Complicated good, simplified bad !

No run today, for knee-resting reasons.

Last night we watched a guy-movie, Seraphim Falls. A familiar format, with one man chasing another for revenge purposes, but unusually nuanced, with neither man being portrayed as particularly good or bad.

Too often in popular storytelling the narrative is polarised, whether through folk-tales, urban myths, movies, or news media headlines. This (usually us) is good. That (usually them) is evil. Contradictions and pluralities are conveniently forgotten because they don’t fit the script. Certain hegemonic societies, not least the US & UK, have been particularly enthusiastic polarisers in this respect. Monotheistic religions are also partly responsible or, at least, some adherents of those religions, in setting up meta-narratives of ultimate good and ultimate evil. And, of course, oversimplification leads to intolerance of diversity, and to conflict, which is why the prevailing “dumbing down”, or avoidance of complexity and contradiction, should be resisted.

Through the looking glass

And another beautiful morning and another delightful run.

Unlike the US economy, BP is keeping afloat with 3^rd quarter profits of $5.5 billion, and that despite being charged $40 billion to clean up their mess in the Gulf of Mexico. Pillaging global resources is clearly a very profitable enterprise.

Meanwhile the UK’s economy is in the hands of the rosy-cheeked young heir to the Osborne baronetcy, a man whose main work experience before joining the Conservative central office was allegedly folding towels in a fancy London department store. Confusingly, he claims that the UK is a safe haven in the stormy international waters (or something like that ), whilst at the same time blaming our under-performance on the royal wedding, the sunny weather, the previous Chancellor, and because a bigger boy told him to do it. So nothing to worry about there then !

Original sin

Another beautiful sunny morning and a fine woodland run.

This morning, on the radio, a speaker was discussing the current US national debt – a staggering 14.3 trillion dollars. He was a theologian, not an economist, and he questioned on moral grounds the widespread premise that the solution to profound debt is always for the economy to grow its way out of trouble. The fundamental problem of such growth is that it seems to be based on further borrowing, so settlement of the debt is effectively deferred for future generations to deal with. The radical alternative suggested by this speaker was for affluent societies such as the US & UK to say: not only have we grown far enough already, but we will pay our debts now. If an individual was in financial trouble, they would be expected to stop spending extravagantly, and to confront their own debts. Why not whole societies ? Being a theologian, he cited Adam & Eve as a parable of people being dissatisfied with what they had (Paradise, in their particular instance), asking for too much, and screwing things up for everybody.

The next discussion was also about facing uncomfortable truths – a brief debate on whether Breivik’s actions in Norway should be considered as madness or terrorism. Essentially the two experts (a professor of terrorism studies and an ex-Islamic extremist) agreed that in very few such cases are the perpetrators clinically mad but that society is inclined to opt for that definition in order to avoid confronting the underlying motivation – whether that be fascism, religious fundamentalism, extreme nationalism or anything else, when judging and punishing. By labelling such acts as madness, we neither have to look at ourselves too closely to see if there may have been some justification, nor care too much about how the perpetrator is treated.

For Norway

What happened on Friday is too shocking & too big to ignore, too recent to make sense of.
We light a candle for the victims.

The future is green or black

An interesting piece in today’s Guardian, responding to an earlier article which had concluded that “green capitalism” is the only way forward (I paraphrase). Today’s piece refutes that, arguing that the Green movement should try to find an alternative way forward, without embracing capitalism which, after over-population, is undoubtedly the biggest root cause of our eco-crisis. The comments following the piece show what a difficult task lies ahead in finding that alternative route forward. Perhaps it’s hopeless. One of the less hysterical comments probably nailed it: “Human society will continue to be run on the alpha-beta-and losers model we inherited from early times on the African savanna. It looks like destroying the ecosystem that produced us. And so it goes...”

That’s no reason to go quietly though. Dylan Thomas wrote “Do not go gentle into that good night…….Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” He was referring at the time to his elderly father who was going blind, but I can’t think of a better anthem for the Greens.

PS - beautiful morning & great run.

Fair fare

Another bright and promising morning and a good 25 minute run.

Yesterday’s post highlighted the unsustainable and parasitic chain of providing animal-based protein to the developed world. Following the logic leads unavoidably in the direction of vegan sources of protein, unless we are fortunate enough to keep our own free-range chickens/cows/goats, or to have access to wild meat like venison or rabbit. What is more, importing any basic food from the other side of the planet is not environmentally helpful either. So vegan and local.

The UK government advice is somewhat contradictory about how much protein we actually need, basing one guide on a proportion of body weight (0.75g per kg) and another on a proportion of total calories we should eat (15%, at 4 calories per gram of protein). Taking the average, for a 140lb person, results in a quota of 65g of protein per day.

In Scotland, living off the fat of the land has always been a bit of a challenge but here goes:

A bowl of porridge (1 cup of oats)             10g

2 slices wholemeal bread                            5g

1 medium potato                                         5g

150g beans/pulses                                    30g

1 medium bagel                                           9g

1 cup of broccoli                                          6g

Total                                                           65g

Dull fare perhaps, and obviously only the protein part of a balanced diet, but nevertheless an indication of how we should be eating if we are to stop acting as parasites in under-developed countries.

Bon appetit !

A beautiful silvery morning and another gentle 25 minute run along the forestry track, past some highland cattle grazing in the woods. All very pastoral and innocent.

Yesterday, the Independent reported some recent research by the US based Environmental Working Group showning the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of various basic foods, before & after they leave the farm. Surprisingly, lamb is shown as being the worst offender, with beef second and cheese third. Pulses, predictably, are best. The concluding message, especially to US carnivores, is help protect the environment by eating less meat. A very good conclusion, but one that glossed over an even more pressing reason to do so.

 In the US, 157 million tons of cereals, legumes and vegetable protein – all suitable for human consumption – is fed to livestock each year to produce just 28 million tons of animal protein in the form of meat. For every 10 tonnes of soya protein fed to US cattle, just 1 tonne of beef is produced. And it’s not just the US. Currently, farmed animals eat one-third of the world’s cereal production. In the industrialised world, two-thirds of the agricultural land produces cereals for animal feed. The EU imports 45 per cent of its oilseeds (soya) and, overall, imports 70 per cent of its protein for animal feed (1995-6). Millions of acres of prime agricultural land in developing countries are used to produce linseed cake, cottonseed cake and rapeseed meal for European livestock, eagerly encouraged by the global agribusiness corporations. (ref 1, ref 2)

As the world population continues to rise, as global food supplies are hit by increasing drought and flooding, and as a billion people are underfed, this is not simply unsustainable - it is probably the single most important issue we are currently facing as a species.

Profit & power

A grey and breezy morning, and a brisk 25 minute run along the loch-side. 

People are falling like skittles as a result of the News of the World affair, but it’s probably too much to hope that our travelling salesman Prime Minister will resign, despite his appalling lack of good judgement, and his apparent complicity in the media power games. Betting shops are offering odds of 16 to 1 that he'll be out of office by the weekend though.

My wife who remembers everything has reminded me that phone hacking isn’t a new phenomenon for newspapers. Twenty years ago His Royal Magnificence, Charles, Prince of Wales. Duke of Rothesay, had his phone hacked. At that time the news media in Australia, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Ireland, USA, & finally UK, were able to overcome their normally impeccable scruples and publish transcripts of his private conversations with the woman who was to become his second wife. 

The hacking by the News of the World is part of a continuum. Whether hacking the phones of celebrities and royal hypocrites or hacking the phones of bereaved families, it’s simply another step along the well trodden path of invading people’s privacy for the sake of selling “news”. In other words, ruthless and cynical marketising of people's lives for profit, and just as immoral as the underlying collusion between politicians, media barons & police.

More schaden, less freude

Another grey morning, and another gentle 25 minute forestry run.

When either Germany or the UK is down in some kind of trouble, the media in the other country will often take the opportunity to deliver a thorough kicking, with more or less justification. Given the shared Saxon roots of many English & Germans (ref), this seems a little unsupportive but, on the other hand, family arguments can last a long time.

A recent example in Spiegel Online, British democracy is a farce, is both justified and not. The title comes from Die Tageszeitung, which is suggesting that the revelations of complicity between News Corporation, government, and senior police officers have shown us Britons what a charade our democracy is. Well, frankly, some of us had one or two doubts about it already. Our famous mother of parliaments can sometimes easily be mistaken for a lumbering binary megalith which spends too much time cynically whoring itself, to the electorate when elections are in view, and to the real power brokers when they are not. Those brokers include of course the captains of News Corporation and other media groups, but also of banks & supermarkets, and of the nuclear, oil, alcohol, tobacco, armaments, & motor car industries. Even today, in the midst of this particularly sordid crisis, David Cameron is on a "trade mission" to South Africa with a planeload of CEOs (ref) to promote Western-style capitalism in sub-Saharan Africa. All in the interest of alleviating poverty, obviously.
Not being a political historian, it’s difficult to say definitively when the rot set in but, seen from the sidelines, the rise of this particular brand of free-market politics seemed to coincide with Margaret Thatcher's ascendancy in 1979.

Mickey, it's time to grow up

A grey and damp morning but a good run anyway.

I made a disparaging reference to the Walt Disney Corporation in a recent post, and should explain why, in case the Disney CEO is feeling offended. The largest media conglomerate on Earth, they dominate as a brand predicated on an infantilised world view where everything ultimately turns out well and, crucially, where pleasure and gratification of desire are seen as over-riding reasons for existence. Browsing their recent movie list demonstrates the forensic evidence, with projects such as Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2, and Tinkerbell & the Great Fairy Rescue. No, honestly !
Such infantile pleasure-seeking is the subtext behind our greedy wrecking of the planet, with the enthusiastic encouragement of multi-national commerce who see new marketing opportunities opening up on a daily basis in the developing countries, but refuse to see the damage they are causing. The world would clearly be a safer and more sustainable place if the media was dominated by the Ingmar Bergman Corporation instead.