|
|
 Image by Pere Ubu I’m the kind of writer that likes to write about things after they’ve happened. That way I get to process the information in the privacy of my own mind and change my mind a good deal in the process. Almost any significant experience I have has to take its time and percolate through my thoughts before I can articulate what I think.
I’ve always been like this, upon my return from a whirlwind week in London, it took me about six months before I could really talk about it. That’s at the extreme end of the scale of course, but it was also before I recognized how my mind deals with stimulation. A less severe example is the three weeks it took me to explain what I got out of the Body Worlds Exhibit I visited earlier this summer. And the latest is the grim yet important book I finished that put me in a funk for about two weeks – the beautifully written, yet profoundly disturbing look at the sickness of our culture – The Culture of Make Believe by Derrick Jensen.
I’ve never read anything else by the author, so didn’t know what to expect, and what I got was a very clear dissection of the culture of hatred that we live in. We see the results of this hatred everywhere, from the smog in the streets, to the disappearing wildlife, to the landfill of the third world where we ship our trash, and those are the mildest examples. A large section of the book deals with the cognitive dissonance that is created when we actively participate in this culture and the coping mechanisms we develop n order to continue to participate in it. It takes a hard look at the fairy tale of our daily life and exposes it for the fraud that it is.
It’s not an easy book to read. Many of the horror stories of humanity are so disturbing and insane, really, that it’s easy to begin distancing yourself from the book as you read it – well, that would never happen here, not in Canada, not in our current culture, oh we don’t do things like that anymore. That is until the book comes to very modern current examples of the way we externalize the costs to keep things the way they are. Until we realize that nothing costs what we truly pay for it. And until we realize that we, you and me, have also developed some deep coping mechanisms to avoid looking at reality for what it is.
After I processed the book I went on Amazon to see what other people thought of it, and was gratified to see that any review that I write will not hold a candle to the great reviews others have written. The book seems to beg a long intelligent review, and many have obliged. I’d have to recommend it to anyone who has ever felt out of step with the values of current society, especially our insistence on productivity, time management and progress. To anyone who thinks our society is slightly insane in many ways, and to anyone who is typically too busy to reflect much on it.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
In other news – my bush peas were doing great – they were bushy. Until a momentous hail storm last Monday came and flattened the lot, just like last year. Now I have a great foot-thick rug of peas growing sideways, with the peas underneath yellowing from lack of sun. Sigh. I’m already jury-rigging a solution for next year – perhaps that will be my ticket to an early retirement? But otherwise the peas are doing wonderful – they are producing a large bowl per day which we gleefully shell and eat each night. All my friends’ peas are puny in comparison, so all hail the pea whisperer!
The tomatoes are also doing well, with the exception of one wee plant that simply refuses to grow. Otherwise they are all producing – before AUGUST which is very momentous in my neck of the woods. And the raspberries have settled in just fine and are already rewarding me with a few berries, something that they’re not supposed to do until next year.
I did plant a few cucumbers, but some enterprising bunny came and ate the lot. Oh well – if he needed them that much, who am I to argue?
I also have a new job, which I start next Monday. That came about in an oblique way, but has also occupied my time, and is a welcome change. The thing with jobs is that you cannot talk about the job, until the offer is signed, kind of like the first rule of fight club. Otherwise for some mysterious reason they are apt not to materialize. Now I’m off to catch up with all of you!
I was thrilled to come across this book written by a fellow Calgarian that received some high praise from critics. The premise of the book is simple - spurred by the birth of his daughter Chris Turner looked around and saw a world careening out of control. Global warming, pollution, destruction of natural resources, excessive consumption and faulty economics drive our consumerist engine, and there is no shortage of problems to look at and wonder when this train ride will come to a wreck. But dozens of books have been written about the staggering problems facing our world and future as a species, but quite few offer real suggestions as to what we can do about it. Chris Turner went on a whirlwind tour around the globe looking for existing, often very local solutions to a truly sustainable future that work splendidly and point the way to a more hopeful future.
Off the bat I’ve got to say that I am not a proponent of anthropogenic climate change. i.e. I do not feel that man-made global warming is our biggest problem, nor do I condemn CO2 as the largest pollutant in our atmosphere. This book is largely structured around this very premise, and the undertone wonders how is it that any rational human can continue to deny the movement largely started by Al Gore et al. Now that several years have passed, and Al Gore’s faulty research and blatantly incorrect hockey-stick graph has been soundly denounced even by the most ardent global warming proponents, not to mention his energy hogging lifestyle, it is clear that he himself, is probably not a good advocate for the cause.
I personally tend to think that plants breathe CO2, that any volcano eruption as well as our oceans dwarf our CO2 output, that the largest drivers of climate are the sun and the oceans and our orbit, things so vast that we cannot even understand their effects, never mind control them, that the planet is typically a much more tropical place and in fact we are geologically speaking in the middle of a short warm pocket that happens to be in the middle of an ice age, and most important of all – that carbon sequestering is a huge money making scam that will make some people very rich, while doing very little to impact our climate. I also fear that the debate whether pro or con is stealing all the spotlight while ignoring the ridiculous pollution issues plaguing our planet. But what I do understand is that whether we agree on global warming specifically or not, we can both be appalled at the damage to our planet wrought by our species, and overwhelmed with the negative press and dialogue that seems to lead us no closer to real solutions.
The book itself is a manic romp around the world skipping from Denmark to Thailand and even yes, Okotoks. His writing style is a unique mix reminiscent of Gladwell and Pollan, both of whom are referenced, except for on speed. Interspersed with commentary on popular culture, pop psychology and history lessons the book is best digested in small increments lest it simply overwhelm your brain. Since he is local, some of his stories revolve not too far from home, a wind farm nearby, a green community in a small town only a twenty minute drive from my house, even our very own downtown Calgary. To me this was obviously exceptionally interesting since I can add my own observations to the mix.
I found it rather worrying that all the examples of a new way of living that he profiles – a fully self sustaining home in Thailand built using local renewable resources, that costs about as much as a ‘conventional’ style dwelling, a small Danish island where the villagers fully bought into wind farms and barely have any need for oil, a community of Earthship dwellers proudly living in a rather hostile climate with all the creature comforts of the average urban home but with almost none of the energy requirements, E+Co which pioneer a genius partnership to turn waste ponds into energy, and amazing real estate developments which allow people to live and thrive in their communities, not simply exist, – are so few and far between taken in the larger context. They are small pockets of wonderful enterprise, human ingenuity and revolutionary principles on display, but they are quite rare when looked at globally. And frankly we’ve always had great people doing amazing things. All the pioneers above use existing technology in innovative ways, they are not inventing anything as such, but until they reach a ‘tipping point’ a la Gladwell, they will always remain an oasis of sanity with hardly an impact on the global scene.
Calgary is a prime example. The book ends with the author looking over the city and noting how things could be different. How the large empty concrete tracts can be re-imagined as green spaces and truly livable mixed use neighborhoods, how flat sloping roofs seem made for solar panels (in a city with over 300 days of sunshine per year), how urban sprawl can be curbed once and for all and many other wonderful ideas. But since this book was written I can’t say any of those changes have materialized. I’ve yet to see a solar panel on any roof whatsoever, our neighborhood that was once on the edge of the city has been surpassed by further development, mixed use neighborhoods are still things that are developed by far more progressive planners than ours, urban agriculture has not exploded, we do have recycling but strictly as downcycling, and sadly, Seaside Florida, one of the communities lauded in the book is currently drowning in oil from a terrible man made disaster.
I also haven’t seen any of those flexible solar panels that were going to drastically decrease prices in the markets, and in fact I haven’t heard any follow up on that story since it was hyped a few years ago. A shamefully quick google search turns up flexible panels that cost several times more per watt that a generic one does. Okotoks’ award winning Drake Landing community has not been followed by any more, despite its cachet.
Chris travels the world looking for examples of a new sustainable economy. Places where the change is people driven, whether it’s machete wielding villagers peeling bamboo for their micro-hydroelectric dam, or a community investing in wind farms without government mandates, oversight or involvement really. In contrast there seem to be pitifully few solutions to be found around our very own urban yards. Since we don’t have to choose whether to spend money on kerosene or purchase a small solar panel, we don’t have the immediacy of looking for a solution as we continue to live in our urban houses constructed with toxic materials and heat them with coal and gas.
Speaking with a local solar installer generates an estimate that to convert a typical house to be entirely off-grid would cost in the realm of $25,000 – a figure hardly affordable and yes, it would take a very long time to pay for itself. Unless you built a passive solar heated home which costs about the same as a conventional house, but you would likely never get the permits to build one. Sure we recycle, but we all know that at best it’s postponing the trip to the landfill by a reuse or two, and at worst – well, how much does it cost (literally and carbon-wise) to ship our recyclables to Asia where they can be processed/landfilled as prices dictate?
Perhaps it’s my propensity for cynicism and gloom that leads me to read this book, and ask what’s changed since it was published? Or the recent environmental catastrophe unfolding in the Gulf is too vivid and underscores the plight of the planet too much. But where many reviewers see hope in this book, I still see a planet heading for disaster simply because I, the reader, still feel powerless to help stop the train. Unless the residents of this fine city start getting together and implementing our own solutions we will continue to have small pockets of hope around a very sick planet.
Not only that, but as he cleverly points out change has to be FUN and beneficial – no one wants to do things out of desperation out of coming doom and gloom. A great example is cell phone technology and internet – the technology is so convenient and so seemingly necessary that hundreds of homemade solutions sprung up to bypass entirely the slow governmental machine that would have taken decades to deliver the service. What we need is someone to bring a sense of fun, cachet, unbelievable convenience and necessity at an affordable price point to renewable technologies. When that happens, consumers will drive the engine of change faster than you can blink. So to me it’s a brilliantly written book that offers the possibility of hope, but note hope as such.
If you’ve made it this far, through the very long book review, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this interesting and vital topic: what do you think of climate change, our path as a species, what we can do to actually change rather than greenwash our lives? Do we have hope?
 Readers with an eye on European politics will recognize Ali as the Somali-born member of the Dutch parliament who faced death threats after collaborating on a film about domestic violence against Muslim women with controversial director Theo van Gogh (who was himself assassinated). Even before then, her attacks on Islamic culture as “brutal, bigoted, [and] fixated on controlling women” had generated much controversy. In this suspenseful account of her life and her internal struggle with her Muslim faith, she discusses how these views were shaped by her experiences amid the political chaos of Somalia and other African nations, where she was subjected to genital mutilation and later forced into an unwanted marriage. While in transit to her husband in Canada, she decided to seek asylum in the Netherlands, where she marveled at the polite policemen and government bureaucrats. Ali is up-front about having lied about her background in order to obtain her citizenship, which led to further controversy in early 2006, when an immigration official sought to deport her and triggered the collapse of the Dutch coalition government. Apart from feelings of guilt over van Gogh’s death, her voice is forceful and unbowed—like Irshad Manji, she delivers a powerful feminist critique of Islam informed by a genuine understanding of the religion. 8-page photo insert.
From Publishers Weekly
This weekend I finished digesting the controversial autobiographical novel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the recommendation of a friend, and what a novel it was. Very well written, it chronicles the life of Ayaan from the streets of Somalia to her arrival in the Netherlands, and her journey of renouncing religion in favor of atheism. She speaks very passionately about the oppression of one half of the world’s women for religious reasons, then proceeds to warn the west about the dangers newly arrived immigrants pose. Actually this book covers a multitude of issues, way too numerous to dissect in one post – whether Islam is truly a religion of peace, whether any religion can shed its bloody history of war and oppression, whether westerners have any idea of the value of the freedoms we have, and how vigilant we must be to guard them. It’s a fascinating saga of a book that never gets too dull or pedantic but wraps up all the issues and historical context in a profound personal story.
Ayaan doesn’t pull back punches though, and some of them are aimed at the western world, that she feels is too lenient and permissive towards immigrants. She feels that hiding under political correctness and tolerance is a reluctance to protect not only the foundations of liberty of the west, but a disservice to the women and girls that continue to be persecuted by unintegrated community members of the newly arrived. She points out the statistics of the girls killed by family members, the genital mutilations performed on kitchen tables, the women’s shelters overflowing with beaten wives, the crime rate spikes in predominantly immigrant neighborhoods, and the drain on resources they represent if they choose not to learn the language and participate in the economy funded by the safety net of the world that sheltered them. Referring mainly to Holland, she says that with political correctness and tolerance and fear of being called racist, the country funds ethnic schools where the children are done a disservice with a cherry picked education, heavy on religion and light on history and science, and promote harmful segregation in the name of cultural sensitivity. They are heavy topics to discuss and yet the books doesn’t get heavy with proselytizing and reads easily.
There’s lots of food for thought here, and as an immigrant I can see both sides of the issue. On one hand you have indisputable statistics that support many of Ayaan’s assertions. You don’t have to look far in Calgary to find that the crime rates are higher as a rule in the quadrant of the city where many of the newly arrived cluster. The gang problem that’s spiked dramatically in the last few years is predominantly a product of the oriental culture and our latest murder trial was of a mother who killed her daughter for her overly westernized ways. To deny the negative impact of immigration from vastly different cultures is dishonest. But on the other hand I see a severe failing of the country to prepare immigrants for life here and perhaps even help them succeed. When predominantly young families arrive in Canada, the culture shock is often severe, I know it was for us. Despite Canada’s self-claim as a polite and friendly country it is often rather cold or uncaring towards immigrants. Sure there’s a genuinely nice culture in small towns, but that’s not where the jobs are, so newcomers end up immersed in cosmopolitan and jaded cities. Not helped by the language barrier, the people are actually not that easy to get to know with our busy lifestyles that often don’t allow us to know our own neighbors, never mind befriend someone new. We often lament that we don’t even have time to see the friends we have, let alone make time for new ones. We often wait for new people to get more ‘westernized’ before we allow them into our circle, making polite small talk at work, but not really breaking down any cultural barriers.
So what are people to do? They do what comes naturally. They find other immigrants from their country, and sigh in relief. Often lonely and homesick, having left all their friends and many family members they understandably feel comforted at meeting someone, anyone who understands, has been there and speaks the language. Quite often the informal ‘training’ they get from their friends is invaluable and not found in any guidebook. Newly arrived people don’t need to know how Canada’s parliament system works right away, they need to know how to purchase bus fare and navigate the city. Where to buy groceries and how to enroll your child in school. What work options are available and where to take English courses. This, and a myriad of other basic things, skills and tips are not found in any guide for newcomers and make culture shock more severe than it needs to be. Many people get overwhelmed with all the information flying at them with mach speed and you end up with older generations that have lived in Canada for twenty plus years and still don’t speak English. But the biggest way we fail immigrants is by failing to truly streamline their re-accreditization in their chosen profession. That’s how we end up with the most educated cab drivers. I cannot count how many people have degrees that are sitting there unused while they do menial work because they have to start from scratch and get re-certified, negating the years of effort it took to get the degree in the first place. These are people who are in the prime of their earning years who cannot afford to go back to school for four, six or eight years as they have a family to support, so their degrees get shelved as they find ways and means to support them. In the meantime, politicians bleat about nurse and doctor shortages as well as every other employee shortage you can think of, yet can’t find the time to streamline the process of getting qualifications recognized. This is a criminal waste of talent and ensures that many immigrant families’ earning power is low longer, contributing to both the burden on social services and delaying their productive integration into our society.
Whew. This is just one of the many tangents this book can take you on, so needless to say it’s an excellent and important read. I now leave you with a picture that is much more tranquil than the rant I just went on. Feel free to agree or disagree below. Or just pet a cat.
|
|
