Power and Construction

 I'm going to have to stop working on Totally Normal Town for a while (so I can work on some of my other projects), but there are still vacant lots waiting for more buildings to be built! What to do?

I use my old stand-by: construction sites!

 

As I've said, many of the buildings in this town are new designs for buildings from 2022, but the two cranes you see in Totally Normal Town go back farther in time than that!

 

I designed this crane build in back in 2011!! For a town I built on my coffee table in my previous apartment!

(It's remarkable how much better I've gotten at this since 2011 -- and yet there are a fair number of ideas from that city that I still use today.)

I also built a wind-farm to serve as the power-plant:

 

I'm not really thrilled with the design, though. I like the forest of brightly-colored wind turbines, but I think the grey framework is too bulky -- you can't really see the florescent battery cylinders as much as I would like.

 When I start building again (probably in 2026 or 2027) my plan is to un-build the power plant and redesign a better version of it on the back of the lot (where the construction site is currently). Then in the front lot (where the wind-farm is now) I'll build an improved version of the factory from the 2022 Totally Normal Town.

 

Straddling the tectonic plates (again)!

Totally Normal Town is built on a set of three separate serving tables -- each on wheels -- which we jokingly call the "tectonic plates." This allows easy access to all of the buildings -- despite the fact that the town is shoved into a corner under the staircase.

This design also allows another strategy to build complete buildings (with all four walls) and still have the interior easily accessible:

 

Like in an earlier Totally Normal Town, I put the supermarket on the ground floor of the split building (again with the Joyce Bysers MiniFigure at the cash register).

 Unlike last time, though, I didn't put "Chez François" upstairs because in this town François got much nicer digs:

So this time I put my own family's apartment above the supermarket:

 

Also on the ground floor, on one side, I added a pharmacy and a post office. On the interior side, I gave the pharmacy and post office both counters that face the interior of the supermarket, so people can pick up their prescriptions and mail their packages while doing their grocery shopping:

I put a cash machine in the post office because of course the post provides banking services:

Of course our apartment has a nice large balcony full of flowers and a nice table for outdoor dining -- and of course I added solar panels on the roof:

 ... with nice interior decor as well:

 

A Woman in Every Pot

In response to recent mass murders by self-described “Incels,” there were a couple of high-profile articles sincerely recommending forced redistribution of women. In case you missed them, please follow these links.

This suggestion was dismissed as absurd for the obvious reasons: that the Incels’ misogyny is 99% of what makes them undatable, and that women — being autonomous humans — cannot be forcibly “redistributed.” But I think the obvious responses are incomplete because a lot of people, when confronted with the idea that women aren’t slaves, respond by thinking “But maybe they should be; maybe things would be better if they were…”

So today I would like to explain why trying to control women more is not merely unethical — it is also a totally counterproductive approach to the exact problem that the above-linked dudes are trying to solve.

Let’s lay out the problem: Some portion of the young, straight men in society are unable to find women who want to be with them. This can make a guy frustrated, angry, often violent, maybe suicidal — while the same guy might be happy and feel motivated to be a productive member of society if only he had a wife or girlfriend and possibly also children.

What happens if we try to solve this problem by decreasing women’s freedom and economic power?

Look at it from the woman’s perspective. If you don’t have the opportunity to earn a living wage yourself — and your mate’s economic contribution makes a big difference when it comes to getting food, health care, etc., for yourself and your kids — then Geezer McMoneybags starts looking really attractive compared to the charming young guy who is barely able to make a living wage himself. That’s not being shallow or superficial, that’s rational self-interest.

But let’s change the scenario a bit. Suppose the woman is able to earn a living wage, and her spouse’s financial contribution isn’t a deciding factor in her kids getting to grow up in a safe and healthy environment. Now she’s freer to prioritize other qualities in a mate. The man himself — his time, his efforts, and his character — becomes more valuable than what’s in his wallet.

Just look at it from an anthropological perspective. Societies with a more patriarchal culture (and with more economic inequality in general) tend to be more polygynous. In other words, the top tier of powerful men monopolize multiple women, either through officially recognized polygamy or through a series of marriages. And on the other end of the spectrum, there are a whole lot of frustrated and hostile men that the ones at the top can use as cannon fodder.

If you want a male-dominated society full of manly men vying with one another for dominance, then you’re talking about a society that — by design — has quite a lot of losers. It’s not a bug, it’s the whole point. Some Incels and others in the Manosphere have suggested that teenage girls should be assigned to men and forced into marriage. But where do these teenage girls come from? If you are one of society’s losers, do you really think that a patriarch in a country where he legally owns his daughter is just going to give her to you, as a participation trophy for being born male?

Maybe a solution that is more equitable for the women is actually also more equitable for the men. Obviously women don’t want to be the third string wife to some gross, old, rich, powerful asshole (like Donald Trump, to name one high-profile example). Sure, some will choose that path regardless. But given more attractive options, women are more likely to “redistribute” themselves — rather than sharing each others’ (old rich dude) sloppy seconds. A society where the women have more opportunity to choose men based on their personal merits is a society with fewer male losers.

The catch is that in this scenario the man has to be better than nothing. Literally. Because when women can get by economically without a man, then having no man at all is on the list of possible options. So if you’re a guy and you want to be with a woman, your presence has to be more attractive than your absence.

This should not be a high bar to cross. The overwhelming majority of women are either straight or bi, which means that by definition they are attracted to at least some men. Sadly, too many young guys who go looking for dating advice online end up getting sucked into misogynist communities. If your problem is that you are having difficulty attracting a woman, I can hardly think of a more counterproductive solution than finding a bunch of fellow losers and working yourselves into a collective lather over how horrible women are.

A more effective solution is to work for a more egalitarian society. And keep in mind that women are people — with their own interests and motivations — not prizes.

Also published in The Medium.

State of the me 2016-2017

Since 2011, I've been writing these yearly posts about where I'm at with my life and my goals. This year I've got a lot going on in my personal life -- in particular, I didn't quite finish part 1 of my comic as planned (there's still the difficult stretch from page 5.5 to page 9 remaining), but I got quite a lot done, and it looks good. But, unfortunately, my personal life has to take a backseat to the tragic state of the world that has arisen this past year.

Specifically, critical amounts of Arctic ice have melted, which means that the feedback loops for catastrophic runaway global warming have begun. The amount of methane frozen in the Arctic absolutely dwarfs the amount in the atmosphere right now. We are dangerously close to having an atmosphere that the ecosystems we rely on can't survive in (and from there, potentially an atmosphere that is too hot for humans to live in at all, even if they had something to eat, which they won't). We are very likely facing extinction within the next twenty years.

The one thing that could potentially halt this deadly course would be if the industrialised world were to recognise this for the international emergency that it is and drop everything to stop it. Unfortunately, the United States has just elected a facist monster who is reigniting the nuclear arms race by conducting foreign policy by posting nuclear threats on Twitter (not to mention defunding NASA's climate research and looking to increase fossil fuel extraction). As the increasing climate catastrophe causes more situations like Syria worldwide, it would take a genius of diplomacy to maintain any kind of global peace. As it is, we will likely be heading into WWIII at this critical moment, and then it's probably curtains for us.

Interestingly, when I mention this situation to friends, I've gotten reactions like, "Back in the 80's, people said acid rain would be a big problem," or "People said we'd run out of fresh water..." But none of these past scares are things that even had the potential to kill everyone. This one can, and if we don't stop it, it will. It's happening -- the global temperature rise is already off the charts.

Naturally, this leads me to a bit of an existential crisis. All my life, I had just assumed the human race would continue long past the end of my expected lifespan, and that I (and my husband and children) would all likely live to old age. Now it's looking possible, but decidedly unlikely.

Is life worth living if we have maybe only another ten years or so of things being more-or-less normal, and then another ten or so of war/starvation/terror, and then death? And not just for me, but for everyone and everything I have ever cared about? As a humanist, I would generally say that my life has meaning due to the positive impact I can have on others' lives and on society, but... it's kind of not the same if all others and society will all be dead too. Now as I look at all of the wonderful things I love about humanity and about life, I feel like I'm saying goodbye.

More than anything I hope we can solve these looming disasters. My deepest wish is that I'll be rereading these words in 2040 or 2050, looking back on how we made it through the critical moment and created a more sustainable society. Alternatively, it would be great if I were simply wrong and delusional -- I'd rather spend the rest of my days locked up in a mental hospital with my drawing tablet than have the situation be as dire as it appears to be.

I'm planning to write another few posts in the coming month or so, to discuss what we're up against, and what we have going for us that may allow us to survive this. I'm not going to sit back and wait for this to happen. We'll succeed in rolling back climate change or die trying...

Happy New Year. :'(

My Utopian Idea!

Ever since I was a kid, I've contemplated how human society could function differently, for the better. I've come up with a lot of naive ideas over the years (I'll bet Mathmom remembers what we came up with back in High School) -- which is fine because figuring out why a given solution wouldn't work helps you to hone in on a good solution. I assume many of the rest of you have spent time on the same problem, especially if you like science fiction. I've never liked being limited to the capitalist/communist dichotomy, as though no new possibilities or ideas have flowered over the past half-century -- despite how dramatically things have changed in that amount of time.

I'd like to ask you to pause a few moments (step away from the computer, if necessary) and think about ideas you've had about how society might be different. When you're done, please come back and read my new idea.

Done?

OK, here's mine:

All adults get one half-day of education per week for their entire lives.

Here's how it works: Each person takes one course per semester (six months), and the course can be anything at all that could potentially be offered by a university or a community college or even a vocational school. This would include subjects like art, music, and sports (even extreme sports) in addition to standard academic courses. The only restriction would be that you can't take more than three semesters in a row in the same broad subject area (eg. once you take three semesters of sports or three semesters of science, then the next semester you have to study something else). Anyone who employs anyone else would be aware that every employee requires one half-day of release time per week (in the same way that they are now aware that employees must be documented and have social security tax paid on them, etc.).

This came to me while contemplating the current U.S. health insurance reform debates. I think that a good government needs to be "of the people, by the people, for the people" (because rulers and oligarchs tend to see their needs/interests as outweighing others' needs, even when they sincerely believe they're being fair), and a functioning democracy or republic depends on an educated populace.

Education is one of the farthest things from a "zero sum game" there is. If one person gets a lot of it, that takes nothing from the big pot of education that's left for others. If anything, it increases the big pot, because if your friend learns something, she might find it interesting enough to tell you about it, and then you might learn something to and/or feel motivated to learn more on your own.

I'm discouraged to see the trend in the U.S. of viewing education as "every man for himself" and as long as your own kids get some, then screw everybody else. You (and your kids) have to live in the same society with everybody else's kids. (As an aside, I often wonder how much good could be done if all those people who home-school would instead send their kids to public school and then invest that same amount of time that they now spend home-schooling on improving the public school instead.)

In addition to the benefit from the education itself, my plan would have further advantages:

1. Linking the campuses would be a boon to developing viable public transportation. One of the problems with setting up a public transportation grid is that you need to have common destinations (as opposed to having all of the start and end points diffused over a large area). With this system, you just go to whichever campus is nearest to your home or work, and from there take a train to whichever campus offers your class. (Naturally the class itself would be less than half a day, to allow time for transportation.)

2. People would constantly be meeting people outside of their socio-economic-racial-cultural group (and making friends, since they'd be meeting people with common interests), which would diminish racism and classism, helping society to function more harmoniously.

3. The society would be more responsive to changing labor needs. If a given line of work starts becoming obsolete and some other skill is desperately needed, then the change in demand could be swiftly met by a change in the labor supply.

Naturally the biggest drawback to this plan is that the United States of America cannot afford to do this. And that's not to even begin with the political reality (that apparently a big portion of the American public would rather continue to be royally ripped off by the world's most expensive healthcare-payment-bureaucracy -- as long as that bureaucracy will reassure them that nobody will get something for nothing). Unlike health insurance reform, universal socialized adult education would cost a lot more money than it saves. And I'm sure I don't have to review for you what state the U.S. economy and treasury are in.

I'm just saying, if it were possible, what a wonderful world this would be!

Now, you've probably noticed that my plan says nothing about economics or about how to deal with the energy crisis. I have more about energy coming up (from a book I'm currently reading), and as for economics, well, as I said here, I should have taken more courses in economic theory. (Maybe I could, if only my utopian fantasy were a reality!) In other words, I'm open to suggestions.

Most Ironic Eco-Food!

As you may recall, I've been thinking about trying to be more eco-friendly by buying locally-grown foods. Y'know, if only somebody out there in cyberspace would create the tools to make it easy and fun for me to do it. ;^)

So, I'm trying to figure out what to think of this new fruit drink I've found: Amazônia. According to the packaging, it helps preserve the tropical rain forest because the fruit is cultivated in a sustainable way, and the production follows international (independently verified) standards of fair trade. And then the fruit juice is shipped around the world from Brazil to Switzerland and sold in little disposable-cardboard cans.

What do you think? Eco or not?

It's pretty tasty...

My Adventures with Local Foods!

Thanks to some helpful comments on last week's local-food post, I've discovered it's not too hard to find online information about what's in season near you and where to buy it (some places to start: Local Harvest, foodroutes.org, Sustainable Table, and Slow Food). The trouble is that most of these will just direct you to the news site of the farmers' market in your area -- there's no single global database where you can type in where you are and it will give you info on what's in season (and where to buy it). There's a certain logic, of course, since the info is local by definition. But I still think the sustainable food sites are missing a big opportunity, and here's why:

Currently, buying local food is a multi-step procedure which is not easy to share with your worldwide Internet friends. You must (1) go to one of the global sites (linked above), (2) type in your location so it will tell you how to find out about your local farmers' market, (3) go to the market or read their newsletter to discover what's in season, (4) find a recipe. None of those steps are hard, but in today's insta-society, that's perversely just hard enough to turn local food buying into some sort of obscure, esoteric hobby. And it's unfortunate because -- if they would just pool their databases and hook up with a big recipe database -- they could turn the procedure into a single fun click that could go viral in a snap!

I think I'll email the sites above and tell them to get on the ball. ;^)

Meanwhile -- even without checking the Internet -- I've started one local food habit, and I hope you will all be impressed by how very eco-friendly this is!


I like to buy beer from a local shop, and bring it home via public transportation. And -- going the extra mile -- I schlep it up two flights of stairs since we don't have an elevator. (Hey, it's cheaper than going to the gym!) The cool thing is that they sell the beer in re-usable bottles, so when we're done drinking it, we bring the bottles back. Then -- since the brewery is right near Zürich -- the bottles hardly waste any energy in transit making the round trip to be refilled with beer so we can buy them again!

Poking around their website, I don't see anything about them using local and/or organic ingredients. And yet, I think there's a high probability that they are using local organic ingredients. The Swiss are like that. It's one of the things I like about Switzerland. :D

Wall-E: our new brave new world...

Are we humans rendering our planet uninhabitable? I thought the idea was still controversial in polite society, but apparently it's hit the mainstream -- at least enough to form the premise of a Disney/Pixar animated blockbuster: Wall-E.

Wall-E's setting is essentially a modernization of the tradition of 1984, Brave New World, Soylent Green, etc.: here's a scary and weird possible future for humanity. But what most surprises me about it is to see such a clever retooling first from Disney/Pixar, as opposed to coming from some more obscure indie literary channels. Admittedly, I don't know the obscure indie world well enough to say there's not a whole new genre of stories about how human society is going to evolve in the next fifty-to-a-hundred years (given climate change, diminishing fossil fuels, etc.). But before Wall-E, I hadn't seen anything that comes close to an interesting modernization of the question of where society may be heading -- just lots of the usual, cliché "post-nuclear-holocaust" premise that has been repeated so many times since the fifties.

Now, Wall-E is a comedy for kids, and it's very clear that it's not at all meant to be taken as something that could seriously happen in the future. Yet it's amusing to see how much social commentary there is in it.

It's not just that the Earth is covered with too much trash,

to the point where leaving the atmosphere entails pushing through a carpet of junk satellites...


The first scene where we see live humans reminded me of my two colleagues who chat with one another through skype even though they sit right across from one another:


Even if it weren't for the garbage,

the consumerism is, itself, a problem.


Americans have been sufficiently innoculated against communism that there's not much danger of a "government" taking over everything, but so what? It's not as though It's not as though there aren't other giant, powerful human organizations that have a huge control over the choices available to you in your life.

More stores don't necessarily mean more choices, particularly if you want the type of life that can't be bought in an ultrastore.


As "the Other Maria" points out in her insightful review, there's really no villain. This is, perversely, an improvement over 1984, which gives you the standard "blame the bad guy" out. But, here, it wasn't some sinister, evil person or organization that destroyed the Earth and ground the meaning out of these people's lives -- it was just a whole lot of people following the comfortable path of least resistance, to this.

As I said, this particular future couldn't happen -- it's meant to be a joke, an exaggeration. Yet it's an interesting to see how much it challenges a lot of the "common wisdom" I talked about in my New Year's post. And the fact that has arrived (controversy-free) right in the middle of the consumerist mainstream? It makes me wonder -- maybe attitudes are changing...?

I'd like to wish you a Happy New Year, but...

Everyone reading this is probably aware of the precarious position we're in. Global warming is proceeding faster than the worst projections, and it's not just a question of everyone feeling a little warmer. Small changes in climate can have dramatic effects on the worlds ecosystems that have already been fragilized to the breaking point by human use. Changes in weather patterns can change storm patterns, destroying not only human habitations (such as New Orleans), but also potentially devastating shallow-water ecosystems such as coral reefs that form a key component of the ocean life systems that we humans rely on for food. Similarly, as if the lungs of the Earth (the tropical rainforests) weren't already in enough peril from direct destruction by humans, human-induced climate change may well finish the job.

But we can solve this, right? If you look around at our modern marvels, it would appear that we humans can create anything that we can possibly imagine. Unfortunately, these miracles are built on more than just human ingenuity and the shoulders of giants -- they're also built on a gigantic trust fund of free energy that we happened to find buried in the Earth's crust. And at the rate we're going, we'll have it spent within a generation or so. World peak oil production is right around the corner (if we haven't already passed it), and worldwide demand for energy is going nowhere but up. We're nowhere near getting ourselves weaned off of fossil fuels, and -- given our society's dependence on energy-intensive activities such as agriculture and transportation of food and people -- it's not clear the Earth minus its oil reserves will be able to support our population of six billion (and growing).

Part of the problem is increased energy consumption in the "developing world." Naturally people want to emulate the (currently) rich countries, and unfortunately they're doing it by making the same mistakes. Developing countries will be in a better position in the long run if they can manage to skip the dead-end step of refitting their cities to be more "car-friendly." But moving towards sustainability will probably require widespread literacy and education, goals that can't be accomplished simply or overnight.

Even apparently sustainable activities like agriculture and drinking fresh water aren't as sustainable as you might hope. Irrigation-based farming can lower the (fresh) water table and affect the quality of the soil in just a few seasons. Overgrazing can harm plant life beyond its ability to recover, and the resulting erosion does the rest. Sure, with effort humans can make the desert bloom, but for how long? And what will it look like afterward? The deserts have spread and expanded over the past few millennia of human use, even without the current global warming catastrophe to speed things up. It's true that modern industrial farming techniques have changed all the rules about how much food humans can produce per acre, but unfortunately this technological miracle (not only in terms of machinery but also in terms of chemical fertilizers and pesticides) is largely based on inexpensive petroleum. (This is why I'm wary of "biofuels" as a solution to our energy problems -- a moment's reflection should make it clear that "biofuels" are nothing more than an incredibly inefficient and environmentally costly type of solar power.)

So are we capable of re-orienting our society towards something reasonably sustainable? I think we could if every human on the planet were to make sustainability a life-or-death priority. Yet -- while we humans are capable of surviving and adapting to amazing hardships when we have to -- it seems we're incapable of making even minor lifestyle changes for an intangible like "future generations."

Even if we see that investments in energy efficiency today can save us a lot in the long run, it's not clear we have the capacity to make any kind of real investments. People keep saying that Obama will have difficulties if the economy gets worse. I ask what do they mean "if"? Energy will become a lot more expensive, and we have no particular reason to project any respite. Meanwhile U.S.-style sprawl means that U.S. cities require several times as much energy per capita to run than their Asian and European counterparts. Then there's the economic crisis. The U.S. economy today is largely based on debt-fueled consumer spending, with an enormous trade deficit. I don't see how this can be viewed as a viable long-term economic strategy, yet the common wisdom still says that as long as we can keep "consumer confidence" (hence consumer spending) up, then everything will go back to normal, and the U.S. will continue to be an economic powerhouse indefinitely.

Your Libertarian friends will tell you that one of the mechanisms of the market is the fact that those who make bad investments go under, but the U.S. government has been cheating by habitually insuring the banking and financial industries. So investments are allowed to grow, but with a safety net that gets hoisted up higher as it goes, since it would be unthinkable for any wealth to disappear once it has been created, no matter how dubiously. But rather than escaping the discipline of the market, it looks like we've merely moved the risk up a level. The U.S. government (hence the American people) are now the ones who have made too many bad investments, and we're getting to the point where it's no longer realistic to suppose that the national debt can ever be paid off. The "almighty dollar" is barely holding its own against other foreign currencies, and (since the Saudi princes will no longer be motivated by helping their friend Mr. Bush) the dollar could take another hit if OPEC starts demanding payment in another currency. We could easily get to the point where the U.S. can no longer even "service" the debt (i.e. pay the interest). American common wisdom says that debt is not a problem because we can always grow the economy to dwarf it. I ask: grow it on what? More debt? Air? This is the economic strategy I like to call "patching Reagan's balloon" (a.k.a. "Voodoo economics"). We've just bought another 700 billion dollar patch that we can't afford -- do you think it will hold? Looking at this from the perspective of someone living outside the U.S., I'd say this bailout will provide the liquidity so that foreign interests can disentangle themselves from the U.S. financial industry as much as possible without losing their shirts. The shirt-losing will come later, to someone closer to your home.

A better investment would have been to spend the 700 billion on rebuilding America'a rail network, and getting it up to the technology level of Europe and the far east. Train travel is by far the most efficient type of travel, and (unlike planes, trucks, and automobiles) it's already largely electric, simplifying the transition off of fossil fuels. The more energy costs increase, the more you'll wish you had that efficient train network. Unfortunately, it would appear that the U.S. government is incapable of making intelligent investments. Uncle Sam can whip out the public credit card for some types of emergencies ("Oops! The banking industry royally screwed up!" or "Oops! That war we started cost way more than we ever expected!"), but can't seem to plan ahead. American common wisdom says that any investment that benefits the whole society is tyranny (socialism!). It's this same faulty common wisdom that causes Americans to think that somebody at the top (Greenspan, perhaps?) can just tweak a few variables and turn the right knobs to "fix" the economy without people having to make even the most obvious planning-ahead-type lifestyle changes (solar panels anyone? A smaller dwelling, closer to work, perhaps? A little less meat on that sandwich? A bicycle?).

Since Obama seems to have bought into this the-bailout-will-fix-everything common wisdom, you may be wondering why I campaigned for him so hard. It's simple. From reading his books, I gather that he has the clear head and leadership skills to unite the country and guide us (hopefully in the right direction) through the coming crisis. He's the one who seemed most likely to be able to avoid that other deadly-wrong bit of American common wisdom: that the solution to economic crisis is war. A President Palin would surely have "solved" our planet's problems by finding us an enemy to nuke. And while that solution may well benefit some species on Earth (by ridding the planet of its most destructive species), it won't help us much.

So, good luck! And happy 2009...

A future for everyone's favorite species?

With population pressure mounting, environmental degradation increasing, and the precipice of "peak oil" just ahead, it's easy to lose hope for our future. Will we end up like yeast trapped in a sealed bottle of grape juice, eating all the sugar until our own waste renders our environment toxic to us and kills us? Or are we smart and adaptable enough to face this challenge and build a sustainable society?

It won't be easy, and it will require some real global cooperation. I've just finished a series of posts to outline some basic ideas and strategy:

First, people are far more willing to cooperate with others and plan for the future when they have enough resources to ensure their own health and the health of their children. In fertility, mortality I talked about how lowering infant/child mortality leads to parents choosing to have only a few children and investing an enormous amount of effort on each one. In is religion the problem? I argued that people of all nationalities, ethnicities, and religions will increase their racist element and find excuses for war when competition for resources becomes critical (and by contrast will be better off cooperating/trading with different groups when they're doing okay). Then in stand by your home-grown tyrant I discussed the fact that people will often side with a local leader -- even an obvious bad guy -- over a foreign invader if the foreign force's motives are tainted (by desire to control and take resources).

Second, we all need to get serious about limiting our own waste and excess consumption. The biggest, simplest strategy is to move towards low-to-no car urbanism. In living downtown and car-free I talked about how it's not just a question of saving the planet -- it can make your life simpler and more convenient in tons of ways. In European dream I argued that urban living can decrease racism (as kids grow up familiar with kids of all different backgrounds) which increases willingness to cooperate with other nations to save our planet. Finally, in earning admiration in today's world I discussed how our human values are starting to change in the right direction so that reducing wasteful consumption -- thinking of the future -- is seen as the highest virtue.

Earning admiration in today's world

There's more to the quest for riches than just gaining opportunities for more physical pleasure -- it's also a quest to be admired. Studying an interesting question or creating a thing of beauty is a pleasure unto itself, and it's one which can also lead to prestige and a sense of accomplishment. Leading a virtuous life is its own reward if you believe in the virtues you've chosen. In any case, there's a strong motivation to feel that you're doing something valuable in life, and to have others in your community agree with that assessment.

Virtue can be defined as placing others' needs above your own desires. Under this umbrella, the particular acts regarded as virtuous can change as the situation changes. Today conservation -- saving as much as possible for future generations instead of a short-sighted grab-and-gobble -- is rapidly rising in value to become perhaps the highest virtue as our environment-and-fuel situation becomes more and more terrifyingly urgent. Celibacy no longer ranks as a virtue in the eyes of the general population: with effective and readily available contraception, sexuality isn't equivalent to leaving more mouths to feed, so the self-denial of abstinence is no more admirable than self-flagellation. As the human race becomes more globally interconnected, rainbows of diversity take the virtue spotlight away from piety and faith (which can be used to bolster ethnocentrism and violence). It's no wonder the religious right is so desperately angry: nobody wants their own investments to lose value. In the middle, monks, nuns, and other ascetics retain a place of esteem as they can teach the faithful to admire leaving a small footprint.

Personal achievement is a beautiful way of earning esteem. Whether you're an artist or athlete, researcher, theorizer, philosopher, or whatever, flexing your talents typically costs little (in terms of Earth's resources) compared to the joy, satisfaction, and potential good that is produced.

Seeking status (and status symbols) seems like the opposite of virtue, yet as with virtue and personal achievement, vying for status is a typical human way of convincing yourself and others of your value. To me this is the biggest weakness of the communist idea "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." Leftist intellectuals notice that it's bad that the idle rich enjoy a lavish lifestyle while poor children go without food or medical care. Yet if everything were equalized economically, the rich man loses his prestige while the intellectual is still admired either for his personal accomplishments or for his position as a leader. So it's hard to see pure communism as a selfless (hence virtuous) position for an intellectual to take.

A more realistic goal than equalizing wealth would be to try to narrow the extremes and persuade the top dogs to desire and value items which are less wasteful.

"Finer, not more or bigger" should be held up as the measure of true luxury. A bottle of wine that costs three hundred euros on the table of a five-star restaurant doesn't take significantly more of the Earth's resources to produce than a three-euro bottle of table wine served in a modest home, yet is an impressive display of wealth. An apartment with a fantastic location in Manhattan -- filled with original artwork -- will probably set you back more than a giant McMansion filled to the brim with rarely-used manufactured goods and accessed via S.U.V., but guess which one sets the world back more. Similarly, expensive designer clothing might be made by skilled artisans earning a living wage (rather than in a sweatshop), and the luxury food industry today can support innovations and traditions (organic farms and traditional artisans) which are more Earth-friendly than industrial farming. I'm not saying wealth is a virtue, but changing values can limit its harm. And people who want to be trendsetters can do some good by encouraging others to aspire to forward-thinking eco-friendliness.

I was over in the expensive part of town the other day, and noticed a few shops displaying handbags in the 900 to 1500 euro price range (and, no, I did not mistakenly add some extra zeros there). To my fashion-uneducated eye, the expensive purses were all grotesquely ugly. My immediate reaction was that you would have to be completely out of your gourd to even want one of those. But of course the ladies who want those purses aren't trying to impress me. (I'm happy to oblige by not being impressed.) On the other hand, if you've got money to burn and want people to know it, there are worse choices you could make. At least "taste" items are small, represent spending money on ideas (designs), and show some value for something somewhere on the education spectrum.

The guy who says "I already have four houses and ten cars, so I guess the next item on my rich-guy agenda is a yacht..." deserves more pity than envy because he's displaying his lack of imagination even more than he's displaying his wealth. America fervently believes in the Horatio Alger story, that unlimited opportunity exists for everyone in the U.S., and that it's one great, big meritocracy where your wealth is a measure of your merits. As a consequence -- since showing off good taste smells of "old money" -- obscenely wasteful over-consumption has long been the ultimate status symbol. But the connection between Horatio Alger's reward and the resulting values of "money = good, culture = bad" gets lost somewhere along the way, and we get leaders like George W. Bush: a wealthy heir who failed at the business opportunities that were handed him, and who is too elitist to show any kind of consideration for the growing ranks of the working poor, yet can still pretend to be salt-of-the-Earth by wearing his lack of culture on his sleeve. Fortunately his hypocritical example may nudge people's opinions in a positive direction. If you're going to be rich, at least make some sort of effort to demonstrate it's not wasted on you -- try to be a philanthropist or patron of the arts or something, sheesh!

So while capitalist theory holds that some economic disparity is necessary to inspire ambition and innovation, I'll quietly add that some economic disparity is not necessarily harmful. The key word, however, is some. People will work day and night to be just a little bit better off then their fellows, but it's all relative and values-based. If the Joneses don't have a swimming pool, there's a good chance you won't care that you don't have one either. If the Joneses just put up these fab new solar panels that power their house and their electric car, you might just need some too. But even if there's benefit to having a little room for economic advancement, that doesn't mean there's any benefit to extremes of wealth and poverty. It's not like the entrepreneur will give up and not bother to try to become rich if he hears that his capital gains or his children's inheritance might be a little less on an absolute scale -- being richer than others is just as rewarding even if it doesn't mean owning every resource on the entire planet. On the other end of the spectrum, no one benefits from seeing children lack basics like nutrition, education, and healthcare, particularly if the country can afford to do something about it. It's merely a question of choosing to invest in the future rather than choosing the instant gratification of gorging on pork today. In other words, choosing virtue.

The human desire to earn esteem and admiration can be what ultimately saves our species -- as long as we value forward-thinking and an eye for the future.

Living downtown and car-free!!!

A lot of people hate living in the city: the crowds, the hustle-and-bustle, the noise. Then there are lots of other people who think they would hate it, but -- once they try it -- discover they love it!!!

I fall into this latter group. I'm introverted, solitary, and anti-social, so the idea of living in a place that's full of people? It was a no-brainer that I'd hate it! I wanted to find my own "Walden Pond" or something. (Never mind that I've never actually read any Thoreau -- it's the principle of the thing!) Then, as I explained in my post le metro, once I tried living in the city, I loved it!!! It was like a revelation of new possibilities that I'd never considered, and now I'm hooked! Today I'm going to explain why I love it, and encourage you -- if you've never considered living downtown -- to think about it.

My number one reason why I love car-free urban living is convenience.

Since your car can take you anywhere, anytime, it seems like it would be hard to beat that in terms of convenience. But really it depends on your temperament and what types of tasks you find pleasant or unpleasant. As I said in my post about le metro, the stress and time wasted on concentrating on driving, finding a parking space, remembering where you parked, not to mention keeping track of maintenance, insurance, etc. add up to a huge pain in the butt compared to the breath of fresh air that is stepping out of your house and taking a pleasant, invigorating walk to your destination. I think commuting by car and working out are both intolerably boring tasks, and it galled me to have to do each one separately if there was any way I could trade them both in for a task I like, namely going for a walk. Walking regularly is a pleasant, painless, even entertaining way to get some exercise. (The entertainment factor come in if you love people-watching like I do -- it's fun and a source of great free material for aspiring writers.)

An additional plus over traditional workouts is that you can't just start up with good intentions (buy the equipment and/or gym membership) and then decide you're too tired, lose interest, etc. If your only means of getting home involves your own feet, then you don't need a whole lot of will-power to stick with the program.

And that's not to mention the cost in actual money! It was painful to me to see such a huge chunk of my paycheck go bye-bye for a vehicle that I didn't even want. For all of my exmo friends who talk about how much better they're doing financially after giving up tithing: giving up a car is even better!!! I caught another person on my blogroll making a similar calculation here.

There are a bunch of bunch of great noble reasons for adopting an urban lifestyle. Not wasting fuel helps us move towards a sustainable future both in terms of protecting the environment and keeping the peace with other people competing for the same scarce fossil resources. Living in the city, you typically interact on a daily basis with people from all different backgrounds, making it difficult to function as a hard-core racist, and encouraging understanding among different groups instead. But choosing this lifestyle isn't a question of martyring yourself for a grand cause -- once you've tried it you may end up doing it just because you want to.

But what about the kids?

That's the best part! Admittedly the question of the school district opens up a whole can of worms, and it may be a challenge to find a solution that works for you as I have in my European dream. But aside from that question, urbanism means a host of different options for kids concentrated within a few blocks of your home.

Back when I was living in New Jersey, a colleague of mine used to talk about the hours she would spend driving one kids to one private school than the other kid to another school, and would waste whole days driving her kids to their various lessons. And she had only two kids who were both young teens. When you live in the city with decent public transportation, it's possible to give kids a bit more independence at a younger age. Obviously you need to work out age-appropriate rules, but you're not locked into a situation where your kids under sixteen are stuck at home (with maybe a strip mall or something within biking distance) except when you're available to drive them somewhere. Plus if the car isn't an absolute necessity for getting around, it's easier to put off the dangerous rite-of-passage of giving your kid the car keys until you're sure your kid is mature enough to handle it.

Kids aren't the only ones who benefit from being able to transport themselves conveniently without driving. There are plenty of people who can't drive because of various handicaps such as blindness, and there are others who shouldn't be driving but do it because it's so inconvenient in many parts of the U.S. to transport yourself any other way. Elderly people can stay independent longer when they live within walking distance of shops. I see this in France all the time: very old ladies with their baskets making the rounds to the market, the bakery, and the pharmacy, and having a nice chat with the shopkeeper at each one. That's what I plan to do when I get old. :D

Plus even people who are normally okay to drive are often in situations where they shouldn't drive (and end up driving anyway for lack of other options). That includes more-or-less unavoidable situations (taking a required prescription, feeling angry and hence less able to concentrate), as well as irresponsible ones (driving while talking on the phone or after drinking). Drinking is only half of the problem of drinking-and-driving, the other half is the driving, which should be just as avoidable. And even if you're a safe driver, you are endangered by having to share the road with tons of poor drivers, many of them in super-sized assault vehicles...

The real question, though, is whether it's even possible.

Admittedly, in the U.S. it's pretty challenging to find a place to live that is a "walkable urban space" (where pretty much everything you need can be obtained within 1/4 to 1/2 mile or so of your home, even perhaps your job, plus ideally convenient public transportation and safe bike routes fill in any gaps). Daddy, Papa and Me wrote a post about the possiblity of walkable urbanism in the U.S. And I'd like to encourage more people to consider it, because the more people that want a walkable urban space and make it a priority, the easier it becomes to make it a reality.

Stand by your home-grown tyrant...?

One of the positive advances credited to the feminist movement is the fact that it is no longer considered a virtue to stay with an abusive husband.

I'm not a historian, but I think it is reasonable to claim that a few generations ago (and right up to the present day in some places, even in the U.S.) it was expected that a man had the right to beat his wife and that the wife was not justified in leaving him over it. Today most modern, educated people are disgusted by the idea that wife-beating could ever have been considered admissable behavior. I suspect that the legal and cultural aspects of this change followed from economic realities: if a father's economic support means the difference between eating and starving, many will conclude that it is better to be occasionally beaten than to die of starvation and exposure. When women started to join the workforce and had greater potential to support their children themselves (if necessary), leaving an abuser became a reasonable choice. The question "but who will feed the children?" finally had a good answer.

Now I'd like to apply the "abusive husband/father" model to the analysis of foreign tyrants. I'd like to talk about this since it would appear that America is in the "regime change" business, thus it makes sense to do some analysis of how such adventures work in order to predict when and why some will welcome a liberator with open arms when others will see a hostile foreign invasion.

Without going out on too much of a limb here, I think that rule number one for being welcomed as a liberator is to convince the people in question that you have their best interests at heart. And a good first step for doing that is to actually have their best interests at heart. It's not enough to say "It is obvious that the dictator of country X is evil, therefore everyone will surely thank me if I kill him by any means I can."

It is true that brutal dictators typically use a great deal of force and intimidation to maintain their power. Yet there is a non-negligible component in which a home-grown dictator can convince his people that he's one of them, that he's interested in making their country great, and that any brutality and repression are necessary measures to protect the people from hostile foreign threats. Even in a case where anyone with eyes can see that the leader is, say, using the nation's resources to build himself a giant palace instead of building hospitals and schools, that doesn't mean that people will necessarily prefer a destructive foreign attack that ends with the country's resources being silently pumped into foreign pockets. It's not that different from the selfish man who mistreats his family yet shares some DNA and common interest with them and is bringing home at least part of his paycheck vs. an outsider who offers no tangible support.

There exist some Americans who explicitly favor a cynical policy of maintaining U.S.-friendly control over foreign resources regardless of whether it is fair or of the effects on the people living in the countries in question. But I think such Americans are a minority and that typically hawkish Americans are sincere in believing that a given military action will eventually lead to improved conditions for the people of the given foreign country. And in some cases this is probably an accurate assessment. But that doesn't mean that a military solution is always the best solution or that it's necessarily even always on the list of good solutions. Lately America's foreign policy is starting to look like a neighbor who says "Mr. So-and-so keeps beating his wife -- I should really do something about it... But what? I know! I'll go burn their house down! That will surely correct the problem."

I recently read an article (hat tip to Paul) that talked about evidence that babies as young as five months old prefer people who speak their own language over people who speak a foreign language. Frankly, I think humans tend to have a natural mental barrier that keeps them from empathizing with foreigners and from seeing immediately the human parallels between a foreign situation and one's own situation. It's not an insurmountable barrier, but it's one that takes a conscious effort to overcome, as I will illustrate below:

Now there are a lot of rumors floating around that Bush is planning an air strike against Iran. And people are probably saying that it's necessary because Iran is very close to having nuclear arms, and since its government is horribly repressive, Iranian nukes pose a grave danger to the entire world. I heartily agree that nuclear arms in the hands of the current government of Iran pose a grave threat to world peace. However, the assessment of the advantage of an air strike only takes into account the most familiar (American) perspective.

Let's use this situation to do a little thought exercise of picturing what it would be like to be a citizen of some other country. I'd like you to take a moment to imagine how this proposed air strike would look to you if you had been born (1) in Iran (2) in some other Muslim country (3) in China or North Korea.

Here are the responses that come to my mind:

For #1, I don't think any reasonable person in Iran is looking at the disaster in Iraq and thinking "I'd like to have that kind of help in my country too." Most likely, the average Iranian will see this attack as concrete evidence that there is a very real foreign threat and that their government is right to pursue a nuclear program in self-defense. An ordinary Iranian (who might otherwise have been pushing his government for needed reforms) would likely turn to his own government for military protection against the foreign danger, and view such things as political executions as necessary for national security -- in much the same way that Bush has persuaded many Americans that the use of torture is a necessary measure to ensure their safety.

For #2, I'd be very worried to see a pattern of the heavily armed U.S. launching unprovoked attacks against Muslim nations.

For #3, I'd be thinking, "So Bush gets to decide who can have nuclear technology and is ready to back up his decision with bombs? Are we next?" Even if China and North Korea have no fondness for Iran, they would logically start thinking about defensive treaties to try to contain American aggression. At worst, they could see U.S. military might as a threat to their own national security and use Bush's own "pre-emptive defense" doctrine to justify launching an attack on the U.S....

So, yes, Iranian nukes pose a grave threat to us. But so do Chinese and North Korean nukes, as do those in other countries as well as the various arms that have gone missing from the former Soviet Union. And think how much more of a danger they will present if World War III begins and we're the aggressor nation that started it.

My recommendation? Try to reclaim the moral high ground. Go back to respecting international treaties so that we can expect other countries to respect them as well. Cooperate -- really cooperate -- with honest people all over the world to recover lost weapons and stop international criminals. Don't be satisfied with "Hey, at least we're not as bad as the terrorists." Actually be the good guys so that there will be no confusion in anyone's mind as to who the bad guys are.

Is religion the problem?

Should we try to eliminate religion entirely? Deconvert the world?

These are the big questions making the rounds of the atheist community these days.

I say it depends on what your goals are. Let's say for the sake of argument that the goal is to leave a human-habitable planet with a sustainable human society on it for our descendants. Preferably a free and open society, and not some bizarro soylent-greenish solution like "okay we have enough resources for everyone to live happily until they're thirty, then we have to eat them..."

Given our current globally-interdependent world, creating a sustainable human society/lifestyle will require a great deal of cooperation among all of the peoples of the world.

(This post will be full of unsubstantiated claims and opinions like that one -- please feel free to dispute any or all of them in the comments.)

I think religion can hinder cooperation and understanding among peoples, but I don't think it's necessarily the primary obstacle. And setting out with a goal to eliminate religion can interfere with more important goals.

Consider the goals of freedom of/from religion, separation of church and state, and a free society with a shared secular public sphere. Consider the goal of high-quality public education, which is what allows people to recognize the difference between actual freedom and the slogan "freedom" (and vote for the former in a democracy). All of these are goals where lots of believers can get on board with us.

There's one thing to keep in mind about believers who are political moderates: Just because they're not violent/dangerous/insane, that doesn't necessarily mean they're not attached to their faith. If they get the impression that the ultimate goal of science education (and/or freedom of religion) is to eliminate religion, many will feel threatened and start to sympathize with the theocrats. There's no reason to alienate our allies like that. Keeping crap-masquerading-as-science out of the schools is not some sort of stealth evangelizing for atheism, and it benefits the whole society. People of differing worldviews can coexist and interact in a free society as long as they agree to do so.

Some say that if there were no religion there would be no war. After all, it's easier to convince people to go out and kill other people if they think it's God's will. God kills people all the time, and carrying out his will is -- by definition -- good. And it's easier to convince people to risk their own lives if they think martyrdom leads to paradise, not to true death.

Still, I think that -- even without religion -- the root causes of war would still be there. War is fundamentally about competition over resources.

People who feel confident that they will see their children grow up to be successful adults have little to gain and lots to lose from violence. The most dangerous people are those whose prospects are so bleak that they're better off taking resources by any means, including killing and risking death. I talked about this in my fertility, mortality post. Any human community can be persuaded to get along with any other human community -- regardless of religion -- as long as it's in their interest to do so.

I would argue that the converse is also true: That (regardless of religion) any human community can be persuaded to kill any other human community if it's in their interest to do so. Humans have a remarkable ability to stereotype and make assumptions about any human community they see as "other." It's weird, but while you naturally see that your own community is full of all different types of people, it's nearly impossible to avoid mentally flattening different races and nationalities into cartoon caricatures. Even educated people who know intellectually that foreign societies have the full spectrum of human qualities still have a difficult time feeling on a gut-level "they're more like us than they are different." Actually living in a city where you're surrounded by people of different origins (or living in a foreign society) seems to be the only way to see that people are the same, and even then it's not clear whether you're learning that "people everywhere are just people" or whether you're merely expanding your own community.

The problem (as well as the "adaptive" value) of mentally simplifying other groups is obvious. The belief that "they're like that, they're not ordinary people like us" is what paves the way for the belief that "they can't be reasoned with; we have no choice but to kill them."

I think that the meta-strategy for peace and sustainability is to see to it that the children of every country have a real opportunity to grow up healthy (again see fertility, mortality for details). See to it that every parent has the expectation that all of his/her children will live to adulthood, which makes it so that investing themselves completely in raising a few treasured children well (and not a quiver-full of disposable warriors) is the most attractive strategy.

How does religion play into this? Regardless of what is written in any official holy book, most people are going to act in their best interest. When it's time for war, those who like the scriptures about God killing all the infidels will rise to power, and when it's time for peace, those who prefer the passages about God loving everyone will rise to power. I figure we might as well make friends with that latter group and compare notes with them. They're the ones who are in a position to sway the (political) opinions of the average believer.

Let's look at this in terms of strengths and weaknesses: The advantage that the fascists, racists, fanatics, and theocrats have is that they enjoy lockstep, unswerving, unquestioning obedience from their followers. Their disadvantage? They can't get along with their closed-minded counterparts in any other racial/ethnic/religious group.

For those who want a free, open, secular/pluralistic society it's the opposite: Everybody has an opinion, nobody will unquestioningly follow the leader through right and through wrong. So our weakness is that most of the time we're marching in a bunch of different directions at once. But our strength is cross-cultural cooperation. Every race, creed, and culture has its open-minded people, and by definition their superficial differences aren't a barrier to working together.

If we can agree (atheists as well as people of faith) on meta-strategy, we can start to make progress on how to carry it out. It's easier said than done at every step of the way, though, so we'll see...