Antibiotics Versus Natural Immunity - A Metaphor

I apologize for my lack of posting lately. Summer school ended five weeks ago and I spent most of the ensuing break catching up on things around my house. Not only did I not give much thought to blogging, but I also did not pay much attention to news from the larger world.

Thus I didn't hear about this week's big financial sell-off until Saturday, during a conversation with a friend. I guess several key global stock markets lost a significant portion of their notional value over the last several days. This friend brought up the subject as part of his discussion on the topic of collapse – a topic that I had first introduced to him over two years ago. This past Saturday, he related to me the strategies he considered to be important in preparing for collapse, including such things as stocking up on bicycles and bicycle parts, owning a gun and converting one's cash to gold.

I say “Amen” to the bicycles and bicycle parts. When we got to guns, I started to choke a little. He told me about how useful guns would be for self-defense and how ammunition was in short supply for a while after Obama was elected, and all I could think of in response was a mental picture of a nation of antisocial red necks each one of whom is convinced that all their neighbors are zombies. (I'm not knocking on my friend here, but rather the deluded doofuses who went out and bought all that ammo.)

I was also reminded of something Dimitry Orlov has said a few times over the last year or so, namely, that in much of the United States, social and cultural collapse have already happened. (If you want to know what that means, look up his “Five Stages of Collapse.”) Social collapse removes those volunteer associations and groups which provide mutual aid to people outside the immediate nuclear family unit. Cultural collapse goes further and reduces even members of the same family to people at war with each other.

Don't trust in a neighbor. Don't put confidence in a friend. With the woman lying in your embrace, be careful of the words of your mouth!

For the son dishonors the father, the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; a man's enemies are the men of his own house.

(Micah 7:5-6, World English Bible)

It's easy to see how, in such a scenario, people would be tempted to rely on guns and other instruments of mayhem as sources of security. But this to me is like people whose friendly intestinal bacteria and other flora have been wiped out because of living in our toxic industrial society, and who consequently get sick quite often, with the result that they rely on doctors and medicine as sources of security. Wouldn't it be better to rebuild natural immunity by re-establishing a healthy ecosystem in your body?

P.S. School break is almost over. I will try to post a bit more regularly. We'll see how it works.

A Kick In Kipling's Teeth

You know, I have to admit that I've been a bit in the dark regarding world news lately. I've been backed up with a mountain of papers to grade, although that will shortly end. So I might be forgiven for not knowing until today that there have been riots in “Great” Britain.

The riots were caused by the same sort of thing that often causes riots in the U.S.: London police thugs shot an unarmed black man and tried to say that it was because he was carrying a weapon that he fired at them. Their case looks like it's unraveling (the bullet that the man allegedly fired was proven to be from a police gun). People – disaffected, oppressed, persecuted, marginalized black people got angry. Now parts of England are on fire.

A few observations are in order. First, the British police have a long history of racist treatment of ethnic minorities. They're also building an impressive history of oppressing their own people, as the death of Ian Tomlinson shows. The British police are the servants of the British elite class in their subjugation and exploitation of the entire country.

Secondly, in the case of the present riots, the British press has uniformly supported this subjugation and exploitation. This has been somewhat true even of the Guardian and the Independent, which earlier helped blow the whistle on the police brutality surrounding Ian Tomlinson's death and the police harassment of nonviolent protest groups. Seems that maybe these newspapers aren't so “progressive” after all. The British press has almost without exception portrayed the riots as the acts of crazed, criminal youth disconnected from “civilization.” Very little effort has been expended in trying to explain why youth from certain ethnic backgrounds might be angry at constant discrimination and harassment while living in a society which has the lowest level of social mobility in the “developed” world.

However, the causes underlying the riots have somehow managed to leak out to the larger world. With just a few mouse clicks I learned today that in the weeks preceding the riots, there had been a very large peaceful protest march by London's black community to protest the death of a British reggae singer under suspicious circumstances during a search of the singer's home by police. That march was not reported by British media. But people are finding out about it now. Also, England has experienced more than a few riots over the last two decades.

Third, the entrenched holders of concentrated wealth and power in Britain have not been willing to admit the role their policies played in the eruption of the riots. Instead, they have mixed stern-faced “law and order” threats with appeals to British “civility.” The tactic is not working, because the people on whom it is supposed to work are people whose future has been taken away and who thus have nothing left to lose. This is an illustration of a point I made in my blog post, “The (Worldwide?) Peak Of Human Resources”: “...it stands to reason that there is a limit to the maximal sustainable rate of exploitation of human beings...Breaching this limit would cause the breakdown of an industrial society even if that society was well-supplied with all other production inputs. Moreover, there would be increasingly severe symptoms of breakdown as the society was driven further and further beyond sustainable rates of exploitation of its members. Finally, it would not be surprising to see the elites at the head of such a society rationalize and refuse to acknowledge the true meaning of these signs and symptoms.”

Maybe we're beginning to see the breakdown of England. The funny thing is that although the breakdown may well be starting with the black community, there are plenty of other places where it could have started just as well. It is true that much of the history of England has been a history of thuggish exploitation of other peoples, other lands, other cultures, in order to secure an elevated standard of living for Anglo people. (Indeed, there is so much blood on the hands of the British nation that one wonders how they can call themselves “civilized.”)

But now the exponential growth of the appetites of the British elite has resulted in the transformation of almost all the rest of the nation into an underclass – including many, many Anglos, and many youth from every background. Income inequality in Britain is at an all-time high. The Tories have only made it worse. It's not just black youth rioting in England now.

This brings up something else. Some Britons, and some U.S. citizens observing the British riots, might be tempted to retreat into the imagined safety of racism, saying that the people who are being oppressed somehow “deserve” to be oppressed. But it's important to note that societies which create underclasses always need an underclass in order to function. There will always be an underclass in such societies, even if the members of the original underclass are wiped out. Once again, the history of England bears this out. A survey of writings from authors such as Charles Darwin, G.K. Chesterton and Rudyard Kipling shows how, even in the absence of ethnic minorities from outside Europe, the British ruling classes sought to define themselves as the only truly human and “civilized” people. They despised anyone who was outside their circle, including the Welsh, the Irish, the Scots, the French, the Germans, the Poles, the Jews, the Italians, the Greeks, and the Russians. Even within England, they had their gradations of British “whiteness,” with disparagement and discrimination against Cockneys, Midland English, and others whose blood was not sufficiently blue. Amazing to think that these people all looked more or less like each other, yet they found the smallest of excuses for choosing off and fighting each other.

That is why I said in my post, The Polyculture of Resilient Neighborhoods, that the most resilient neighborhoods in the United States will turn out to be composed of a number of heterogeneous cultures whose members maintain certain key cultural distinctions while learning from members of differing cultures. The members of the component cultures of such neighborhoods will engage in reaching out to members of differing cultures within their neighborhoods, forming a common, somewhat weakly binding meta-culture of common courtesy and customs within which the component cultures exist as distinct entities. Within the over-arching meta-culture, there will be opportunities for cross-pollination between the members of the component cultures, with results that are hopefully beneficial to all. On the other hand, neighborhoods (and larger entities such as cities, counties and states) which are predominantly monocultural will probably tend to be less resilient.

A polycultural (or multicultural) neighborhood, region or nation that functions along these lines will tend to be a more pleasant place to live, because its members will be treated with mutual respect. It will also be more stable. (Singapore comes to mind as an example.) On the other hand, a neighborhood, region or nation that attempts to create ethnic underclasses dominated by a ruling majority will be a dangerous place to live, even for those who are in the majority. For if, over time, the members of the original underclasses are removed from such a society, the masters of that society will seek to create a new underclass from some of the remaining members of society. It will be like a game of musical chairs where the chairs keep getting taken away until almost no one has any place to sit down. The only person who wins such a game is the person who owns the chairs.

Chickens for Poor People, Part 2

Aimee, a fellow blogger who writes New To Farm Life, made another insightful and informative comment on my post, “Chickens for Poor People.” She said,

“I mean, it [the tendency I spoke about to make chicken-keeping and other acts of self-reliance more complicated than necessary] might be another symptom of the same disease that causes helicopter parenting - an overwhelming anxiety that things will go to pieces if you aren't in total control of all variables at all times.

“I'd like to recommend Storey's guide to chickens (they have a whole series on farming). These guides are down to earth and relaxed, providing information but with a general attitude that even children can successfully raise animals of all types. Storey's chicken book has plenty of plans for simple chicken houses, too.

“My chickens roost in the rafters of the barn. Most breeds of chicken will do fine with a roof, a good windbreak, clean water and ample food. They need a few square feet apiece, minimum, to stretch and scratch. Chickens will be extra happy if they can also make wallows and take dirtbaths.”

That sounds like good advice. I'll have to find Storey's book when I get a chance. And it's helpful to realize that chickens, being birds after all, are quite able to survive without human intervention. (Otherwise, there'd be none on earth today!)

On another note, posting will be light over the next week (and maybe two). I've got a ton of homework to grade and I need to catch up.

Chickens for Poor People

I'm working on a research-heavy post, but it's not quite ready. The information contained therein will be bad news to some folks (maybe quite a few folks), but then again, a lot of news about the world seems very bad nowadays. Anyway, I've been a bit busy – so here is a short (and hopefully somewhat lighter) post for this week.

An urban gardening education outfit called Growing Gardens hosts an annual “Tour de Coops” as part of their program of promoting urban chicken-keeping in Portland. The Tour de Coops originally started out as a bicycle tour of various local chicken-keeping homes, but has since grown geographically to the extent that many people drive from house to house to view chicken coops. Around a year and a half ago I started building a chicken coop in my back yard, thinking I could knock out the project in a few weeks. But my life got very busy and I quickly ran out of inspiration as I remembered the warnings I had heard in the chicken-keeping classes I had attended – warnings which distilled in my head into the message that “you must do everything just right or your birds will die!!!”

“How do you build a coop just right? What does just right look like?” I wondered. So I bought a book of chicken coop plans and I thought back to the chicken coops I had observed during the Tour de Coops which I had witnessed. As I sought to implement the things I had observed, I couldn't help but notice how much money I was dropping at Home Cheapo for what seemed to be the requisite building materials. The plan I chose from the book I bought seemed to me to be very basic, yet it was still more elaborate than I would have liked. At times I fumed about the potential cost per egg over the lifetime of my coop.

That got me thinking about the various coops I had seen during the Tour de Coops I had witnessed, as well as the general tone of the chicken-keeping classes I had attended. A large number of the coops I saw on tour and in class were, shall we say, palatial, with electric lighting, ventilation (and maybe even heating in one case), and all built by yuppie or post-yuppie types who viewed their birds as cute, affectionate members of their extended family. (How is a full-grown chicken “cute”?) “Where do you find the time or energy to build all that?” I wondered.

Immigrants and people outside American upper middle-class culture tend to view these things very differently. When I told some of my immigrant friends about my chicken coop project, almost all of them asked why I didn't just pick up a coop for free from Craigslist. Only one of them has built anything that is anywhere near as elaborate as coops, American-style seem to be becoming. But that's not the best part. After I started my coop, I noticed during my travels on bicycle that several back yards had birds who were housed in very simple boxes with chicken wire on their fronts. I kept thinking, “I could have done that!”

All of which brings up an uncomfortable observation. It seems that many who have been thoroughly marinated in American upper middle-class culture have a fundamental blind spot when it comes to trying to do anything simply and frugally. Some of us who look for strategies for sustainable living render those strategies unsustainable by turning those strategies into status symbols. So we have “fair trade” coffeehouses, sanctimonious hybrid vehicle owners, people who browse issues of Real Simple whenever they visit Whole Foods Market, people who try to balance stressed-out materialism with a few hours a week at a yoga studio, people who build chicken palaces with full utility hook-ups in order to make a statement about “sustainability,” people who take their cars to a Tour de Coops. And we have whole industries devoted to catering to the self-image of these people.

What's needed is chickens for poor people – along with a truckload of other survival strategies for people who have fallen (or have jumped) off the upper middle-class train. (There are more of us each day in this country.) We also need competent teachers of these strategies. Some of the coops featured in the Tour de Coops may lately have been sending the wrong message. Growing Gardens will probably never read this post of mine, but if they do, I hope they will bear with a bit of gentle constructive criticism from a friend.

The Sound Foundations of Engineered Earth Construction

Earth construction has recently attracted great interest as post-Peak building method for the First World. (By post-Peak methods, I mean methods of producing useful products which are suitable for a declining or collapsing economy whose resource base is drying up.) The reasons for this interest have to do with looming resource constraints, in particular, the resources required for construction methods which have become standard over the last hundred years in the developed world. However, the principles of proper earth building design and construction must be thoroughly understood and properly implemented in order to avoid loss of life due to failure and collapse of buildings. There is a strong need for validation of techniques, practices and principles of structurally sound earth building. This validation must be accomplished via experimentation and mathematical modeling and analysis.

This validation is also of special interest in the Third World (also known as the developing world), where, according to at least one source, approximately one fifth of the world's population lives in adobe and rammed earth structures, and where, according to another source, more than 90 percent of the population in moderate to severe seismic zones is living and working in non-engineered earth buildings. A body of work now exists which documents the behavior of earth buildings when subjected to various loading events, including seismic and wind events. This development of this body of work has been spearheaded by engineering professionals, universities and governmental agencies both in the developing world and in the First World nations of the Global South.

This work reveals some surprising facts, both with regard to safe earth construction best practices and with regard to the flow of useful information in the developing world. As far as the flow of useful information, two things can be observed. First, there is a much greater proportion of public-minded engineering and technical professionals in the developing world compared to professionals in the First World. This is seen in the willingness of researchers to openly and freely disseminate their published work via the Web without charging rent on “intellectual property.” In the First World, on the other hand, rent-seeking vultures have restricted the free flow of potentially life-saving technical information in many cases. (Many of the publications from First World sources on the topic of earth construction are behind paywalls. One refreshing exception in the United States is the Getty Institute.) This is one reason why the Third World may be better poised for post-Peak adaptation than the First World. Secondly, the universities and professionals of the Third World are every bit as capable and competent as those in the First World, and in fact they may be far more creative.

In the literature which I have discovered, there are two categories of discussion regarding performance of earthen structures: the performance of non-engineered structures and the performance, experimental testing and analysis of engineered earthen structures. These discussions reveal the following observations:

1. Almost all of the literature states that typical non-engineered earthen structures perform very poorly when subjected to severe and sudden wind loads or seismic events. This applies both to rammed earth (also known as tapia, taipal or pise de terre), cob and adobe structures. Rammed earth constructions and other earth structures can be highly susceptible to damage from earthquakes and other ground motion.

2. The mechanism of disintegration of earth walls for various types of earth construction have been studied via shake table and compression tests. Among other things, these tests have documented the anisotropy of multi-layer rammed earth walls. A material that is anisotropic has physical properties that vary at different locations and in different directions in the material rather than being uniform throughout the material. This is important if there is a concern that a wall made of anisotropic material might have material properties that are not constant throughout the wall.

3. Techniques for stabilization and reinforcement of earth structures have been studied. One study focused on two particular approaches: internal reinforcement via chicken wire or bamboo, and external reinforcement with bamboo or wooden members. Internal reinforcement did not work nearly as well as external reinforcement, which spread earthquake stresses over a large wall area, dissipating earthquake energy without causing major cracking.

4. Proper reinforcement of earthen walls is key to surviving earthquakes and other environmental events. Unreinforced earthen structures suffered a number of typical failure modes. In addition, walls or wall elements that are reinforced internally with biodegradable materials like straw have been known to fail due to degrading of the reinforcement by insects and rot.

5. As a result of laboratory tests, mathematical modeling and observations of actual earth structures in the aftermath of actual earthquakes, a number of governmental agencies and NGO's have published earth construction design guides. Many of these design guides agree on key points. In addition, there are countries in the developing world and the Global South which have formulated or are formulating earth building codes. New Zealand is one such case. Their New Zealand Earth Building Standards can serve as a repository of best practices and a starting place for model codes for earth building in other countries. Unfortunately, access to the New Zealand standards is not free.

6. In addition to design guides for building professionals and code-enforcing officials, certain governments and NGO's have developed earth construction manuals for non-professional, unskilled builders who would be typical in rural or poor urban populations. Among the governmental agencies disseminating this design information is SENA (Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje, www.sena.edu.co), a national public entity of Colombia in South America, which publishes literature for public education and vocational training throughout South America. In addition, the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur has published the IAEE Guidelines for Earthquake Resistant Non-Engineered Construction, which is available in PDF form free of charge at the IIT Kanpur National Information Centre of Earthquake Engineering website. A 2011 draft update of these guidelines is also available from the International Institute of Seismology and Earthquake Engineering in Japan. Such guidelines embody low-cost, effective approaches for building safe earthen structures.

7. Researchers have studied the challenge of reinforcing and retrofitting existing earthen structures which have historical significance. Recommended retrofit practices are emerging. Many of these retrofit practices involve addition of bamboo reinforcement to the exterior surfaces of earth walls, both outside and inside an earthen structure, in order to spread forces and stresses so that they don't result in concentrated failure at one point.

Many more facts could be gleaned from the available literature, but unfortunately, I am out of time. However, a list of references and cited works is included at the end of this post. Enjoy!

Additional References And Resources:

1. “Seismic Behavior and Rehabilitation Alternatives for Adobe and Rammed Earth Buildings,” Luis. E. Yamin, Camilo A. Phillips, Juan C. Reyes, Daniel M. Ruiz, 13^th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering, 2004.

2. “Modern and historic earth buildings: Observations of the 4^th September 2010 Darfield Earthquake,” H.W. Morris, 9^th Pacific Conference on Earthquake Engineering – Building and Earthquake-Resilient Society, April 2011.

3. “Non-Engineered Construction In Developing Countries – An Approach Toward Earthquake Risk Reduction,” Anand S. Arya, 12WCEE 2000, Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India.

4. “Review of Non-Engineered Houses in Latin America with Reference to Building Practices and Self-Construction Projects,” Aikaterini Papanikolaou, Fabio Taucer, European Commission Joint Research Centre, 2004.

5. “Seismic Performance of Mud Brick Structures,” Joseph Hardwick and Jonathan Little, University of Bristol, EWB-UK National Research Conference 2010 and Engineers Without Borders UK, 2010.

6. “Low-Cost and Low-Tech Reinforcement Systems for Improved Earthquake Resistance of Mud Brick Buildings,” Dominic M. Dowling and Bijan Samali, The Getty Institute.

7. “Assessing the Anisotropy of Rammed Earth,” Quoc-Bao Bui, Jean-Claude Morel, 11^th International Conference on Non-Conventional Materials and Technologies, 2009.

8. “Planning and Engineering Guidelines for the Seismic Retrofitting of Historic Adobe Structures,” E. Leroy Tolles, Edna E. Kimbro, William S. Ginell, The Getty Institute, 2002.

9. “An Improved Means of Reinforcing Adobe Walls – External Vertical Reinforcement,” Dominic Dowling, Bijan Samali, Jianchun Li, SismoAdobe 2005, Lima, Peru.

10. “Earthquake Resistant Rammed-Earth (Taipal) Buildings,” J. Vargas, Catholic University of Peru.

The (Worldwide?) Peak of Human Resources

In my last post, I discussed the fallen tendency of some of us humans to conduct ourselves as predators and to regard all the rest of humanity as prey. I also briefly described how this tendency has shaped the evolution of industrial society. Another way of framing this predator-prey relationship is that to the wealthiest members of society, the global official economy over which they preside exists for one purpose, namely their own personal enrichment. Just as that economy requires an ever-expanding supply of material resources in order to generate ever-increasing wealth, so it requires an ever-expanding supply of human capital in order to generate ever-increasing wealth for its elites. The Hubbert Peak of the rate of extraction of various non-human resources is now appearing as a threat to the survival of the economy. I'd like to suggest the existence of a Hubbert Peak of the rate of exploitation of “human resources” as well, and that this poses a further threat to the owners of our present economy, in addition to the Hubbert Peaks of use of other resources. I will present evidence that suggests that we (at least in the First World) are already “past Peak” with regard to human resources. As one version of a favorite song of mine says,

Well, there's a change in the wind, you know the signs don't lie,

Such a strange feelin' and I don't know why it's takin'

such a long time;

Backyard people and they work all day,

Day gets wasted, it's safe to say that they're tastin'

to make the words rhyme...

First, it should be mentioned that Hubbert depletion analysis has been applied not only to inanimate resources, but to biological resources that are exploited at rates beyond their natural rates of regeneration and renewal. One such analysis is “Price Trends Over A Complete Hubbert Cycle: The Case of the American Whaling Industry in 19^th Century” by Ugo Bardi, a professor at the University of Firenze in Italy and author of the blog, Cassandra's Legacy. Those who study the history of whaling in the 19^th century will find an interesting perspective among whalers and those who depended on the whaling industry, namely, a failure to recognize or acknowledge the effects of overfishing and exploitation of whales at a nonrenewable rate. The closest anyone seems to have come to an acknowledgement of this reality is found in a book published in 1878 by Alexander Starbuck who acknowledged that declining production of whale fisheries was due to “an increase of consumption beyond the power of the fishery to supply.” However, like apologists for our present oil industry who blame “aboveground factors” for production constraints, Mr. Starbuck cited “the scarcity and shyness of whales” as a contributing factor in fishery production decline.

Since there are limits to the maximal sustainable rate of exploitation of non-human biological resources, it stands to reason that there is a limit to the maximal sustainable rate of exploitation of human beings as well. Breaching this limit would cause the breakdown of an industrial society even if that society was well-supplied with all other production inputs. Moreover, there would be increasingly severe signs and symptoms of breakdown as the society was driven further and further beyond sustainable rates of exploitation of its members. Finally, it would not be surprising to see the elites at the head of such a society rationalize and refuse to acknowledge the true meaning of these signs and symptoms.

Are there modern societies in which we can see this breakdown taking place? (Is the Pope Catholic?) A better question might be, “Which modern country might best serve as a poster child for the effects of unsustainable exploitation of its human capital?” There are many contenders for this doubtful honor, but today I'd like to focus on Japan – not because I believe that country is worse than, say, the United States, but because the capitalists of that country have created trends which most of the industrial world has been obliged to follow. First, we need to look briefly at the history of Japan from the end of World War Two onward.

The end of the war left Japan both shattered and occupied. The United States provided approximately $18.6 billion in aid, both under the Marshall Plan and other outlays, for the rebuilding of nations whose infrastructure and economy had been damaged by the war. Japan received $2.44 billion. (Total U.S. expenditures from 1945 to 1953 amounted to $44.3 billion.) (Source: Wikipedia, Marshall Plan.) Yet even with American aid, life was very hard for the majority of Japanese citizens just after the war. Their suffering and privation motivated them to quickly fashion an economy which would guarantee robust prosperity for the nation.

Many growth strategies were employed both by the Japanese government and the leaders of its most powerful financial and industrial sectors. While some of these strategies focused on protecting Japanese domestic markets from foreign competition, others focused on building Japan into an industrial powerhouse. One aspect of the building of that powerhouse is of particular interest – namely, the fostering of a certain kind of relationship between the managers of large corporations and the majority of their employees. This relationship was the outgrowth of the Japanese Production Management system (JPM) which has given the world such concepts as TQM (Total Quality Management), JIT (Just-In-Time Manufacturing). SCM (Supply Chain Management), Kaizen, (embodying, among other things, “lean manufacturing”), Zero Defects and Quality Circles. (One other thing to note: although these ideas came to full implementation in Japan, many of these ideas were introduced to Japan by American business and economic teachers such as W. Edwards Deming . This is rather like communism, which was not invented by Russians, yet was wholeheartedly adopted by Russia for several nauseating decades.)

The essence of many of these elements of JPM was to eliminate as much “waste” as possible from the manufacturing process. As JPM spread to other sectors of the Japanese economy, this same focus on “eliminating waste” spread too. The aim of kaizen was continuous improvement of a business process. The measure of “continuous improvement” was continuous growth of profits and continuous reduction of operating expenses. Industry leaders fostered a culture in which workers supported cost cutting and continuous process improvement, identifying fully with the goals of management. This led to situations in which workers on a line assembling car engine parts might have only two minutes allotted per car and no spare time allowed, thus forcing a typical worker to assemble engine parts for 250 cars every five hundred minutes. In such a factory, the production method would involve synchronized production (JIT, no pool of parts and no waste), value organization (to identify the spare time each worker had after one assembly operation in order to identify “waste time”), and supplement production (obtaining the minimum necessary parts from suppliers and subcontractors in order to reduce stock). (Source: “Karoshi – Death From Overwork: Occupational Health Consequences of the Japanese Production Management,” Katsuo Nishiyama and Jeffrey V. Johnson.)

This frenzied work environment was not confined to blue collar occupations, but spread through the ranks of lower and mid-level management as well, giving rise to the salaryman as a cultural icon. It has also given rise to Karoshi (death from overwork), a medical phenomenon of epidemic proportions, along with the related phenomenon of Karo-jisatu (suicide from overwork). Yet this work environment has been reinforced through many means, including identification with traditional Japanese religious and cultural values; unions that have been thoroughly co-opted by management; rigorous standardized schooling with heavy emphasis on conformity, rote memorization and high-stakes, standardized tests, and mass media which promotes the idea of the salaryman as a modern-day samurai contending on behalf of his employer. (As one television commercial put it, “Can you fight 24 hours for your corporation?”)

(To those of you who are not Japanese and who have no knowledge of Japanese culture, I ask: does any of this look familiar? Can you see these things happening in your own societies? Karoshi may soon be coming to a town near you.)

Though this culture has taken a heavy toll on Japan, the government, along with leaders of business and industry, have been extremely reluctant to acknowledge that toll. (What? You're telling me that stress kills people? Aw, come on! “Not all scientists would agree with you.”) But now there are signs that the society which has been built on this culture is starting to break down. The origin of the breakdown is among the Japanese youth, who see their parents being dehumanized and worked to death and who are saying to themselves that they refuse to become like their parents. They are angered by their parents' unrequited sacrifices and they are choosing to opt out of the system.

The opting-out takes a number of different forms. There are the freeters, young people who deliberately choose low-paying part-time jobs so that they can have control over their lives instead of running in an ever-accelerating corporate hamster wheel. There are also the hikikomori, youth who have been damaged by a high-stakes schooling system and who are unable to face the thought of going out into a predatory world without any social support system. There is the larger movement of the datsusara, people who quit work as salarymen or office women in order to launch careers that are more in line with their values.

These people are a threat to the dominant economy, in large part because they represent lost profits (or, to put it differently, they are escaped prey). They have caught the attention of the leadership of Japan, one of whose members suggested not too long ago that all freeters should be forced to join the Japanese Self-Defense Force and go to Iraq. Yet they are part of a phenomenon which is arising in many different countries. As globalization and uber-capitalism have swept the globe, youth who are now coming of age (along with not a few older people) are also coming to realize that the society created by their masters holds nothing for them, and they increasingly feel no obligation to that society. They are dropping out of their respective societies – much as air leaks slowly out of even perfectly good tires on a hot day. The trick is to escape without losing one's mind in the process.

References:

1. “Karoshi – Death From Overwork: Occupational Health Consequences of the Japanese Production Management,” 4 February 1997, Katsuo Nishiyama and Jeffrey V. Johnson.

2. “The Japanese 'Death by Overwork' Phenomenon,” 25 July 2007, Josefine Cole.

3. “Karoshi (Work to Death) in Japan,” 2008, Atsuko Kanai.

4. “Workplace Stress: A Collective Bargaining Issue,” 2002, Anne-Marie Mureau.

5. “The Impact of Globalization on Post World War II Japan,” 2 April 2010, Phillip Luu.

The Danger Of Telegraphing Your Punches

As some long-time readers of mine may have noticed, my blogging has undergone a bit of a hiatus over the last year. This was due to my working two jobs, one of which involves teaching. The demands of the two jobs left very little time for anything more than scattered, brief commentary on this blog. Now, thankfully, I am down to just one job. Though the pay is significantly less than before, the peace of mind is significantly greater.

At the beginning of my (partial) silence, my writing was strongly focused on the subject of resilient neighborhoods, including topics such as the elements of a neighborhood that provide for resilience in the face of economic contraction and energy descent, as well as steps for building neighborhood resilience. Overwhelming busyness prevented me from exploring these themes further, but I was able to keep up with the writings of others who were exploring these topics, in particular, Joanne Poyourow, a writer active in the U.S. branch of the Transition movement. She wrote a five-part series of articles on economic resilience as applied to local communities, as well as a separate post on her own blog, titled, “Resilience: A View From The Transition Movement.”

Her articles and the suggestions contained therein were both good and practical. Yet as I read what she had to say, along with reading the daily news of what was being done to our nation and our world by the holders of concentrated wealth and power, I found myself having second thoughts, even as I reconsidered my own focus and emphasis. It seemed that Joanne had fallen victim to a blind spot which seems typical among many activists concerned with economic contraction and energy descent. I will attempt to point out that blind spot now, along with what I believe to be the issues that must be faced by ordinary people seeking to adapt to our present times.

I'll start with a quote from Gale Warnings, a blog written by Stormchild. The quote reads in part, “...most of us spend our lives as prey, economically and psychologically. Awareness is the key to understanding this; but once we understand it, we may transcend it, choosing, when we can, to be neither prey nor predator.” The problem people have faced almost from the outset is simply this: the fallen tendency for some humans to conduct themselves as predators and to regard all of their fellow humans as prey. There is a long history of predator-prey relationships across societal and geopolitical scales, culminating in the predation of the entire world by the Anglo, American and European empires.

As I see it, three trends have been at work in the world over the last two hundred years or so. The first trend is the tendency toward the concentration of the power and wealth of societies – particularly in the West – in the hands of an ever-diminishing number of master predators who are able to out-compete their fellows for prey, and who eventually succeed in laying claim to every available bite of prey. The second trend is the fight for freedom waged by the prey against their predators. During the 20^th century, this fight for freedom was ostensibly successful in many parts of the globe and many sectors of American society. Several countries were able for a time to escape from being banana republics or something similar, and many members of ethnic minority groups in the United States suddenly had wonderful doors of opportunity opened for them. While this did indeed upset the elites at the head of fading European empires or the expanding American empire, this fight for freedom was tolerated somewhat, because the continual expansion of the global industrial economy was able to absorb the exponentially expanding appetites of these elites even as they lost some of their prey to freedom. (Of course, between the overthrow of colonialism and the gains of the civil rights movements in the 1960's and now, the elites were able to subtly erase nearly all civil rights gains and to recapture a very large proportion of escaped prey, but that's a subject for another time.)

The third trend should concern us all very much, because it is the trend at work right now. I said that the appetites of the elites are exponential. What I really mean is that the expression and manifestation of those appetites is exponential. Today they want one bite of prey. Tomorrow, they will want e bites. The next day, they will want eⁿ slices, where n is an integer greater than 1. As long as the economy controlled by these elites grows at a rate greater than eⁿ, they can tolerate the escape of a few prey from their grip. But what if the economy should begin to contract because of the decline of its resource base and the inability of the earth to absorb any more of the waste products of that economy?

That is the situation we face now. The well has run dry. The resource base of the global economy is drying up, the global economy is contracting, and no one can do a thing to stop it. When governments and wealthy people at the top of society see these things unfolding, their response and priorities are very different from the responses and priorities of ordinary people who see these things unfolding. We live and function in an economy in which the notional “wealth” held by the largest holders of concentrated wealth and power actually consist of relationships of dependence which they have established with the vast majority of the rest of us through trickery and force. In other words, they have made us to depend on them for nearly every necessity of life, which they are willing to give to us in exchange for our labors. The surplus of those labors is creamed off for themselves, leaving almost nothing for us to enjoy. And the “necessities” which are given to us in return for our labors are very tightly rationed, or in increasing cases are mere junk, froth and “empty calories” disguised as necessities.

One needn't look far to see examples of what I am talking about. How about having to pay thousands of dollars a year for “health insurance” which does not actually guarantee that you will be able to see the doctor you need, let alone avoid medical bankruptcy should you become seriously sick? How about not being able to get from point A to point B without driving a new car that costs tens of thousands of dollars, forcing you to go into debt just to get around? How about being beholden to private utilities, including privatized water and sewer services?

Every relationship of dependence on our formal, official economy is a claim on the fruits of your labor – whether it's an interest-bearing debt you owe because of the cost of buying a house, a car or an education; or whether it's the percentage of “market share” of which your purchasing decisions comprise a part; or whether it is the tax burden imposed on you as an ordinary citizen as part of your government's promise to bail out rich financial institutions. These claims make up a large part of the notional “wealth” of the predators at the top of our society.

Many of us now see that the formal economy is in trouble, and that it can no longer deliver the necessities it promises, and we are talking among ourselves, making plans, publishing on the Internet, trying to start movements, trying to warn and influence the policy makers at the helm of society. But the predators at the top see these suggestions and movements as threats to their wealth. For even if we all cooperatively fashion a society that is equitable and suited to energy descent, this means the loss of the power of the elites. If on the other hand, we ordinary people begin to break free from the system on which we depend – if we begin to fashion survivable, sustainable alternatives to the system – we will be regarded as escaped prey by predators who can no longer count on an expanding economy to satisfy their ever-expanding appetites.

(Here I must insert a quote I discovered this last week from a talk given by John Taylor Gatto to the 11^th Annual International Democratic Education Conference (IDEC) in 2003. In his talk he described how the elites of our society see themselves – not as conspirators, but rather, “When you bought your last package of chicken parts, or slabs of beef, or a side of salmon, did you think you were participating in a conspiracy against the lives of these animals? It's a ridiculous idea, isn't it? Q.E.D. You and I are the chickens, the beef and the fish.” I don't know that I believe this isn't a conspiracy, but I thought his quote about chicken, beef and fish was right on.)

If you find ways of meeting your needs outside the system and you are unwise enough to publicize them, I see one of three things happening to you. First, what you are doing may be declared illegal, even though before you opened your mouth, it was perfectly legit. The second and third possibilities are especially relevant if what you do involves networking with others or creating alternative societal arrangements. If you form alternative networks for providing services or necessities to people apart from the dominant system, there is the possibility that global uber-capitalists may drive you out of business by flooding their perceived “market” with low-cost alternatives to your network. This highlights something we all need to realize about the wealthiest members of the official economy, namely, that although they are sitting on unholy amounts of claims on wealth which they call “capital,” they are always trying to grow the size of their “capital.” So their capital “chases yield” – in other words, the super rich are always looking for some market they can corner via strategic investing in order to increase their claims on the rest of us while deepening our enslavement to them. (This is why it is so hard to become an entrepreneur or small businessman in the United States nowadays.) The third thing that may happen is that if there is a political element to your alternative social arrangement – if it takes on the character of a movement – you will be joined by infiltrators and ersatz “reformers” claiming to “be working within the system to try to change the system,” and they will co-opt your movement and derail it.

In other words, if you seek to escape from our present economic system because you see that it is crumbling, you will become an offense to the masters of that system, because they are predators and you have just become escaped prey. Now that their system is shrinking, they grudge the loss of any prey, and they will do all they can to make sure their appetites are satisfied at your expense. Under such circumstances, does it make sense to openly talk and write about establishing “Transition Networks,” or to openly talk and write about establishing local currencies and barter arrangements, or to disclose – on the Internet, for all the world to see – any other suggestions for community action and community resilience? Jeff Vail and John Robb have written about the concept of “open source insurgency” as an outcome of the efforts of ordinary people to break free from predatory systems. I admit that I need to study in more detail exactly what they mean by “open source insurgency,” but I think it is now becoming increasingly unwise to publicize many of the strategies people might use to make themselves and their localities more resilient. I think it would be better for people to discuss and plan their strategies for resilience in face-to-face conversations with people they can trust. I also think it is far past time for people to take a step back from technology and to rediscover methods of communication and collaboration that don't depend on the Web and that are less vulnerable to eavesdropping. This may mean that “neighborhood resilience” takes on a multicolored hue, that there arises a huge variety of means by which various neighborhoods and groups of people in cooperation with each other become “resilient.”