Outsourcing to Nature: Recognizing Brilliance in Other Living Beings

Plants are not objects. On an intellectual level, we all know that. We know that plants are living beings and even that they move - albeit very slowly. However, if you ask most children if they think that plants are objects or creatures, they will answer objects.

A plant sees the light.

 It is a fundamental failure on the part of us people to view other living beings (and even sometimes other people) as objects. Perhaps it's the nature of our ego or our will to survive to see ourselves as more worthy than other living beings. We claim for ourselves the height of evolutionary brilliance because of our ability to dominate and control other beings. Yes, our brains have made us great generalists, so that we can even survive in the most inhospitable climates. But by being a generalist, we also aren't the most advanced or naturally skilled at everything.

Monarch butterflies are an excellent example of how - in comparison - we are troglodytes. Even with the most minute of brains, these butterflies can navigate a complex migration path using light as a guide. Perhaps with our increasing reliance on technology, we have lost this ability to navigate with light. Our technology even stands in the way of even seeing the light. Despite the brilliance of creating GPS systems that can lay out a path for us, we ourselves are not capable of finding a migration path on our own. Are we better than butterflies because we can outsource our navigation or are they better than us because they do it innately? These questions seem to become more and more irrelevant in face of our growing body of knowledge that exposes the sophistication of other living beings' abilities. Is it not time to discard the claims of the Enlightenment: reason and ratio have incurred far more destruction than they have brought light.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a small but noticeable trend to recognize the brilliance of many highly specialized adaptations by plants and animals. In recent years, this trend has reappeared in the return to designs in nature to solve issues in robotics and networking. But before this could happen, there needed to be a change in the way we viewed other living beings. We had to overcome our need to sit at the top of the pyramid and outsource our designs to creatures whose abilities far outreached our own.

Nature builds like this (Revue des Monats, 1928)

And people build like this.

Post-Soviet Family Cohesiveness: Why Only Half of Us Went to Pinery Park

When I first encountered the eastern European mindset around 10 years ago, I was astonished at how cohesive the group of Russian and Ukrainians were. It seemed as though they would do everything together - to put it in military terms - they wouldn't leave anyone behind. For me this was a bit of a shock, I have always had a streak of efficient laziness. In other words, I would want to get a task done as quickly as possible, which usually meant dividing and conquering. My Western version of social cooperation.

That was 10 years ago. Or maybe we just visit our in-laws too often. Or maybe I'm just too grouchy too often to want spend time with (something about staying in a two bedroom apartment for even one night with four other people makes me want to tear my hair out).

What once astonished me now sets me up for disappointment. When we go to visit, it's an effort to convince everyone that spending time all together would be a good idea. We did after all just spend money to drive all the way to London, Ontario (it's a two hour drive) with a three year old to visit. How outrageous is that? To feel as if your visit is welcomed, your effort is recognized, your presence valued?

The obligation to all agree to do something has faded - there are justifiable excuses not to do something all together. One person doesn't want to do this because it's only for kids. Another person wants to hide inside from the evil pollen out there. Another one doesn't want to drive so far. Yet another one doesn't want to spend the day cooped up inside, dealing with a bored, pouty spouse or eating till the grouchiness compounds into downright hostility (that's me).

There was an insurmountable impasse to spending time all together. Nobody wanted to make an effort to compromise - to bend. We, as much as the others, didn't bend to the others. In fact, going to Pinery Park was a defiance of unnecessary compromise - of bending to another's whims. If there were the hope that others might compromise, we might have felt less defiant. We also might not have spent the day at the beach and walking through the forest.

In the end everyone was happy not to have had to compromise - what is that saying - a good compromise leaves everyone a little dissatisfied.

Skepticism, the Sacred and Sexuality: What to do if you're allergic to spiritualism

The short answer is avoid it and try to keep the gagging to a minimum when confronted by it in any of your acquaintances. I usually also avoid commenting on it, unwilling to rain on anybody's parade even when their parade seems to be founded on such substance as rainbows.

The longer answer comes from the conflation of "consciousness" and "sacred" that like a virus replicates itself in people looking to connect to a movement beyond themselves. Recently I came across advertisements for a sexuality and consciousness conference in Montreal in the springtime. They promise a "transformational" experience that will lead to more "fulfilling relationships" and "magic." In principle I agree with an attempt to remove "shame, guilt and fear related to sexuality and authenticity." If it works for you, then great. Participate in workshops called "SSSEX" (Spiritual Sexual Shamanic Experience Level 1). Participate and meet other like minded folks who will entrench you even further in ideas you share.

I have several problems with conflating sexuality, sacredness, and consciousness as this workshop seems to do. The first is cultural appropriation. I read recently a well-written blog post by a former yoga teacher which outlined her reasons for halting her yoga practice and teaching. She became increasingly troubled by the aspects of yoga that resembled colonialism. This is not to say that "learning" from another culture is forbidden (that would be even worse), but using another culture for your own purpose is separate issue. The brief time I spent on the Sexual Renaissance page, I noticed immediately the motifs from cultures that have a spiritual reputation such as early South Americans who have a history of Shamanic ritual. Why do have stamp our products, our so-called spirituality with another culture? Do we take from other cultures to lend ourselves credence?



A second issue I have with such conferences is the spiritual aspect pure and simple. I find it suspect to heal bodily taboos with the sacred. To put it crudely, it is just replacing one pile of crap with another. I have not done the research, nor can I say assuredly that I am an expert, but I assume a large portion of sexual taboos and shame have been codified through the Judeo-Christian tradition in the West. One could argue that spirituality and organized religion are two separate enterprises, but untangling the two is problematic on many levels.

Simply put, many people still look to organized religion for spiritual guidance, and often on matters directly related to sexuality. Even one as purportedly as open as the "Shamanic" experience they offer is laden with beliefs about sexuality, ones that could easily - if not already - harden into dogma. (Come on, a playboy tantric sex teacher?)

 Furthermore, ladling sex and sexuality with creativity and the sacred ignores one of the most fundamental aspects of sexuality as that which we share with animals - with practically any living creature. It links us with the entirety of the planet not through our human consciousness but in the very absence of it. (And what makes orchid blossoms so delightfully obscene - I have been known to stick my pinkie finger into a blossoms centre with some childish sense of fun).

Sexuality is not sacred. Removing the sacred from sexuality is what will cause the "Sexual Renaissance" they are so desiring. How can we do that? By supporting sexual education in our schools. By not being afraid to teach our children about their bodies from a very young age. Knowledge about their bodies will protect them and give them pause when they explode into a hormone soup during their teenage years. Engaging a new generation of critical thinkers will give them the tools to approach the barrage of hypersexual and often artificially enhanced images with a skeptical eye. To not necessarily believe our senses. To not believe in magic, while wondering at it all.

It is true philosophical skepticism which leads to openness - a kind of secular spiritualism - founded in disbelief.

The Plant Gave It to Me: Economics and Nature

For many years, it has been easy to value natural resources at zero. Even though we began to see our negative impact on the natural environment in the 1960s, we have failed to take into consideration nature as both a cost and value. Over the past forty years, this has changed a great deal, and gradually, nature is being recognized in economic theory as a significant factor.

What were the reasons for nature to be ignored? One of the easiest to point out is our distinction between culture and nature. Economic activity has been viewed as a cultural activity. While the context and much of the natural resources have been viewed as outside culture and consequently outside economic activity. As early as 1974, these limitations were being recognized and included economic calculations. E.F. Schumacher used this as his basis for his distinction between "economics" and "meta-economics." The latter being the context for which all economic activity takes place.

While in economics, the natural environment was gradually being recognized as both an ignored factor and additionally, a devalued ethical concern, one forward-thinking German writer was already recognizing "nature" as an economic factor at the fin de siècle. Kurd Lasswitz, a writer known for his contribution to early science fiction, realized that the natural world played a fundamental role in economic success. In his novel, Star-Dew: A Plant from Neptune's Moon (1909), the plant gives a "gift" to humans of a chemical compound that can be used to make a flexible, yet durable material - similar to what we call plastic. By framing the plant compound he calls "rorin" as a "gift," he recognizes that the plant's contribution may not be able to be concretely valued, but that it nonetheless has value. The function of "gift" also attributes an agency of sorts to the ones who give the gifts, while not calling it a human agency. The plants become as persons, but not persons.

Lasswitz' concept of plants as economic factors anticipates in many ways Matthew Hall's argument in Plants as Persons. Although he does not claim that plants are intelligent and sentient in the same way that humans are, he does argue for a view of plants that gives them a similar status to humans. If we can do that for corporations, why not for other non-humans. This improved status may be the final impetus to include plants and other non-human and even the non-living resources in our economic equations.

NDP: Win A Date with Tom Mulcair!

The NDP`s latest fundraising campaign offers a chance to watch a hockey game with Tom Mulcair, if you donate as little as 5 dollars to the party. While Tommy may be not as much a draw as say Trudeau for a date, it would still be interesting to sit and grill him about his plans for the party for a couple of hours and make him buy you beer and hot dogs for the exhorbitant arena prices. I have two questions about the campaign. First, why am I ignoring the emails? Second, I wonder how he feels about the whole thing.



I signed up to receive emails from the NDP, so that I could receive updates from the party. Instead, they function as a platform for a big, red "donate now" button. I stopped reading them because the information they send is essentially useless for me and they send far too many of them. I suspect for every forty people like me who views these emails as flies buzzing in my inbox, there is one person who will donate on the tenth email in seven days (I may be exaggerating on the amount of emails - this is my feeling of the frequency). If we follow the law of averages, the more people you contact the more likely they will donate. Great! Simple formula.



Or slightly incorrect. For people like me, who aren't inclined to donate willy nilly and get annoyed at the clutter in my inbox, the amount of emails may actually be impacting their perception of the party and may have some further negative consequences far beyond the reach of the campaign. I place my vote based on the party platforms. What if I were to get so irritated at the fundraising tactics that this would bias my interpretation of the platform to the extent I would see otherwise positive goals to actually be negative. How do you fundraise without turning people off from the cause?
 

I don't have a ready answer to that but I do know that this may be fine line to cross.

As for my second question, I am sure that Tommy - may I call you that? - enjoys spending time with a complete stranger who won some contest by donating five dollars to the campaign. Maybe he looks forward to getting to know someone new over a bonding experience like hockey. Dear Tommy I hope you have a great blind date and I hope that the campaign was worth the date.



On a side note, this campaign has been part of a larger effort to connect with a younger demographic. Their previous effort to engage young voters with the "pick the best sticker" campaign is another example. "I heart NDP?" Really? I suggest that they may have more success if they dressed Tommy in a flannel shirt and got him to wear a toque. They're already halfway there...

Ambivalent Motives: A Backlash Against the "Caring" Insurance Company

I don't watch the super bowl, but I ended up watching the "dead boy" commercial (and hearing my neighbours cheer every time someone scored a goal). Nationwide insurance wanted attention. That much is clear. Why else pay for a commercial spot during the super bowl. If this was their sole aim, they have succeeded on that point. Out of all the ads aired during the super bowl, theirs has received the most buzz on twitter and elsewhere.

But, and here is the big but: the response has been largely negative. Why? Because their motives appear ambivalent. Are they airing a commercial because they care about preventing drowning? Or, do they have a more nefarious purpose? One more closely aligned with the central purpose of ad space, selling or promoting a product. After the storm around the ad had already started to rage, Nationwide stepped up to the microphone and claimed that they cared. They were simply trying to start a conversation.

Yet judging from the twitter storm, many believe that they were trying to promote their product on the graves of innocent children. A rather unsettling association to say the least, and I would guess, not the conversation they were intending to start.

Part of the problem stems from the ad itself. Not only does it play on a person's heartstrings (most people do not want children to die, especially a sweet, lovely child like the one on screen), but it also uses the device of a surprise reveal that emphasizes the negative emotions. It is only at the end of the commercial that we learn why the child will never learn to ride a bike, to fly, and to get cooties. The child drowned. The surprise reveal is a trick that acts as an intensification device. In the commercial, it emphasizes an extremely negative outcome that partially places the responsibility for that outcome on the viewers. Ouch. The viewer now feels like they've been tricked and they feel guilty for the child's drowning.

Besides for the heavy emotional content in the context of light entertainment, why would the most negative motive be the one many jump to first? If google is any indicator of the widespread perception of insurance companies, it's not surprising that an insurance company is associated with say, "evil" or "scam" or "crooked." Those three extremely negative associations appear in the top five suggestions when you type in: "insurance companies are..."


Counteracting the negative perception of a company is one of the key motives behind initiating a public awareness campaign like this one here. Even though the company claims that they have been working with experts for more than 60 years to make homes safer, this is not the message that comes across. When designing the campaign, I don't think that the negative associations with insurance companies were taken seriously and addressed outright. The ad appeared to be the sheep's wool, hiding the wolf underneath.

A better strategy would have been to acknowledge the wolf. The ad could have begun with....

"Let's start a conversation about safety"
"We know our money can never compensate for a child's death"
"Meet..."

Then the original ad could have continued and perhaps the backlash would have been different.

Or not. Aren't insurance companies evil?

Why is technology blue?

Why is technology blue? A simple search for technology on Google images brings up a predominantly blue group of images. In the world we live in of extreme gender colour-coding, the first thought that comes to mind is that technology has been coded as masculine. But is this an accurate first impression?

A simple count of the number of male figures versus female figures in the image reveals that the majority associate male figures with technology, although there are a few female figures.

 

 This immediately leads to a second question. Is this merely a coincidence or do these images and the colour coding of technology as masculine reflect a reality within industries associated with technological innovations?

 

 Fortune magazine has compared the diversity numbers between the major tech companies and generally found them lacking. Just taking a look at the male-female ratio, the numbers are appalling. Indiegogo headed out the top of the list with 57% male and 43% female, while Apple with its uncharacteristically blue apple came in second with 72% male and 28% female. If the numbers only include technical workers, then the picture is decidedly more abysmal. Indiegogo still heads out the top with 33% female workers, but Apple's ratio of female workers drops to 20%. 

The question remains: what happened to Apple's previous rainbow coloured logo? Is that not a better ideal to strive for than a blue one?

The predominance of blue in images of technology is not the source of the gender disparity in the tech industry but rather a symptom of a larger issue. The industry seems to have been coded masculine just as other fields have been coded feminine such as education and pharmacy.








A biological basis for these differences have long been discounted, so the question of cultural conditioning remains. In a world that is more and more dominated by images, we seem to be subtly reinforcing norms within industries through the visual representations we choose. The answer isn't necessarily to code technology as pink - that would be just falling back into a mindset that excludes rather than includes.










The images we choose to represent a set of discourses as diverse as technology will change as our concept of technology and who is involved in determining it will change. I would hope that images like the one of the tree will be the reflection of our future. Such images speak to a growing awareness of the impact our changing technology has on our environment and on our neighbours.