There are other things in life than money and growth

Posted by on

Epicureans believe that there are aspects of a good life other than economic growth, money and productivity, but they are under-valued or barely noticed by politicians in Washington.  The system, once much admired (especially by the author!) has been distorted and rendered decadent in a system of revolving doors, involving corrupt politicians and lobbyists and vastly overpaid, greedy corporate bosses.

 Can I suggest some Epicurean objectives, far distant from the world of raw statistics and sleazy political deals, that would help make the United States to be, once again, a more decent place to live in?

–            A safety net, where poor people can be protected from the worst aspects of old age.

 –           A health system that does not exclude forty million poor people. 

 –           An education system that actually attempts to educate, broadly, and encourage thinking for oneself.

 –           An ability to join a union in the face of over-powerful bosses.

 –           the possibility of unemployment benefit in the event of disaster.

Add to the above a rate of tax for millionaires and billionaires that is way higher than that of the poor and the middle classes.

 Some people believe it is right to pay taxes to repay society for the benefits it has offered us all.  Not so among all too many people in the  US, where everything that marks civilised government is under attack, along with tolerance and the environment.

Some would castigate the above as straying into politics.  On the contrary, they are (or would be) the marks of a civilised society.  And isn’t a civilised society what we should be striving for?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The use of farm subsidies

Posted by on

Just 1% of the $700bn-a-year subsidies given to American farmers is being used to benefit the environment, according to a report by the Food and Land Use Coalition(FOLU).  Instead, most of it goes to promoting high-emission cattle production, forest destruction and pollution from the overuse of fertiliser. The report rejects the idea that subsidies are needed to supply cheap food and found that the cost of the damage currently caused by agriculture is greater than the value of the food produced. Think about that.  It also finds that producing healthy, sustainable food would actually cut food prices, as the condition of the land improved. “There is incredibly small direct targeting of [subsidies at] positive environment outcomes, which is insane,” said Jeremy Oppenheim, principal at FOLU. “We have got to switch these subsidies into explicitly positive measures.”. (The Guardian, 16 Sep 2019)

Typically, throughout the world, agricultural subsidies were introduced to ensure adequate food availability and keep farms in business.  What has actually happened is that the subsidies are going to huge industrial-agricultural combines, which are uninterested in sustainability and which are forcing out (have forced out of business?) the small family farmer.  Once again, political connections are more important than the environment.  Why are our tax dollars going to agribusiness?

What we eat, what we breathe, the environment we live in, our standard of living, our very future – all these are matters both for philosophers and for those  of us who want a calm, happy, rewarding life, as free as possible from stress and bad health.  The problem is that big business and money talk louder than anything else and skew our way of life.  Where is the magic boundary between the common sense desire for a healthy life, sufficient money, happiness, and the stress caused by big money in politics and the way it undermines decent society?   I am bound, correctly, to swear off party politics, but where is the line that should never be crossed?    Comments, please!

Time to say farewell to steak?

Posted by on

Soon, most of us will stop eating beef, and it won’t be because we’ll all agree with vegans that meat is murder. It’ll be due to the logic of advanced capitalism. The alternatives to meat now being developed – plant-based substitutes and vat-grown meat produced from cultured animal cells – will taste the same as beef but, unlike cow meat, they’ll be subject to the “transformative power of the modern production line”. It’s not just a matter of the sheer volume of goods produced; it’s the speed of manufacture from raw material to finished article, and the ability to vary supply with fluctuating demand, to dispense with low-value by-products like offal and excrement, and to develop variations in flavour.

“Factory farming”, despite its name, has no such advantages. As for those who think a global industry that rears billions of animals can’t vanish overnight, I give you one word: “horses”. In the early 20th century, our cities and country lanes teemed with them. Then along came the internal combustion engine, and they were gone. As the horse went, so shall the cow.  (Peter Franklin, The Week, 7 September 2019)

The Epicurean approach to this is that people should eat what they enjoy. At the same time they should be reminded that, even at its best, beef production uses a vast acreage of open farmland that was once forested and which, for the benefit of all mankind, should be at least partially re- forested.  At its worst, beef production involves vast factories where the animals are fed automatically and seldom see daylight .  The sylvan image of the grazing cattle on rolling pasture in the sunlight is a thing of the past, as city tycoons foist cruel farming methods upon us in telentless search for ever greater profit,  at least in the US.  Eat a steak and wonder how much antibiotic you are swallowing.

 

Pornography and the environment

Posted by on

Streaming of online pornography produces the same amount of carbon dioxide as the whole of Belgium, according to a new report by the French think tank The Shift Project. Its researchers found that the energy required to stream online videos is responsible for the emission of 300 million tonnes of CO2 a year – almost 1% of total global emissions – and that a third of that comes from videos with pornographic content (The Week, 20 July, 2019).

Once upon a time, young and subject to fits of curiosity, I watched a couple of these videos.  My overwhelming reaction was “BORING”!   My second reaction was “DEGRADING”. The video purported to have a “plot”,  the outcome of which was wholly predictable and dismally executed.  If this is how a small subset of the population choose ( or do they choose?  Maybe this is the extent of their interest in life) to make a living, pandering to the worst daydreams of messed- up men, then the people who watch regularly are in need of some gentle coaching on love, tenderness and respect.  Where were their parents when they were growing up?

But I am being judgmental.  While pornography is about as far away from Epicurean behaviour as we can get, we have to live and let live – porn doesn’t affect the vast majority of the rest of us.  But that this stuff appears to be responsible for pouring a disproportionate amount of CO2 into the atmosphere – well, that does affect us, and it deserves to be reined in.  The enablers should be ashamed – we should help make them feel more so. Message to porn producers: Get a life!

Welcome to the age of plastic and the trash dump planet

Posted by on

Humanity’s appetite for plastic is already inscribed in the fossil record – suggesting that the current epoch could become known as the “plastic age”. For a groundbreaking study, oceanographers at the University of California San Diego examined annual layers of sediment off the coast of California back to 1834. Microscopic plastic particles began to appear in the 1940s, and since then, their quantity has doubled about every 15 years – mirroring the rise in plastic production during this period. Overall, two-thirds of the particles discovered were plastic fibres, a fifth were broken-down fragments of other plastic, and a tenth were plastic film. “Plastic was invented and pretty much immediately we can see it appear in the sedimentary record,” said study lead Jennifer Brandon in The Guardian. “It is a scary thing that this is what our generations will be remembered for.”

Where I live all too much stuff we buy is packed in plastic of some sort.  Even the wrapping of parcels delivered from online sources are not re-cyclable.  Milk, which was delivered in glass bottles in my youth, is now sold in plastic containers.  And so on ad infinitum. Some manufacturers got the message years ago, but money talks loudest, and all too many companies just keep under the radar and seem to hope they don’t have to change, disrupt production, and lose a scintilla of profit.

What has this to do with Epicurus?  It is all about the degradation of the planet – too many people and too much junk finding its way into our oceans, even our drinking water. Any thinking person can (should? ) be concerned about what legacy we are leaving our children and grandchildren.

Of course, the effect of climate change is the most challenging ( I personally believe it will result in unprecedented violence), but our ignorance and indifference about  what happens to the huge piles of trash we throw out may give us temporary ataraxia, but it will come back to seriously bite us.  We need to haul in the activities of the oil companies and the effects on the environment.  Big time!  (From The Week, 21 Sep 2019)