out there that run on advertising money; it almost feels like advertising is the annoying, flashy bone structure holding up my favourite websites. That dependency always pissed me off.

SNIFFFFFFFF FUUUUUUUUUU-

Also, we were to look at and essay by Fisch et al. called The Impact of Sesame Street on Preschool Children. They concluded that Sesame Street had positive effects on children concerning mathematical, social and reading skills that last for pretty much their entire lives, no matter where it was aired. They use Sesame Street as an example of the potential of the television medium to be used as a teaching tool, and just be used for social good in general. Alas, with great power comes great responsibility...

Who am I kidding? Muppets are always freakin' great!

We also had to look at an article from grist.org called Julia Louis-Dreyfus and husband Brad Hall discuss their eco-friendly hideaway, which is exactly what it says on the tin. I remember the points presented in class that while the house was designed to be earth friendly, the house was still has its excesses. Luxury can be a little eco-friendly too I guess, better than not being eco-friendly...Well, it is nice to see people involved with organizations for the environment, also. It appears that her husband is more intense about environmental issues, while Louis-Dreyfus is more moderate.

Week 3: Stories that Taught Us to Consume

Now for my thoughts on all our readings. I hope looking back on them from my vantage point of being at the end of the course can provide some unique musings on them. Well, at least different ones from the people who have been doing their homework properly, unlike me.

Other than Reenchantment of the World, we also had to read Stuart Ewen's Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Roots of Consumer Culture. This essay starts out with a bit of history that I'd like to recant. Henry Ford's development of the line production system in 1910 for assembling cars is cited as the source of a grand transformation in America; suddenly one was able to produce a lot more goods with less time and manpower than had to be used previously. Ten years later, more elaborate advertising techniques were devised in order to justify and perpetuate the productivity of the technology that developed.

Sprouting of mutant butterfly wings not included.

I've been pointing out for most of this course that our desire to consume is largely created in order to deal with our sudden increase in productivity due to the technology that was developed since the industrial revolution. This essay has got a lot of nice quotes that I can now use to illustrate my points if I were to ever write an essay on this or in case anyone wants to get in internet fisticuffs with me. I'd like to reproduce them here:

Consumptionism is the name given to the new doctrine; and it is admitted today to be the greatest idea that America has to give to the world; the idea that workmen and masses be looked upon not simply as workers and producers, but as consumers. . . . Pay them more,sell them more, prosper more is the equation. (Page 1)

Before mass production, industry had produced for a limited, largely middle and upper-class market. With a burgeoning productive capacity, industry now required an equivalent increase in potential consumers of its goods...The mechanism of mass production could not function unless markets became more dynamic, growing horizontally (nationally), vertically (into social classes not previously among the consumers) and ideologically. Now men and women had to be habituated to respond to the demands of the productive machinery. (Page 1-2)

As the question of expanding old and creating new markets became a function of the massification of industry, foresighted businessmen began to see the necessity of organizing their businesses not merely around the production of goods, but around the creation of a buying public. (Page 2)

The creation of “fancied need” was crucial to the modern advertiser. The transcendence of traditional consumer markets and buying habits required people to buy, not to satisfy their own fundamental needs, but rather to satisfy the real, historic needs of capitalist productive machinery. (Page 6)

The negative condition was portrayed as social failure derived from continual public scrutiny. The positive goal emanated from one’s modern decision to armor himself against such scrutiny with the accumulated benefits” of industrial production...The use of psychological methods, therefore, attempted to turn the consumer’s critical functions away from the product and toward himself. (Page 7)

I believe that in order to understand the present and decide what to do for the future, I think that knowledge of history is really important. The origins of something are necessary in order for you to understand it. By understanding that the desire to consumed is manufactured, you can properly set yourself on the path to combat its influence on you. There was also a point about how "economic freedom/democracy" is actually more about supporting our production systems. It was also interesting that they mentioned that focus shifted from the elite to the mass market because it was the surest way to justify costs and make a profit and not really out of any notion of fairness or equality.

I remember one of my economic professors saying that he had an appreciation for micro-economical theory, since it revolves around the belief that a person is rational and knows oneself. Attempts to mold and manipulate a consumer's perceptions of their needs and desires are therefore aberrations and perversions of a consumer's inner knowledge. However, we only studied this concept concerning situations in which a consumer must choose between goods, provided they don't go beyond their means. The consumer is seen as a powerful unit, but only within the system in which he is expected to help perpetuate.

But who knows what people will be teaching 100 years from now.

I suppose the Berman article acted as an introduction to the core idea of this article, that the psychological approach to advertising caused it to revolve around playing on our social insecurities. But to me, it came off as Berman saying that scientific thought is the core of selfishness and I don't believe that. I could have done without that article; I feel Captains of Consciousness illustrates how scientific analysis led to advertising's goal being to feed into our insecurities well enough on its own.

Also, there was Robert Putnam's 1995 essay, Bowling Alone. This essay suggests that America's social capital which it once took pride in is declining. This article serves somewhat of an introduction for themes of another upcoming week, in which we discussed the negative effect of consumerist media on people. Putnam suggests that there has been a reduction in in-person social interaction, which is the root of enriching lives.

He states that the reason for declining civic engagement is because we've found that we can't trust our politicians...and I would say he's pretty right about that.You can't really blame us. I remember talking to a friend of mine describing a political debate on television just being old people slinging insults at each other. Apparently that's what they think we want to see. People don't take part in politics because people feel that in spite of how democracy is supposed to be, we aren't getting heard. Plus, all those scandals and broken promises don't help. I remember a newspaper article talking about the same issue...I don't remember what it is now, and the writer stated that it isn't so much apathy that has led to decreased civic engagement, it's more of a form of protest. With potentially dangerous side effects to be sure.

A buffoon like Mitt Romney was actually allowed in the presidential race for Christ's sake.

Of course, Bowling Alone has come under criticism as well. One of them is that while traditional forms of social interaction that Putnam has studied, such as bowling leagues, have declined in membership, other forms of social interaction have risen up. You can check out Nicholas Lemann's Kicking in Groups for more on this concept. There's some research that suggests that Putnam was too U.S. of A-centric and that the social capital problem isn't as bad in other first world countries. Another criticism that's appeared is the that some of the social groups Putnam focused on are responsible for the repression of minorities and the prevention of equality. Like how the Boy Scouts of America discriminate against gays and how people use the church to repress and abuse women.

We also had to listen to a lecture titled: A Short History of Progress (Part 5): Rebellion of the Tools. Headed by Paul Kennedy, it tackles the ideas of Ronald Wright. His domain is primarily archaeology; he makes a point that with each fall of a major civilization, the damage becomes greater. He presents three kinds of crisis that lead to the collapse of a civilization: One where the issues escalate until they are unmanageable, hostility to change, and lastly, the system holding everything in place becomes overworked or too complicated and becomes vulnerable. He sites the innovation of agriculture, while allowing the human population to grow beyond what hunting/gathering would let it, as being the root of problems that exist today, mainly the concentration of power at the top resulting in a desire to maintain the status quo. Wright suggests the state of our civilization, which we think is normal and inevitable for all developing nations is an anomaly. We only have this society because Native American civilizations were weakened by the diseases brought over by the Europeans and unable to defend their societies.

Also, this lecture reminded me that Thanksgiving freaking sucks.

He states that these problems are often intertwined. In the history of humankind, civilization as we think of it is actually a relatively recent way of living and thinking, something I wouldn't have really realized as a teenager. Whenever I was writing an essay or speech, I used to like to make sweeping statements about our nature as a race, that with knowledge such as this, I eventually recognized were untrue. I've noticed some people, even my age, still talk using these grand statements, that traits that we think are wonderful are inherent in us and will always be. But in reality, we're a bundle of different instincts and messages from the outside, either encouraging or conflicting with each other. Wright even states that the reason humankind can be short-sighted is because we've spent so long as hunter-gatherers, living from day to day. Throughout history, and among cultures, there's so many different ways of thinking about things such as life, love, religion, art, etc. that you can't really say certain traits or beliefs stood true for all people for all time periods. If you're going to make claims, you better tell me how, what, when and why. Which is why I really appreciate this lecture and its historical and archaeological basis.

In this lecture and in readings in other weeks, evidence in presented that our society is showing the symptoms of a possible future collapse, such as the acceleration of world population growth and human shortsightedness leading to pollution and the depletion of resources in both the past and present. I especially noticed this when reading the ideas of Juliet Schor in preparation for my presentation. He also mentioned the failure of laissez-faire economics (or "Reganomics"), which I'm sure one of my past economics professors would appreciate, since he cites it as the source of inequality and the widening gap between the rich in the poor in America today. I always thought that with our technology, he had the ability to industrialize other nations without our mistakes, and it's good to see this opinion here.

He touches on the bizarre trend of evangelism x market extremism in the United States, which we focused on in another week, so I'll get to this theme later. He ends the lecture saying that the way to the future is not necessarily anti-capitalist. We just have to revolve our policies around thinking about the future, moderation and respect for the environment.

The religious/market extremists should have nothing to fear but they do.

The great American tragedy, people.