what in the world is a ppm?

We live in a capitalist society and we around surrounded by numbers. We count the money in our wallet, we count the money in our bank account, the interest rates of our credit cards and we count the days till we have less money in our wallet when the rent is due. Numbers are surrounding us from all sides and we live and breathe numbers. But one wonders how much do we really understand numbers. Joel Best in his article "More Damned Lies and Statistics. How Numbers Confuse Public Issues" says that we barely understand numbers at all. He states that not only are we constantly lied to with numbers but that the people who use these numbers to lie to us don't understand numbers all that well either. When looking at the crisis that surrounds us we see that we are constantly bombarded with risk calculations, and means and averages, percentages and parts per million (ppm). What in the world is a part per million and how am I supposed to understand that our atmosphere needs to reduce carbon in the atmosphere to 350 ppm? We are given these numbers but we don't understand what they mean. If 350 ppm is the number we need then what does smoking one cigarette do? Does a single cigarette put into the atmosphere 1 ppm, .01 ppm, .00000000000000000000000000000000000000001 ppm, or nothing at all. The entire environmentalism movement has been based on numbers but there has been no clue as to what that means to us. It is strange that although it seems very intuitive to us to use numbers for all of our issues, it is actually counterintuitive for many of our causes. As Best puts it, if a study indicates that diet cola drinkers are 20 percent more likely to have a specific medical condition. People may take that to mean the 20 percent of diet cola drinkers will get this disease. But in actuality if only 5 people out of 10000 have the disease than that would mean that a 20 percent increase in diet cola drinkers would mean that 6 out of 10000 diet cola drinkers would have the disease. 20 percent greater in this case means an additional 1 person out of 10000 and that in the overall scheme of things is almost insignificant. So it becomes increasingly clear that these numbers aren't telling us a thing so then why is it that we rely on them so much? Perhaps what we really need to be doing is moving away from numbers and actually showing people information in a more human way. We weren't born with money in our pockets and we aren't capitalists at 1 year old, so in our hearts we aren't made to understand numbers. Telling me that x number of smokers contract lung cancer does not affect me as much as showing me a smokers lung. 

we care too much or not enough?

When looking at the state of the world now, the accusations of consumer culture and the complete and total excess of things that we live in. One can start to look for a cause, a reason for all of these. Certainly one can look at the industrial revolution and and the invention of the machine as the moments in time when we began to walk down this path. But that would be making an excuse for something that we shouldn't. I believe that it is more important to look at inherent human nature and try to understand why it is that we make. In her book "The Body in Pain" Elaine Scarry produces a marvelous argument that the reason that we make is because we care too much for everything. When looking at the world it is apparent that the world cares nothing for us. We as humans are susceptible to pain from everywhere. We don't have fur to keep us warm and we don't have claws to defend ourselves from other animals. And our skin is too soft so we cut ourselves on rocks and tree bark. This susceptibility to pain is what Scarry calls Sentient Awareness. It means that we know pain and that we are scared of it. And we make because we want to the world around us to be sentient also, we want to the world to understand and acknowledge our pain. Man "wishes or pretends that the inert external world had his or her own capacity for sentient awareness, civilization makes this so." (p 286) Scarry argues that the essence of being human is to acknowledge that one is in pain, but it is not enough to acknowledge that one is in pain, you must also wish for the pain to be gone. As Scarry puts it pain is "something which cannot be felt without being wished unfelt" (p 290) So we start to look at this wish of ours that others not be in pain, and we start to look at material artifacts. The blanket which acts as a second skin, is an embodiment of the human desire that we not feel cold, it is acknowledgment that our skin is not thick enough to protect us, and the delicate fibers of the woven blanket will start to mimic this. The chair is the acknowledgment that we have a problem with weight and that we want to rid ourselves of weight and it does this for us. So it becomes clear that all of the things that surround us, the fridge, the television, the bed, the doors, the laptop, are all embodiments of someone else's wish that we not be in pain. According to Scarry in their essence human beings care for one another and see one another's pain. And seeing pain means understanding it and wishing for it to be gone. So all of these material artifacts that surround us are caring for us anonymously, they know that we are in pain and they want to rid us of it, they want the world to be more loving to us, they want the world to acknowledge our pain. So it would seem that the reason that we have so many things is because we care too much for other people, we want to rid everyone of pain. But it seems to me that the desire in making all the objects around us feel our pain and trying to make them sentient is basically humanities cry that we aren't accepted, we are the black sheep of the family and through making we are trying to fit into the world, we are trying to have the world see us and to see our pain, but the funny thing is that because we try so hard to fit into the world, there is now barely any world left for us to fit into.

thinking ecologically

Our education system as a whole can be brought down to the point that when you follow it from start to end, and you finish high-school and you go to college and get your bachelors, and then you go to grad school and you get your Ph.D. you have a career in academia. Our education system as a whole is meant to pump out college professors according to Ken Robinson. So one thinks about this and as Robinson says our schooling is meant to take out the creativity from kids, we teach them from an early age that imagery is not important and that they should be accountants and lawyers and they need to go to college and get a degree. And this loss of creativity in my opinion is a frightful thing, because it teaches us to not learn, it shows us that there is a need for information to be given to us and that we cannot be creative enough on our own to discover something, it shows us that we will not be able to live a normal life without someone telling us how. We need our computer and our ipod because we cant entertain ourselves, we need the computer to constantly be in reach of information. We are not creative enough to find ways to live our lives without things. So with all of this one then starts to wonder if that is really a problem with out education system. Looking at it more analytically one can tell that the way in which we are used to taking in  information is a linear one. We are reliant on the verbal language to understand a point. Frascara in his article "Diagramming as a Way of Thinking Ecologically" believes that that is our problem. He believes that for many of the things that we are taught diagramming is a much better way in which to understand. "The structure of verbal language, however, offers a limited capacity to convey information. It promotes linear thinking and sequentiality, and is very poor for the presentation of hierarchies, inclusions, simultaneity, distinctions of levels, multiplicity of kinds and complexity of connections."(p 166) And thinking about the problems that we are facing it is clear that it is not possible to think about things linearly. One action affects so many different stake-holders and has a multiplicity of outcomes. Diagramming this becomes a way in which to understand all of these connections and reactions in a much more natural way. The reason that he terms diagramming a way of thinking ecologically is because the kind of thought process that goes through ones head when looking at a diagram is very similar to ecological reactions. It is by no means a linear path. because when examining our environment it is clear that a multitude of things are happening simultaneously and all of these things need to be understood. Diagramming becomes not only a tool for understanding complex systems like ecology but it becomes an internalization of the outside world. We begin to think like the environment around us acts. Perhaps this can give us a much deeper understanding of the world. In my opinion it also fosters our creativity. Not everyone will understand things in a certain way and there is no right way to understand. Looking at the environment there is no start and endpoint to the systems, no one thing happens before another it is constantly happening simultaneously. So that means there is no correct way to look at a system, one can jump in from anywhere and meet someone else along the way who came from a different point and have a mutual language. So what then would happen if our education system fostered this kind of thinking. If it showed you the system and didn't put you in it. If we lived in a world of diagrams and read information in that sense, wouldn't we then be a society rich with vantage points and ideas? Perhaps creativity should be fostered so that we know how to look at the world, perhaps we should be able to see that when we write on a piece of paper a tree is cut down, and a truck is driving it towards us.

Innovation

So i am trying out a new way to blog. i have this new hightech phone thingy called the tmobile g1 and it has this nice little blogging tool that allows me to make posts easily from my phone. maybe this way there wont be 2 month gaps between my posts as i can conveniently post from the boring classes i sometimes have. although this phone is pretty innovative thats actually not the topic of the post. i also need to apologize as i am too lazy to capitalize all the proper letters and fix grammatical mistakes. there is no spell check on this fancy gadget of mine. regardless, i was sitting in a class of mine called environmental history and ideas and we started a conversation about how humans destroy the land that we live on. my argument was that all humans will take advantage of the land and use it to fulfill their needs, often not thinking about the health of the environment. some would argue that this is only something that modern humans do but even the nomadic tribes, burned down vegetation and cut down forests in order to turn them into plains and open space so that they could hunt the buffalo they used as food. this shows that it is something inherent in every single human. the guy that i was arguing this with made a statement that it isnt true, he said that there were many different kinds of people that lived in harmony with the land and didnt destroy it. i replied by saying that he cannot make that statement because we never let the histories of these people play out. because the history of the world is an imperialist one it is not possible to know how these people would have continued to live their lives. by him referencing them it was equivalent to him referencing unfinished history, he made an ending to a book that had no end. and he replied by saying there are tribes of people that live in rainforests that don't have anything to do with the outside world. they are uncivilised and don't destroy the land. and they have been around for centuries. this made me think about innovation. when does innovation happen. and i thought of these people and realized that human beings only invent when their environment makes them. when there is no way to get food but to kill a bison a man will create a weapon as he cannot kill a bison on his own. when there is too large a community to support on bison alone man discovered farming and agriculture. when there was very little rain and water was scarce humans developed refrigerators. human beings began to invent when their surroundings and environment forced them to innovate. the next stage of innovation seemed to happen when man had free time. when civilisation got to a point where men didnt have to be hunting all the time and women had enough tools to have been able to finish work faster and when communities began to make divisions of labor people had an over abundance of free time and they began to innovate. so i realized that innovation only happens at 2 instances, one instance is when the environment makes a direct need for innovation and the second when we have enough free time to not work. that group of people living in the amazon may not have taken advantage of their immediate surroundings possibly because the environment has given them enough support to be able to live comfortably. these 2 kinds of innovation also make me wonder if the reason for our over abundance of things because of boredom? certainly we wouldnt be suffering from environmental crisis if we only innovated when the environment made us innovate. it seems our problem is that we just couldnt work enough.

connections through laundry

Ok first off let me apologize to everyone. It's been a long time. School and work has kept me way too busy and I am sure that at some point everyone experiences these things. I have not abandoned this blog, in fact I have been making little notes in my notebooks about things I want to write about. And there are many things that I want to write but I will start with just this one. The only reason that I have found time recently is because of a snow day. My university classes have been cancelled for the day so I was able to catch up on many things in life including laundry and cleaning. Thats actually the reason for this post. I will start by mentioning that recently I have been very stressed out, with work, school, friends, parents, drama, girls, money, rent and many many other things. And having finally had this one day to sleep (that doesn't happen very often), I have been able to rest and think about everything thats going on. I cleaned my room, did the dishes and even managed to do my laundry and I discovered a strange feeling. Doing daily chores is somehow an amazing stress reliever. I can't begin to tell you how happy I felt when I made it to the laundromat on time and sat there while my clothes were washing. And the feeling that I got when I discovered that underneath all my clothes there was a floor, and under all the dishes there was a sink. Washing the dishes is one of my favorite things to do, there is no thinking involved, you just put your headphones in your ear and wash, its like a break for my mind. So I started to think about this strange feeling I was having as I stood outside the laundromat, it was something very similar to nostalgia. But I couldn't understand what I was feeling nostalgic about but rather it made me think about this chore that is so mundane and it made me feel like I was living a normal good life. What in the world is a normal good life? I don't have an answer to that but apparently it involves clean clothes, laundry and washing dishes. I think it might have been this weird sense of unity. The fact that everyone in the world has to clean and do laundry, its something that seems to be a factor in everyones life and maybe that is what is so therapeutic about it. The fact that globally this ties people together. Cleaning is a common language, no matter what country you go to, and no matter what language you speak, you do laundry, you clean. I have a goal in life which is to connect everyone in the world without sacrificing identity. How do you find a common language, and this seems to be one of them. This simple act of washing your clothes is a miracle, a miracle because it is something that truly unites the world. It doesn't matter if you are jewish, catholic, muslim, buddhist, its irrelevant whether you are black or kkk, whether you are from north korea or south korea, australia or the us, cuban or venezuelan at the end of the day we all do the same thing, and we can all wash our dishes and our clothes, and that makes me smile. I love cleaning, and I love standing outside of the laundromat wondering who else in the world is washing their clothes too.....   :)