Posts under ‘Social Change’

Expensive Cars Never Stop At Crossings

Sep 2nd, 2010

The other day I was crossing the street on a pedestrian crossing. I tend to be quite bold and don’t have the patience to wait politely until the traffic comes to a complete standstill. I mean pedestrian crossings are named that way for a purpose, yes?

I happened to be pushing a baby in a buggy and accompanied by Mona (proud mother of baby, tolerant wife of me).

I could be dramatic and say I was almost hit by the large BMW but integrity and a certain standard of honesty prevents me making such exaggerated claims. The truth is my foot was definitely on the crossing and clearly I wanted to cross the street. The BMW in question drove straight across in front of me and, had I not stopped, there might have been a nasty accident.

Mona turned to me and said,

“Expensive cars never stop at crossings.”

As a huge generalisation it probably doesn’t warrant too much investigation and it would be really pedantic to say it’s not the cars but the drivers that never stop.

Despite that, her comment did get me thinking about how much we’ve given over the world to the all powerful motorcar.

Stopping at Crossings

Haven’t we got this back to front?

I reached a point where I regard a driver who decides to stop to allow me across the street as doing me a favour. Many times I wave a hand of thanks to the driver who goes out of his/her way to slow down and let me pass. Walk down any busy street and you’ll see people patiently (or not) waiting for the traffic to stop so they can pass. Usually those on the street well outnumber those driving cars, particularly as most motors seem to only have one person sitting in them.

This is especially true in towns and cities – places having the purpose for people to live, work and relax.

Yet it’s the rare city where the pedestrian rules as we’ve given over the places we live to the automobile.

If we were to start over again I would strongly push for an approach whereby it is the driver who waits and it is the driver who waves a thankful hand to those of us on the street for allowing them to pass by.

Or better still, eliminate cars from towns and cities completely. These are places for PEOPLE not for cars!

The only places where this currently happens are a few historical cities and shopping streets. I suspect for the former this is more to preserve the old buildings and for the latter to make it harder for the shoppers to escape.

Fuelling the Monster – Part 1

No-one really knows how many motor vehicles are cruising the streets of the planet today:

Around the world, there were about 806 million cars and light trucks on the road in 2007; they burn over 1 billion m³ (260 billion US gallons) of petrol/gasoline and diesel fuel yearly.. (Source: The always reliable (!) Wikipedia)

Is it only expensive cars that don’t stop at crossings?

Whether they stop at crossings or not is largely a matter of social culture. In Romania they rarely stop unless you are spread-eagled on the tarmac in front of them. In other countries you only have to look at the crossing and they stop.

What is true, though, is ALL cars are expensive.

The purchase or lease cost is just the small tip of the iceberg (or oil field!). Add to that maintenance, fuel and insurance.

And the continual depletion of our fossil fuel reserves.

And all the resources used in vehicle manufacture and maintenance.

And road building.

And don’t get me started on the cost of air and noise pollution, traffic accidents or the accidents resulting in massive damage to the oceans (BP, anyone?).

Fuelling The Monster – Part 2

Someone has got us convinced we need at least one car each, or ideally, more than one car. Call me crazy but, personally I suspect the oil companies and car manufacturers.

Whoever it is, they’ve somehow got me to believe the car I drive says something about who I am as a human being. Am I successful enough to drive a big, flashy car? And a family car to use when no-one is watching?

It’s quite amazing how much my ego can be fuelled by driving.

One car I had some years ago was a very sexy, sleek white monster that went very fast indeed. And I felt GREAT driving it. Honestly, though it didn’t change me as a human being – only when I was behind the wheel when I myself became a very sexy, sleek white monster that went very fast indeed. And, really .. how on Earth can a car be SEXY???

These days I don’t own a car and my ego is no longer fuelled. Except when I borrow one from time and the boy racer comes out to play. Unless it’s my Mum’s car I’m borrowing!

Losing The Use Of My Legs

I enjoy driving.

It also makes some aspects of day to day life much easier. After all it’s pretty hard to do some things these days without access to a car. Not impossible but usually very inconvenient.

Perhaps those same people who fuel my ego with images of sleek, white monsters are also in collusion with those who plan our living spaces. Some living spaces are worse than others in this respect.

My parents visit the US from time to time and one place they stayed was a residential area just over the other side of the street from a supermarket. They naively thought they could just walk across the road to the other side but found there was no physical way of doing so. They had to drive there despite being only 100 metres away.

It’s so easy to get about in the car it becomes a habit. The price we pay is we lose the use of our legs. Is it coincidence the countries with high density of motor vehicles are also those with high densities of overweight people. I know it’s not a simple as that, but when I see people jump in the car to drive a kilometre down the street I wonder how long it will be before their legs drop off through inactivity.

They Are Here To Stay

Of course they are wonderful inventions and they are here to stay. I’m not suggesting any different.

What I would like is moderation and awareness.

Consider these questions every time you choose to drive in favour of other alternatives:

is driving the only way, or are there alternatives? (walk, bus, train, ask for a lift?)
what’s the total cost of this drive in financial terms – to you? (fuel, maintenance, depreciation) and to the world (or your share of all the hidden costs)?
remember that pedestrians are not a nuisance but people, just like you, who chose to use their legs instead of their wheels
is your choice of car really your choice? or is your choice influenced by the mass media? (be brutally honest with yourself!)

Drive safely!

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Knee Deep In Waste

Dec 31st, 2009

by ianpeatey.

7 comments

Three bags of garbage today and it’s the third time this week I’ve taken at least two, 35 litre bags of rubbish to the communal bins – and the week’s not over yet. I didn’t analyse what was in the bags but my guess is that about 50% was packaging and most of the rest was food. I’m feeling ashamed to admit it but this was food I’d either bought and not used in time or I’d cooked and not eaten.

Partly a post-Christmas phenomena but mainly it’s because I’ve built far too much waste into how I live my life and I want to change it.

I don’t think I’m unusual. Most of us are unaware just how much food we throw out. I read that, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, around 50% of all food production is wasted. It’s hard to find comprehensive data on this but the financial cost alone amounts to, not millions, but billions of dollars every year.

The Food We Buy

Mona just came back from the local bread store. It’s a holiday tomorrow and the store will be closed. She said the store was crazy – full of people buying 10 loaves of bread as though they wouldn’t be able to buy anymore for weeks.

I know myself that whenever I go to the supermarket I’m always tempted to buy things I hadn’t intended. Supermarkets are in the business of selling as much as possible as fast as possible. It’s not good business to throw out food and it’s not good business to take up large areas of costly storage space. They make more money the faster they can move product so they want to entice me to buy a trolley full.

Money is reasonably tight in our household, but still I rarely know how much I’m spending on food until I reach the check-out.

Displays, positioning of product, pricing, special offers, selection and store design are all aimed at one thing – to make it easy and attractive for me to buy as much as possible.

They’re doing their job very well.

What are some of the things I buy I don’t need?

Snacks – I enjoy eating chocolate and cookies but I couldn’t say I need them
Vegetables and fruit – I often throw out things that looked great in the store but start decaying once I get them home
Baked products – things that go stale before I have a chance to consume them
Dairy – we eat a lot of dairy and don’t throw so much away but even so the odd carton still goes in the bin
Jars and bottles – jams go mouldy, sauces go off before they’re finished
One off items – ingredients for a particular dish and, even buying the smallest quantity possible, the rest goes to waste
Meat – no longer an issue as I don’t eat it anymore – but when I did I often threw it out when it went it’s use by date was up.

None of these things are unavoidable!

From a simple economics point of view, the less I buy, the less will be produced – or it may be diverted to other places where it’s more needed. Waste is waste – not just the food itself but everything that’s gone into getting it into my kitchen. The less I buy, the more resources available for other things.

Cutting back may be a small drop in the ocean – but every ocean is made up of small drops.

The Food I Prepare

I was brought up as a child, as were many in the developed world, to eat everything on my plate. I’ve lost count of the number of times I heard,

Think of the starving children in Africa!

as I pushed aside an uneaten mouthful.

With more than 1 billion people estimated to be short of food that’s a lot of starving people to be thinking about.

I’ve heard people say,

Better to throw it away in the garbage than throw it away in your stomach.

Well, this is probably true. It’s even more true that it’s better not to throw it away at all!

I had a friend once who always left some food at the side of the plate. I asked her why and she told me that it was a habit – it was her way of making sure that she didn’t overeat. If she left some food then it was some kind of check that she hadn’t eaten as much as she could have done.

There must be better habits we can develop!

Why do I throw away food after I’ve made it:

Misjudging how much to cook – I often cook more rice or pasta than I need, for example
Misjudging how much I want to eat – often I’m not as hungry as I thought I was when I started cooking
Overeating – yes! I eat more than I need to
Variety – especially when entertaining guests I tend to overcomplicate and make different dishes
Bad cooking – sometimes I over-cook something or just mess it up.

All of these are avoidable.

Of course, this food is also stuff I’ve over bought – so there’s a kind of double waste.

How To Waste Less?

Here are 10 ideas that have worked for me or that I’m going to try:

Never shop when hungry
Have a shopping budget (take exactly the amount of cash I need and leave the plastic at home)
Prepare a list of what to buy and stick to it
Only buy things with a clear idea of which meal they’ll go into
Don’t allow myself to be tempted by special offers – especially those products I know I tend to throw out
Buy fewer things with a short shelf life – more often if needed
When cooking, weigh things rather than guess
Freeze leftovers
Recycle waste food for compost
Get more creative with cooking and use of leftovers (great ideas on this site).

This starts to deal with 50% of my waste. Now what about the packaging …. watch this space!

I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments about how to cut out food waste!

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When The Minority Is You

Nov 26th, 2009

by ianpeatey.

4 comments

What do you do

When democracy’s all through

What do you do

When minority means you?

‘What Do You Do‘ by The Proclaimers (from ‘Sunshine on Leith‘ -1988)

I was listening to this song the other day. I don’t usually pay much attention to the lyrics, but something about the line ‘What do you do when minority means you?’ caused me to stop and think (yes, it happens from time to time!).

Minority of One

I am a minority of one.

No other human being has the same view of the world, interests or responsibility for my life as I do. Even if I found someone who was similar enough I doubt I would fully trust them to govern any major aspect of my life. That’s my responsibility and I don’t want to put aside some things that are important to me – such as my continued education, my health, the well-being of my family etc..

We are all minorities.

As being a minority can be a lonely experience, we tend to group together in many different ways. We’re each part of communities based around families, schools, churches, interests, work or where we live. Each of those communities is a minority as well.

The only point at which we stop being part of a minority, I suspect, is when the community is so large it encompasses each and every one of us – the community of all the human beings sharing this planet.

Majority Rule

I get the impression at the level of society that the mainstream has settled for our (principally US and European variants) vision of how to organise at society level. Of course it’s a hugely complex thing and living in Europe I’m much more familiar with Western forms of government that are often conveniently lumped together and called ‘Democracy‘.

One of the principles I’ve taken for granted through my whole life is that of ‘majority rule‘ – one of the seemingly unchallenged foundations of democracy. Whenever a group of people has to make a collective decision, in my experience it ends with someone saying ‘Let’s vote.’ Of course, the unspoken assumption is that the majority will get their way and the minority will immediately give up their disagreement and follow the decision.

I’ve been wondering if maybe the root of many conflicts and violence in the world are a direct result of this assumption. After all, whenever a majority forms, there is, by definition, a minority. Aren’t many of the wars in the world a direct result of separation into majority and minority? Minorities fighting to get heard? Majorities resorting to force to get submission of the minority?

Is ‘majority rule’ really the best way we can imagine of making collective decisions?

Learning and Growing

As an individual I’m changing and developing throughout my whole life.

Physically I may start to decline at some point, but how I see the world and operate in it gets better and better as I learn. When things don’t work I make adjustments and when they do, I capture what works and repeat it. Sometimes I go down a path that isn’t serving me and then I might make radical change, but usually the growth is more gradual.

I’ve found that this is not just an unconscious experience but one where I bring things to the surface, explore my experiences to learn from them, to consciously grow and seek improvements.

While the process and the journey are different for all of us, I believe we’re fundamentally built the same way – as learning machines.

I do this as an individual, but …

… Are We Learning As Communities?

Probably, but there are not many signs of it. Reading the media and watching the foreign policies of the powerful nations I would have to conclude that ‘democracy’ and ‘majority rule’ are perceived as the ultimate form of governance. So much so that there’s a desire to export them all over the world.

I don’t have any answers at the level of society – but I’m concerned by the lack of conscious questionning of our ‘systems’ by those who hold power.

There are form of governance that don’t alientate minorities – for example ‘sociocracy‘. But there seems little appetite to introduce these kinds of government that include minorities rather than exclude them.

And it scares me.

After all – we are all minorities.

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A World Where Conflicts Are Solved Peacefully

Oct 20th, 2009

by ianpeatey.

16 comments

Something suddenly became crystal clear to me yesterday. What had been fuzzy and out-of-focus, in a flash became sharp and well defined. It wasn’t of Newtonian ‘apple-falling-from-tree-equals-gravity ‘ proportions – yet important for me nonetheless.

Dreaming Of World Peace

I’d just returned from an International NVC Mediation Conference and was chatting to a friend over a coffee, sharing our impressions of the Conference. I get quite animated when talking about my dream for the future of the world – the one I state as clearly as I can in the Welcome message over there on the right:

“… a world where conflicts are solved peacefully …”

Despite my passion for this vision, I found myself apologising for it as naïve, idealistic and impossible to achieve. I could even say I was whining a bit!

Why was I apologising, I asked myself? Do I really have my head in the clouds, I wondered? It was more confusing as I’d just spent the last 5 days together with 60 people from all over the world, learning how to mediate between two conflicting sides.

Then the apple fell.

I, like the majority of people, haven’t believed that universal peace is possible:

“World Peace? Wonderful idea .. but no chance of happening! At least not in my lifetime”

But why not?

Are we doomed to a future of turmoil, hurting and killing each other? Are we really unable, as a species, to rise above that and choose love and peace instead of hatred and fighting?

Believing In The Possible

If I don’t believe something is possible then how can I expect it to happen? If I’m trying to achieve a goal without the conviction that it can happen, my energy is getting diverted. It’s half-hearted.

This last week I found the belief I was missing. I started to believe that not only is peace possible, it’s actually not that difficult!

I learned a few skills and a simple process designed to help solve conflicts peacefully. They’re not hard to learn and we all have the foundations already – for example, empathy, interrupting, asking questions, making requests, keeping track of a conversation. There’s a little more to it than that – but not much.

I became clear that anyone can learn how to solve conflict peacefully.

World peace is possible.

All it needs is enough people to learn and apply these skills. We’ll have world peace when most of us learn a little – just enough to solve day to day conflicts, and a few learn deeper to deal with the more intense conflicts.

Peace In My Lifetime

Conflict is not going away – it is an important part of life. It’s stimulating and in the tension where interests meet there’s a creative possibility greater than what the individual sides bring. Conflict – inner or outer – drives us to innovate, create and is part of being alive. I love conflict!

Peace is not the absence of conflict but the resolution of conflict with love and respect.

I strongly believe the majority of the world’s population want this – they just don’t believe it’s possible. Many people get a superficial kick from violent conflict – but deep in their hearts are wishing to get their kicks in ways that are peaceful.

We all want peace in our lives but we don’t yet believe it’s possible. We’ve built a world where we are constantly receiving messages designed to keep hope away and keep us believing in violence.

War has been glamorised to get us to support killing in the name of the nation, religion or other cause
Violence has been pushed down our throats as entertainment by the mass media
Our culture values aggression as a sign of strength.

We’ve lost our collective hope that it can be different.

Yesterday I had also lost hope.

Today I write boldly and clearly:

Help me build a world where conflicts are solved peacefully – it is not only possible, it’s easy.

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Art Of Peaceful Competition

Oct 13th, 2009

by ianpeatey.

11 comments

The spirit of the universe is at once creative and destructive.. it creates while it destroys and destroys while it creates, and therefore it remains to us a riddle. And we must inevitably resign ourselves to this.

Albert Schweitzer

Competition is all around us .. in our business world, our education systems, sport and many forms of entertainment. It’s impossible to escape the dominance of competitive thinking and practice.

People who know me would probably describe me as an averagely competitive person. Getting me to ‘play’ might be a challenge, but when I do play, I like to win and it’s not the end of the world if I don’t. Whether it’s in my personal, social or economic life, I’ve always preferred co-operation over competition and partnership over adversarial relationships.

Somehow I had this idea that ‘competition’ is bad and I avoided it as much as possible. Recently I started to question that belief. One of the reasons was that I really enjoy watching sport and rooting for my favourite soccer team seemed hypocritical – but I still did it!

I think there are two basic approaches to competition, one creative and one destructive.

Competition as a creative force

And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high.

Ayrton Senna

This approach is to use my fellow competitors to help me raise my game to the best it can be. Winning is a measure of how well I played, relative to my opponent. It feels good when I’ve won, not because I’ve beaten anyone but because I’ve performed the best I could and that was better than anyone else.

My energy is about creating the circumstances to raise both of our games to the highest level possible. I want all my competitors to be at their peak and without my full respect towards them this won’t happen.

In my view there are few things more creative and exciting to watch than two (or more) sides at the height of their game, challenging each other to more and more skill. Whether it’s in sport, business or any other endeavour.

Yes, there may be a winner and a prize. But it is the art of the competition itself that is of primary importance. It’s what we’ve created together and we can all feel proud by having taken part.

Competition as a destructive force

Racing is not what I like to do; it’s winning.

Jeff Gordon

This approach is about winning at all costs. Winning is the end and competition the means. If I approach it in this way then I may be equally focused on getting the other side to lose than on raising my own game. One upmanship and cheating (maybe even stretching the rules to the extreme) all become part of the game and my focus is to prove (to myself, and ideally the other side), that I’m better. Winning feels good, not because I’ve played the best I could, but because I’ve won.

As competition is secondary to winning it’s much less likely that we’ll create much. It may happen but is a by-product and may be more about creative ways to destroy the opposition.

I’m more interested in myself than I am in my other player and in extreme cases I want to damage my opponent – certainly I’m not at all interested in respecting them.