Higher Purpose: Japans earthquake and nuclear crisis asks us what we really want

What do we as a people really want? What kind of technological infrastructure do we really want? Recent disasters, by taking away specific parts of the technological infrastructure running our society, demonstrate their real cost. Is this a cost we really want to pay?

To recap - last Friday a tremendous earthquake struck off the coast of Japan, triggering a Tsunami that wiped out dozens of coastal towns despite the high seawalls. The Tsunami knocked out the backup power supply at the Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, and with no electricity the cooling system at the power plant stopped running, leading to several explosions, fires, the containment buildings blown up, it's likely the inner containment structure has fractured, and the fuel rods are melting. Plumes of radiation are being unleashed out over the ocean and we could very well see radioactive clouds where I live in California. It's going bad to worse to impossibly worse. It's like a replay of last years oil spill disaster, just different details. The oil spill last year took several months to play out, and it demonstrated the icky consequences of our modern lifestyle. It appears this nuclear crisis will also take several months to play out, and it's demonstrating other icky consequences of our modern lifestyle.

Economists have this word: externality

Business leaders try to externalize costs - which is a fancy word for pushing the cost for something onto someone else so that you don't have to pay the cost yourself. An example is the health care costs of people being poisoned by exhaust from cars burning fossil oil based fuels. It's well known that the exhaust contains poisonous chemicals that cause a wide range of diseases, for example gasoline pumps have stickers warning that the pump dispenses material that is a known carcinogen. Do the oil companies pay for the health care costs? No.

That was an interesting detour - I want to discuss a question both disasters bring to mind: What do we as a people want?

When you turn on a light bulb, where does the power come from? Refrigerator? Washing machine? The computer you're reading this on? The car you drive around?

The power companies have given us an externality situation. We get to use electricity or gasoline without having to be aware of the real cost of supplying the power.

Our use of gasoline and diesel forced the oil companies to drill that oil well that blew up last year. Our use of electricity forced the electric power utilities to build the nuclear power plant that's blowing up right now.

What we see with both these disasters is the worst possible disaster scenario of both energy sources.

An offshore oil well blowing up and spewing crude oil for months into an area that supplies a huge percentage of the seafood we enjoy in the United States.

A nuclear plant blowing up and spewing radiation for what we expect will be months. Further Japan has shut down several reactor complexes because of the earthquake, causing rolling blackouts and a general shutdown of industry in Japan, disrupting sales of critical electronics components. There will be a ripple effect in the economy that could drive us into a world-wide recession or depression due to disruption of the supply chain.

One can point to the power suppliers - Maybe BP is stupid and liable because they did a horrid job of running their oil well safely - Maybe TEPCO is stupid and liable because they made bad mistakes for example putting the backup diesel generators in a place that got swamped by the Tsunami - or General Electric is stupid and liable for building a susceptibility nuclear plant design

All that's true, these companies could have made better choices and run their business with better safety in mind.

However that doesn't wash our hands of responsibility. Each of us who buy gasoline or use electricity are responsible for the existence of those companies. Those companies formed themselves in response to our demand for gasoline and electricity.

Another folly is the choice of building critical infrastructure in places we know are liable to have serious damage or other serious consequences. In this case the choice was to install nuclear power plants near a fault but really Japan is on the Ring of Fire and see's earthquakes all the time.

The planet and its processes (earthquakes, hurricanes, tornado's, weather systems, etc) are still much larger than human society has been able to "conquer". This earthquake demonstrates the power of Mother Nature - A fault needed to slip and shimmy a bit, but it destroyed the objects we built along the coast. The planet doesn't really know or care what we built upon it, the planet has geological forces that are playing out.

"We" build stuff, towns and highways and nuclear plants, then the planet yawns and stretches and destroys those things. By having those things taken away from us, it presents an opportunity to take a step back and look from a broader perspective. Are those things we really want anyway? Is the cost of having those things greater than the benefit we get from them? Is there a better place to put those things than a spot that's prone to earthquakes?

Do we really want a life where the consequences of the things we buy is a poisoned landscape with toxic air and water? Do we have to recreate the world the way it has been the last few years?

Maybe our history is asking us to rethink our society and the technological gizmos we use in our society?

See also:

Change starts "here"; Change starts with "you"; Change starts with "me"

Stand up for Real Change

This world doesn't have to become an uninhabitable nuclear radiation poisoned wasteland

Higher Purpose: Japans earthquake and nuclear crisis asks us what we really want

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Dan Phillips: Finding ones self by building creative houses from reclaimed stuff

What we really need to do is reconnect with who we really are.

Why should everything be the same? Why do we have rows of ticky-tacky houses lined up on the hillside, all the same? Why, despite all the brands of everything in the store, are all the products the same? Nature doesn't grow uniformity. Nature grows stuff based on localized needs and conditions.

Start two plants of the same species, but in different places, and the result will be plants who've adapted themselves to the local condition.

Organic growth patterns don't result in uniformity. They result in automatic adaptation and reuse of whatever is lying around.

A lot of waste in our society is because some things don't fit the supposedly desired uniformity. Say a window pane cracks on its way to the construction site. The construction foreman will reject the window because it's nonuniform and throw it on the trash pile. Wasted stuff.

Suppose a box of cereal is dented just before it's put on the shelf? The store manager might object and put it in a reject pile. Wasted stuff.

Wasted stuff is materials which went through the mining, extraction, shipping, fabrication, shipping process - and then were deemed unsuitable (nonuniform) and to be thrown away.

Links: 

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_phillips_creative_houses_from_reclaimed_stuff.html

"Why don't they run that class at night" - unwarranted corporation intrusions of job life into personal life

For most of 2009 I was unemployed (like many people) and (unlike many people) attempting to make a living using this blog. Recently I rejoined the workforce to have a job (and more stable income) and being employed again has given me perspective on the role of working for a living. What I want to write about today is a comment by a co-worker that represents a typical intrusion of the corporate needs into personal life. I've never liked how our corporate masters feel they can require any obeisance including neglect of our personal lives in order that the corporation flourish. Having spent a year working for myself it reinforced for me the wrongness of a corporation demanding intrusions into employees personal time.

Just now I was standing next to a co-worker, he noticed a list of corporate training classes being offered and remarked how it would be more convenient for him if the class were held at night. I think his view is he's too busy during the day taking care of job stuff, and a night time class wouldn't interfere with his job duties. Uh..

The time we have to live this life is limited by the number of breaths between our first squeal at birth and our last gasp at death. In between those two breaths we breath in and out several times a minute, and have a life to live while taking those breaths.

What's the best use of that time? Is it the best use of our time to spend 24/7 at the job or otherwise taking care of job stuff? Or is the best use of that time to lead a life of balance between work, pleasure, home, travel, etc?

Maybe you know some people who conceptualize that the best use of their life is to spend it on the job. Obviously I know at least one person with that idea. Heck, I used to live that way myself. But after some time, and after being laid off a couple times, it became clear for me: the company doesn't care about me. It doesn't matter how they dress up claims that a given corporation will take good care of their employees, the bottom line is that companies drop their employees in a moment if the money in the balance sheet says they have to cut staff.

Why then do employees give any loyalty to the company if the company has no loyalty for them?

To make a few guesses...

Adrenaline: Some people get high on working hard. Corporations are all too happy to find an employee who'll work 24/7, maybe because that person will replace hiring a couple more people.

Fear: Some people fear the unemployed life, don't know how to survive without employment, and need someone to give them something to do.

Normality: The normalthink is that people have a job and the boss can tell you to do anything. There's a lot of laws behind that normalthink.

What I believe is that my time is the period where I can pursue my own interests. The time I give to the corporation is when I have to deny my interests and do what the company says to do. At the times I've let the company intrude their demands into my time I was completely unable to pursue my interests, and that caused a lot of internal pain.

To put a boundary between my company and personal time my employment, now, is on a contract basis. It means there is a strict set of hours I'm on the job, the corporation can't demand I work overtime, and my time is my time. Speaking of which my lunch hour just ended and I have to go back. Cheers.

Lost Generation

This video was created for the AARP U@50 video contest and placed second

Article Reference: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E2fAWM6rA

Cerberus Capital: Literally Blood-Sucking the Poor to Make Their Billions | Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace | AlterNet

Normally when people moan about blood-sucking corporations it's not as literal as this story. Cerberus Capital, one of Wall Street’s most notoriously ruthless leveraged-buyout firms made a $1.8 billion profit from buying, and the later selling, the company named Talecris. Talecris engages in buying blood plasma from plasma donors, then producing and selling products from that plasma.

Theoretically buying and selling companies is part of the free market, right? Wall Street financiers should be just as free as anybody else to buy any company they like, make corporate changes to refurbish the company, and then sell the company. It's just like when the car addict down the street continually buys and resells cars, but in the case of financiers buying and selling companies there are peoples lives at stake along with the products and services operated by those companies.

Cerberus Capital paid $82.5 million for Talecris and later sold the company for $1.8 billion. Quite a profit, eh? They must be real smart. Or extremely ruthless. According to the alternet article: "They did it by the most savage, heartless means possible: by paying peanuts to their impoverished human plasma donors, who increasingly come from Mexican border towns to blood-pumping stations set up on the American side, jacking up the price of plasma by restricting supply , and then selling the refined products to the most desperately ill, patients suffering from hemophilia, severe burns, multiple sclerosis, and autoimmune deficiencies."

Cerberus Capital has a long and shady record. For example they bought Chrysler and GMAC, drove both companies into the ground, arranged for tens of billions in government bailout funds, bleah. The corporate management is a who's who of "free market" leaning Republican insiders such as former Treasury Secretary John Snow and former Vice President Dan Quayle.

Sometimes I think the "free market" people simply want less government regulation so they can have more freedom to screw everybody. That's what has happened in this case.

Article Reference: 

Cerberus Capital: Literally Blood-Sucking the Poor to Make Their Billions | Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace | AlterNet

Gasoline Fumes May Fuel Road Rage | Autopia | Wired.com

it might be the fumes you’re inhaling while pumping gas that make you angry. Amal Kinawy of Cairo University found that rats exposed to gasoline fumes were more aggressive than those breathing clean air and more likely to show signs of anxiety. What’s more, their brains experienced changes in neurotransmitters in the hypothalamus, hippocampus and cerebellum. Although Kinaway limited her research to rats, she says the findings could apply to humans and be a factor in road rage.

Article Reference: 

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/11/gasoline-fumes-road-rage/

Links: 

http://delicious.com/reikiman/7gen

Sustainable Work Life

The word 'Sustainable' most often is used to refer to resource utilization such as sustainable farming practices that preserve soil health. However the word itself refers to patterns which sustain life over the long term. Sustainable farming practices sustain an ecosystem over the long term, etc. But what about our day-to-day lives can also be made sustainable as well?

In my day job my coworkers and myself have recently undergone a period of extreme overwork. The product being developed has a huge feature list, there is a lot to accomplish in order to achieve the envisioned goals and there is very little time to reach the goal. This of course meant the team routinely worked overtime often 80 more hours a week.

This sort of scenario happens in businesses around the world all the time. The bosses of the world seem to have worked out ways to motivate employees to work long hours. What inspires me write at this moment is the unhealthy condition this creates in employees and the employers responsibility.

It's widely known that working long hours is unhealthy. A lot depends on the sort of work being performed, as long hours in front of a computer doesn't create the same bodily stress as long hours threshing grain in a field.

The Center for Disease Control publishes Work Schedules: Shift Work and Long Work Hours , an overview of studies regarding long work hours, working at night, and shift work. It refers to greater degree of accidents and other health issues.

Working Long Hours Places Women at Health Risk A UK study suggests working long hours can cause women to indulge in unhealthy behaviors more so than men.

The impact of overtime and long work hours on occupational injuries and illnesses: new evidence from the United States Results: After adjusting for those factors, working in jobs with overtime schedules was associated with a 61% higher injury hazard rate compared to jobs without overtime. Working at least 12 hours per day was associated with a 37% increased hazard rate and working at least 60 hours per week was associated with a 23% increased hazard rate. A strong dose-response effect was observed, with the injury rate (per 100 accumulated worker-years in a particular schedule) increasing in correspondence to the number of hours per day (or per week) in the workers' customary schedule.

This article in the International Game Developers Association website is especially appropriate: Why Crunch Mode Doesn't Work: 6 Lessons More than a century of studies show that long-term useful worker output is maximized near a five-day, 40-hour workweek. Productivity drops immediately upon starting overtime and continues to drop until, at approximately eight 60-hour weeks, the total work done is the same as what would have been done in eight 40-hour weeks. In the short term, working over 21 hours continuously is equivalent to being legally drunk. Longer periods of continuous work drastically reduce cognitive function and increase the chance of catastrophic error. In both the short- and long-term, reducing sleep hours as little as one hour nightly can result in a severe decrease in cognitive ability, sometimes without workers perceiving the decrease.

In the game industry the bosses routinely force employees into crunch mode working the employees for long long long hours. But this article shows decades of research into the productivity available from a workforce based on the hours of work per week. Rested healthy employees are able to do more and able to perform more reliably than ones who are worn out and punchy from working long hours. Duh..

Sustained Reduced Sleep Can Have Serious Consequences

Working Long Hours: a Review of the Evidence The review of the research literature shows that long hours working, especially when coupled with sleep disruption, causes deterioration of task performance, because it has detrimental effects on such things as rates of error, pace of work and social behaviour....The review of the research literature shows clear grounds for concern about the adverse effect of long hours working and (the frequency of) health and safety incidents. However, most of this research focuses upon specific occupations (eg long distance lorry drivers, the medical professions), which precludes more general conclusions being drawn. ...The review of the research literature shows that there is little robust statistical evidence on the effects of long hours working on employee motivation, absence and turnover. However, self-reporting and organisational case studies suggest that long working hours has a negative effect on motivation, absence and turnover....

Why do employers regularly ask for long work hours? Great question. Perhaps they're all skinflinting scrooges who don't care about the negative effects on their employees. Who knows? Clearly this is a pattern which has existed for centuries if not more.

In the modern societies like the U.S.A. there are laws about work hours. These regulations vary from country to country but obviously there are ways the bosses have of getting around the laws.

One way is that in my profession nobody works on an hourly basis but instead on a salaried basis. Such workers are not subject to hour limits on their work time and can be subject to extra work.

Employers are in a position of leverage over their employees. Obviously the employer is in the position of providing money, and the money is what provides food and shelter. You can easily analyze this with the hierarchy of needs, with the first rung of the hierarchy being food and shelter. Basic survival of the employee, then, is dependent on receiving money from the employer. Hence this puts the employer in the position of providing the employees survival. THAT is a crucial role to play and even subtle threats on that flow of money can appear to the employee to be a threat to survival.

Can an employee effectively choose to keep their work life in healthy balance? This seems like a difficult thing to accomplish. For example some fields of work routinely have long shifts such as in medicine or fire fighters. If every employer in your chosen field of work insists on unhealthy work hours, what can you do?

What is the ideal arrangement of working, workers, employment, employers, and sustainable survival? I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

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