Category Archives: Uncategorized

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Marking Seasons by Lattes

Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of comments on Facebook and online that say something to the tune of, “You know Fall has arrived when you can get a pumpkin spice latte!” This has made me think a bit about our connection, or more accurately our disconnection, to the environment and change of seasons. The important markers of seasonal change are no longer crops and harvests, weather, or even a calendar, but the latest coffee flavor served at cafes. When pumpkin or gingerbread is being served, then you know Fall or Winter has really arrived. In essence, time has become a commodity.

We are increasingly seeing and defining ourselves solely through our connection to and consumption of the material world. Our very definition of ourselves and the world around us has become dependent on the brands we like. Along with this, we’ve become increasingly disconnected from the process of making the products we consume and the effects they have on the world. I don’t just mean environmental pollution, which is a huge factor, but also the lives of the people who helped contribute to the making of these products. Take the pumpkin spice latte, for example. Who picked the coffee beans (and how much were they paid for this work)? Who milked the cows that made the cream on top (person or machine, small or large farm, what are the lives of the cows like)? What about the pumpkins and the spices, how were these grown and transported (and who has access to the seeds and patents for these spices)? All of these things go into the products we consume but they become invisible when our lives become commodified. We become focused on the brands and products we buy rather than the story behind them (which is often extensive in our globalized world).

The time that went into one specialty coffee or one pair of jeans or tennis shoes is much more extensive then the ten minutes it takes for the barista to make your drink or the cashier to ring you up. I think keeping the real time that goes into them, as well as all the lives involved in the process, help us to stay grounded and understand our interconnection and dependence on each other. This awareness may also help push us to advocate for those who have put at a great disadvantage by these global markets and processes, which look mainly at profit rather than the human cost involved. So while you’re sipping your latte, take a minute to consider what went into getting that drink into your hands. It might be more complicated than you think!

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The News Effect

I don’t watch the news on TV very often because whenever I do, I start to feel a little uncomfortable. I keep shifting in my seat, waiting for the newscasters to say something, anything, other than what they’re saying, which goes something like this: crime, war, politics, rare disease, sports, weather. And most importantly, each story somehow seems to have the potential for apocalyptic death or ruin, so we must always remain cautious and on alert!

Now, I’m not saying it’s better to ignore the news. I read various newspapers, magazines, and news websites, which I feel present a bit more information and balance in their stories, but the news on TV makes me cringe. And I think this is because it creates a culture of fear. It presents a world in which nothing is going right. There is always something, dark and dangerous, lurking just around the corner. And so people get hooked, because it’s better to be informed than ignorant, but I feel the news does the opposite.

I came across a book review for “The Culture of Fear: Why American are Afraid of the Wrong Things,” which I haven’t read yet but it seems pretty interesting. There was a quote from the book that says, “between 1990 and 1998, when the nation’s murder rate declined by twenty percent, the number of murder stories on network newscasts increased 600 percent.” Furthermore, the book also said, “People who watch a lot of TV are more likely than others to believe their neighborhoods are unsafe, to assume that crime rates are rising, and to overestimate their own odds of becoming a victim. They also buy more locks, alarms, and – you guessed it – guns, in hopes of protecting themselves.” With news presented in this way, people are not being informed of what’s happening in the world, they’re being taught to fear it.

Another issue is that in our world of 24-hour news, we’ve become accustomed to instant information. We want answers immediately, and we want them to get straight to the point. Complexities are ignored in favor of sound bites. For example, in political debates candidates are expected to answer questions, which often have difficult and complicated answers, in under ninety seconds. It’s impossible to adequately address issues, and to discuss underlying causes of problems, in such a short time frame. Did you know that back in the day, at the time of Abraham Lincoln, political candidates often talked for 60-90 minutes during political debates? Can you imagine people sitting through something like that today? Candidates actually talking, in depth, about what they believe? There’s no way! We want instant and easy answers, preferably that conform to what we already believe.

So, in conclusion, don’t watch the news. Eventually it will make you afraid of your own shadow. I came across a beautiful quote about the affect fear has on us, “Love is a light that never dwelleth in a heart possessed by fear.” A good thought to keep in mind whenever fear and uncertainty starts to creep in.

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Co-housing: A Solution to Urban Isolation

Maybe some of you are familiar with the term “co-housing” and what it’s all about, but it’s a living arrangement and movement I only recently learned about. Basically co-housing is a type of collaborative housing where a building has both individual units as well as shared common space. This doesn’t mean a huge apartment building with hundreds of units that share a miniature courtyard in the front, but rather co-housing buildings usually have a communal kitchen and living room, so the shared space is inside the building, as well as often having a shared courtyard and/or garden. Co-housing buildings create a sense of community by offering shared meals and celebrations, as well as shared responsibilities with tenants expected to participate in regular meetings, building maintenance, cooking, gardening, and other chores.

The modern co-housing movement began not too long ago, in Denmark in the 1970′s, but didn’t reach the U.S. until the mid-1980′s when a couple of American architects, Katherine McCammant and Charles Durrett, lived in these co-housing communities in Denmark for a year and were so impressed they wrote a book that launched the co-housing movement in the U.S. Even though this was considered a “new” concept, the idea of communal living is a traditional one. Multi-generational families commonly lived together, and often still do in other parts of the world. As the U.S. grew increasingly wealthy, people were able to afford living on their own. Of course, there are plenty of positive aspects to living independently, but for many it can also lead to a sense of isolation, and I also believe decreased feelings of empathy and the ability or willingness to deal with other people’s problems. People who feel disconnected or isolated in large urban areas can turn to co-housing as an alternative.

I’ve never seen a co-housing community in action, so I don’t know what it looks in reality, but I like the idea of it. I like that people are finding a way to connect with others, to build community out of disintergrating social and family ties. It looks like you can find a co-housing community in most major cities across the U.S. Essentially, people are creating villages within large cities. Besides individuals desiring a sense of community, a lot of families and single parents are also turning to co-housing as an option. They see it as a way to raise children with an increased feeling of support from neighbors and a safer environment for their kids to grow up. And as the saying goes, “it takes a village to raise a child.”

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UN Inquiry Plight of Native Americans

For the first time in its history, the United Nations will be investigating the plight of Native Americans living in the United States. The UN stated: “This will be the first mission to the US by an independent expert designated by the UN human rights council to report on the rights of the indigenous peoples.” The investigation will be led by James Annaya, the UN specialist on indigenous peoples, and a professor at the University of Arizona.

While this type investigation, and awareness of the severe suffering of many Native Americans in this country, seems long overdue, it only became possible recently. In 2010 the United States signed the UN declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples, meaning not only do we believe indigenous peoples rights should be recognized and respected abroad, but we also have a responsibility to do the same here at home.

Often we think human rights abuses are something that only happen elsewhere, in far away countries where laws are not yet established to protect people, or they’re simply ignored because of ignorance or government corruption. But if you’ve ever stepped foot on a Native American reservation – and I mean beyond the casino and its parking lot – then you know the suffering of these people is acute. Jobs are scarce, extreme poverty is widespread, and alcoholism is rampant. But the truth is most people haven’t spent any time on Native American Reservations. The plight of the native or indigenous peoples of this country has truly been pushed out of sight and out of mind. Hopefully this UN investigation will bring about some much needed reforms that will help to alleviate the desperate conditions found on so many Reservations throughout the U.S.

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Walmart Goes Green?

Since 2005 Walmart has been leading a green revolution in the business industry – making eco-friendly decisions, and encouraging other companies to follow suit. Walmart has put a major effort toward reducing waste by, for example, using less packaging and using recyclable materials as packaging instead of styrofoam; lowering energy use by installing solar panels on the roofs of some of their stores; using diesel-electric hybrid truck as part of its shipping fleet; and selling more eco-friendly products including products made out of recycled materials, locally-grown produce, energy efficient lightbulbs, and organic baby clothing.

Walmart has stated clearly, and proven over the past few years, that the main motivation behind these decisions is that they have saved the store money. Less packaging has meant needing to pay for fewer shipping-containers loads, as well as less money spent on gasoline. In addition to this, they have also redesigned shipping routes to make them more efficient, which has meant far fewer miles traveled. Using renewable energy, such as solar panels, as well as finding ways to reduce trash, has meant major savings in electric and trash bills. And reusing plastic instead of sending it off to the landfill, for example by turning old hangers into material for dog beds, has even turned a small profit.

All this has been good for the environment and for the company. But when you look at the business model that Walmart and other similar stores are built on, these changes seem less significant. Walmart and other big-box retailers are often located just outside of city centers or in the suburbs and are rarely walkable or even easily accessible by public transportation. This means that all their customers must drive to shop there, using gasoline and releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. Because most customers must drive, these stores build massive parking lots, often replacing green fields and wetlands with asphalt. These expanses of asphalt often create “heat islands” when it’s sunny outside, causing local temperatures to rise, and create flooding when it rains, because there’s nowhere for rainfall to be absorbed. These stores are also open 24-hours a day (or close to it), using huge amounts of electricity, much more than can be produced by renewable energy alone. They also focus on selling cheap products, which usually break or tear within a couple of years, and has lead to increasing amounts of trash sent to landfills.

While the greening of Walmart and other stores is definitely a positive step, it’s more akin to a band-aid than an actual solution to the environmental problem. When the entire mega chain-store model is basically a disaster for the environment, the improvements they have made don’t seem as impressive. This also makes me think of the demands we hear for political and financial reform. While these reforms are trying to improve the situation and would be beneficial, they don’t seem like enough. When the system itself is corrupt, or doesn’t take into account the human or environmental cost of its practices, these reforms, even though they may sound good, will make little difference in the end.

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Tweet That!: Saying No to Ads

We’ve all heard about how social media is revolutionizing the world we live in. It’s impact on organizing and recording protests and social movements, including Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, has been huge. But twitter has also had a major impact in another area: advertising campaigns. Unlike a television, where viewers must remain passive while they watch and take in whatever information and images are presented to them, twitter is active. It allows users to respond, to talk back, to give their opinion on what’s presented to them.

Because twitter has become such a huge phenomenon, a lot of companies have turned to it as a medium for advertising. However, these ad campaigns haven’t always gone as planned, precisely because people are allowed to voice their opinion openly, on an equal footing with businesses. McDonald’s and Wendy’s both launched ad campaigns through twitter with the hashtags #McDStories and #HeresTheBeef. The companies were hoping twitter would be flooded with tweets about how much folks love eating their burgers and fries, but what should come as no surprise is that they got the exact opposite. They got stories about people finding gross things in their food, throwing up after eating there, the real ingredients that are used by these fast food chains, and on and on. McDonald’s and Wendy’s probably realized pretty quickly that if you let people respond, they may not say what you want to hear.

Related to this, MissRepresentation, a documentary and campaign dedicated to challenging media images surrounding women, beauty, and sexuality, launched a twitter campaign during the Super Bowl to respond to advertisements that aired during the game. The hashtag #NotBuyingIt allowed people to respond to these ads, and not just in their living rooms with friends, but in an open and online forum that a lot of people pay attention to. And as you can imagine, there were plenty of ads during the game that featured scantily clad and overly-sexualized women. So people, both women and men, aired their grievances when they saw young, skinny, sexualized women used to sell cars and everything else under the sun.

What I like about these stories is that twitter has given people the ability to talk back, to have a voice against the barrage of advertisements that are pushed on us every day. And I think it shows that many of us don’t buy into these media images and stories that are always telling us to buy more. These twitter trends may not be enough to persuade fast food chains to sell better food or to stop companies from using young, half-dressed women in their commercials, but I think they’re worth noting because twitter is not the end of the line. Technology, social media, and how people all over the the world connect with each other will continue to grow and change. And from the look of things, it’s going to be increasingly interactive and participatory. And this allows all of us, voiceless as we may feel at times, to speak up and be heard.

 

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Maladjustment

I recently came across a magazine called Yes! It’s one of the better magazines I’ve read. It actually has meaningful stories about people trying to effect change in the world. This is quite unlike most magazines which seem to be filled almost entirely with advertisements, gossip, or the same news stories you read everywhere else. This issue ran the story, “15 Extraordinary People Transforming the Way We Live,” and had a  1-2 page summary about the person and what they were doing. And no, it’s wasn’t Barack Obama, Steve Jobs, or Julia Roberts. They were all people I hadn’t heard of before, who were running various projects related to saving the environment, protesting for peace and change, healing through art, building interfaith ties, etc.

The story that stood out the most to me was about a man named Tim DeChristopher, who recently landed himself in prison for a little bit of environmental protest turned civil disobedience. A couple of years ago he posed as a bidder at a government leasing of public lands in Utah (I didn’t even know such things happened). He was trying to drive up the price and keep the land out of the hands of gas and oil companies. Doing something like this is incredibly ballsy – I would never have the guts to do it. But I wonder if this type of action is the best course for bringing about change. A lot of people seem to think so and have  likened DeChristopher to other well-known activists of the past, such as Rosa Parks.

What I liked best about his story was about his journey to becoming an environmental crusader. He used to work as a wilderness leader for troubled youth. He would take the angry, apathetic teens out to the woods to camp, trek around, and learn survival skills. He gradually came to the realization that these teens weren’t the ones who were the problem; instead they were the ones who were being told to accept a messed-up world, and they didn’t want to. He said, “I started to feel like I was helping perfectly healthy kids adjust to a broken world.” It’s such a striking realization.

When we’re children, most of us are taught how to be a good person. We’re taught to be honest, to share and be generous, to be kind and helpful, and so on. But gradually as we grow up, we learn that there are exceptions to these rules, and that we don’t always have to abide by them all the time. At some point we may realize that a parent or friend lied to us about something, or that someone cheated and got away with it, or that people will take advantage of kindness and see it as weakness, and the list goes on. Learning to overcome hurtful or difficult situation is, of course, a part of life. How else are we to learn and grow? But at them same time, we’re also taught to acquiesce, to let these ideals go and face up to reality. We respond to this letdown in different ways: some cling to their ideals and are labeled silly and naive; others reject them and become disillusioned and bitter. And those who seem to be perfectly fine with moral ambiguity are labeled healthy and normal. Something doesn’t seem to be adding up here.

The world as we know it is, as DeChristopher said, broken. There are so many people today, whether rich or poor, who are miserable. It doesn’t seem like it should be this way, but maybe the world has always been broken and always will be broken. Maybe that’s part of humanity’s eternal struggle – to imagine and work for something different, something better. And that constant struggle, as difficult and hopeless as it may seem at times, is the only way we’ll ever achieve change.

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The Occupy Movement: Creating a Sense of Community

The occupy wall street movement has been vast in its scope. What began as a protest against greed and corruption on Wall Street has grown to encompass a broad list of demands for change, including political reform, educational reform (especially in terms of increased cost of higher education), bank reform, more equal distribution of income, the high rate of unemployment, and so on. Beyond the slogan “We are the 99%” that protesters have chanted to highlight the extreme level of income inequality in the U.S., the occupy movement has done much more that simply demonstrate the need for economic reform. It did something that few were probably expecting – it created a sense of community.

When you think about some of the problems that the protesters were demonstrating against, they were able to arise because of the lack of community that people feel today. Many people today are not friends with their neighbors (or in the case of busy urban areas may not know them at all), don’t live close to their family, don’t belong to a church or other faith community, and spend so much time at work that they barely have the mental energy to do anything besides watch TV when they get home. All of this isolation creates a sense of apathy, a disconnection from the world, even on the local neighborhood level. And because of this apathy and isolation, we have allowed businesses, and their well-being, to become more important than people.

The situation has gotten so out of hand that people have finally decided to take to the streets and protest. Every major city from New York to Seattle has had a protest, with people building little tent cities in parks that are often smack dab in the middle of the city. These cities in miniature have been pretty remarkable – they’ve created assembly meetings where everyone is able to speak and be heard; medical tents; libraries; committees to take care of food, shelter, clothing, media coverage, and so on.

But it’s not all sunshine and roses. Many of these occupy encampments have attracted the undesirables of our society – the destitute, the homeless, the drug addicts, and the mentally ill. The occupy protests in many cities have had to deal with violence, rape, drug and alcohol abuse, and more. As far as I know people were not kicked out of the camps. Instead, the members of the assembly and various committees figured out a way to deal with it. They created a community. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Because that’s what a community does. It does not pretend that the things or people it doesn’t like don’t exist, or push them to the margins of society where they don’t have to be seen. A community recognizes each individual’s humanity, and our need for each other.

Beyond the call for societal change on a grand scale, I hope the occupy movement also helps us to recognize this need we have to be connected to each other. That we will never be happy and fulfilled living side-by-side in isolation from each other, even if vast amounts of wealth are accumulated. We are meant to learn to love one another, no matter how hard that is at times. That’s how true happiness, a true community, is built.

Related to this idea of community, check out a great article about Occupy Boston on Wired here.

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The Moral Injury of War

It appears that psychologists and other mental health professionals are beginning to acknowledge the moral (or spiritual) affects of war on individual soldiers. As veterans return home from war, many suffer from what has been termed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) – trauma associated with threats to a soldier’s life. Recently, some have gone a step further and said that many vets suffer from “Moral Injury,” which has been defined as, “a wound that can occur when troops participate in, witness or fall victim to actions that transgress their most deeply held moral beliefs.” When you take a step back and think about it, this seems obvious.

As we grow up, the vast majority of us are taught that it is wrong to kill. For those who grow up in a Jewish or Christian tradition, one of the ten commandments is, “Thou shalt not kill.” Many other Faiths also teach that killing is wrong. We grow up with this belief and it forms part of our intrinsic core values. When individuals later become soldiers and find themselves in combat situations where they kill the enemy and also witness their fellow soldiers and friends being killed, it seems inevitable that moral questions and conflict will arise, even if they believe their actions are justified.

In a book titled The Untold War, Nancy Sherman, an ethics professor, interviewed veterans from Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and World War II. She wrote, “Regret doesn’t begin to capture what the soldiers I talked with feel. It doesn’t capture the despair or depth of the feeling — the awful weight of self-indictment and the need to make moral repair in order to be allowed back into the community in which he feels he has somehow jeopardized his standing.” Having committed and witnessed death in battle, it’s difficult for soldiers to return home and readjust to normal life. War not only inflicts physical and psychological scars, but also moral ones – soldiers can lose their sense of having the capacity to be a moral or virtuous person.

Some veterans take issue with the term “moral injury,” and feel it describes them as immoral simply because they’ve been to war. This, of course, is not the case. But I do believe that the act of killing others affects one’s soul. And I think the numerous psychological and emotional problems that many returning vets suffer from bears witness to this.

To read more about this, check out: Beyond PTSD: Soldiers Have Injured Souls

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Sports Fans Gone Crazy

As many have probably read recently a huge scandal has broken around the Penn State football program, where one of its coaches has been accused of sexually abusing young boys. Apparently a number of other coaches, staff, and administrative personnel know about the sexual abuse but did not report it to the police. This is a horrifying story of a man taking advantage of young boys, and to make matters worse his victims were all part of a charity program that he founded for at-risk-youth.

Another coach for the Penn State football team, who had been informed of the abuse but did little to stop it, was fired from his position. Based on the stories I’ve read, firing him seems justifiable. In a bizarre twist in this story, Penn State students seem to think his behavior was perfectly fine and began rioting when they heard of his firing. They took to the streets, shouting his name to the heavens as if a great martyr had fallen. Why would they defend him? No, he was not the one actually abusing young boys, but he knew about it. Don’t you think his responsibility in this situation was a little greater than taking away the bathroom key and telling one other person about it?

I can’t seem to wrap my mind around why these students would be so upset about the coach’s dismissal. So he’s a football “legend.” So what? Wasn’t it his moral responsibility to do something to stop this man from hurting others? Wasn’t he worried about the safety of the other young boys participating in the charity program? Or was his reputation, and the reputation of the Penn State football team, more important than that? Why has winning sports championships eclipsed our moral and ethical responsibility to our fellow citizens and human beings?

And this is not the only “scandal” that has arisen around college or professional athletes and coaches. It seems every few months a new story emerges about someone in the sporting world who has gotten caught doing something they were definitely not supposed to be doing. And yet each time it seems we quickly forgive their actions and move on. As long as they can run or throw a ball better than we can, who cares? Our obsession with entertainment, in this case in the form of sports games, has gotten us to a place of apathy, where we care little about the character or integrity of these so-called stars. Has our passivity led to moral ambivalence?