Tokyo Babylon

Looking around at the interior of the Tokyo subway car it occurred to Robert that the ads, their arrangement and their content had something to say about Japan.

There was the beer ad that featured a man so wound up by his world that seemingly only beer offered release from it, a release so forced through the strictures society had placed upon him that it brought an expression of physical anguish with it, like a dislodged vertbrae being snapped back into place. He could only shake his head in wonder at a society that boxed its people in so tightly that it required chemical surgery of this magnitude. He also had to wonder at the kind of people who would consent to this masochistic living, if indeed it could be called that.

Then there was the subway map itself, which contrary to the western way of doing things did not conform to compass directions. The left side of the map was the east and the right the west. Was this positional relativity a feature of Japanese life? Was it designed to be deliberately confusing or did the Japanese live in a world where constant re-orientation was a fact of life. He had read in a book called the Enigma of Japanese Power that the Japanese morality was relative rather than absolute, that the direction of the poles of right and wrong, like the subway map, could change depending on external circumstances.

Then again, he thought, looking up at the Japanese woman jogging along a beach to sell vitamin supplements, that this woman looked almost exactly like an English woman he had known, loved and left in London. He smirked thinking of the irony of that. Morally relativistic, aren’t we all?

Perhaps that explained why he and everyone around him put up with life in boxes, distorted by social expectations and the grey suited authority of supposedly economic necessity. The beer ad seemed to him almost tragic, the subway ad disappointing. However there jogging woman made it seem universal, like Japan was the rule rather than the exception. Perhaps it was only his outsiders eyes that saw it this way.

He recalled that some big wig at Intel had said that to be successful organizations had to live in a world of perpetual fear bordering on paranoia. This was the new economics of fear where your job could pack its case for India. Doubtless it was  the child of the old economics of fear, where your job simply left without telling you. Outsourcing was the new buzz word. However growing up as a child in Glasgow he had known that the shipbuilder’s jobs had moved to South Korea, he just hadn’t had a word for it. Perhaps it only deserved a name when it was middle class people whose jobs were moving? Fear was upwardly mobile it seemed. Was it environmental or was someone messing with the faucet?

The new fear of what tomorrow could bring had many adherents to judge from the people inside th e car. The rule was grey, black and dark blue, as if they were trying to blend together to confuse a predator, whether fickle fate or the amoral market. The occasional flare of color amidst the civilizational pallor seemed as much a blaze of defiance as a style statement. On the other hand fear it occurred to him that fear had pervaded this society completely.  The government had started to fingerprint foreigners entering Japan, so the fear was apparently being felt on high as well as down here in the bowels of society. They said that it was to guard against terrorism, obdurately oblivious to the irony that the only terrorists in Japanese history had been home grown. He recalled news reports of the sarin gas attack on the same Tokyo subway system he was himself riding. He shrugged thinking that he could die any number of ways. Living in fear was hardly the answer.

These were desperate people, wound to explosive self destructive tension. Perhaps it was the desperation to find any escape that had turned their moral compass. Then again, pretty girls looking down from ads was universal, so was the cramped interior of this Tokyo subway train a metaphor for modern living, regardless of domicile?

One day I hope to live in East Timor. When I was a young man, some year ago, I read about the East Timor independence fighter’s struggle to free their land from Indonesia. It always seemed unjust to me that a small independent nation, a former Portuguese colony, should be wiped out by Indonesia, with US blessing. The fact that these ragged men continued to fight when the international community had abandoned them meant they always had a place in my heart.

Now that I am older and have experience of living in Asia I would like to do my bit to help this impoverished nation, which is the newest in Asia. They’re having a hard time of it at the moment. The Australians have screwed them over the division of oil rights in the sea between Australia and East Timor, but the East Timorese are getting something out of it.

I wish I could say that my interest was entirely selfless, however I definitely do not qualify as a saint. One reason I want to go there now is that it’s close enough to Australia that I can virtually commute when I’m in need of an English conversation in a English speaking pub.

The permaculturists says that borders are the most fertile. If that really is the case then East Timor, where Asia meets Australasia might be just the place to be.

The way we think about things is often channeled by the terms that are used to describe them, in very much a half empty, half full fashion. In my international classes I came across the term “containment’, which was used to describe the way the Soviet Union was ringed by US allies, the way that a nuclear reactor is contained within a pressure vessel. This predisposes you to think of containment as a good thing, since it is holding back something lethal. Containment is generally the answer to things that have no cure, like radiation sickness and the ebola virus.

On the other hand if you described the reality as “forward deployment” then what was manifestly a virtuous response to something vile turns into standing on a neighbour’s doorstep with a gun in your hand.

There are many such altered realities in our everyday world. Homeland Security becomes Government Intrusion, the “war on terror” becomes “keeping citizens in a state of fear”. However, the one I came across recently was subsistence. To people who believe in markets this amounts to a cardinal sin (You mean you don’t trade! - How primitive!), whereas exactly the same reality could also be described as being self-sufficient, providing for your own needs. Since when did growing our own food make you a pariah?

When you consider the amount of junk we as citizens produce every day there seems to be a crying need for more of us to start growing our own food. It’s fresh, trustworthy, hasn’t travelled the world to get to your plate. How much oil do you really want with your food? But we keep coming back to this derogatory term subsistence.

When you think about it, you take shit from your boss so that you can get the money you need to drive to a Walmart, fight your way up and down aisles and drive home again. In the process given the way these soul-less hell bound execs run their business you’ve screwed over small farmers in every corner of the planet. It doesn’t sound like a virtuous cycle to me. Shit from your boss. CO2 from your car. Making evil corporate SOBs richer. Screwing smallholding farmers. Having someone drive a trolley into your heel.

On the other hand with just a bit of ingenuity and maybe a sizeable backyard you can count the days till you tell your boss to go screw himself, send Walmart into bankruptcy where it belongs, save the planet by walking into your garden rather than driving to the supermarket, and hit back at the system that’s killing farmers, all by having a few potatoes and tomatoes running up your wall.

When you think of subsistence in these terms it’s really not a vice at all. Pro-marketeers will try to convince you otherwise. There’s no money they can make out of you growing your own food.

I expect every civilization the world has ever known never saw the bad times coming. Willful blindness is apparently an essential component of what it is to be human. If to err is human then I think of late it is the unconscious past-time of virtually every citizen of the developed world.

Don’t know what I mean? Well, look out your window at the building opposite you. It will seem unremarkable most likely, a building that could be almost anywhere in the world. The fact that it does so is remarkable. Is it not incredible that this virtually global tangible manifestation of uniformity should be before us yet we do not think about what it represents?

Ever heard the expression ‘don’t put all your eggs in the one basket’?

It is likely that the building you are looking at is made from brick or concrete. Bricks fired in kilns, concrete made using cement that has been fired in massive industrial complexes before being transported in a cheap energy vehicle to the construction site. The world over it’s done the same way. Globalization is perhaps just another way of saying one system, one market, one basket. Is it basket or basket-case I wonder?

It seems to me, and I may be wrong, that the building opposite you is a symbol of a world built on cheap energy with no consideration of how that energy, or the materials it processes, seeps into the environment and into you, into me. If it is a new building you can be certain that it was not built to last. You can be certain that it was not built to be deconstructed at the end of its life. It was not always so.

One of the reasons so many buildings in ancient times are mere shadows on aerial photos is that they were disassembled and their materials put to good use in providing a family with shelter, because it was cheaper in terms of energy expenditure than starting from scratch. Such is not the case now. Buildings now are designed to be reduced to unusable fragments, those fragments shoved under the corner of the carpet, out of sight out of mind.

Surely a case of all’s well before it ends badly.

Those who talk about the end of oil, the beginning of expensive energy and what this means to a civilization whose every artifact, whose every structure and machine requires cheap energy are mostly ignored. But consider that every aspect of your life is made possible by cheap energy, the house you live in, the plastic wrapped food you eat, the car you drive to work in the morning, the lights you leave on accidently when you go out. Now imagine what it means when energy becomes less abundant. I would imagine that like leprosy this energy starvation will affect the extremities first, the life blood of the system doesn’t make it all the way to the fingertips and slowly but surely they darken, atrophy and fall off. 

Your government suddenly talking about nuclear energy begins to make more sense doesn’t it? 

On the other hand is it forlorn attempt at maintaining a system that is increasingly unaffordable? It’s probably just my opinion, but I think I need to make arrangements while the going’s good.  On the other hand if you look at insurance costs and security companies the signs are that I’m not wrong in my thinking.  It’s likely that we’re heading towards market failure, bank runs and refugees fleeing those darkened extremities in their millions. The problem is that too many people are making too much money from the way things are. It’s rather like entrepreneurs selling the wood of the lifeboat you are sitting in. These men are feted for the moment “Neutron Jack” Welch - called this because like the neutron bomb he left buildings standing but killed people, Donald “Apprentice Master” Trump - whose genius was that he borrowed so much that his debt became the bank’s problem not his, and the master Entrepreneur Richard Branson, who is investing in space like he knows something the rest of us don’t.

I really need to get my act together, get a piece of land to call my own, make it more fertile than Eden, get my energy generation systems together before they can’t be bought for love nor money. But you know as well as I that the rich will be able to buy their way out of a dead end, but the rest of us will be like those who wandered the American heartland in the 30s with a sign saying will work for food.  Back when the Berlin wall fell an American called Fukuyama said it was the end of history, that the evolution of our civilization had come to a close, there was no more. 

Maybe he was a couple of decades too early?  

Take it anyway you want, either creep as a noun or creep as a verb. Perhaps using  both senses simultaneously would most apt. In any case the spectre of security again raised its ugly head, inserting itself into the private lives of ordinary people everywhere. This week thanks to my special visa status I was perhaps the only foreigners on my flight into Japan who was not photographed and fingerprinted. The immigration waiting line for foreigners was longer than I’d ever seen. The contrast with the Japanese national side, a half acre of unoccupied carpet, had never been so stark. The television screen detailing the procedure featured a seemingly delighted blonde western woman. She had her photo taken in a manner reminiscent of a graduation ceremony. She had her fingerprints taken like she was expecting to have her fortune read. I trust the blonde lady was well paid for her part in that fiction.

Ostensibly the reason for fingerprinting was to prevent terrorism. This completely overlooked the fact that the only contemporary terrorist attacks on Japanese soil were committed by Japanese nationals. Interestingly foreigners arriving at some Japanese hotels have been asked to present their foreigner identity, or gaijin, cards. The fact that there is no legal basis for such a request does not stop it happening.

The stench of zenophobia wafting from the hallowed halls of officialdom contrasts starkly with the reception foreigners recieve from young Japanese people. I sometimes wonder how it is that a country whose citizens disavow war and aggression should have such a government. On the other hand when you consider that the same group of people have run Japan since the mid-50s it makes more sense. In Japan politicians don’t come to power they inherit it, it is passed down from mandarin to protege much like lands and titles in monarchies, and as in monarchies, the ordinary citizen, or should that be subject, has little say in the matter.

Interestingly the next day I read a column by Naomi Klein in which she wrote that investments in alternative energy solutions to growing environmental problems were playing second fiddle to investments in security systems. Apparently there is more money to be made from protecting people from the consequences of their consumption than in seeking solutions to those problems. In the contest between make a better world or ley it rot and buy a gun - the gun is winning. The walls are going up, in Japan, in the EU and in the US.

Interesting that the market should give signals of business as usual and preparing for doomsday at the same time isn’t it?

Naomi Klein talks about how Neo-Cons, the IMF and the World Bank beat down the citizenry and imposes”reform”. It explains why every time the IMF goes into a country in trouble there are riots, so much so that they’re now called the “IMF Riots”. It doesn’t matter where they go, or what the circumstances are the prescribed treatment is always the same. Sell off stuff that belongs to the citizens, and which they paid to build, to private companies at fire sale prices. When people oppose this the tanks roll. Be prepared to be horrified.

Whenever one reads about climate change, what they are invariably reading about is global climate change. By contrast very little attention is paid to climate change at the local or micro level. I can’t pretend to know much about this, but what I’ve read suggests that vegetation affects the climate around it. There are changes in precipitation whether it’s dew, mist or rain. There’s also massive changes in temperature, windflow etc underneath a tree canopy rather than walking bareheaded to the sky.

The Las Gaviotas project in Colombia planted trees on a barren savannah which had no economic use. Many people said that it would be impossible to grow trees in the soil since it was very acidic, but the man behind the project, Paolo Lugari,  planted trees that could adapt to acidic soil conditions if planted in conjunction with fungus. The trees produced resins used by industry and increased precipitation in the area by 10%. The forest became the economic base for a wide variety of life enhancing projects.

Changing climate on the small scale must have an effect on changing climate on the large scale since one feeds into the other. If carbon dioxide is heating up the atmosphere surely it makes sense to plant more vegetation to counter that. The Chinese are planting millions of trees in an effort to stop Beijing turning into Cairo, the desert is racing towards the Chinese capital, and sandstorms a very infrequent occurrence is now something which happens again and again in the same year.

The big question in my mind is how far can you modify the climate? Would it be possible to green the Sahara, the Great Sandy Desert of Australia? I think a lot depends on what you grow, how you design the systems but I don’t see any reason why it should not be possible. There are a number of toys  on the market that could make that all the more easy. The one that interests me the most is the Solar Desalinator from Zonne-Water which uses nothing more than sun’s energy to desalinate water. In theory this could provide sufficient water to convert a barren coastline into a coastline alive with vegetation. It could also create an oasis of green in by brackish waters of inland lakes. Small increases in precipation allied with the use of fungus holds great potential for buying a piece of land as a doer upper and turning it into your own little ‘use in case of emergency’ life support system. Can you stack changes in microclimate up, like a line of dominoes well the easy answer is I don’t know and I don’t think anyone does, but when you think about the Amazon feeds the trees water, the trees feed water vapor into the air and it falls again as rain.

What would you call the process of changing the face of the planet in such profound ways? Terraforming?

The Romans in the early years of the Republic used a stone called Tufa for building. It’s volcanic in origin being basically limestone bubbled out of hot springs which then set. It is easy to cut and shape; the romans did so with bronze tools. Tufa hardens on contact with air and is lightweight. It’s vulnerable to frost damage since it’s porous.

Nowadays if you talk about building anything in the tropics or subtropics all you hear about is concrete, which is less than ideal if you are poor. Also if you’ve ever seen how concrete is made it’s incredibly energy intensive. In my previous post I wrote about the possibility of partly replacing expensive portland cement with rice husk ash generated by the rice husk furnace, since there will be occasions when you would not wish to use a rock which is not waterproof.

In some situations, such as building a sand filter for cleaning water you would need concrete for the interior surface, but you could have tufa as the primary support material. I came up with this idea while looking at geological maps of East Timor, the eastern half of a volcanic island (the other half belongs to Indonesia) which lies just north of Australia.

They’re dirt poor and are having to rebuild their country from the ground up since the Indonesians levelled the place as they were getting pushed out. In situations like that the ability to build cheaply but well is of real importance. Rice is a major crop in East Timor so there is an abundance of rice husk ash, after the husks are burned twice, in the Belonio Gasifier Stove.

(http://www.crest.org/discussiongroups/resources/stoves/Belonio/Belonio_gasifier.pdf)

The East Timorese have an abundance of Tufa as well. Combine both of these with bamboo and you a high strength low cost construction industry that all but the poorest people can afford to build with in East Timor, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and The Philippines.

Rice Husk Ash, such as would be produced by the rice husk furnace developed in the Phillipines, has a number of uses. One which is very interesting for me is it’s ability to partly replace the portland cement component of concrete. Replacing 50% of the Portland Cement component of the concrete results in concrete which is cheaper than normal. Whilst research is scarce on this topic it is likely that this type of concrete would also be less porous than normal cement.

Links:

A project in the Phillipines:

http://www.mite.com.au/ricehuskash.html

I swear if you read an environmental journal and an economics journal you’d think there were two different worlds called Earth. Read on and you’ll see what I mean.

“Adios to poverty, hola to consumption” that’s the title of an Economist article on economic growth in Latin America. It’s wonderful to hear about people dragging themselves out of poverty, getting access to education and improved medical care, but the downside is that The Economist article is a peon in praise of consumption along the lines of the American model and that could have deadly consequences.

In the article line after line of text is about record levels of consumer credit, car purchases, mortgages, computers and electronics. “All these positive trends are recent and remain fragile” we are told. Perhaps it is just me, but I find it disturbing. I find myself smiling as I squirm in my chair. I feel like the guy at the party who just knocked over the drinks table.

The ‘what’ I agree is good, the ‘how’ we are getting that ‘what’ is the thing that makes me very uneasy.

When I read news like this it’s like watching a movie about a young kid in a new car, bought with credit, whooping for joy out the window as he races along. You smile along and nod your head. It’s a good thing to watch after all. Me, the man sitting next to you, smiles along, but clearly my heart is not in it. You see, I know something you don’t. I’ve seen this movie before and I know that after a few minutes of a whooping and hollering he’s going to find that he’s got no brakes and about to run out of road.

The Economist seems unable to consider the fact that we are living in a world with limits and that the very existence of these limits should determine the “how” we get the “whats” that, let’s face it, we all want. Accelerating consumption across the globe is not cause for unalloyed joy, only accelerated well-being would be. The Economist would say that increasing consumption and increasing well being were on the same page of the dictionary. But that’s a tired refrain, long since bereft of any authority.

For you see these people are all being lifted out of poverty by an economic machine that is destroying everything we need in order to survive. We passed long ago the point where we were not eating into our natural capital base. It’s rather like a man standing in a tree sawing on the branch he’s standing on; it’s foolishness elevated to an artform. So while I feel happy for those people who will know the joy of their first CD player (as the Economist measures joy) still my happiness is bittersweet.

Study after study has shown that past a certain level more consumption does not make you any happier or fulfilled as a human being, but when you talk to an economist, or read The Economist, you’ll be engulfed by a kind of determined unconsciousness. They’re out of touch with reality. They’ll show you data, but take a step back and look at their argument and you’ll see they’re not data mining, they’re shovelling something altogether less appealing.

Nevertheless, if you were to ask a Brazilian or a Colombian what they want, they will tell you they want what we have, and will quite rightly point out that they don’t see why they should have to settle for anything less. They do have a point. Consumption is the universal religion and everyone wants the chance to worship at the altar.

The problem with that is it’s rather like everyone on a ship wanting to be in the crows nest, high above the ship. Sure the view is great, but then the boat capsizes because it’s top heavy, and then it will be too late to do anything about it. Right now the boat is swaying a fair bit.

If we want to stay afloat and breathing air we’ll have to lower that crow’s nest as more people get into it. The options are not as bleak as you might think, except if you’re a fanatical Humvee owner. Consumption on the level we’re at has to go. We need to make things to last. We can’t throw things out anymore, we need to be able to reuse everything. If we can do that then we will completely separate consumption from the natural world. Now before you start wringing your hands keep in mind that many of the things I’m talking about are already being done.

In Europe manufacturers are responsible for the full life cycle of their products -they sell it - you use it -they have to take it back. If they’re smart like American company Caterpillar, they’ll design it so that it can be refurbished and sold again, just like their industrial engines . This is a big money earner for Caterpillar, and not too much of a sacrifice for the customer since good as new isn’t a big step down from new, and what’s more it’s cheaper. If everything in it can be recycled then you’re essentially looking at a consumer good that can live forever, like something out of a vampire movie, requiring only energy to revitalize it whenever it gets wrinkly. This would separate consumption from environmental damage provided we can power it entirely with renewable energy.

There needs to be a movement that shows people how they can live the life they would want to live rather than buying the life that none of us can afford. If anyone out there knows of such a movement please tell me so I can become part of the cure instead of part of the problem.

The Economist and I are in complete agreement on the “what’ which is people should not live in poverty. We disagree somewhat on they why, since consumption and well being are not the same past a certain point. More importantly we disagree totally on the “How” and it’s not me that’s wrong.