Can we use our humanity to outwit our humanity?

Reading Craig Dilworth’s book “Too Smart for Our Own Good”  (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Too-Smart-our-Own-Good/dp/052175769X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338150827&sr=1-1) I often find myself disliking his academic style.  The reason people like Richard Dawkins are much better known is not because the ideas he expresses are any more valid, but because he does not use academic jargon.  To some extent academics are trapped into a system in which they cannot advance their careers without having their writings approved by “peer review” and there seems to be a conspiracy amongst academics to encourage the use of jargon simply to impress each other.

Dilworth’s book explains how and why human beings are destroying their future.  It’s about human ecology, a science which hardly existed before 1960 . To study human ecology it is necessary to step outside our species and look at how we behave in an objective and scientific fashion. The science is searching for answers to such questions as “what do humans do and why do they do it?”  You can’t even begin to ask such questions unless you are prepared to view homo sapiens as one of many similar species of animal with very similar genetic make-up and, in many ways, very similar behaviour.

The paradox is that taking an “objective” view of your own species is something only human beings can do. All animals and most humans can only view life from within the constraints of their instincts and culture. Their concerns are mostly with food, territory, and reproduction.  Most of us live our lives within the culture we have inherited from many previous generations.  We don’t question ideas like “economic growth” because it’s been with us all our lives. Our livelihoods depend on the use of fossil fuels, but so did those of our ancestors.

To understand why our instincts and culture are leading us to catastrophe we have to step outside our normal lives and look at how our species has behaved over the thousands of years we have been in existence.  What is so extraordinary is that the body of accumulated knowledge which now enables us to do this has only just reached the point where the pieces start falling into place.  The central ideas come from Darwin, but amazingly it turns out that (as I recently discovered) the implications of his thesis have not been truly understood until quite recently.  For many years the phrase “survival of the fittest” has been misunderstood and derided.  Now at last we are beginning to get a true understanding of what we have been doing all this time, and the implications are truly horrifying.

Just as we begin to say “ah, that’s what has been happening” we realise that it is probably too late to do anything about it.  Is there a grain of hope in the “probably”?  There may still a chance that the worst can be averted, but to do so we have to hold that contradiction in our hands; we have to know that we are just another species with all our inherited baggage, but also know that we have the unique capacity to look at ourselves. What we have to do is use our humanity to outwit our humanity. 

Its 7 am and I've just ridden to the Junction Pool on my electric bike.

This is the point where the Towy and Doethie rivers meet and is a popular bathing spot on the few occasions when the weather is hot enough.  To the right is the Dinas, a conical hill where you can find Twm Sion Catti's cave. This spot also featured in the S4C drama "Pen Talar" as the site of a rape.

I've brought my breakfast with me and am sitting on a rock watching the sun hit the mountains opposite. It'll be hot later but for now it's cool and absolutely quiet except for the birdsong. A pair of dippers just chased each other up the Towy.

I first came to this valley in about 1974, and for several years I came every spring to help guard the Peregrine Falcon sites. I used to climb up through the trees here...

... and sit watching the crag opposite:

 On one occasion I saw a group of racing pigeons speeding through the valley. The Peregrine stooped, one of the pigeons tried to escape by flying staight up but the falcon took it from below; one of my most exciting bird watching episodes.

Now I must ride the half hour back to Cilycwm - a great way to start the day. 

The Elephant in the Room

I’ve been spending a lot of time in the last few days reading and getting to grips with the articles and links generated by Paul Chefurka http://www.paulchefurka.ca/  It started with a piece I discovered when trying to find some data on rates of population growth relating to  food supply: The Elephant in the Room:”  http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Population.html

It may seem strange to be delighted to find such a clear exposition of the disaster we are facing, but the delight was from the realisation that there were lots of other people out there who think in the same way as I do. Last year I wrote a short piece trying to sum up the problem as I saw it and put it on this blog - look for  "State of the World" in September 2011, or use this link: http://morningking.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/state-of-world.html .


I posted links on Twitter and Facebook but nobody was interested.  I had a fairly good idea why nobody was interested:  there is no evolutionary need to be concerned about anything which does not affect the period between birth and the sexual maturity of our offspring - about 12 years. Now I find there is a thing called “hyperbolic discount function” which shows how good we are at rapidly responding to an immediate threat but how our interest in anything long-term rapidly falls away: http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Hyperbolic%20Discount%20Functions.html

I developed these ideas in another piece which I didn’t publish:

Why do I waste my time writing arguments for carbon reduction when so many others have written with much greater authority and done far more research?

Simply because after half a lifetime of reading and discussion, I think I have a clear view of the big picture.  The so called “Green” movement has amassed libraries full of statistics and polemic.  Their arguments are rational and well thought out, but the things they say which connect with the general public at an emotional level (which is where decisions are made) are not the important central truths. Many of us love the idea of “self sufficiency”, nature conservation, growing our own food, eco houses, sustainable transport, recycling etc. Yet those same people can say that Britain needs “economic growth” to avoid “recession”.

The unfortunate thing is that the big truths are so unpalatable to most of us that expressing them sounds not just eccentric but unhinged. Here are some of them:

• Following the laws of evolution, the biggest motivator of human action is whatever enables the largest number of our children to survive to breeding age. We have no instinctive desire to provide food and resources beyond that period.
• Our present “standard of living” is based on accelerating use of energy and resources (economic growth) and is not sustainable without them.
• Our present global population owes its existence to fossil fuels and cannot survive without them.
• We cannot cut carbon emissions to levels which will prevent catastrophe and maintain anything like western levels of consumption.

Sounds pretty hopeless doesn’t it, and we all know you can’t motivate people to take action without hope. Elected politicians just want to get re-elected and won’t look more than 5 years ahead, so it’s down to us, we who care about the future and can stare into the abyss without losing hope. These are some of the ideas I cling to:

• Things will get worse before they get better. History shows us that our most adaptive behaviour is in response to crisis.
• Human ingenuity is amazingly powerful. Up to now it has been used to deliver super-abundance of resources within the 20 year time span, but faced with crisis who know what we could achieve?

It should be evident to anyone who looks at the scale of energy consumption in Britain that thinking we can replace fossil fuel energy with renewable energy and carry on living the good life is pie in the sky.

The only way we can hope to cut our carbon emissions to levels which will slow down global warming is by a massive cut in energy consumption. We owe our fantastic standard of living to the burning of fossil fuels, mainly coal and oil, at a steadily expanding rate. This has been going on for so long (hundreds of years) that we regard it as normal, and economists speak of "economic growth" as if it were some kind of natural process like grass growing. Now at last we are being presented with the bill, and our politicians are trying all sorts of ingenious ways to avoid paying it.

I’ve been on the fringes of Green politics for 40 years and until recently believed fervently that we could change people’s behaviour in time to prevent catastrophe. I now believe it is too late. Things are happening too quickly. This realisation drove Paul Chafurka into three years of depression. If you look at his recent writings you will see that he has turned to a various forms of spirituality to give some meaning to life.  I certainly believe there is a place for the spiritual in all our lives, but I always come back to Voltair’s maxim “Il faut cultiver notre jardin” – we must cultivate our garden. To me this means that we find meaning in life doing the ordinary physical tasks that sustain us, but also literally that gardening is one of the best healers of the soul because it puts us in touch with our most basic needs.

Being of a very practical nature has been a mixed blessing for me. Having drifted into earning my living with my hands - being a woodworker rather than an architect – has meant earning £16 an hour rather than £60. Now I am facing being unable to do the hard physical work I love. Still, despite all this, being able to do a whole range of practical things is a much better way of dealing with a depressing global future than sitting at a desk all day thinking about it, and far better than being locked into a nonsensical economic system which regards “growth”, “progress” and “development” as its main goals.

I’ve just been watching two jackdaws pulling bits of wool out of an uncomplaining sheep to line their nests with – that’s my kind of spirituality.

addicted to DIY?

5 Dec 2011
Can you be addicted to "jobs around the house"? For the last three years I have worked nearly every day on this house as employment - as if I were being paid for it. Until a year ago I was in a sense being paid for it by accumulating a larger share of the eventual sale value of the property. Since we moved the shares have stayed the same but I still work with the same intensity.
Now in the run up to Christmas the intensity has increased to the extent that I find it difficult to think of anything else I want to do. What has happened to my resolve to write more, to get more engaged with creative things which are not sound dependent? When, finally, the list of jobs still to be done is down to the really finicky - that little bit in the top corner which only I can see - will I have forgotten how to relax?
Perhaps not, because even though my immediate motivation is still obsessive, now that I am down to the last few details in the kitchen I can feel a real sense of achievement- a glow of satisfaction every time I look at the room with different lighting or from a different angle.
The traditional Christmas deadline is different this year because for the first time in may years we are hosting a gathering of a key selection of my ruptured family overlapping with part of Thelma's. Since Jan, my ex-wife, invited us for Christmas two years ago, this is now the return match and she is coming together with Hannah, Megan and  Charlie. Hannah has just had a dramatic falling out with her current partner but her ex Danny will be arriving on Boxing day at around the same time as Matt and Carol.
Viv and Nina are coming for New Year.
I have to admit it is really important to me to have Jan's approval of what I have done here. Thelma has had a very large say in what went into this house, and her values have had a big effect on how I think about things in general, but the driving aesthetic behind my designs is still the one I developed, with Jan, in my thirties. The influence of Barry and Maggie Thompson and Vic Chinnery is still strong. We all shared a love for the simple interiors found in early American homes which were copied from Dutch and English rural styles. If, like many of the Dutch merchants, you were wealthy, your protestant ethic did not permit you to flaunt it. A well-ordered simple life was the benchmark, but you showed your closeness to the Lord by careful craftsmanship and attention to detail.
Fortunaltely Thelma, perhaps because of her protestant faith, also feels the strength of this view of the world as was evident when we recently spent half a day at the "Vermeer's Women" exhibition in Cambridge.

The day I dread - turning the clocks back

Sunday 30 October 2011

 

5.45 am

The awful day the clocks go back: we say “go” back as if they did it themselves; an illusion fostered by the computers who do indeed change the hour without our intervention. Presumably the deed was done at 2.am – a tiny movement on the digital display; two becomes one. It’s an illusion because they can only do this if a human being tells them to. The other clocks, those run by simple electric motors simply keep ticking away recording the passing hours. These we have to reset by hand.

That’s an easy job – one finger does it in seconds, but how can I change my body clock? -  this strange bundle of neural impulses inside my brain which tells me it is time to get up. For years its waymarks have been drifting slowly forwards: it always feels more natural to do things earlier rather than later. It takes a continual effort, a constant vigilance, to wait a little longer for the next meal, to work for another 15 minutes when you feel like stopping, to stay awake another half an hour in the evening, and hardest of all to stay in bed longer when you feel like getting up.  While all you out there, the great consensus, are rejoicing at being allowed another hour in bed, I am wondering how I am going to do everything a whole hour later than my body requires.

Today I did not even begin the task. I am still firmly in yesterday’s time. As I go through the day I will find ways to delay things and hope to keep going longer in the evening. If I manage that, there is a chance I may wake later tomorrow. I will get there eventually but it will take at least a week.  Then I can enjoy the winter in the knowledge that next spring the tables will be turned: the arrival of British Summer Time will give me an extra hour. For a few glorious days we early risers will be on top of the clock, riding the hours. This adaptation will be easy, and if talk in the media is correct, we may never have to face the clocks going back again.

This computer may have changed its clock but the Blogger site still thinks it's yesterday - must be run by late risers!

The Cambridge Chancellor Election

We went to Cambridge last week-end, partly as a week-end break, but with a purpose: to vote in the election for Chancellor.

My feelings about Cambridge are very mixed. When I got involved with the Peterhouse society as a committee member I reacted angrily against the young-fogyishness of it, the innate sense of superiority which goes with the public school tradition. Despite this there is still lots to love about the place and especially the odd eccentric traditions which still have great power.

Nothing could be more typical of Cambridge eccentricity than this election. It is over 100 years since they last had an election for chancellor and when the relatively uncontroversial choice of Lord Sainsbury was put forward as a replacement for Price Philip nobody expected one this time. However, a local shopkeeper, Abdul Arain, said “What has Lord Sainsbury ever done for Cambridge town?” and stood against him. When the election was announced two more candidates were put forward… a radical lawyer and the student’s choice, Brian Blessed.

A normal institution would send out ballot papers to all who were eligible to vote, but not Cambridge University. In this election you have to vote in person in the Senate house. To be eligible you have to be a member of the Senate and only those with masters degrees or higher are members. So those with first degrees are excluded then? Oh no – you can buy a masters degree for £10 if you apply a couple of weeks in advance. I had taken my masters degree years ago so I am eligible, but another condition is you have to wear a gown, and if I ever possessed a master’s gown I certainly don’t now. Problem? – “Oh no sir we can lend you one.”

The idea of going to vote became increasingly attractive. Thelma likes Cambridge anyway so she was very happy to go, and booked a B&B. I got in touch with three of my old friends from student days: Nick Stern was not going though his son was. Jim Cuthbert, now resident in Devon, wasn’t either, and Vince Bodsworth couldn’t,  but said to call in at Cricklade if we were driving. We stayed Thursday night in Bristol and got to Cricklade (near Swindon) on Friday morning. It turned out that Vinnie was in America but Chris was pleased to see us and we had a good catch-up session before the long drive across country to Cambridge.

The B&B was out of the centre so we took a bus in. It was surprisingly cold and I didn’t have a coat so decided to go and vote there and then.

I stepped into a different world – a world of privilege.  I must admit I loved it. As you might expect from what is at present rated the top university in the world, nothing is too much trouble for us “alumni”. There are men and women in gowns everywhere being as helpful as they could possibly be. One even sprinted across the Senate house quadrangle to pass on a message from Thelma that she would meet me at the “Combination Room” where they are serving refreshments. First I am lent an MA gown – longer and more elegant than the “bum freezer” gown we used to have to wear as undergraduates. Then I am asked my name and directed to the T registration table. Two attractive young people efficiently and graciously find my details, give me a little CU badge and direct me to the ballot box. There I put my first choice as Brian Blessed and my second as Abdul Arain.

All this takes place in the Senate house the elegant 18^th century hall where we used to sit our exams. The last time I was here was (according to the people with the register) in 1971 when I was required to hold one of the “praelector’s” fingers and was led into the hall with 4 others also holding a finger. (OK, seriously weird, but this is Cambridge University don’t forget). Then I was with my parents and some foreign girl asked to take my photograph. This time it was Thelma taking pictures. I was glad to hand back my status symbol and then we both went to enjoy our refreshments – seriously good coffee, tea and cakes in a fabulous medieval building.

I got my place at Cambridge by my own efforts from and ordinary grammar school in Swindon. It felt as if we were the future of the ancient universities in the sixties. The next lot of students were no longer required to wear gowns in the town, then all the colleges went mixed sex – it seemed that this wonderful world of academic excellence and ancient tradition was now part of the birthright of any Briton who could pass the exams.

Alas it was not to be. Cambridge is still a great place for free thinkers, it still welcomes people of all faiths politics and race, but its radicalism has been smothered in polite, friendly, liberal elitism. The public school boys have changed their accents to sound like the rest of us. They are less arrogant, but they still regard a Cambridge education as their right. They still give huge sums to their old colleges to keep the system going. (Although the money often enables the underprivileged to obtain scholarships  - see what I mean about niceness?)

How many of us lower orders are seriously going to travel to Cambridge to vote for a ceremonial office?  How naïve of me to think that anyone other than the establishment figure of Lord Sainsbury had a chance? A liberal lady don writing in the Guardian didn’t even consider voting for the “foul mouthed” Blessed. Sainsbury took over half the votes with Brian trailing well behind and the other two nowhere in sight – although the totally unknown Mr Arain did get over 300 votes.

Half of the next day we spent in another fabulous Cambridge institution – The Fitzwilliam Museum. They had an exhibition on called “Vermeer’s Women- Secrets and Silence”. Vermeer is one of my favourite artists, and although most of the paintings were by his contemporaries, the whole was a masterpiece of the curator’s art. All those still domestic interiors, those pensive women going about their peaceful occupations, turn out to have been charged with intense symbolism. They are full of mystery, allegory and didactic moralism. They are also wonderfully beautiful.

A second exhibition on the treasures of the Viennese court was even more surprising. The Hapsburg princes were immensely wealthy and spent vast amounts of it commissioning the most intricate craftsmanship imaginable. The skill employed in making some of the small artefacts on display is so incredible it looks like magic.

Then there are the permanent collections – it’s too much; our minds were so expanded we were exhausted and stumbled off to the Anchor pub by the river for some lunch. The town was heaving - thousands of young people mostly non-european looking.  What are they all doing here? I don't much like modern Cambridge - it's too big and rich. After walking a few more miles round the town we got the bus back to the B&B for a rest before heading out again in the evening. 

Evenings when we are away from home are a huge problem for me. I’m hungry before 7 but don’t want a big, long drawn out meal. If I go to bed before 11 I’m awake at 5 and have to face the prospect of 3 hours of tedium before I can hope for breakfast.

Live (amplified) music is OK if it’s in the right environment and something I can feel an involvement with. I used to be able to enjoy the theatre if it had a loop system, but that doesn’t work for me any more. Meetings, lectures and conferences are pretty hopeless. What’s left? Well cinema showings with subtitles are great but very scarce. If I watch telly in the bedroom I fall asleep even if it does have subtitles, and many hotel TVs do not.

Sometimes I can manage to get a reasonable amount from films if there are lots of visual clues to what is going on. I should have known however that “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” would be almost the model of what not to watch if you are deaf. After an hour I couldn’t bear it any longer and had to get out. I wandered around the bit of Cambridge which contained the “Grafton Centre”. The shopping centre itself is horrible, but the area around, despite some typical shopping centre type shops, is one of restored old terrace streets with a few really interesting looking pubs and restaurants. We could have had a decent meal in good surroundings, but we had to eat quickly before the film, so went into the only proper restaurant in the Grafton Centre – a very pseudo-Italian place which served a horrible cardboard pizza.

It was a grim and depressing evening which rather spoilt the wonder of the day.

The arrival of the light

11 Oct 2011
I don't suppose anybody looks forward to getting up in the dark - a sure sign of  the beginning of winter. For me it comes at the end of summer,  in my favourite month: September. It's part of what I can only describe as a joyful melancholy which comes with the gradual slowing down of the natural year. It goes with clear, warm still days when leaves slowly spiral down and the over-abundant growth of the summer is cut back to reveal the plain brown earth. In the arable areas the big artificial looking fields of uniform cereals with their tractor-wheel tramlines give way to something much more natural - stubble, a friendly environment for the birds and animals.

Getting up in the dark in a nearly carbon-neutral home has its own interest too. Many of the lights take a while to reach full power; when they do it is with a warm, gentle light. I found this a bit irritating at first but now I look forward to the slow arrival of the light. Would we love the dawn as much if it happened suddenly?

Since this house is a recreation of an old rural house of mixed origin, we decided not to go for the full "passivhaus" concept of zero energy input, but a typically British compromise where we have chinmeys and fires. This decision is also re-inforced by my conviction that the hearth is something we humans have evolved to cherish. Why else would we have imitation hearths in houses with no chimneys: fireplaces with imitation flames and no heat? Radiant heat and fireplaces make us feel good. So we have a Stanley Donard solid fuel cooker. This is cleverly designed to be easy to light and to burn wood. We also have a large solar water heater and a calor gas boiler as back up. All three feed into a big heat store tank in a shed outside. (Need I add that both are well insulated?) The heat from the tank is drawn off at different levels for underfloor heating,  towel rails, upstairs radiators and domestic hot water.

Since the boiler only operates if the water at the top of the tank is between 45 and 52 degrees, most of our hot water in the summer comes from the solar and in the winter from the Stanley, and Stan takes some looking after. He is like a much loved but demanding teenager - temperamental and fussy and often hungry at the wrong time.

I always have an awareness of the temperature of the hot water. If we've had a cold night then the room thermostats for the underfloor heating will start "calling" (for heat) and warm water will flow through the pipes, bringing down the tank temperature. Then I need to light the cooker.

Sometimes it feels like a nuisance, but usually I welcome this link with the past. Lighting fires was for centuries one of the main jobs for the early riser. In the wealthier households it would have been the servants, but even in my own past I can remember my father rattling around with a coke-burning rayburn. Until recently most of the heat generated by domestic ranges was wasted. Now I know that only the small part which emerges at the top of the chimney is wasted; the rest is stored in the tank or heats the air in the house. Even this heat is stored in the walls. Our walls have an inner layer of blocks which are sealed off from the outside air by 100mm of insulation, a 50mm cavity and a second, outer layer of blocks. It's called "thermal mass" an has the effect of smoothing out temperature differences in the whole house.