My Story of Stuff

Housing and World Federation

By John Taylor; 2007 Dec 13, 2 Masa'il, 164 BE

The other night I viewed a short but must-see video on the Web called "The Story of Stuff." It is in a very simple format supplemented by black-on-white line-drawn animations and can be found on the Story of Stuff website, at:

 <http://www.storyofstuff.com>.

 This short film reminded me of "An Inconvenient Truth," in that it is essentially a filmed lecture that brings together disparate research findings about the environment in one place, simplifies them, brings them to life and goads us to contribute to ending the mess. The narrator is clear and colloquial, but she does not eschew academic jargon.

 The Story of Stuff describes one woman's ten-year study of our messed-up manufacturing cycle, and suggests ways to change it from a linear model to a circular one that does not destroy, exploit and spew poisons into our world. Our present linear model is a one way trip to oblivion that destroys nature, that overproduces while pumping toxic chemicals and neuro-toxins, and encourages blind consumption. What is left over is thrown out, or worse, burned. Our recycling is half hearted, and most new stuff is designed to be un-recyclable.

 I was half-way into it when I notice Tomaso watching over my shoulder. I thought it would be way over his head, but animations work miracles and to my surprise it inspired him to draw his own picture, similar to the linear production cycle featured on a white backdrop throughout the Story of Stuff film. It included his own suggested ideas for bringing manufacturing and sales around to a circular, recycling model. Inevitably, it involved contraptions, laser blasters and attack robots, typical eight-year-old boy fare. He was so intrigued that he called a reluctant older sister to come and watch, and she too was inspired. As a result I saw the film more often that I would have otherwise. They were horrified by the part that explains the role of television and advertising in enslaving consumers in an endless rat-race of consumption. I expect to hear fewer arguments about my limiting screen exposure and less ardent regrets about my cutting them off from commercial television. I highly recommend that everybody check this site out.

 Like Tomaso, whenever I see a problem in the world I want to sketch out the solutions, the difference being that I rely less heavily on lasers, blasters and robots. Robots, maybe, but not at first. We who believe that the way to peace is the unification of the world under one confederation are, in my opinion, going about it in the wrong way if we concentrate only on politics. Politics are corrupt, unpopular and restricted in appeal. We need to turn to what works. The problem of stuff is, as the film says, at base a human problem and, as the film says, humans must become the solution too. Here are the ideas I woke up with this morning.

 It seems to me that if we are going to make the stuff cycle circular and non-linear we should concentrate on housing and neighborhoods. The entire linear system pictured in The Story of Stuff points directly here. A huge arrow is pointing from the sources of destruction to you and me in the homes we live in. Here the decision to trash products is made, -- as the film points out, over 90 percent of the trinkets and gadgets we buy is trashed within six months of purchase. Though all arrows point here, the housing arrow itself points in the same direction as the rest of the economy: straight to oblivion. Here designers and scientists are blocked from planning; here the least coordination and standardization are to be found. Here the great tyrant is not big brother but "little brother," that is, parochialism, localism and labor disharmony. Human ignorance and selfishness stymie every attempt to reform the system.

 This happens because housing is the end product of rampant land speculation. Our homes are purpose built to minimize speculator's initial construction costs. Permanent, enduring expenses are created and offloaded to home buyers, who are so heavily in debt that they rarely can afford to bring the houses up to standard, even when they have the knowledge, will and expertise to try to do so. As a result, our homes and apartments are expensive and inefficient to run.

 Because they are purpose-built to ignore long-term costs incurred over the entire lifetime of the building, residents pay slightly less initially but fork out thousands every year for heat and utilities that could have been largely avoided. Owners and residents in these money and resource sinks suffer for lack of improvements that would have cost a pittance to install initially, if only building codes held to a higher standard.

 Now that the planet's resources are scraping at their limits we suddenly realize that we need to conserve heating costs by sealing houses and using heat exchangers to allow efficient air circulation. We see how it would be of benefit to install solar panels, improve our sewers and toilets, and grow food local, in yards and roof gardens. There are dozens of other important ways we could reduce waste, but to do them quickly we would somehow have to retrofit every house and apartment building in the world. Such massive renovations would be disruptive, inefficient and extremely expensive for home owners.

 How do we get around this? Do we tear down every neighborhood and rebuild entire cities from the ground up, doing it right the first time? Perhaps. But if the problem is people, and ideas run people, then we should change ourselves and adopt better ideas first. Otherwise, radical changes could very well make things worse than they already are. And the very act of tearing down and pouring concrete for new buildings releases large amounts of greenhouse gases. So for a while, at least, we are better off reflecting, meditating, praying, consulting, and doing other activities that go to the heart of the problem, the human heart, and do no harm to the environment.

 We should concentrate all our thoughts on better technical standards, especially for homebuilding. If there were a standard home everywhere tremendous economies of scale would kick in, and the billions of displaced souls stuck in substandard slums would gain the necessities of life and hope of advancement.

 I am convinced that higher housing standards would improve the lifestyle of the wealthy even more than the poor. It is astonishing that from a technical point of view even the million dollar mansion is very poorly built. People in the future will laugh at us in the same way we laugh at the drafty castles in which kings and the nobility lived in the middle ages. The reason this happened is the growth of a siege mentality that separates the minds of the elite from what is in their own interests. They shut themselves off in gated neighborhoods, and hold in their minds an excessive class consciousness. Similarly corporations are separated from shareholders, workers and the communities in which they function, and this has led to the vicious circle where poisons are routinely pumped into the process at every stage. We need to unite minds and pocketbooks. The Master has something to say about that, as we shall soon see.

 Isolated from reality, the rich and their corporate minions miss out on a chance to learn life's most valuable lesson, that there are many kinds of wealth, and the best cannot be measured in dollars. Love and wisdom, as the proverb says, are far more precious than gold or rubies. If those living in rich areas renounced their precious, unused, excessive space and lived in the same compact, standard, modular, mobile, high density housing complexes as everybody else, they would find that what they lose out on is a mere pittance compared with what they would gain. Numerous studies have found long term health benefits and reciprocal advantages of living in a diverse, active, vital community, and a gated neighborhood cannot be diverse.

 The area that does the least harm to the planet are changes in software, both that in our computers and that in our own heads and hearts. If we concentrate on giving our planet a better nervous system -- in the form of a responsive Internet -- we will be in a better position to act effectively when the time comes. I have often thought that the first place to start is to have a goal of connecting every person on the planet to a telephone and the internet, which would allow each and all to have an Internet-based bank account. That would allow charities and donors to make direct payments to the poorest people in the world. By assuring that they are financially stable and their rights are secure, we could remove the causes of exploitation of people, all of which are wrapped up in environmental destruction.

 Supplemental Articles

 Article One, "Framing," at the end of this mailing, discusses the idea of making each individual in the eyes of the computerized financial system look like a independent bank or corporation. Although this is discussed in a different context, I think this is what we should be doing as far as the "software" of social reform goes if we are to hope to bring about rapid changes.

 Article two is a website our radical doctors emailed us about, that includes a petition you can fill in to lend moral support to those who disapprove of how the talks at Bali are going. It rings of politics, I know, but I have become such a fervent environmentalist that in spite of my qualms, I signed the digital petition.

 Article Three is financial advice from the Master on how to reform the whacked out monster that capitalism has become. Like most religious people, Baha'is are all for a moderate, regulated free enterprise system. As it is now, any aspect of economics that affects the interests of the few, be they workers or the elite, is politicized and therefore emasculated. Abdu'l-Baha's advice shows how to keep owner worker relations from becoming politicized. He ends with a story of a Turkish worker's revolution that took place in "ancient times." Does anybody know what specific event He is talking about?

 Following these three articles are some short but interesting ideas for solar panels, higher standard houses, and other stopgap ways to make our hopeless dwellings less environmentally damaging.

 Article One, Framing: Securing Very Important Data, Your Own; By Denise Caruso, NY Times, October 7, 2007

  AS long as we are willing to relinquish some personal data, Web applications have long allowed us to create virtual identities that can conduct most of the social and financial transactions that typify life in the real world.

  ONE way to change this, he said, is to make people more like organizations. To this end, Mr. Neuenschwander and his colleagues have floated the intriguing concept of the L.L.P.: the Limited Liability Persona. This persona would be a legally recognized virtual person in which users could invest the financial or identity resources of their choosing. Once their individual personas are created, consumers would be able to use them as their legal alter ego, even in financial transactions. My L.L.P. would have its own mailing address, its own tax ID number, and that is the information Id give when I am online, Mr. Neuenschwander said. Other benefits include the ability for personas to limit their financial exposure in ways that individuals cannot.

  http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/technology/07frame.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

 Article Two, Featured Website and Survey: Stop the Climate-Wrecking at Bali

  http://www.avaaz.org/en/index.php

  Climate negotiations in Bali are in crisis. Things were looking good till now: near-consensus on a delicate deal, including 2020 targets for rich countries, in return for which China and the developing world would do their part over time. IPCC scientists have said such targets are needed to prevent catastrophe. But Japan, the US and Canada are banding together to wreck the deal, and the rest of the world is starting to waver...

  We cannot let three stubborn governments throw away the planet's future. We have until the end of Friday to do everything we can. Please sign our emergency global petition below -- we'll deliver it through stunts at the summit, a full-page ad in the Financial Times in Asia, and directly to country delegates to stiffen their nerve against any bad compromise. Add your name to the campaign below now!

 Article Three, Abdu'l-Baha, Foundations of World Unity, pp. 43-44

"No more trusts will remain in the future. The question of the trusts will be wiped away entirely. Also, every factory that has ten thousand shares will give two thousand shares of these ten thousand to its employees and will write the shares in their names, so that they may have them, and the rest will belong to the capitalists. Then at the end of the month or year whatever they may earn after the expenses and wages are paid, according to the number of shares, should be divided among both. In reality, so far great injustice has befallen the common people. Laws must be made because it is impossible for the laborers to be satisfied with the present system. They will strike every month and every year. Finally, the capitalists will lose. In ancient times a strike occurred among the Turkish soldiers. They said to the government: "Our wages are very small and they should be increased." The government was forced to give them their demands. Shortly afterwards they struck again. Finally all the incomes went to the pockets of the soldiers to the extent that they killed the king, saying: "Why didst thou not increase the income so that we might have received more?"

 Homemade air conditioners:
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2007/11/homemade_air_conditioner_2.html

 Sunshine to Dollars, practical advice on how to get free solar electric panels:
 http://www.freesolarelectricpvpanels.com/?gclid=CMHekdfOy48CFQkxgwodnQHT-A

 Minihomes:
 The Perfect House: Architecture

 "A home built with a clear conscience," by John Bentley Mays, October 12, 2007
 <http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20071012.MAYS12/TPStory/Environment>

 The Sustain Minihome, the modernist green RV, makes it to TV. I think it is a fabulous thing, the ultimate in green housing.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOAPe0VoK3U

 Overall First Place: Technische Universitdt Darmstadt
 http://www.solardecathlon.org/scores_standings.html

 This team from Germany came to the Solar Decathlon hoping to have an impact on people, and it's safe to say that this happened. Darmstadt won the Architecture, Lighting, and Engineering contests. The Architecture Jury said the house pushed the envelope on all levels and is the type of house they came to the Decathlon hoping to see. The Lighting Jury loved the way this house glows at night. The Engineering Jury gave this team an innovation score that was as high as you could go, and said nobody did the integration of the PV system any better. Darmstadt was one of seven teams to score a perfect 100 points in the Energy Balance contest. All week, long lines of people waited to get into this house. Germany has a "solar feed-in tariff" that provides a guaranteed price for any solar power that is fed into the German power grid. Because the feed-in tariff is high enough to more than cover the cost of the installation over the long term, the university is selling shares to the public to finance these photovoltaic systems. This yields a return for the investors as the revenue from selling the power is split among them.