I keep thinking back a few years when I read The Upside of  Down : Catastrophe, Creativity, and the renewal of civilization, by Thomas Home Dixon. A laundry-list type of notes from that book is found here
.

And following is a shortened version of those same notes – pertaining more specifically to the social and political upheavals currently happening in the world.

The central purpose of this book is to help us recognize the signs and prepare for breakdown in world peace and civil order.

Stresses are accumulating deep beneath the surface of our contemporary societies.

Population stress arising from differences in populaiion growth rates between rich and poor societies and from spiralling growth of megacities in poor countries

These stresses in combination with what Homer Dixon calls multipliers will make breakdown more likely, widespread, and severe. These multipliers are:

1. Rising speed and global connectivity of our activities, t3echnologies, and societies
2. Escalating power of small groups to destroy things and people

“Especially worrisome is the spread of lethal technologies that have raised destructive power of angry and violent people. Technologies that provide killing power to fanatics, insurgents, and criminal gangs. Never before has it been possible for small groups to destroy entire cities.This one fact will ensure our future is entirely different from our past.”

In 1950 there were about 2 poor people for every rich person on Earth; today there are about 5;  this has grave implications for world peace

Discrepancy between rich and poor and the poor’s knowledge of it because of technology. Migration of young men especially at interfaces between rich and poor regions (US and latin America; Timor and Australia; North Africa and Europe).

Features of rapid urbanization in poor countries (43% of whom live in slums) and their inherent problems includes; (weakness of governance and police, crime and gangs, extreme income discrepancies – rich resorts and gated communities next to slums); also the growth and number of mega-cities.
Young men, out of school, out of work and charged with hatred.
15-29 year old cohort of young men is 40% or more of the population in Afghanistan, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Mexico, Pakistan, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa. Makes up 50% or more in the Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Iran, Kenya, Nigeria, Syria, and Yemen

Likelihood of violence in our world is the power shift allowing fewer people to kill large numbers of people more quickly than ever before. This is particularly visible in poor countries that have been flooded with small arms and light weapons. This gives militias, ethic groups, political factions, and gangs the opportunity to wreak havoc. Places like Somalia, Sierra Leone, Liberia and eastern Congo have experience this resulting in the virtual collapse of govt authority. Organized crime and armed militias have quickly filled the vacuum

Things could go one of two ways in a social earthquake:
1. Fanatics could frame reality and define a tumultuous future
2. Social creativity could shape the future

In order to achieve #2 above, we need to enact the following steps:
1. Reduce underlying stresses (population imbalances, energy shortages, environmental damage, climate change, income gaps) We need more integrated approaches to these problems. Need risk of weapons of mass destruction; secure and destroy enriched uranium (perhaps the most urgent). We’re unlikely to weaken these stresses enough to significantly reduce the danger we face so we need to prepare for social earthquakes
2. Cultivate a prospective mind – we need to be comfortable with change, surprise, transience; exercise our imagination otherwise we’re more likely to be afraid
3. Build a resilience into all systems critical to our well-being. Gi ve up extra efficiency and productivity to achieve resiliency (i.e. draw on support and resources from elsewhere BUT be self-sufficient enough to provide for essential needs in an emergency). We need to boost the resilience of the weakest societies, namely those with damaged environments, endemic poverty, inadequate skills and education, and those with weak and/or corrupt governments. Otherwsie the entire global socio-ecological system will become increasingly vulnerable to disease, terrorism, economic collapse. These goals go against the ideology of global capitalism (which calls for larger scale, faster growth, less government, more efficiency, connectivity, and speed). We currently work against resiliency by piling on debt, building track housing on agricultural land, use distant sources of energy, and “fill every nook and cranny of our days with so much junk information and pointless running around that we don’t have time to reflect on what we’re doing or where we’re going”.

Rich countries need to find alternatives to blind commitment to economic growth which is incompatible with the Earth’s long term viability. Globalized capitalism sees economy as separate from nature and acts like a machine whose operation is linear, predictable, and reversible. We need to recognize there are no good substitutes for biodiversity and a benign climate. We need to find ways to give these explicit economic value so that people are motivated to protect them. Conventional economics is dominated by intellectual rationalization of today’s world order.

Characteristics of adaptive complex systems :
1) Extraordinary diversity
2) Decentraliation of power and decision-making
3) Systems are unstable enough to experience unexpected innovations yet orderly enough to learn from their failures and successes.
Systems with these three characteristics stimulate constant experimentation and generate a number of problem-solving strategies.
The internet provides us with the potential for this kind of system. Unfortunately, we have barely tapped the potential of the internet because instead of its being used for problem-solving, adaptation, and social inclusion, it has turned into a venue for “a screaming cacophony of electronic narcissism”.

Open source materials need to be used fro problem-solving, not just technical programming.
“In western liberal societies, public discussion of values is dreadfully impoverished”

Re: consumerism: we get drawn into discussions about superficialities because of this dearth of value debate. This serves the interests of the political and economic elites who value growth above all else.
Only a broader and deeper democratic practice will develop the expansive moral commonwealth essential to our collective e survival.

We must acknowledge that our global situation is urgent and begin wide-ranging and vigorous discussion about what we can and should do.

It doesn’t mean we can roll over and play dead though.

More of us have to be willing to make real changes to our lifestyles of comfort and convenience to address climate change instead of relying on abstract emission targets that are still too low and blaming world leaders when they aren’t achieved.  How many of us remember that it is the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world who will suffer the most while contributing the least to climate change and that we can make personal changes to turn that around?  And how many of us recognize that by not voting, Stephen Harper and his ilk end up in positions that enable them to promote their vested interests instead of  representing us in these and other crucial areas?

Surveys indicate that the majority of Canadians are worried about climate change, but somewhere between our good intentions lays a sea of inertia, denial, and insecurity. We like the stuff that lets us have fun, look good, gain status, or be pampered. We like not having to remember to bring our own coffee cups or shopping bags. We like not having to wash and re-use plastic bags, take out the compost, or spend time hanging clothes on a line.  And we like ‘getting away from it all’ with winter trips to Florida, Mexico, or Cuba – flights that cost us all in environmental degradation.

Canadians are flying to warm climates to bask in the sunshine, seeing it as our right and apparently oblivious or unconcerned about the plight of the world’s poor. Statistics Canada says that in 2007, there were 71.5 million trips made by air in Canada.We don’t want to think that our actions could be responsible for tsunamis, forest fires, and landslides that will have the worst effect on the poorest people on the planet. Surely that would tarnish the (undeserved)  good image we have ourselves.

On the small island of  Tuvalu in the South Pacific, global warming is not an threat looming  in the unfathomable future. The people there see the effects of global warming daily and fear for their live. Rising sea levels threaten the very island on which they live.  And Tuvalu is not the only place adversely threatened by imminent effects of climate change. Thousands of coastal communities in Africa and Asia are sitting ducks as wind patterns and rising sea levels swirl around them increasing the frequency and ferocity of hurricanes, tornados, floods, fires, and tsunamis.

And still we take our tropical vacations.

The David Suzuki Foundation states that “although aviation is a relatively small industry, it has a disproportionately large impact on the climate system” accounting for 4-9% of the total climate change impact of human activity and has a greater climate impact per passenger kilometre. High-altitude emissions apparently have a more harmful climate impact because they trigger a series of chemical reactions and atmospheric effects that have a net warming effect two to four times greater than the effect of carbon dioxide emissions alone.

In England, a network of grassroots groups called Plane Stupid, is committed to non-violent direct action against aviation’s climate impact. They say that an average flight in Europe produces over 400 kg of GHG per passenger (the weight of an adult polar bear) and proposes a global levy on flights with proceeds going into an adaptation fund for the world’s most vulnerable people. They have produced a sensationalist video incorporating polar bears falling from the sky- images that are hard to erase from your mind once you’ve seen them.

To bring the issue full circle and to understand Canada’s role in electing (by absentia) a prime  minister who represents oil interests , much of the fuel used to propel airplanes comes from the catastrophic tar sands industry which now accounts for a third of the crude oil production in  northern Alberta.

The tar sands project is world’s largest energy project, using  more energy, money, and water to extract oil than conventional methods.  It takes one  barrel of oil to produce five and  the project will destroy 80 % of wildlife in the region not to mention threaten the  very existence of the pristine Mackenzie River Basin – the third largest watershed in the world

At the same time as the tar sands projects are destructive to the environment during extraction, their end product is also worse than conventional oil products. Andrew Nikiforuk, author of Tar Sands : Dirty oil and the future of a continent says that the dirty oil that comes from the tar sands emits 20-30% more greenhouse gases (GHG)  than conventional oil. And this at a time when scientists say we need a 70% reduction in GHG emissions needed to turn the tide of global warming. Yet neither the Alberta nor Canadian governments have credible plans to manage these emissions and in fact, their regulatory bodies continue to approve permits for additional projects.  

Unbeknownst to most consumers, nearly 10% of oil currently consumed in the west now comes from tar sands projects. So when you’re driving your car or flying in a plane, chances are the fuel for your trip is coming – at least partially – from dirty oil – another blight on the environment.

And this billion dollar industry is what is influencing the decisions of politicians on the provincial and federal levels, largely for the benefit of American consumers at the expense of Canadian resources. 

Alberta is what Nikiforuk calls a petro state, a kind of political territory with notoriously low voter turn-out allowing the government and its regulatory bodies to play patsy to an industry that is lining the coffers of influential financial supporters.  In the last provincial election voter turn-out was as low as 22%.

Federally, we are not doing much better. When only a paltry 50% of eligible voters went to the polls in last year’s election, we essentially gave the conservatives (whose supporters do make a point of voting) the right to make decisions for us.  And for Canadians at this point, this means allowing a prime minister whose base of support is the oil patch in general and the tar sands in particular, to represent us on the world stage. No wonder Harper did such a lousy job in Copenhagen. His interests lie with his petroleum pals and until we unite and turf out the likes of him, it won’t matter how much we complain to him, petition him, or how shamed he is by receiving the fossil of the year award.  

Think about that when you look into a child’s sweet and trusting  face (whether your own or another’s anywhere in the world). Imagine their future without polar bears, eagles, bananas, the boreal forest, clean air or clean water.  Imagine the same baby living on an island in the South Pacific or Asia or Africa and think about if it’s fair for you to travel for your own enjoyment or enrichment when it puts many others’ lives at peril.

In this time of new years’ resolutions, I urge you to resolve to sharply curtail your own air travel (or eliminate it completely).  Get your family and friends to pledge too, while thinking about ways to retrofit the economy to fill the vacuum left by the decline of the aviation and petroleum industries.  And be sure to vote when you’ve got the chance.

From

Tar Sands : Dirty Oil

by Andrew Nikiforuk

12 Steps to Energy Sanity

1. Admit the magnitude and complexity of the energy crisis
2. Slow down tarsands development and cap production at 2B barrels/day
3. Establish a national strategy for energy security and innovation
4. Impose a carbon tax with 100% dividend (to decrease fossil fuel consumption by 50% by the year 2020
5. Challenge the first law of petropolitics ( and the erosion of democratic  life) by:

a)      Mandating transparency and freedom of information

b)      Separate tarsands corporate tax revenues from general revenue to build a national sovereign fun (an IMF recommendation to oil-producing states) – see Norway’s Petroleum pension fund;

c)       Reassert accountability in tax regimes to encourage more efficient use of capital, slow the pace of development, and foster better project management

1. Challenge continental energy integration
2. Relocalize food production
3. Abandon economic dead-end activities like carbon capture and storage which are not only expensive but which only benefit oil and gas companies; money should go to alternative public investments to decrease greenhouse gases
4. Rural and urban planning reorientated to renewable energy;
5. Go after low hanging fruit by measuring fuel consumption and encouraging conservation
6. Don’t wait for government; power down; eat locally; walk more; travel less; be a community leader; challenge the petrostate
7. Renegotiate NAFTA (which guarantees U.S. unlimited access to our oil and gas supplies, even in the event of shortages

Declaration of political emergency

1. Oil consumption is going to end – Canada has adopted a new geodestiny providing the U.S. with bitumen, a low quality, high cost substitute
2. Northern Alberta’s bitumen fields are the last remaining oil fields on the planet;  attracted 50% of global oil investments
3. Neither Alberta nor Canada has a rational plan for the tarsands other than full-scale liquidation;; richest deposits could be exploited in 40 years
4. Rapid increase of tarsands development has created foreign policy favouring bitumen exports to the US. Canada is now a 3^rd world energy supermarket
5. Tarsands development is the world’s largest energy project but no comprehensive environmental, economical, or social impact studies have been done
6. Canada now accounts for 1/5 of U.S.  oil imports; while ½ of our oil supply comes from the middle east (makes us vulnerable as to supplies)
7. SPP has rapid tarsands development as a central goal – leads to political integration of a continent dominated by the U.S.
8. Bitumen is a signature of peak oil
9. Each barrel of bitumen produces 3x as many GHGs as conventional oil
10. Bitumen is the world’s most water intensive oil product. Each barrel needs 3 barrels of fresh water from the Athabaska River, part of the world’s 3^rd largest watershed. One million barrels of bitumen are exported to the US daily
11. Tailings ponds along the Athabaska River leak into the groundwater
12. To mine or steam out bitumen requires enough natural gas to heat 4 M homes daily. This could compromise our natural gas supplies by 2030.
13. A decrease in the amount of natural gas will drive nuclear renaissance
14. Bitumen development is unsustainable and will destroy the forest, rivers, and surrounding environment
15. Oil hinders democracy and corrupts the political process; Alberta has one of the least accountable governments in Canada and the lowest voter turn-out
16. Without long-term planning and policies, Canada and Alberta will fail to secure reliable energy supplies for Canadians or develop resources for the future
17. Tarsands development will enrich a few powerful companies, hollow out the economic, industrialized ¼ of Alberta’s landscapre, and erode Canadian sovereignty, and destroy the watershed
18. Albertans and Canadians have become too tolerant of politicians who exploit. Don’t liquidate tarsands for global interests but use the resources for the transition to low-carbon economy
19. Every Canadian who drives a car is part of the political emergency and must be part of the solution.
20. Transforming our fossil fuel dependent economy takes place in small humble ways; it’s not glamorous
21. We must begin today

I pray for a healthy planet and a life of happiness for her and my son – and all the children of the world. May we create it for them.

Tarsands : Dirty Oil

by Andrew Nikiforuk

Within the next ten years, production from Canadian oil sands is going to increase five times, bringing with it environmental degradation of one of the world’s largest watersheds, destroying thousands of acres of tundra, and causing untold numbers of health defects and illnesses.

Unbeknownst to most consumers, nearly 10% of oil currently consumed in the west is coming from tarsands projects.

The five million barrels a day that is expected to be extracted before 2020 will mostly go to foreign export, jeopardizing Canadian energy security and sacrificing our environment and future resources for the short-term gain for a few. The U.S. government is practically begging us to ramp up production as quickly as possible and the Alberta and Canadian governments are accommodating them by turning a blind eye to democracy, regulatory guidelines, and public health – what Nikiforuk calls a petrostate.

The tarsands projects are a bad idea in every way. Not only does it require much more energy and clean water to extract the equivalent amount of usable oil from tar sands as it does from conventional oil resources, it continues to accommodate the wasteful western consumption of fossil fuels instead of seeking to curtail our consumption and changing our lifestyles to adapt to the reality of peak oil.

This book is an alarming analysis of development of the tarsands projects from the earliest days cost prohibitive and therefore slow production to today when the price of oil makes it a feasible economic proposition.

I had to return this book to the library so didn’t take any detailed notes on it, however, I extracted here, Nikiforuk’s 12 steps to energy sanity and his Declaration of Political Emergency, directly pertaining to tarsands development in Alberta.

12 steps to energy sanity

1. Admit the magnitude and complexity of the energy crisis
2. Slow down tarsands development and cap production at 2B barrels/day
3. Establish a national strategy for energy security and innovation
4. Impose a carbon tax with 100% dividend (to decrease fossil fuel consumption by 50% by the year 2020
5. Challenge the first law of petropolitics ( and the erosion of democratic  life) by:

Mandating transparency and freedom of information
Separate tarsands corporate tax revenues from general revenue to build a national sovereign fun (an IMF recommendation to oil-producing states) – see Norway’s Petroleum pension fund;

1. Reassert accountability in tax regimes to encourage more efficient use of capital, slow the pace of development, and foster better project management
2. 6. Challenge continental energy integration

• 7. Relocalize food production
• 8.Abandon economic dead-end activities like carbon capture and storage which are not only expensive but which only benefit oil and gas companies; money should go to alternative public investments to decrease greenhouse gases
• 9.Rural and urban planning reorientated to renewable energy;
• 10.Go after low hanging fruit by measuring fuel consumption and encouraging conservation
• 11.Don’t wait for government; power down; eat locally; walk more; travel less; be a community leader; challenge the petrostate
• 12. Renegotiate NAFTA (which guarantees U.S. unlimited access to our oil and gas supplies, even in the event of shortages

Declaration of political emergency

1. Oil consumption is going to end – Canada has adopted a new geodestiny providing the U.S. with bitumen, a low quality, high cost substitute
2. Northern Alberta’s bitumen fields are the last remaining oil fields on the planet;  attracted 50% of global oil investments
3. Neither Alberta nor Canada has a rational plan for the tarsands other than full-scale liquidation;; richest deposits could be exploited in 40 years
4. Rapid increase of tarsands development has created foreign policy favouring bitumen exports to the US. Canada is now a 3^rd world energy supermarket
5. Tarsands development is the world’s largest energy project but no comprehensive environmental, economical, or social impact studies have been done
6. Canada now accounts for 1/5 of U.S.  oil imports; while ½ of our oil supply comes from the middle east (makes us vulnerable as to supplies)
7. SPP has rapid tarsands development as a central goal – leads to political integration of a continent dominated by the U.S.
8. Bitumen is a signature of peak oil
9. Each barrel of bitumen produces 3x as many GHGs as conventional oil
10. Bitumen is the world’s most water intensive oil product. Each barrel needs 3 barrels of fresh water from the Athabaska River, part of the world’s 3^rd largest watershed. One million barrels of bitumen are exported to the US daily
11. Tailings ponds along the Athabaska River leak into the groundwater
12. To mine or steam out bitumen requires enough natural gas to heat 4 M homes daily. This could compromise our natural gas supplies by 2030.
13. A decrease in the amount of natural gas will drive nuclear renaissance
14. Bitumen development is unsustainable and will destroy the forest, rivers, and surrounding environment
15. Oil hinders democracy and corrupts the political process; Alberta has one of the least accountable governments in Canada and the lowest voter turn-out
16. Without long-term planning and policies, Canada and Alberta will fail to secure reliable energy supplies for Canadians or develop resources for the future
17. Tarsands development will enrich a few powerful companies, hollow out the economic, industrialized ¼ of Alberta’s landscapre, and erode Canadian sovereignty, and destroy the watershed
18. Albertans and Canadians have become too tolerant of politicians who exploit. Don’t liquidate tarsands for global interests but use the resources for the transition to low-carbon economy
19. Every Canadian who drives a car is part of the political emergency and must be part of the solution.
20. Transforming our fossil fuel dependent economy takes place in small humble ways; it’s not glamorous
21. We must begin today

Last Child in the Woods

by Richard Louv

There are many “programs” for children to be in nature, but they mostly have and educational overlay which  I think turns them into more of an obligatory, chore-like exercise than simply living and playing in natural environments.  Our family attended a night walk through the UBC endowment lands, a natural forest, a while ago which brought this point home. It was a beautiful evening, but we weren’t left alone to simply enjoy the walk, listen to the birds, and smell the forest. Every 50 feet or so there were glaring lights over information tables highlighting some aspect of forest life or other. I think the organizers had the best of intentions but I felt it a big imposition and interrption to our enjoyment of the evening. And the message I got from it all was “the forest is not enough…. we are not enough to simply experience the wonder of nature on a spring evening”.

Since reading this book I’ve been searching and trying to make space for my son to explore and be free in nature as much as possible – even allowing for some potential physical danger in order to bring  home the point that nature is something to respect and retain a sense of awe over.  And thinking about some of the areas close to where we live where there are a number of street people smoking pot or drinking beer. These are not what I want him to see or expect from nature but if there were more people just out claiming nature for themselves, these streetpeople would not feel comfortable practicing this  kind of degenerate behaviour.

Here are my notes on this book. The points in BOLD are the ones I consider most note-worthy.

-          Natural play is now a quaint artifact

-          Kids now aware of environmental issues but have little physical contact with nature

-           nature now is more abstract  than reality

-          Contact with nature may be as crucial to childhood development as good nutrition and adequate sleep

-          Early experiences of nature binds us to nature forever

-          Unlike tv which steals time, nature amplifies it

-          Nature offers healing, fantasy, escape, creativity, senses, privacy

-          Nature is a place of archetypal power, teaching, and challenge;  offers wonders , calm and focus but also excitement

-          This book identifies the current generation as the 3^rd frontier (of America), displaying the following characteristics:

• 1. Separation from food source/origin
• 2. The merging of machines and humans
• 3 Increased awareness about environmental information but less intimacy with it
• 4. Increasing numbers of wild animals in cities
• 5. Increase in suburban lifestyle

-          Children of this age display a “know it all” attitude

-          In one study, a child, asked to list her weekly activities does not list her soccer games or practices as playtime; and bemoans her lack of playtime. Adults consider the soccer practices as play but the child considers it as an obligation

-          Current life is less a life of the senses than previously

-          Shift since the 1970s from activity orientation to knowledge orientation

-          Cultural autism (tunnelled senses, feelings of isolation and containment)

-          Narrowing of true experience

-          We’re losing our ability to experience the world directly and this impoverishes us

-          John Dewey in the early 20^th century said that the worship of secondary experiences (tv, video, computer as opposed to real life experiences)  in childhood came with the risk of depersonalizing human life

-          Children live through their senses

-          Sensory experiences link kids to their exterior world with their interior hidden world

-          The natural environemt is the principal source of sensory stimulation

-          Freedom to explore and play outdoors is essential for a healthy inner life

-          Self-actuated, autonomous interaction with nature

-          Children test themselves by interacting with their environment and reconstructing human culture

-          Depression. Loneliness reported in adults who did not spend free play time outdoors , especially in wilderness

-          New technology moves us further from direct experience

-          Physical touch is essential for human health – and ultimately for peace in the world (think of hand-shakes)

-          Medical students have trouble understanding how the heart works because they’ve never used a pump or a siphon

-          “that which can’t be googled doesn’t count”

-          The “know-it-all” attitude is really quite fragile; breaks down with real-life experiences with nature

-          Deepest friendship evolve from shared experiences, especially in environments where all the senses are enlivened

-          Natural settings stimulate all the senses; these help build cognitive constructs in children’s brains

-          Nature stimulates the imagination limitlessly

-          TV and electronic media displaces the primary experience of nature

-          There is more creative play in natural environments vs. build spaces (playgrounds)

-          Children use more imagination, retain a greater sense of wonder, are more egalitarian, and have a greater ability to concentrate when they play in natural environments without  imposed structure

-          The developing consciousness of all children involves a dynamic sense of relationship with their place

-          Nature is used as a restorative therapy for children with ADHD

-          Too much (adult) directed activity leads to attention-directed fatigue in children, leading to impulsive behaviours, agitation, irritation, and inability to concentrate because the neural inhibitory mechanisms become fatigued by blocking competing stimuli

-          In 1990, tje area over which children were left free to roam was five times less  than the area  kids had in 1970;

-          Stranger danger scare (94% of abductions are actually perpetrated by family members or friends)  is now blamed for increased shyness among children and adults as well as the retreat from social interaction into electronics;  a high price to pay for the perception of guaranteed safety

-          Too much education/exposure to envirom,emta; abuse/degradation may make kids feel overwhelmed; they associate nature with catastrophe, not wonder

-          More environnmental-based OR place-based education recommended (currently PCs sucking up education dollars)

-          Knowledge of local vegetation and environment decreasing; how can we notice if some organism is changing or in the wrong place if we don’t know what should be there??)

-          Concern re waning sense of awe

-          US national park usage decreasing; camping down especially among the under 30s

-          Development and energy interests are moving in to fill the void (by exploiting natural resources in the national parks)

-          Environmentalists are looking increasingly old and white

-          In US, Girl Scouts now have more programs to do with stuff other than nature (including marketing, product-developments, interviewing skills)

-          In the middle Ages if you said you were bored you were committing a sin of devaluing the world and its creator; would have been considered self-indulgent

-          In pre-modern times, life wasn’t considered interesting or exciting either, it just was

Kids need day-to-day contact with he elements (not necessarily dramatic, or picturesque wilderness – it’s better to know one mountain than to climb many

-          Modern life narrows the senses; nature accentuates the senses

-          The child in nature has to make decisions not encountered in a constricted, planned environment; ones that present danger but also opportunity

-          The natural environment is more complex than any sports field

-          Nature  is where the inner life can develop at its own pace

-          Advocate for joy and wonder with respect to nature (over the educational)

-          Fear of liability adds another layer of deterrence to encouraging natural play

Death and Life of Great American Cities

by Jane Jacobs

Originally published in 1961, this groundbreaking work by urban visionary Jane Jacobs proposes some provocative ideas and concepts for creating space and social environment for living civilly in close quarters.Unfortunately, in North America, we have already lost many of the active street features that were common in 1961, and which gave a vibrancy to New York (and other cities) at that time.  I was surprised at her position on city parks. Let me know what you think!

Here are my notes from this book:

Generally

Jane Jacobs considers that planners are following the dictates of an unhealthy planning model set up in the late 19^th century (remember this was written in 1961!!) that proposed a garden city “away from the filthy city.  She had no tolerance for planners and says that many of their plans contribute to “The Great Plight of Dullness” (housing projects and suburbs)

Projects rip out the heart of a neighbourhood by taking away activity on the street and replacing it with alienating housing optionw where people  keep to themselves, don’t have their eyes on the street, don’t have public places to hang out. They also usually have elevators which she calls vertical  streets that have none of the benefits of a public ones.

She calls for active diverse city streets that are active at different times of the day and with mixed uses to keep it lively, interesting, and to keep people involved in their street.

The uses of sidewalks – safety

P. 40

Peace is maintained on city sidewalks  primarily by the police, but also by an intricate, almost unconscious network of voluntary controls and standards enforced by the people in the neighbourhood. In places where this is left to police it is a ‘jungle’.  No amount of police can enforce civilization where the normal, casual enforcement of it has broken down.

P. 44

A well-used street is apt to be a safe street.

Public  and private space can’t ooze into each other

There must be eyes on the street belonging to the natural proprietors of the street

Buildings should be oriented to the street

The uses of sidewalks – contact

p. 81

When you have a lively street, you develop relationships with others on the street that can be casual (free from unwelcome entanglements, boredom, fears of giving offense, embarrassments, or commitments and all such paraphernalia of obligations that can accompany more limited relationships (like in the suburbs) . It is possible to be on excellent sidewalk terms with people who are very different from yourself. Such relationships can and do endure for many decades. As opposed to the pressure of “all or none” in a suburban setting where the apprehension about getting entangled with a family makes people keep to themselves.  To increase the likelihood that you will get neighbours that are like you, suburbs also become homogenized which cuts into her criteria of having a diverse street community to keep it vibrant.

p. 85

When people have a choice of all or none, they usually choose none – in terms of associating with neighbours.

Consequently, public jobs that need doing, like watching children who are playing on the street, go undone

p. 89

The social structure of sidewalk life hangs partly on self-appointed public figures (shopkeepers); someone in frequent contact with a wide circle of people who use the street

p. 91

Word-of-mouth information doesn’t get passed on if public figures and active sidewalk life is lacking

p. 95

“lowly, unpurposeful and random as they may appear, sidewalk contacts are the small change from which a city’s wealth of public life may grow”

LA considered ‘culturally behind”  because of no street life

The uses of sidewalks – assimilating children

p. 101

On an active street, there are many pairs of adult eyes on children “to think this represents an improvement in city child rearing is pure daydreaming”.

City kids know that if you want to do something you’re not supposed to, you go to the park and do it where noone will see

Casual adult surveillance, when adults intervene in children’s play when necessary is an essential feature to create a sense of community and responsibility for the peace of the neighbourhood.  It also gives children a valuable lesson in civics because they see that strangers will act for the common good even if they don’t know each other.

p. 107

“planners do not seem to realize how high a ratio of adults is needed to rear children at incidental play” “only people rear children and assimilate them into civilized society”

p. 108

“in real life, and only from ordinary adults  do children learn the first fundamental of successful city life: people must take a modicum of public responsibility for each other even if they have no ties to each other. This is a lesson nobody learns by being told. It is learned from the experience of having other people without ties of kinship or close friendship or formal responsibility to you take a modicum of public resonsiblity for you”

Uses of neighbourhood parks

p. 117

Jacobs questions the urge to create open space asking for what? Muggings? Bleak vacuums between buildings?

p. 128

city parks are creatures of their surroundings

any single, overwhelmingly dominant use iof space imposes a limit on the use and usefulness (and safety) of a park

p. 132

no point bringing parks to where people are if in the process the reasons that people are there are wiped out and the park substituted for them. Parks cannot replace plentiful city diversity

p. 133

well loved parks benefit from a certain rarity value

p. 135

four elements of parks from which to assess their usefulness

1)      Intricacy – the reasons people come to the park; diversity of people, activities, change in contour, groupings of trees, openings, various focal points; with centring being most important.  A centre or main crossroads and pausing point, a climax; for those parks so small that they are all centre, their intricacy comes form minor differences at the peripheries. Centres should become stage settings for people

2)      Centring (see #1 above)

3)      Sun

4)      Enclosure – presence of bulidngs around a park is important to enclose it, give it a definite shape so it doesn’t  look like an unaccounted for leftover

p. 142

magnificent views and handsome landscaping fail to operate as demand goods – swimming, fishing, etc is a demand good.

p. 145

parks add attraction to n’hoods that ppl already find attractive for a variety of other rasons. They further depress n’hoods that people find unattractive for a wide variety of other uses, they exaggerate dullness, danger, emptiness. “the more successfully a city mingles everyday diversity of uses and users in its everyday streets, the more successfully casually and economically its people enliven and support well located parks

Uses of city neighbourhoods

p. 147

no direct simple relationship between good housing and good behaviour

Generators of diversity

p. 197

To generate exuberant diversity in a city’s streets, 4 conditions are indispensable (the absence of any one frustrates a district’s potential)

1. Street or district must serve more than one primary function preferably two. These must insure the presence of ppl who go outdoors on different schedules and are in the place for different purposes but who are able to use many facilities in common
2. Blocks must be short with frequent  corners
3. Variable ages and conditions of building stock so they vary in the economic yiels they must produce (new and risky ideas and enterprises need cheap rent)
4. Sufficiently dnese concentration of ppl for whatever purpose thy may be

p. 249

Large swatches of construction built at one time are inherently inefficient for sheltering wide ranges of cultural, population, and business diversity.

p. 258

when an area is new it offers no economomic opossibilities to city diversity. Practical penalties of dullness stamp the n’hood early

p. 300

whenever ppl distributed thinly and an attractive opens up nearby it causes traffic congestion

Curse of border vacuums

p. 337

areas outside civic centres, large parks, big monuments are extraordinarily blight-prone or stagnant – a condition that precedes decay.

Slumming and unslumming

Gradual accommodation of immigrants into an’hood means we are capable of accepting and hangling strangers in a civilized fashion.

BOOK REVIEW

The Upside of Down : Catastrophe, creativity, and the renewal of civilization

by Thomas Homer Dixon

This book is a fascinating, albeit unsettling analysis of how economic, environmental, sociological, and political forces in contemporary society could interact to challenge our current lifestyles and lives.  It’s more than an environmental wake-up call, but incorporates the social forces, including disparity between rich and poor, and increasing connectivity that affect and will be affected by environmental and/or economic catastrophes.

It’s interesting to note that this book, published in 2006, predates the current economic meltdown we experience in late 2008 – yet Homer Dixon’s predictions about the consequences of this kind of phenomenon are being played out in much the way he describes.

Here are my notes from this book.

There are five tectonic stresses accumulating deep beneath the surface of our contemporary societies:

1. Population stress arising from differences in populateion growth rates between rich and poor societies and from spiralling growth of megacities in poor countries
2. Energy stress from increasing scarcity of conventional oil
3. Environmental stress from worsening damage to land, water, forests, fisheries
4. Climate stress from atmospheric changes
5. Economic stress from instabilities in global economic system and ever widening income gaps between rich and poor

Any combination of these five stresses in combination with what he calls multipliers will make breakdown more likely, widespread, and severe.  These multipliers are:

1. Rising speed and global connectivity of our activities, t3echnologies, and societies
2. Escalating power of small groups to destroy things and people

Globalization’s  face today is about  a virtual vertical rise in the scope, connectdness, and speed of all humankind’s  activities and impact  (speed of disease spread infestation of insects, and human mightration

Globalization has created benefits but also huge challenges. Allows for disruptions to cascade outward like with SARS. Especially worrisome is the spread of lethal technologies  tha have raised destructive power of angry and violent people.  Technologies that provide killing power to fanatics, insurgents, and criminal gangs. Never before has it been possible for small groups to destroy entire cities.

This one fact will ensure our future is entirely different from our past.

Stresses and multipliers are a lethal mix that boosts the risk of collapse of the political, social, and economic order in individual countries and globally – what he calls synchronous failure.

Convergence of stresses makes  synchronous failure  more possible.

In the past, one or two major challenges might occur at once. But today we may face an alarming variety like oil shortages, climate change, economic instability, and mega-terrorism at the same time.

Synchronous failure is disaster on a grand scale and something we must do our best to avoid.

We usually respond to this by 1) denial; and then 2) reluctant management

Most experts working on global problems advocate management response – doesn’t help much because we need changes to existing economic and political order.  Staunch opposition from powerful and entrenched interest groups so are hardly ever carried out.

Need to make our technological, economic, and social systems more resilient to unexpected shocks (like de-centralized energy generation)

Prepare to take positive advantage of breakdowns that do occur by being well prepared, nimble, and smart and by learnikng to recognize warning signs.

The central purpose of this book is to help us recognize the signs and prepare for breakdown. See theupsideofdown.com to join the conversation to do so.

Sometimes, in the face of crisis or upheaval, new, more innovative, and better systems evolve.  He calls this categenesis – the reinvention of our future.

The future cannot be predicted but we know it wll include elements of surprise, instability, and extraordinarily change.

We need to change our conventional ways of thinking and speaking; the idea of being able to understand and manage everything is dangerous partly because we then lose our capacity for self-criticism and self-reflection. We need to adopt an attitude toward the world, ourselves, and our future with the knowledge that constant change and surprise are inevitable – what he calls having a prospective mind.  A prospective mind recognizes how little we understand and how less we control it.  It’s not a relentlessly pessimistic viewpoint – we shouldn’t approach the future with fear.

A prospective mind looks to prevent or forestall horrible outcomes through management but most importantly by imagining and implementing more radical solutions.  Good men and women must be prepared to act, to make us more resilient to shock, and moresupple in response to rapid change.

In the near future we’ll be faced with one critical junction after another in rapid succession.

As the Roman empire declined,  architectural monument construction ceased, , institutions and social structures became simpler, peasants became more tightly tiedl to local landlords in feudal relationships, taxes dropped, civil administration declined, and everyone travelled far less.

In 1950 there were about 2 poor people for every rich person on Earth; today there are about 4; and in 2025 there will be nearly. Grave implications for world peace

Discrepancy between rich and poor and the poor’s knowledge of it  because of technology. Migration of young men especially at interfaces between rich and poor regions (US and latin America; Timor and Australia; North Africa and Europe. Many die trying to get to the richer region but most feel it’s worth the risk.

In rich countries, immigration laws are getting tightened up to restrict movement.

Wealthy societies have experienced only a tiny fraction of the immigration pressure they’ll face in the coming decades.

Features of rapid urbanization in poor countries (43/% of whom live in slums) and their inherent problems includes; (weakness  of governance and police, crime and gangs, extreme income discrepancies – rich resorts and gated communities next to slums);  also the growth and number of mega-cities.

Young men, out of school, out of work and charged with hatred

15-29 year old cohort of young men is 40% or more of the population in  Afghanistan, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Mexico, Pakistan, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa. Makes up 50% or more in the Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Iran, Kenya, Nigeria, Syria, and Yemen

Organized violence by the urban underclass is more likely when big cities suffer a sudden economic shock  due to currency devaluation, debt crisis, or increased energy prices

Association for Peak Oil and Gas

Alternatives to oil:

1. Natural gas, stocks now seriously depleted; in some other places (middle east, Siberia, and Central Asia supplies are far from ppl who could use them. Shops to transport gas would need to be build as would receiving tyreminals all of which would greatly reduce its EROI. These terminals would also be appealing targets for terrorists.
2. Coal – there are immense deposits but at huge environmental cost,
3. Solar – currently very expensive but could be competititve with conventional energy within a decade or two; but sunlight is not consisten and not available year-round.
4. Nuclear – security risks; also waste disposal problem
5. Nuclear fusion, idifficult to harness on Earth
6. Hydrogen – Storage and acquisition costs and technical problems

No really good alternatives to oil so we need to work on the demand side; i.e. conservation

We need to get away from the idea that our society and economy depends on high rates of growth for well-being. As long as we’re addicted to strong economic growth, our energy consumption will not go down even if we steadily improve energy efficiency

As oil beomes scarcer and costlier, peak oil will present itself this way. A period of recurring prices surges, recessions, international tensions, and growing conflicts for access to critical oil supplies

Social breakdown will become steadily more likely as world’s accumulating tectonic stresses  especially energy stress combine to overload our societies.

Scholars say that revolutions happen when inflexible societies experience multiple shocks

Unalloyed and simplistic optimism about the future is really just denial in another guise.

Social causes of denial. Self-interest of powerful groups – corporations, government agencies, lobbyists, religious institutions, unions. NGSs have a vested interest in a particular way of doing things or of viewing the world. If evidence doesn’t fit their worldview these groups work to deny this evidence.

Homer Dixon explains why we keep thinking we need ongoing economic growth

Economic elites don’t just encourage consumerism. Through their influence on media and political process, they create, reproduce, and justify a pervasive and interlocking system of rules and institutions from property rights and capital markets to contract and labour laws – that promotes growth and that, in the process, buttresses their power and privilege . A particular language of capitalism – a “discourse” of economic rationality and competition that penetrates into every nook and cranny of our economies, societies, and lives – helps us understand and abide by these rules and institutions.  This language says that people maximize their pleasure from consumption and that they make decisions as if they were calculating machines, constantly weighing costs and benefits to evaluate their choices.  Also says that our labour is a commodity to be bought and sold in a competitive marketplace. Equates our personal identities with our economic roles in that marketplace. Taken as a whole, modern capitalism’s system of rules, institutions, and language is formidably resistant to change. Economic elites have learned to  protect their status by creating a system of incentives and a dynamic of economic growth that diverts political conflict into manageable, largely nonpolitical channels. As long as the system delivers the goods – defined by capitalist democracy as a rising material standard of living and enough new jobs to absorb displaced labour – no one is motivated to challenge its foundations. We find it easier to play by the reules if we believe in the legitimacy and reasonableness of the larger system that creates these rules. We become invested in the capitalist worldview, without which our modern world wouldn’t make sense, we wouldn’t know our social and economic  roles and it would be hard to connect and communicate with people.  The interests of business prevail over all others.  So our economic system generates pervasive insecurity; this insecurity impels us to play by the rules and justify them.

We shouldn’t expect any challenge to capitalism’s tenets to come from the top of our social hierarchy. Members of economic elite rarely have qualms about the prevailing economic worldview because it sustains their status and they believe they’ve achieved that status through their superior intelligence, guts, and drive.  The conviction that one’s advantages re entirely fair seems a condition of membership in the rarefied upper strata.  A cycle of delusion and denial. Economic growth is seen as a panacea for all our social and personal problems.  Growth equals  health.  This perspective is the opposite of what HOMER DIXON says we need  in a prospective mind to lead us wisely into the future.  Compare to the Heliocentric cosmos where more and more elaborate and far-fetched theories were raised to try to justify the inconsistencies of the heliotropic worldview (i.e. that the universe revolves around the earth) pp.  216-219

Our societies are faced with more problems simultaneously and that the pace at which these unfold seems to be3 increasing. A growing number of problems chained together and that reinforce each other in unexpected ways.

Holling posits the world is on the verge of some kind of systemic crisis

3 reasons:

1. Collapse is usually part of the story about how complex systems evolve
2. Rapidly rising connectivity within global systems both economic and technological increases the risk of deep collapse.
3. Rise of mega-terrorism to kill huge numbers of people and produce major disruptions in world systems.

Think of humanity as one immense social-ecological system.

A build-up of pressure from multiples stresses, a series of shocks and weakening of resilience can push a society over the edge.

Dislocated lives, worseneing poverty,  and wider income gaps affect the motivation to participate in violence by providing fodder for extremist leaders. They create in people general feelings of frustration and anger that leaders can shape and focus into powerful resentments against governments or specific groups. Income gaps are especially good at doing this, because people care more about that relative than their absolute status. People on the losing side of the gaps or who strongly identify with those who are can be made to feel profoundly humiliated.

Likelihood of violence in our world is the power shift allowing fewer people to kill large numbers of people more quickly than ever before. This is particularly visible in poor countries that have been flooded with small arms and light weapons. This gives militias, ethic groups, political factions, and gangs the opportunity to wreak havoc.  Places like Somalia, Sierra Leone, Liberia and eastern Congo have experience this resulting in the virtual collapse of govt authority. Organized crime and armed militias have quickly filled the vacuum

As American leaders realize how the shift from a high-EROI to a low-EROI world jeopardizes their country’s dominance, they’ll do what Rome did: use every means including force to organize and control the world’s territory to permit the extraction of energy. (think tar-sands)

In the next decade, while the US desperately tries to extract energy resources around the planet  and likely get into fights as a result it will be faced with terrorist threats.

What Homer Dixon describes next is a possible social earthquake scenario  actually was occurring in 2006-7.

Chi na’s predicament immediately relevant to the rest of the world. The international economic crisis involving rupture of the dollar relative between US and China – a twin bubble symbiosis

China sells 40% of its exports to the US market; then, by buying treasury bills, corporate bonds, and short-term securities which they then use to lend money back to the US, some of the import dollart; this  helps finance US budget and trade deficit, stimulating domestic demand while propping up the US dollar relative to Chinese currency and holding down US interest rates. Low interest rates discourage US from saving; instead Americans speculate on real estate and borrow on increasing household equity, which frees up dollars that are then used to buy more Chinese goods.

Next Homer Dixon describes what could happen if there was a sharp decline in the US economy, something which began in late 2008

A sharp decline in the US economy would be bad for China because it has a trade deficit with other countries. It would lead to a run on banks, stoke nationalistic fury against Taiwan and Japan, and could lead to bitter conflict

A heavy debt burden boosts vulnerability to external shocks by creating appalling discrepancies between rich and poor.

In Europe, similar population discrepancy circumstances exist between itself and North Africa. Currently the areas where North Africans live in European cities are dreary suburban enclaves with high unemployment, failed assimilation, resentment, and strong group cohesion.

European energy is vulnerable and dependent on external systems. Climate changes stresses in Europe because of its location with respect to changes in ocean heat circulation could hurt European agriculture. An economic downturn could lead to dreadful ethnic violence – another social earthquake

Social earthquakes are a series of events that occur from fear, greed, bigotry, and people seeing the world in black and white

Things could go one of two ways in a social earthquake:

1. Fanatics could frame reality and define a tumultuous future
2. Social creativity could shape the future

In order to achieve #2 above, we need to enact 4 steps:

1. Reduce underlying stresses (population imbalances, energy shortages, environmental damage, climate change, income  gaps) We need more integrated approaches to these problems. Need risk of weapons of mass destruction; secure and destroy enriched uranium (perhaps the most urgent). We’re unlikely to weaken these stresses enough to significantly reduce the danger we face so we need to prepare for social earthquakes
2. Cultivate a prospective mind – we need to be comfortable with change, surprise, transience; exercise our imagination otherwise we’re more likely to be afraid
3. 3. Build a resilience into all systems critical to our well-being.  Gi ve up extra efficiency and productivity to achieve resiliency (i.e. draw on support and resources from elsewhere BUT be self-sufficient enough to provide for essential needs in an emergency). We need to boost the resilience of the weakest societies, namely those with damaged environments, endemic poverty, inadequate skills and education, and those with weak and/or corrupt governments. Otherwsie the entire global socio-ecological system will become increasingly vulnerable to disease, terrorism, economic collapse. These goals go against the ideology of global capitalism (which calls for larger scale, faster growth, less government, more efficiency, connectivity, and speed). We currently work against resiliency by piling on debt, building track housing on agricultural land, use distant sources of energy, and “fill every nook and cranny of our days with so much junk information and pointless running around that we don’t have time to reflect on what we’re doing or where we’re going”.

1. Rich countries need to find alternatives to blind commitment to economic growth which is incompatible with the Earth’s long term viability. Globalized capitalism sees economy as separate from nature and acts like a machine whose operation is linear, predictable, and reversible. We need to recognize there are no good substitutes for biodiversity and a benign climate. We need to find ways to give these explicit economic value so that people are motivated to protect them. Conventional economics is dominated  by intellectual rationalization of today’s world order.

Characteristics of adaptive complex systems :

1)      Extraordinary diversity

2)      Decentraliation of power and decision-making

3)      Systems are unstable enough to experience unexpected innovations yet orderly enough to learn from their failures and successes.

Systems with these three characteristics stimulate constant experimentation and generate a number of problem-solving strategies.

The internet provides us with the potential for this kind of system. Unfortunately, we have barely tapped the potential of the internet because instead of its being used for problem-solving, adaptation, and social inclusion, it has turned into a venue for “a screaming cacophony of electronic narcissism”.

Open source materials need to be used fro problem-solving, not just technical programming.
“In western liberal societies, public discussion of values is dreadfully impoverished”

Re: consumerism: we get drawn into discussions about superficialities because of this dearth of value debate.  This serves the interests of the political and economic elites who value growth above all else.

Only a broader and deeper democratic practice will develop the expansive moral commonwealth essential to our collective e survival.

We must acknowledge that our global situation is urgent and begin wide-ranging and vigrour discussion about what we can and should do.

Buy Buy Baby : The Mass Seduction Of Our Youngest Consumers, And How It’s Changing The American Family

by Susan Gregory Thomas

I reluctantly picked up this book after a week away on holidays.  It was due back at the library a few days later with no option to renew it so I ploughed ahead even though I expected it to depress me.

And it did. I had to remember the old adage that knowledge is power. It is better to know about unpleasant forces around you, because whether you are aware of them or not, you are still influenced by them, including the ability of advertising and materialism to make you depressed, anxious, and overly competitive.

In fact these are some of the findings that investigative journalist Thomas discovered in the course of interviewing marketers, toy producers, psychologists, educators, and child and family welfare professionals for her book.  Namely that intensive marketing to younger and younger children is resulting in their being afflicted with what were previously considered adult ailments.  And along with this, our children’s cognitive and social development is at risk.

But it seems the temptation (and income earning capacity) to exploit children is too great to overcome much conscience on the part of most toy advertising executives.

Toy manufacturers and their marketing cohorts are pushing parents into believing that unstructured play and baby-directed activity is not enough for today’s infants and that every free moment must be a learning opportunity. Despite there being no evidence that babies learn anything from these products and the suspicious fact that so-called educational research is funded by toy companies, these products are gaining in popularity amongst North American parents. One child’s toy marketer who spoke to Thomas on condition of anonymity said that a “marketer who can establish educational credentials can get away with anything” p. 3.

And it seems that the temptation to move into media manipulation of younger and younger audiences is greater than any conscientiousness on the part of marketers.  Something called KGOY—kids getting older younger—is the result of this down-aging of the marketing machinery whereby younger children are watching more television and videos, and identifying with more “licensed character” products as a result. It’s another indication of our society, manic with consumerism and materialism.

Thomas cites the meteoric rise of the Baby Einstein series of DVDs that claims to introduce the world to infants and toddlers. The company says that their products contain “developmentally appropriate content that parents/caregivers know they can trust to use with their little ones, and providing them with superior products they can feel good about using with their children“(http://www.babyeinstein.com/en/our_story/about_us/).

Far be it from parents to be able to give children what they need – including the personal connection with a real live caring human being that really gets their synapses firing. Baby Einstein products not only don`t give children what they need, but they also steal from parents a feeling that they are capable and most important for an infant to develop healthy social relationships. But of course, no one is making money on authentic parent-child interactions and that’s what motivates marketers to discredit what parents have known for years.

Even in the face of a peer-reviewed scientific journal, the Journal of Paediatrics that questions Baby Einstein’s ability to develop cognitive abilities and may even delay them, the Disney Corporation balks, calling the research clumsy and inaccurate as a way to deflect criticism and maintain their influence on parents and their hard-earned cash (Journal of Paediatrics Vol 151, Issue 4, October 2007, pp. 364-8).

There was not much new in this book for me, despite its well written and well organized array of interesting research, but I have long been interested in marketing and consumer issues.

What did surprise me was the last chapter wherein Thomas gives her very personal and insightful explanation for how we let our children become the object of marketing madness.  Speaking from the position of a Gen X-er she says that her generation’s insecurities and consumption patterns made parents vulnerable to the forces of marketing that made them want to give their children ‘everything’. Thomas says that as a child of the 70s, dealing with divorced parents and television-filled free time, she was the first generation to be raised on the highly manipulative marketing that has only become more seductive over time. She says it’s ironic that Gen X-ers think, erroneously, that they are the most free generation, yet she now thinks their obsession with image and nsecurities about almost every aspect of their lives springs from the media onslaught she experienced as a youth.

So I was delighted to see her again yesterday and to fill her in with our news and find out hers. She told me she sometimes takes the skytrain – the light rail transit train we have in Vancouver, to see her daughter and that the last time she went, she had to stand the entire way – no short distance. Inez wasn’t complaining and in fact justified people’s obliviousness to her standing the long distance, saying people must have been tired after being at work all day. She simply said that things had changed. I told her I had had similar experiences standing on buses while obviously pregnant and that I tried to used these times as educational opportunities. When I would say to teenaged boys sitting in the seat I so dearly coveted, that I needed to sit because I was going to have a baby, they would almost always jump up, flustered, and immediately give me their seat.

But why do I have to point this out to them? And why should an obviously old woman’s (or man’s)  discomfort not be considered?  I think it’s because people are so engrossed in their own lives – and maybe feel so down-trodden for whatever reason that they don’t look around and notice someone else  who might be in more need.

I know children are in some ways treated as if they are the centre of the universe -  driven  hither and yon as a matter of course so that they are oblivious to the fact that someone is taking time from their own day to chauffeur them around. Does this lead to their lack of exposure to others’ needs?

Being without a car, we travel by foot, bike, or public transit and see this is an opportunity to teach our children about the variety of people in the world, different needs, challenges, and attributes (with some censoring at this stage of their lives). We also see it as a living example of the simple joy of striking up spontaneous conversations with strangers. Living in civility with strangers, as Jane Jacobs, the visionary urbanist says,  is essential if we are to  survive and thrive in an urban environment.

If you’re always in the backseat of a car with playthings and entertainment technology, there are no real opportunities to notice a lot of these things, let alone talk about them. And how else can children learn to give up their seats  or hold a door open to help others in need?