Perspective

Whatever we do, wherever we go, whatever we think we carry our past with us. All of our thoughts and actions carry tendrils that reach back into the past. Most tendrils may only go back into recent living memory, a large number may go back a few generations, a few may go back a long way to medieval times, such as the times of the plague, and one or two may stretch way back into the mist of time, the stone age or even beyond. We are inescapably tied to our past. It shapes and determines how we think for the future.

Today we are plagued by short-termism. This country in particular has no long-term investment view. What is the least input required to be able take out the grosses benefit, that is the ruling mantra. Our ancestors took pride in what they produced, mostly, they put all their skills into making something to hand on to the next generation. What they produced was their measure of worth, their public mark of where they stood in their community. Not for them the quick cheap fix, stuff it in nobody will notice or care. We have inherited those quality products and now routinely trash them with contempt. Today the labour cost is king whilst thousands are idle or employed in lowgrade drudgery work. But hey technology is changing so fast there is no point in making things to last anymore and robots do a much more consistent and faster job than any human. What do I care, nothing to do with me, I will just buy the next model upgrade and see if that works any better.

Sitting on top of this economic model that drives our culture are the Supermarkets, exploiting to the very limits, promoting and using every psychological trick to encourage us to revel in this throw away society. Buy more, buy cheaper, buy because its not going to be there tomorrow, buy, buy. To placate the institutional shareholdings who only look for the percentage gain this minute to the next minute and most certainly have no stake in a week, month or even a years strategy let alone any long term goal. The Supermarkets need to keeping increasing the amount they sell day by day. Squeezing their suppliers and manufacturers to cut corners, to cut standards, to cut quality, anything to reduce costs by that pence here or there. Cutting until just before the point of customer drift. Maintaining high standards and expectations, promoting a strive to improve quality and experience just are not their agenda. Lulled as we are into this false security of trusting our run-of-the-mill supplier, the Supermarket outlet. They are doing what is best for us. Ha. In our name they are corrupting the quality of life we depend on. They do not have a balance sheet on the numbers of people kept in production employment, the plunder of raw resources, the wanton accumulation of discard's to be tipped, they are just exploiting the economic model. The model which states labour is an key expense and throwaway is cheaper then longevity. 

Just remember there is nothing intrinsic about labour being a dominate cost factor, just as there nothing intrinsic about cheap throwaway technology. We are bright enough and creative enough to devise alternative economic models, if we choose to. Models, just for example, that reward local production, that reward least use of raw materials, that have long shelf life's, that have upgradeable platforms or reusable core components. There are lots of other options to consider, if we had the will. If we chose not to treat our Earth as infinite landfill site and face the reality of diminishing natural resources. We could if only we cared. We might then rediscover a pride in what we passed on to our children.

Time to Share.

We look at it, we know it, we are almost bored with the thought but we carry on doing nothing. We humans have replicated to such a point that our capacity to plunder exceeds our limited Earth's capacity to provide. Been like that for a long time and what do we do? We sail on stripping the Earth of its irreplaceable assets as if there is no tomorrow. At least no tomorrow for our children now born, us, oh we will be all right, be enough to see us through! But we put so much time and energy into protecting our children and giving them best start out possible why bury our heads and ignore that that we know is going to happen? 

It is too big a problem? We are many, we are the cause and we can also be the solution. 'They' will sort it out. No, too set in a rut, 'they' can only carry on the way they always have, too much at stake for them to want to change. Ignore it and it will go away? It just gets to be an even bigger problem the longer we leave it. Scaremongering, just another false crisis made up for some political agenda? No. This is for real. There are so many fronts, each are telling the same story. Many, not just oil, essential minerals have a known finite reserve. Climate is going to change and our food sources are going to suffer. We strip the Earth of its lungs, the rain forest, we trash the soils with monoculture, we poison the ground with insecticides and fertilisers, we drive species to extinction just for our greed, it goes on and on. Wherever you are on the political spectrum, you cannot deny every single aspect. We have a problem.

On another tack we in the West have expectations of what we need to surround ourselves with to cope with life. The whole gamut, homes, furniture, food, transport, leisure activities, technology, we want it, we need it, we cannot survive without our access to it, to it all. China's millions are now waking up to these self same expectations. Their government pro-actively is out there now buying up rights to resources around the world, so their people can have what you take for granted. Not just China, but India, Africa and the S.America's are all looking and their appetite's to have also are awakening. The stuff they want does not come out of thin air, is not 're-cycled', it all comes out of the Earth, in one way or another. We have a problem.

We have to change tack. Put an end to this winner takes all attitude. The biggest, the most powerful take all they want. Be it hundred times, one thousand times, one million times more than the next person. It is their sovereign birth right to take it, to have it, protect it and stop you from getting a morsel. Whether we are thinking about individuals, companies, bank bosses, governments, continents, the same attitude applies. Those with the power take, take all they have a fancy to and those without, do with that much less.

We have to stop. We have to begin to care for that person next to us. They have as much right to what we have as we have to it. Nothing, nothing at all, gives us the right to have more, more than our neighbour. We have to share to make sure that what we enjoy is not disproportionate to what everyone else has. Only when we can be satisfied that others have had the chance to take their portion are we free to go back for more. This is the heart of being human. Whether we think about person to person or country to country, this is the true spirit of humanity. The takers have usurped us, now it is time for all of us to stand up and shame them for what they are. To claim back, on behalf us all, what is rightfully ours. To say no you are not entitled to that bonus, to use those share to your own advantage, to enact that legislation which is inequitable, your title deeds do not allow you sole occupancy, call it out as it is. Stand up, together, and shout out loud, "Fair for All or None at all".

There is Another Way

Just read an article that has given me hope, great hope, 'Evolution of Inequality, New Scientist, 28.07.2012'. I am no longer that nutter aspiring to impossible dreams. There are alternatives, so they are achievable if only we want them enough. Our capitalist based society of the winner grabs the lions share and gets to dictate has only been around for some 5,000 years. Whether or not you accept the premise that prior to that our hunt gatherers ancestors lived an egalitarian lifestyle  matters not. What does count is that there is an alternative to grab first and hoard. He with the biggest hoard gets to take his pick of what is available,  grab more and then use his hoard to buy fealty. The rich just get richer and richer off the backs of the poor, too poor and weak to resist.

The alternative is an egalitarian society where we look out for each other and make sure that what we have is no more than what anyone else has. No one is left in need or want, the group looks after it kin, as the weakest bring them all down, but together they have strength beyond the sum of their parts.

Just the required fresh new way of looking at our world as we have passed beyond the tipping point, where our plunder of its resources exceeds its capacity to replace or regenerate. We have to get back to a more frugal way of life. We have to stop putting our own little clique first and start to ensure all people born on this planet have some hope of a life not too disparate from our own expectations. A way to minimise our use and waste of scarce earth resources. A chance to rein in the incomprehensibly wild extravagances of the few and to look carefully at what the earth is able to offer so that we can all have a comparable share in it. Not equality. Not match for match, but comparable, not so disparate as to give rise to resentment, but a rough and ready fairness dependant on global position, climate and ease of access to resources.

Of course the bully boys and their cohort thugs have ruled the roost for millennia. Each generation is born with them as their only their role model of, take what you want and answer to nobody, as the possible viable route to follow. They are not going to give up their inherited accustomed rights and privileges. Yet their excesses can only be fuelled by the acquiescence of the masses that go without. So it is mutable, but whether peacefully or their rush to force can only be countered by a matching force, is the question to be addressed.

There are prospects, not everything we value in life is based on what can be obtained by force. Appreciation, respect, attention, these give an inkling of an Achilles heel that could bring the capitalist tyrants to book, maybe. Assuming, as a daydream, we overthrow our capitalist society and replace it with a society founded on egalitarianism, the battle is not over. There is always, in every society, it is in our human nature, the small percentage of cheaters, who claim full shares but hold back and conceal their gains. Or even worse steal or take by force when no one is looking. Nothing new here I guess. Like our hunter gatherer ancestors before us, the consequences of becoming a social pariah has to outway any advantage gained by stealing a march. When we all share in the same comparable distribution of resources, when we all know what we are entitled to, it does take the heat out of the need to go one better.

The longer you contemplate an egalitarian society the more it reveals in it a new calmness, the need to work together rather than to complete. How the world could begin to start out afresh in a new dimension. Inspirational but not beyond realisable.

Right to Plunder

Time to roll up the sleeves and get serious.

Our attitude to this Planet has to change, it is not an infinite resource that can be plundered at will and used as a stock-pile to make money out of. We know enough now to understand it is limited and our greed is, or already has, taken us to the point where the end of the earth's resources can be counted.


Already we are talking of running out of oil but that is just a for instance. Whichever way you look there are just too many of us all wanting our share in these limited resources. Gas, rare metals, water, fish, unless it is renewable, it is under threat and has to be in doubt.

So we are not just talking about the buried minerals nor just the flora and fauna that feeds on the surface of our planet but the atmosphere we breath and depend on to create our climate. All is finite, limited and under threat from our continued abuse of our globe. Too many of us expecting more than our share. We have to change tacks. Time for us to accept that we are mere custodians of this planet we live on and we have a responsibility and obligation to our sons and daughters that will inherit the Earth we pass onto them.

It is for us to make sure the Earth we pass on is in no worse a condition than the Earth we inherited. We don't own it we are just temporary custodians.

In principle, if we take something out of our planet that will not replenish itself, if we spoil part of the planets infrastructure that cannot repair itself then we have to make amends to the future generations. If we take out from the planet a resource that will need time to recoup or we spoil virgin soil, these are not free commodities, they have to be paid for, upfront before the event, not a reluctant minimal gesture after the event and after the profits have been taken. Want to take a non-renewable, fine but first pay the full costs of reinstatement to as was beforehand. Even the renewables replacement will have to be paid for first. So pay for the cost of conserving stocks and attendant enforcement before you take your 'free' fish.

Nothing is perfect, so we don't know the full implications of a spoilt or lost resource 50 years down the line but we can best guess the implications as of now. Nor can we fully monetise all the implications but again we can best guess, taking a median position between extremes and all out in the public peer-reviewed. That's a better starting point than the present free-for-all. This conversion into money for the act of spoiling some aspect of our planet for future generations is not a government get out of jail free card. The money has to be ploughed straight back into a relevant conservation or remedial project. To make some amends for the mess we are currently living with. We have to take serious now this planet we live and on start to look after it in a meaningful way.

This principle spreads wider and relates not just to the planet, its biosphere, flora and fauna but also to the accumulated history of man's activities on the earth. The rich mosaic of artifacts we inherited needs to be conserved for future generations, for it explains what we are. Not every single scrap that has history marked on it, but those that are lodged as relevant and significant to the place, time or progression. Most of our vast accumulation of detritus from the past will fail the test suggested leaving some room to move forward.

If a property passes the test and is relevant and significant, then those features and their setting deemed so must be preserved, repaired and a new apt use found, with all costs carried by the custodian owner or forfeit their claim. Once every avenue has been explored and there are no viable options, only then can the owner opt for demolition or significant change. As a pre-requisite the owner to pay up-front for a complete 3D and physical archive of those deemed features and settings, reclaimation of all re-usable materials and payment for future proofed archiving of such records, in consideration of the history lost to later generations.

Just to loop back to an earlier post, to turn green soil into a building plot is not a free right that can be issued by the government. It belongs to our future and the least is an up-front payment to remove all evidence of mans intervention and return the soil back to its prior condition. As above such money not trickling into government coffers but put into immediate use to rescue land or a building in peril.

Nothing is for free and an appropriate contribution to the loss for future generations must be made before commercial gain can be taken.