Death by convenience

[the_drifter]

I'm taking a course at the local university on green economics and sustainable development. I'm doing the second batch of reading right now, and I find myself running over and over into a principle that drives our behavior as American consumers (which is to say, as Americans, since given the means to consume, consumption seems to become the default

Comments

[sundogx2]

are you gonna end up doing grad school?

[the_drifter]

That's my hope--besides interest, I'm taking this class now so that when I apply for a slot in the program for fall 2007(though I'm still teetering a little bit on whether I want to go the practical or research track), I'll have taken a grad-level course in the department already and hopefully established that I've got the chops.

[executrix]

I found it very striking that, for example, a week of blackouts in Queens during a heat wave didn't lead to creation of voluntary "AC sharing" coops in the NY metro area--e.g., "Monday, we'll all go to Ethel's apartment and play bingo, Tuesday, we'll go to Gladys' apartment and watch her Fred Astaire movies..."; every home-bound or mostly homebound person just sweltered in her own apartment.

[the_drifter]

A visiting professor proposed that in the U.S., environmentalism has been replaced by survivalism as what drives us to conserve/limit consumption/find alternate lower-waste sources. Of course, survivalism of that sort can take place on an axis. On one end is individuals banding together to limit personal consumption and share resources for the good of the many. On the other is what some government advisors have called the "No Regrets" strategy--in discussions of "abrupt climate change scenarios", this means the U.S. (which due to geological flukes could be somewhat less screwed than the rest of the planet) physically barricading itself within its borders and leaving the rest of the world to freeze, starve, and generally die.

I don't know about you, but I'd like to believe that even major threat to me and my family would not be enough to make me accept the extreme forms of option B.

[executrix]

Well, y'know, even absent climate change, a good argument could be made that--e.g., degradation of worldwide environments to provide McDonald's burgers and gas at whatever price the oil companies manipulate it to rather than a cost reflecting long-run costs--the American Way of Life *already* depended on leaving the rest of the world to freeze, starve and generally die.

[the_drifter]

I'm not about to argue that. But while it'll take something for us to deliberately to back ourselves out of the moral slop-pit we've slid into (by putting our own convenience above the lives of others), I'd like to think that choosing that kind of immediate and violent destruction for everyone else would also take a deliberate choice (as opposed to just habitual complacence). I don't know that I'm right, but I'm sure as hell going to try and make change on the assumption that I am until proven otherwise.

[anatsuno]

the idea somehow lurking behind all this (to me, but i might be crazy) seems to be that we're at our most free when we're alone - this is to say, that Others Are Inconvenient (or like Sartre said, they're Hell. Of course, he was right - I just happen to think they're also heaven *g*). It is inconvenient to deal with them at every point - sharing a wagon in public transport, sharing a sidewalk in the street, sharing time bumping elbows in the asupermarket or the library or the laundromat. Convenience is apparently defined as freedom to do anything at anytime with the least effort and while having to deal with the leas human contact possible. It is quite odd, indeed.

[the_drifter]

Quite odd, and thoroughly modern in all the worst ways. Kind of like the factory mentality has spread until everyone we do not know is merely a cog--or an obstacle--between us and what we want.

I think of the U.S. as taking the doctrine of convenience to unparalleled heights, but it's hard for me to imagine that Europe is exempt from it. What's your view on that?

[anatsuno]

I would say we're victims of something close - a mix of whatever philosophy we'd developped locally/regionalyl, and the cultural imperialism / sharing values with the US (I say both as it do not think it is all a questions of cultural imperialism - the exchange does go both ways, even though there IS some imperialism in there, definitely). One place where this doctrine - in tis freedom form rather that it convenience form - seem very striking to me and different in the US and here (for now!) is the levels of expectations of most north americans nowadays in term of privacy, size of their eprsonal bubble, and right to be Left Alone at all times and in every way. Like, people I have tremendous respect for (this is to say, this is simply an expression of the way their culture varies vastly from mine) have habits of expecting the rest of humanity to Always Stay Away from them, to Never Oh Never Ever touch them, to Not Cross The Lines*. I'm not sure I manage to express myself well, but since this has to do with the way we relate to each

[the_drifter]

A lot of sense, especially as I have my experiences in Amsterdam to relate to. One thing I remember very vividly from my first afternoon in the Damrak is bumping into people over and over again--on the sidewalk, in doorways, on the tram. This is the kind of thing that sends up a flag for me, and I remember it being about five minutes between when I realized it was happening and when I realized it wasn't that people were walking into me on purpose (not that I ever really thought they were), but that they weren't doing the thing all Americans do where we instinctively reposition ourselves on a footstep-by-footstep basis to maximize the amount of space between us and everyone else. I was still doing it, but no one else was, and so we were colliding simply because we weren't following the same rules about how (and if) we should avoid it

[msilverstar]

I've been thinking about this, and how there's so much variation among places and subcultures in the US. There are people who eat fastfood and people who only eat organic vegetables... There are farmers who never see a person outside their families for weeks at at time and people who have a constant stream of visitors.

Also, the cell phone has vastly changed some jobs which used to be lonely and isolated in some ways. No wonder truckers were the first to adopt CB radios!