I have finally finished moving those really old posts, written over nine years ago, here. Took a very long time because I had to make room for them, since they’re all personal posts and one of my rules for this blog is that the personal posts must make up less than half of the total. But at least that’s done now…
I’m still awfully embarrassed by that period of my life, but a lot of things make me feel embarrassed in hindsight and I doubt I could have done things differently anyway. Besides, it’s a part of my life and, taking everything into account, I don’t think it was any worse than what I’ve been going through for the past four years. It probably wasn’t any better either, just a slightly different kind of suffering and a few different problems…
If for some very weird reason you want to have a look, go ahead. If you click that link, you’ll see that they’re sorted with the oldest ones first, so if you’ll click “Previous Entries” at the bottom of the page you’ll actually see the next ones, while clicking “Next Entries” will take you to the previous ones. I put that tag before the title for each of them just to make it obvious, in case someone stumbles upon them and doesn’t notice the date, and that also allowed me to link to all of them like this. There are 25 posts in total…
Yesterday I received a notification from John Feeney, the founder of Global Population Speak Out, announcing that the Population Institute will administer Global Population Speak Out 2010, so I want to post a little rant about getting the media to cover the problem of overpopulation, and to do so properly.
It’s true that I say that environmental awareness campaigns are just a waste of time and money, because education requires a couple of generations to produce truly significant results on a large scale and we don’t have that time because we needed those results at least a generation ago already, but things are a little different when it comes to overpopulation. Pretty much everyone who doesn’t deliberately reject facts is aware of the damage we cause to the environment, there already are a noticeable number of activists and organizations that support these causes and the corresponding political movement is gaining strength, to the point that the Greens were the only previously existing group to gain members and influence at this year’s elections for the European Parliament, so the time of talking about the environment is past us. But there seems to be something that prevents people from making the connection between population and pollution and resource consumption, which means that we are far from having any significant number of activists or organizations tackling this issue, and none of the few that do exist have any political power. So it’s true that we needed significant results at least a generation ago, but it doesn’t look like we’ll ever have them unless we start from the beginning.
I think it was two days ago when I noticed the cover of a business magazine that said “The Demographic Bomb” in large letters. I was intrigued, wondering how did such a magazine end up deciding to publish something like this, but a better look proved that it was something completely different and actually quite typical for the business environment: They were talking about the aging population and how it is harming the economy, so it was quite the opposite idea!
I also remember that, despite monitoring all important Romanian newspapers during that time, the only article concerning overpopulation that I saw printed during Global Population Speak Out 2009 was one aimed at undermining any such efforts, saying that anyone wishing to reduce the population by lowering birth rates is misguided at best, because there’s no point in caring for the future unless our children will be living in it, then adding a religious perspective into it as well.
To top it all off, the swine flu provides a good opportunity for all sorts of conspiracy theories, generally revolving around the fact that the virus was engineered and released on purpose. They started tamely and plausibly enough, by saying that the pharmaceutical companies desperately needed a solid source of income, which will now be provided by the swine flu vaccines and treatments everyone will buy, so it may be that they created the virus themselves in an effort to increase sales. But then the focus ended up being on the governments, that supposedly are very much aware that Earth can’t properly sustain the current population now and will be able to sustain much less once the oil reserves will run out, so 90% of people need to be killed as soon as possible, which is why such a virus was created and released.
What this means is that the population problem is rarely approached by the media, and when that happens it’s mainly to warn or even scare people away from taking any measures to properly address it. Economists are worried about the fact that fewer births mean an aging population, which harms the economy, ignoring the fact that there won’t be much of an economy left once resources will run out. Most religious individuals claim that not breeding is against the teachings of their religion, ignoring the fact that causing harm to others or destroying what they believe to be the creation of their god or gods can also be against those same teachings. The selfish say that there’s no point in caring for the world itself and all the other creatures we share it with, so they only want to pass on their own genes, ignoring the fact that their own children are likely to suffer greatly if they’ll be born in this world. And conspiracy theorists, through this approach, make a significant number of people skip right past the part that says that a drastic reduction of the human population is required and be on guard against any attempts of accomplishing such a feat, even if the means used would be quite different from the ones the conspiracy theorists claim are currently being used.
In these conditions, it’s obvious why many people don’t know how much of a problem overpopulation is and why many of them are likely to react negatively to any attempts to discuss this issue. This means that anyone who tries to tell them differently will meet a very hostile reaction, making the likelihood of such an attempt even lower and the problem itself even greater. This is one situation where it’s extremely obvious that if you’re not part of the solution you’re most definitely part of the problem.
But there’s power in numbers, so what would be suicide for one person to attempt, a group of people might just pull off. And this is where events like Global Population Speak Out and organizations like Population Institute come in. They don’t get things done themselves, but they could create that critical mass of activists who would then be able to actually get things done. Talking about this may translate into further delays and even lower chances of solving the problem in due time, but at this point we don’t really have another option, or at least not an ethical one.
So I think that pairing Global Population Speak out and Population Institute is a very good thing, despite looking dubiously at Population Institute’s goal of promoting only voluntary birth control. The current state of the environment proves that voluntary measures don’t get things done, but that’s a discussion for later. For now, we just need to inform people about overpopulation, get them to understand how much of a problem it is and that all these other viewpoints that occasionally make their way into the media and claim that drastically reducing the number of births is not desirable are wrong because, if they take any facts into account at all, they fail to see the long-term effects of the current approach.
I kept saying that depressed people think better, but now there’s even a study to back me up, though the researchers don’t agree with me when it comes to causality. They’re saying that being sad makes people think and recall memories better, while I was saying that thinking things through inevitably results in being depressed in this world we have created for ourselves. But the two opinions can simply be summarized by saying that there’s an undeniable connection between thinking and being sad, which is quite obvious.
On the other hand, the author of the study says that a positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, cooperation and reliance on mental shortcuts. When it comes to creativity, I assume he’s talking about quantity, because when you’re in a good mood you may feel like putting any talents you have, or just think you have, to use and creating something, while when you’re in a bad mood you really don’t want to do much of anything and tend to assume that whatever you’d try will turn out badly. However, it seems to me that the best creative works are very often born out of pain and sorrow, so this statement could be seriously challenged if quality would also be taken into account. The other three parts, namely flexibility, cooperation and reliance on mental shortcuts, can be explained by the fact that people who are in a good mood tend to be more confident, but also shallower and less attentive. So happy people will trust their own abilities to get things right even if they miss certain details and believe that everything will turn out well in the end even if something doesn’t sound so well at that particular moment, but that also means they’re less likely to notice potential problems and more likely to just ignore even those they do notice.
I don’t have many good things to say about happy people, do I? That’s because happy people are far less likely to do something to improve the world and, while further improvements may not be needed in an ideal world, that’s certainly not the case for us, considering how deeply flawed our society is and how much we have harmed and continue to harm the entire planet. Being unhappy with how things are drives you to want to change them, so this kind of discontent is what the world needs, though obviously not what the people feeling it need.
Things are a bit different when it comes to personal lives, however. Being reasonably happy with your personal life helps a lot, because it allows you to overlook any minor disagreements you may have with those who are close to you and the little things that go wrong on a daily basis. Such a good mood also gives you the confidence needed to solve any problems that do arise and also to help those around you, strengthening your relationships. That same confidence can make you believe you can do something to improve the world too, while having strong relationships with the people you’re close to ensures that you’ll have others to support you in your attempts or to comfort you if you fail. But you’ll still need plenty of contemplative moments even in your personal life, to ensure that no serious problem or potential problem slips past you, unnoticed until it’s too late, and contemplation and happiness don’t go too well together.
So an ideal state of mind is probably represented by being generally content with your personal life, though also setting aside some time for contemplation in order to ensure that no problems remain unsolved for too long, and generally discontent with the world, though also enjoying some moments of hope, confidence and excitement in order to actually do something to improve it.
Regarding one’s personal life, long-term happiness is certainly possible, though rather rare, and nearly everyone has reasons for temporary happiness at least a few times in life. On the other hand, extremely few people have any reason to be happy with how the world is and works. So you’d think that the necessary degree of discontent required for improvements would always be there and we’d constantly be moving in the right direction, yet that’s not the case. That’s not the case partly because the powers that be make it very difficult and risky for anyone to try to change society, partly because unhappy people aren’t too confident in their abilities to begin with and partly because those in power have always tried to provide just enough people with just enough reasons for momentary happiness to prevent the unhappy ones from creating a strong enough movement.
But providing people with reasons for momentary happiness requires taking their needs and wants into account and actually doing something for them, so a better method for keeping them subdued was desired. It took a long time, but eventually, with the advent of modern psychology, it finally presented itself. Generalized feelings of unhappiness were called depression and started being treated as a disease, the “patients” being taught how to get over whatever’s making them unhappy and given drugs to simply make them less unhappy regardless of how they view things. That was a great day for the powers that be, not to mention for psychologists and pharmaceutical companies, and a dark day for the world, because people naturally want to be happy and more and more of them resort to these methods, treating the effects and doing nothing to remove the actual cause of their unhappiness, essentially doing the work that those in power had been forced to do up to that point.
If, as this study says, people who are in a negative mood are less gullible, less shallow, more eloquent and have better memory, they’re a threat to the status quo not only because they want to change it, but also because they could actually have the means to do so. On the other hand, if people who are in a positive mood are more gullible, shallower and have a harder time recalling past events, they’re easier to manipulate, while the fact that they’re less eloquent also means that they’d have a harder time attracting others to their cause even if they desired to do so. That said, being happy because you truly have a serious reason to be happy is wonderful, but not being unhappy despite having a serious reason to be unhappy only ensures that things will continue getting worse. It makes perfect sense for those in power to desire such a situation, but I can’t understand why do the rest of us allow it!
Perhaps a society in which the leaders would be unhappy and their subjects would be happy would be a giant leap towards utopia, because such leaders would be able to identify any problems or potential problems and truly want to solve them, while such subjects would be willing to do what their leaders would advise them to do in order to accomplish just that. But since the current situation is more or less the opposite, we need to stop being just pieces in their game, stop doing what they want us to do, hold on to our unhappiness and use it to fuel our efforts until we’ll actually manage to change the world for the better. Because if we don’t, who will?
It appears that England and Wales are considering giving cohabiting couples better inheritance rights, which is certainly a good thing, but lawyers are complaining about it. I really don’t get this. If those people have shared their lives for so long, you should assume that each of them would want the other to have whatever they leave behind after death too. If one of them specifically doesn’t want that to happen, they’re free to write a will and state that fact, but if no such will exists then the default assumption should be that sharing your life includes sharing your wealth.
But this is just one part of the issue. I think that the amount of time spent living together is what should matter when determining what rights should people who are in a relationship have, not a simple piece of paper saying that they’re married! Ideally, married and unmarried people should have the exact same rights if they have been living together for the exact same amount of time. (I’m trying to avoid writing “couples” because I want to take polyamorous relationships into account as well.) That situation may be a long way off, but every step forward helps and every step back harms.
That proposed law appears to state that the surviving partner receives full inheritance rights after five years of living together with the deceased or if they have children together, while having no children and having lived together with the deceased for at least two years, but less than five, entitles the surviving partner to half of that amount. The part about having children really bothers me, as does everything that encourages people to have children, especially when it’s for such selfish reasons, so I wish they’d get rid of that, but the amount of time seems quite correct. I just wish the same law would apply to married couples as well…
Actually, if I were to think about it right now, I could even set ten years as the amount of time people would need to be living together for before getting all these “relationship” rights, though the amount of time should be reduced accordingly if the relationship started when all those involved were already past a certain age, to offer them a reasonable chance of obtaining all these rights before death. In that case, you could even have a few rights obtained after just six months, about half after two years and the vast majority after five years. This is, of course, not just about inheritance rights, but about all the rights and benefits that people who are in a relationship can enjoy.
I see that lawyer being quoted as saying that “there is a fundamental difference between people who are married and not married” and don’t really know what she’s talking about. I mean, yes, those who are married because “that’s how it should be” are more traditionalistic, those who are married just in order to obtain these rights and benefits are more selfish and perhaps more pragmatic, while those who are married for both of these reasons are both more traditionalistic and more selfish than those who are not married, but why would that give them more rights? If anything, those who get married in order to obtain these rights and benefits should be far less entitled to them!
The sort of reasoning that makes people say that the act of marriage carries such weight in itself is basically saying that people share more and become more dedicated to each other after going through a ceremony and signing a piece of paper than after living together and sharing every aspect of their lives for years. Thinking logically for just a fraction of a second should be enough to make everyone realize that such a concept is completely wrong, stop focusing on papers and ceremonies and move on to what really matters in a relationship.
Granted that some sort of evidence is required in order to certify that certain people have moved in together and consider themselves to be in a relationship, but that’s easy to obtain even without marriage. Actually, married people may not even live together at some point, so these requirements would be even more effective in determining who is truly entitled to those rights and benefits. I’m talking about something as simple as adding something to the documents that need to be filled when a person changes their residence, so they’ll be able to specify that they’re doing so in order to move in with their partner (or partners) and provide some contact information for them. The partner(s) would then obviously need to confirm this. And that’s all there is to it. Rights and benefits would automatically be granted as soon as the required amount of time would pass, as long as neither partner would contact the authorities to indicate the termination of the relationship or to change their residence without their partner(s) moving with them and no evidence of a separation would present itself.
I firmly believe that such laws would make people be more responsible and also avoid the situations that currently arise out of marriages of convenience, not to mention messy divorces. After all, we’re talking about obtaining rights and benefits as a result of managing to live together and maintain a relationship for an extended amount of time and not as a result of a ceremony that only requires a few minutes. And if any such individual rights and benefits would be lost by the one who leaves the relationship without having a very serious reason that’s clearly the fault of their partner(s), such as repeated abuse, it could even encourage people to put more effort into working out their differences, which would be another great thing.
It’d actually be better if the concept of legal marriage would be abolished entirely; it certainly would become pointless… Those who desire to get married in a religious setting would still be able to do so and the authorities would keep a record of these marriages for the benefit of the religions that do not allow their followers to have multiple partners at the same time or more than a certain number of partners during their lifetime, so nothing would change in that aspect. It’d just be a far fairer and more effective way of approaching this issue.
I find it rather strange that I didn’t write about this before, since I certainly heard a fair bit of talk about it and find it rather bothersome, not to mention really stupid. I’m talking about the debates regarding hanging clothes out to dry and all the places where doing so is already forbidden. It’s even happening in a few areas here in Romania, so unfortunately I imagine it’s a far worse problem in more “developed” countries.
Actually, I don’t have to imagine. The fact that something like Project Landry List exists reveals how things stand well enough. Sure, that only focuses on the United States, but it’s bad enough even so. It’d be interesting to know if similar movements exist in other countries as well, because I’m quite sure they’re needed… Even in areas where the local authorities don’t currently seem to mean to move in this direction, the residents should still be wary and at least show their support for those who are confronting this situation elsewhere.
I find it interesting that, despite having one themselves, certain people are so offended by the idea of a naked body that they have created these laws that force a person to wear clothes in public at all times. That’d make one believe that those people find clothes quite appealing, or at the very least acceptable at all times. Yet these debates seem to prove that assumption wrong, because they signify that clothes, clean clothes, are not an acceptable sight anymore. The exact degree of cleanliness can’t be the issue either, because clothes tend to be less clean when worn by a person than when they’re on a clothesline. The idea that clothes could only be an acceptable sight if they’re currently being worn or that underwear should never be seen doesn’t explain the situation either, because in that case clothing shops couldn’t exist.
That said, my humble opinion is that we’re talking about snobbery at best. Certain people want to show that they’re so far above the rabble that they can’t even tolerate something that’s not seen as modern anymore, so they attack those who still do that thing as a means of proving their own status. Later, those who aspire to that apparent higher status take after them. But that’s only if we’re to assume the best, such as it is, about these people. Otherwise we can conclude that it’s nothing but pure malice, these people simply creating and using this issue to trample over those around them, to force their will upon everyone else, simply because they realized that it could be possible to do so.
I’ll admit that a dryer can be useful if you truly need something to be dry very quickly, but why use one, why consume all that electricity, when a clothesline would do? Granted that this is a far more significant problem because of all the resources used and all the pollution currently generated in order to create that electricity, but it’d still be an issue even if that electricity would be generated entirely from renewable resources, simply because you shouldn’t use something when there’s absolutely no need to do so.
It’s a matter of taking responsibility for the real consequences of your actions. Using a dryer makes things slightly easier for you, but harms Earth. Also harms your finances, but that’s not what I’m talking about here, especially since those who push for such bans aren’t usually the kind of people who need to pay attention to such matters. Hanging your clothes out to dry, on the other hand, doesn’t harm anyone or anything. Those who claim otherwise just don’t know what they’re talking about, mainly because in order to complain about something like this they’d first need to watch what’s happening on someone else’s private property, which could be taken as a violation of that person’s right to privacy. It’s interesting how people fail to notice this little issue…
I really don’t know what could be so unsightly about a clothesline; seems like a pretty normal sight… Then again, that could be just what the problem is: Certain people have somehow lived without seeing something like this often enough. Maybe if we’d do it even more, they’d get used to it and the problem would be solved? It probably won’t be so easy, but it’s certainly worth a shot, and we’d better do that fast enough, before they manage to make even more people get used to the lack of clotheslines.
But seriously, the presence of a clothesline on someone’s private property shouldn’t be an issue for their neighbors. Or for anyone else. Ever. On the other hand, using a dryer, especially when it’s not really necessary, can and perhaps should be an issue for everyone because the massive amount of electricity used by these appliances has negative consequences for our planet and, if that’s not enough of a reason in itself, we all live on this planet… What’s more, such a significant power consumption can strain the distribution system, which can cause blackouts or power surges, therefore potentially harming the user and many others. As hard as it may sometimes be not to believe that it simply comes out of thin air, we do need to remember that electricity is produced somewhere and transported to us through a system that needs to function properly if we want to be able to enjoy all the benefits it offers when we actually need them.
So make a stand and hang your clothes out to dry! Don’t use dryers, don’t use small drying racks and don’t hang your clothes to dry inside your house or apartment unless you really have to. Put clotheslines in your yard if you have one or in your balcony if you do not and use them. That way, your clothes will dry for free, without using any resources and without causing any harm. And, who knows, maybe you’ll help certain individuals get used to the sight a little more…
The simple fact that clotheslines have been successfully used for so long may not be a good enough reason to keep using them, but snobbery, the desire to be “modern” or pure malice are even worse reasons to stop, especially considering the alternative. You don’t replace something that works well with something that creates more problems than it solves. Or at least you shouldn’t…
