SatNav for the soul®

Following a discussion with Matt Edgar about the accelerating pace of change in the modern world (Matt denies this phenomenon exists) I propose a quasi-scientific proof of concept (and my apologies for any inaccurate science in my reasoning).

Consider a gas contained in a fixed volume. The molecules have a certain amount of space within which to vibrate and interact. If you add more molecules into the fixed volume, the interaction between them all will increase producing a higher pressure and higher temperature. If more molecules are added then at some point the gas will reach a tipping point and become a liquid. At this point the rate of change is accelerated and demonstrable.

Now consider a human population contained in a fixed space. The interactions between the people will occur at a certain rate. Increase the population in the fixed space and the interactions have to increase proportionally. If the people are creative as well, then the resultant interactions are likely to produce even greater ‘temperatures’ than would be expected.

This phenomenon is observed in the animal kingdom. A swarm of locusts is created when grasshoppers interact at a specific rate. The grasshopper population metamorphosing into a swarm of locusts represents the transformation of a gas into a liquid and the rate of change is accelerated and observable. The consequences of that swarm of locusts on the surrounding area represents what happens when the pressure inside the fixed container becomes too great for the container to hold and an explosion occurs. Again the rate of change is then accelerated and observable.

This change from a stable condition to an unstable one is perfectly demonstrated in the example of fish farms. The increased density of fish in a fixed volume of water produces unforeseen consequences to the environment. The incidence of disease and parasites within the farmed fish increases dramatically. The faeces from the fish cannot be processed quickly enough by the natural biological cycles within the system and the result is ecological devastation for the sea bed. So change is brought about by an imbalance in the system (whatever that system is).

Therefore, I assert that modern civilisation is inherently imbalanced in nearly all of its practices, from agriculture to the financial systems and that the process of maintaining these unsustainable systems is an accelerating one and the inevitable catastrophe when these systems collapse will represent accelerated and observable change.

'Guest services'

It is better to be on the move than to arrive. Never has truer words been spoken than when applied to a theme park.

You invariably wait in a queue of people for one and a half hours, only to ‘arrive’ at a ride that will last approximately two minutes and will produce at best a sensation of disorientation, and at worst, nausea. Theme parks must be one of the most curious and perverse creations that has resulted from the human mind’s unnatural pursuit of profit. The fact that they make a profit at all is testament to the elasticity of the human consciousness in its ability to reconcile harmful ideas as good.

On entry, you are greeted by signs that refer to you as a ‘guest’ but guests are generally welcome visitors that are not expected to pay for any hospitality given. So in Legoland, where you are not ‘welcome’ if you do not have any money, you are not a guest, but a cash-cow that it intends to milk mercilessly until your teats are dry of any liquidity or succour. The complete one-sidedness of this arrangement is beautifully demonstrated by the penny franking machines all tourist attractions seem to have. These are machines that ask you for good money—a penny, which they will then destroy for you by franking their own advertising logo onto it. Not only do these machines destroy your good money, but in order to allow you to advertise their profit making enterprise to others on your ruined penny, they ask you to pay one pound. And some people agree to pay this! I felt like a sane man inhabiting an asylum.

Let me destroy your good money

It also has a class system in place. If you are rich, you can avoid queuing by buying a special pass. It was strange seeing the endless lines of humanity waiting for a ride, like so many desperate refugees waiting for transport away from their hell, and then see a privileged member of the elite walk straight to the front of the queue and usurp the seat that someone had been waiting hours for. There was something feudal in the act.

People waiting to be processed

As the day progressed, I became aware that  all the parents I encountered seemed to be of a similar disposition as me, that is, bored, fed up and spent up. That means that fifty percent of Legoland’s visitors must be unsatisfied with the product. What other service or product could survive such an atrocious customer satisfaction survey?

My only explanation for theme parks existing is that parents have been inculcated with the idea that they have to sacrifice their lives for their children—if the children are happy, nothing else matters. But why can’t parents share their lives with their children? Why aren’t there theme parks that engage the adults as much as the children? And even if the their children’s happiness is paramount, any father knows that a lake of mud with a shower attached is all they need to be entertained.

Capturing a child's imagination.

As we strolled around mini-world, a land of miniature buildings and scenery all built out of lego, my son, in an unguarded moment, let slip that he considered this part of Legoland to be the best bit out of all the attractions. Maybe it has something to do with engaging a child’s imagination…

At the end of the day, my wife saw my distress and granted me leave of absence from doing any more theme park duty for the rest of my life. At least something good came out of it then.

Recently there was a consumerist war. The Blu-Ray dvd player, manufactured by Sony, fought the HD DVD player, manufactured by Toshiba. Consumers stood in a circle around the fight and watched. They had learned their lesson from previous fights (Betamax vs VHS) and weren’t going to part with any money until they knew who was going to win.

This is capitalism as it is supposed to be: firms fighting it out to give us more choice at a reasonable price. Except in this instance there should have been more fighters in the ring. Two fighters is looking a tad suspicious for a capitalist contest.

Anyway, Sony came out victorious. People knew where to put their money and the units started flying out the door. The best product must have won, right?

Wrong.

It was well known at the time that Sony was making a huge loss with every PlayStation 3 it sold (the machine had a Blu-Ray player built in).  Sony’s strategy was clear: undercut the competition until they run out of money, then the market will be wide open for the monopolistic dominance of one company. It’s a well known gambit. Regional newspapers used to do it all the time to upstart magazines appearing in their territory which were given away for free. These magazines would eat into the newspaper’s advertising revenue by offering a cheaper alternative. The newspaper’s response would be to slash its own rates until the upstart starves of income. Once dead, the newspaper would safely put its own rates back up to immodest levels.

What we have instead of competition then, is simply, the survival of the richest. In a market of few players, the player with the deepest pockets wins. And we can see this happening today. Look at practically any market in the Western world and a few giant players dominate. How many supermarkets can you name? Presumably then, the logical endpoint of capitalism is a monopoly. Game over.

Should firms be allowed to sell their products at below cost? Surely, some would argue, that option is part of the freedom of capitalism? But corporations are required by law to maximise their profits for their shareholders so is this strategy unlawful?

This is why an independent referee with meaningful powers is required in any market.

Someone at the recent Glastonbury festival brought a balloon with them which they inflated during the U2 performance. The text on the balloon criticised the band’s hypocrisy  (particularly Bono, I presume) for using tax shelters to hide their considerable wealth. There is indeed an issue with fabulously wealthy people bemoaning the state of the poor whilst simultaneously denying them help in an indirect way. I don’t know how much U2 donate to charity or how many hours they work in soup kitchens but my issue in this instance is not with U2 but with the Glastonbury festival organisers.

The balloon was similar to many other standards flying in the crowd. Some standards promoted well known, profit driven commercial enterprises. Presumably this was acceptable to the organisers because they were allowed to remain. The balloon criticising U2 however, was removed by the authorities. Read that sentence again… The balloon criticising U2 however, was removed by the authorities.

The authorities in this case were the security ‘guards’ at the festival. The ‘protest’ balloon was making a valid comment on the facts surrounding the band on stage. It was not inflammatory, it was raising a debate. Wasn’t the original motivation for having festivals, the desire to have an alternative space where freedom of thought and expression could flourish? It appears the hypocrisy of U2 has infected the festival organisers in a contagion which has spread unnoticed by the morally alert and ethically switched on intelligentsia of festival goers — or am I imagining these people still exist?

Inevitably, the wheel turns full circle and the Glastonbury festival has become the very thing it originally professed to despise.

The struggle that liberal parents have at Christmas time is deciding which story to tell their young children. They can either go along with the charade of a mythical, generous figure distributing bounty to the world or they can tell the truth; these presents really came from your parents and it nearly bankrupted them in the process.

What usually happens is a capitulation, an unthinking compliance to, ‘tradition’ or ‘charm’ and the children are left in ignorance about the truth. The reasoning is that their childhood will only last for so long and so the parents let them enjoy the magic of Christmas before that rough kid turns up in the school playground one day with devastating news. The impulse is to protect their children’s innocence from the hard, cynical realities of life.

WikiLeaks is that rough kid in the playground of the world, telling everyone that Democracy doesn’t really exist and that it’s just a story to protect us from the hard, cynical realities of life.

And what are those realities of life?

• That governments are made up of human beings and as such, are as prone to the same greed, corruption and duplicitousness that affects everyone else.
• That, far from being a benign, generous figure dispensing the gifts of freedom and choice to the world, Democracy is just another clever disguise for a group of privileged and power obsessed people bent on imposing their version of how everyone should live onto the rest of the world.
• That securing resources, consumerism and profit  are the three gifts that they bring for themselves.
• That the only safety and innocence that they wish to protect, is their own.
• That the greatest enemy of Democracy is, in fact, the very people we have entrusted to protect it.

Better that we were never told the story of Santa Claus in the first place, then that rough kid couldn’t break our hearts so easily.

It has been said many times that technology is the saviour of the human race. It has been revered by the consumerist society as the lodestone that guides our direction in society and, ultimately, it will save us from whatever danger threatens; we are technology.

But we are locusts in a buzzing swarm. We admire our empire of things, of numbers; look how big and clever we are. It is axiomatic that the locust swarm is at its biggest immediately before it collapses. We are deluding ourselves that all is well.

Let’s look at the benefits that technology has brought.

It is only in the last two hundred years that technology has benefited a large number of people and that benefit is subject to much interpretation. To the poor workers who inhabited the hell holes of the city, it was of no real benefit, it was the owners of the factories who benefited.

Medicine is often touted as the biggest improvement in our lives. But medicine is predicated on illness. Without ill health we don’t need medicine and evidence suggests that the majority of hunter gatherer societies in the past were incredibly healthy. Once you control the main infectious diseases such as Smallpox, Measles, Tuberculosis and the like, what are you left with? Today’s big killers, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, are all linked to self inflicted poor health. The rest of the modern medicine that Big Pharma trumpets as miracles of technology are remedies for ailments that have been brought on by… modern technology. Is that progress?

So perhaps three generations of the human species have benefited from technology so far. The next generation will be the first to show a negative result in terms of benefits – they will die younger due to affluence. So just three generations have drunk on the fruits of technology and become so addicted to its effects that we cannot live without it. And yet, one day soon, we shall be denied the drug. Technology is not a benediction, it is a curse.

It is my belief that the technological revolution has debased the quality of life. At some stage, the speed of change within technology will overtake our ability to keep up with it (if it hasn’t already). Look what is happening today. If I was a manufacturer of dvd equipment, I wouldn’t be too worried about my machines becoming unreliable after a couple of years. This is because there is a very good chance the equipment will be obsolete in that time and a ‘better’ product will replace it completely. Also, cheaper goods mean that it is not worth repairing faulty goods but simply replacing them.

What is this mentality doing to our culture, lifestyle, outlook and sense of history? At one time, a house builder would have it in the back of their mind that the house they were building had to last at least 100 years. That meant that every item installed into the fabric of the building was evaluated on this basic assumption. The builder would disregard any material that he considered unable to pass this criterion. Today, with turbo charged innovation, a builder, who is used to his electronic equipment becoming obsolete after a couple of years, considers house building in a new light. How long is the house supposed to last? Usually the term of the mortgage, so 25 – 30 years is the new minimum. After that time, building regulations will have moved on so much that houses built today will be considered worthless. Solar panels will have to be built as standard, wind turbines where appropriate, equally so.

The upshot is, that we fill our material lives  with disposable trash, designed to fall apart after a couple of years. Our vision of the future becomes increasingly short sighted. Nobody will want to build anything of quality as regards technological equipment because it simply isn’t worth it. Our culture will suffer too. Everyone will speak in Twitter sentences, art will be maximised for 15 minutes of fame, music will be ‘enhanced’ for a once only listen. Technology is supposed to be our servant, not our master.