Our separation from reality

I have often heard people say, "you aren't living in the real world" refering to someone's sheltered life. It is generally considered an insult to say that someone doesn't live in the real world. It suggests that they are sheltered and different. It suggests that they are ignorant of what is real (whatever that is).

I'm going to suggest that very few, if any, Americans are really acquainted with the real world. Sure, we all have experiences that expose us to some brutal realities, but from the grand perspective, we are ignorant of much of what goes on around us. It's not that we are trying to shelter ourselves, but we live in a deceptive culture and, intentionally or not, we are not exposed to what is going on around us.

I think this is going to work better with examples.

When is the last time you saw a chicken or cow slaughtered? What are the sights, sounds, smells and feelings involved?

What are the effects of auto emissions? When is the last time you really examined what comes out of the tailpipe? How does it smell? what color is it? how long could you breath it (please don't conduct any tests to answer that)?

Who made the shoes that you are wearing? What was their working environment? How much did they get paid?

I could think of more examples, but I'm going to stick with these three because I'm a little more familiar with two of them. I also feel that sticking with just three examples will help exemplify the fact that I am not claiming to be all knowing or experienced in the world. I am just as ignorant as the next guy but I'm trying to recognize that and trying to learn.

Back to the examples...

I have never seen a cow slaughtered. I've seen pictures of clean slaughter houses, and I've heard the sounds of a screaming cow as I road by a slaughter house the other night (I assumed it was being slaughtered, but it may have just been unhappy about dinner), but I've never really seen it. I have seen a chicken slaughtered, but it was a long time ago. I remember it running around with its head cut off. I remember lots of blood. I remember being disgusted trying to get the feathers out, I didn't like that at all.

My goal here is not to be gross, but this is a real process that is closely connected to the animals that you eat. Being unaware of it doesn't mean that it didn't happen, it just makes you ignorant to that. I think the meat industry wants us to be ignorant, and I don't think it's good to be ignorant. We should understand what goes into our food.

Another comment related to food, but not meat- I gave out sunflower heads to students in my golf classes as prizes. I was amazed at how many people commented, "you mean the seeds grow in the flower?" Everyone in the class was familiar with sunflower seeds, but not more than 5% knew how they grew.

Now I'm going to talk about car exhaust. I could talk about bike rides stuck behind stinky trucks or other experiences on my bike when the air was less clean than it should have been because of automobiles. I'm not though. I think this is the perfect time to share a story about my first car.

Even before I turned 16, I owned my dream car. It was a 1972 VW bus. I remember taking my bus to get the emissions tested. I was a little worried that I would fail, so I did everything everyone told me to. I warmed it up, and I added stuff to the gas tank. It was running great. I went to the station and they put me up on the treadmill type device (it really just lifted the rear wheels so they could spin). I 'drove' the bus while the guy stuck the sensor up the tailpipe to measure the exhaust. I'm not completely sure how it happened (there are a lot of things that happened with that bus that I couldn't explain), but as the test proceeded, smoke started pouring out of the vents in the dashboard. I continued the test because the engine wasn't overheating and there was no sign of fire (well, except for the smoke). The test continued and it got hard to breath in the bus. There I was with my head hanging out of the bus to breath, just sure I was going to fail my emissions test and have to find a way to get the bus fixed. Just as I was contemplating getting out of the bus and seeking air to breath, the tester came back with the paper that said that I had passed. I didn't tell him about the smoke on the inside, but I would be surprised if he hadn't seen it. In hindsite, I'm guessing that the only reason that the bus passed emissions was because all of the emissions were coming out the dashboard instead of coming out of the exhaustpipe where things were being measured.

The moral of the story is that you can't breath car exhaust for very long. Don't try this at home, but realize that just because your exhaust is going into the open air doesn't mean that we can do that forever without consequences.

The third set of questions was about your shoes. I don't have any idea who made my shoes (I'm actually wearing slippers right now). This is the point that I really want to make. We, the consumer, has been seperated from things that we should care about. If I had to purchase my shoes from the factory, and I saw that the workers at the factory were being treated poorly and and were not making enough money to survive, I would try to find a different factory to buy my shoes where the employees were treated properly. I would pay more for shoes made by a factory dedicated to improving the lives of my fellow man.

In large part, consumers don't have any idea what goes into the products that we buy. We see misleading advertisements and a picture perfect display case. We see prices and sales, but we don't see the consequences of our purchase. We don't have any idea of the reality of those providing us our goods. We are ignorant and separated from reality. At this point, commercial ventures are seeking to keep it that way. I think it would do us all a lot of good to see where our products come from. It amazes me at how difficult that is.

Wow, that is bordering on the world's longest post. I'll try to be concise next time, then maybe someone will read it.

Ethiopia

I always struggle to keep up on sporadic bloggers... I am one of them. Hopefully I will gain some consistency after June 5 (written and oral comps will be over). Today I had something that has been on my mind so I'm going to post, despite the fact that I should really be studying.

I'm a child of the 80's. Well, I was born in the 70's, but most of my childhood memories are from the 80's. I remember vividly the commercials on TV asking for donations to help the people of Ethiopia who were starving because of a drought that had lasted a long time. There were pictures of sad kids and mothers who looked really hungry. I never donated, but some of those images really stuck with me. Here in the Western world, we have it really well. I have never been deprived of food (except for long bike rides when I'm not bright enough to bring enough food to get me home).

You're right, I don't blog about Ethiopia or droughts in Africa. I blog about bike related stuff and simplicity. Today I'm going to add ethics to the mix and talk a little about ethanol as a fuel. For some time the US government has subsidized farmers who grow (or don't grow) crops such as corn. This keeps cost of US corn low and makes it so poorer countries can't compete with our prices (like most of Africa). Most Americans don't concern themselves too much with that idea because the subsidies do keep many farmers in business who would otherwise really be struggling. I don't know what makes US farmers better than Africans, but that isn't the point that I want to address today.

Currently corn prices are sky rocketing (along with other grains that can be used to make fuels such as bio diesel) and the farmers are in a better situation. I don't think the subsidies have stopped, but I could be wrong on that. The reason prices are rising is because we are developing technologies to turn these crops into fuel. While it may help us beat peak oil (which I think is approaching quickly), I think it could have some catastrophic consequences.

It's simple economics (I say that, but I'm really not an economist). Demand for corn is high because it is now not only a food, but also a fuel. So the prices go up for foods that contain corn. (try to find a processed food that doesn't contain corn syrup...there aren't many.) And this turns into a great ethical decision.

The free market economy that we live in allows supply and demand to regulate prices (with a little intervention). Now we have the wealthy who can afford fuel for their cars and the poor who can't afford food. Is it OK (ethical) for the wealthy to have luxuries that directly result in others starving? Oh, I just found a cool website. Put in your income and it will tell you how rich you are compared to the rest of the world. I'm in the top 13%. The next time you go to fill up hour car with gas, think that when you pull that nozzle out of the holder, you are pulling a cob of corn out of the mouth of someone who is hungry.

The big problem with the whole thing is that like many things in the US, the consumer will be distanced from the consequence of their consumption so that the consumer doesn't see the harm. I really think we need to get rid of that practice. How much would it influence your choices if you could see the landfills and the pollution and the division of wealth that come from our consumption? I think that it would affect many people greatly, but people don't want to worry about it (and the companies that produce stuff certainly don't want you thinking of it). It's that separation that keeps us making consumption choices that are bad for the environment and bad for other people.

Did I miss something on this, like I did with the China thing? I don't think so, but let me know if you disagree.

Generations

I was thinking the other day about how different generations are known for different things. For example the generation that grew up during the depression were known to be frugal. For good reason, they grew up in a hard time. It seems to be that today's generation is exactly the opposite. This is the disposable generation (no pun intended). It seems that everything that we buy is designed to be disposed of so we can get a new one. I don't think that the generation is totally to blame, marketing and manufacturing play a HUGE role in that. Either way, it's not good.

How many times have you had a computer printer break on you? Have you ever tried to get it fixed? Don't get me wrong, they'll fix it for you, but it will generally cost more to fix the printer than it would to buy a new one. Do you think they expect you to get it fixed? I don't think so, they want to sell you a new one.

I'll be fair, that isn't always the case. Cars, for example, although expensive to fix, are cheaper to fix than replace. Unfortunately with cars, in order to be "cool" you have to have the newest (or put the most money into fixing up an old one... which is cooler than the new cars). Marketing has made it popular to have the new design. Is the new design that much better than the old? Of course, who could possibly live without a DVD player in the back of every headrest? Even if the new design isn't that much better, it is still a status symbol to have the latest and greatest.

Don't think I say that just because I don't especially like cars. Bikes do the same thing. I still have an 8-speed cassette on my road bike. Last year my derailleur hit the skids so I had to replace it. I couldn't find a 9 speed, let alone an 8 speed. So now I have a 10 speed derailleur with an 8 speed cassette. So my bike doesn't shift the best, but I really feel that I have all the gears I need. Most of the time I have the gear I need on my fixie.

Back to the original topic, what was the generation before the depression like? What were they known for? My wife suggested survival. I don't think so. I'm guessing that they didn't know what they didn't have. I bet they could even look back and wonder how previous generations had survived without the convenience of trains and the cotton gin. I don't know. So if you are over 80 years old and remember what your grandparents were known for, please let me know. I wonder if they were known for their prosperity and not taking advantage of it? Or maybe they were also known for their frugality, but they may not have even known what it means to be frugal in the way we are frugal today.