Hunger in Your Community

Hunger is an international problem that is the result of many other social issues. Hunger is easily related to poverty. Interestingly enough, poverty is tied to an impressive amount of society's other problems.

            Some Causes and Consequences of Poverty

Notes on Poverty, Globally and Locally

While poverty and hunger are very prevalent issues in society (even in America!), idealists like myself are here to say, "There is hope! We can make a change!" You can create positive social change in your community, and we can create positive social change in the world. This is a fact. Now, If you're not interested in coffee table economics and sociology, and you're more interested in seeing how you can fight to end something like hunger in your own community, go ahead and scroll down a couple paragraphs. 

Global banking organizations, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have a lot of potential to help people in struggling parts of the world. Unfortunately, they have not met this potential, and have been used in the past as a means to financially control developing countries in ways that satisfy the interests of the rich. This is what we call a social structure - it's "the way things have been done" and it's tied intricately into the politics and functioning of everyday society. School systems, taxes, and lines (like what you wait in at banks), and even the banking system are things created and maintained by society. 

Social structures are not all bad.  But, because social structures are so intricately tied into tradition, they are often difficult to change. Difficult - not impossible. Often it may seem difficult, even daunting to try to confront these issues, but as I've said, I like to advocate a small-world approach to creating large-world progress.

So How Can You Create Change in Your Community?

To one degree or another, I've been involved with community service organizations both in leadership and follower-ship positions since I was twelve. I'm no expert, but you can learn some things in ten years. 

Here are a few tips to help you get started.

1.) Do some research. Find out what organizations, churches, or other groups in your community are fighting for causes similar to yours.

2.) Once you've done your research, get involved! 

3.) If no one is fighting for your cause, find a flexible organization that you can get involved with which you can tailor to your cause. For example, you can start a local support group, or a group of advocates at a church or an after-school program. Take charge! Change is made by leaders who are brave enough to persuade people to fight along side them.

4.) Once your cause is well established in the community, look for partners. Teamwork makes the dream work. Ideally, you can create a network of local organizations dedicated to fighting your cause. Someone at a church group I go to told me about a community that was dedicated to ending poverty in their zip code. This kind of stuff is not easy, but it's possible! In the end, my advice is this.

Positive social change occurs slowly, but if you're willing to take your time, and keep up the hard work, eventually you will convince other people to join your cause. One organization, two, five, ten organizations later... and you can do amazing things for your community and the world. By setting an example for small-world social change, you are creating a model for the rest of humanity. It all starts with you. Go get 'em, Champ.

What the hell is fair trade?

We've all heard of it, but what is fair trade? And why does it matter?

As I sit here drinking my tea, I start to feel guilty, but then I read the package that it's "EquaTrade". I buy from Teavana. It's high prices are attributed to being owned by Starbucks, but it really because they pay each "middle man" a fair price. It doesn't hurt that it's a better quality as well, not being pumped with pesticides and chemicals. 

There seems to be this stigma that people who are poor are lazy, but each of these farmers and plantation owners are working harder than I ever will to just keep food on the table, not for themselves, but their children. If they are working so hard, why then can't they keep food on the table? Because of what we buy and where we buy it from. 

Be aware of the effect you have on these families. 

population bomb....ut-oh

http://www.latimes.com/world/population/

Hello all bloggers! Take a look at the link to a video above. It's a wonderful visual and I think all of you will enjoy it although it is a bit depressing...

We live in a world where over 90% of the growing population is happening in the poorest countries. We live in a world where there is currently 7.058 billion people (2012 population data). We live in a world that is predicted to double in 58 years. 

This data may just seem like a statistic to some readers, but these numbers are human lives. Can Mother Earth take care of another however many billion people? Many people think it can. That's cornucopian! 

A Cornucopian is a futurist who believes that technology will find away to sustain our earth and that we will always find a way to get by. They believe that there is enough matter and energy on the Earth to provide for whatever population comes at it. 

It is predicted that if our population is to keep growing at the rate it is, by 2050, we will need an 80% increase in our water resources just to feed everybody. Nobody knows where we will get that water from. That's scary, don't you think? 

With these statistics, what do you think America will be like if our world was to double in just 59 years? Man, talk about a population bomb. 

That's all folks,

Jenna Newton

Let them eat (cheap) cake

       If you're like me then you might have found yourself asking what exactly this chapter of Stuffed and Starved  was all about.  It talked a little about what trade is at the most basic level and it talked a little about tea and other beverages.  Okay, who am I kidding, it talked A LOT about tea and other beverages.  I actually started to wonder why the chapter was titled 'Just a Cry for Bread'.  It also talked a lot about the Rhodes' Conundrum which basically stated that...

1. Poor people are out there and they're growing in number
2. There's not enough food to feed them all
3. Without food, the poor will go hungry
4. If they're hungry, they might start a civil war
5. Luckily other countries have enough food to feed them

This list led to the "solution" which I also think was the main take away point of the chapter.  Notice the quotation marks I used on solution..I'm being sarcastic because it's a terrible solution.

THE SOLUTION AND THE MAIN TAKE AWAY MESSAGE (in my opinion) 
       Governments use an abundance of cheap food to prevent civil wars from its citizens.  This chapter basically says that British and American governments feared that if people went hungry for too long that they would turn to violence and cause an uprising.  To prevent this from happening the World Trade Organization was created.  The WTO is basically a global government that facilitates trade and enforces trade laws.  This sounds good right?  Well...it's not.  The WTO severely restricts countries from being able to handle their own economies and direct their own trade.
       Watch this video to learn more about the World Trade Organization and decide for yourself if you think it's helping or hurting countries around the world.

   
-Georgia

The Chicken or the Egg?

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? - Although this has been a widely debated and pondered question, we seem to be no closer to the answer than we were in the beginning.

Thomas Malthus

Similar to this question, then, which came first: population growth or poverty? In Thomas Malthus’s An Essay on the Principle of Population, he argued that population growth will go unchecked until the growth runs up against environmental limits which, eventually, lead to poverty, resource scarcity, and hunger. Later critics of Malthus’s work have come to argue that poverty and hunger cause environmental decline and population growth as impoverished families struggle to maintain a living. Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen is one of the individuals in this camp.

Amartya Sen

Whether or not you buy into the argument of the chicken or the egg, or the argument of population growth or poverty, it is important to take the facts at face value. Or population is growing, and it is growing quickly. A constant rate of growth in the population leads to the acceleration of the use of natural resources. Our world is only so big; there are only so many resources to go around.

If you need to put into perspective the real, tangible problems that we are facing, take a look at this video: 

Also, keep in mind that today, in 2013, (as mentioned in the video) our world population is over 7 billion and growing. According to Michael Mayerfeld Bell in An Invitation to Environmental Sociology, more than 90% of the world’s population growth is currently taking place in poor countries - countries with high poverty rates and low levels of human development.

Check out this interactive map if you would like to see how the population is growing across countries and continents worldwide, provided by the Population Reference Bureau.

While thinking about an exploding population it is important to keep social issues in mind, as well. It is imperative to consider some of the reasons why birth rates are consistently higher in many impoverished countries. Although there are a multitude of social, economic, and political issues to take into consideration, this link may help put things into perspective, at least to some degree, in regards to women and the difficulties that they face in controlling their reproduction in many countries: Dollars and Sense: The Case for Contraception.

Although determining whether population growth causes poverty or the opposite, whether the chicken or the egg came first, it is equally important (if not more so) to own up to the issues related to population and poverty that we are facing today - before it is too late.

~Carly

This blog has two awesome videos! (Does that make you want to read it?)

I have written and rewritten this blog four times in the last two days. I know, I know: "Blogs are easy and fun!" said every blogger ever.

I have blogged about issues in the chapter such as carrying capacity, and how the earth simply does not have enough resources to sustain the exponentially growing global population.

I have blogged about inequality, and how the world's problems cannot be understood without understanding the basic principles of development and underdevelopment.

I've blogged about how uncomfortable it is to think about the world with 9 billion people by 2050. Not just as an uncomfortable thought, but an actual discomfort, with the image of a sardine can rolling through my head.

 

However, each time I rewrote this blog, it immediately transformed into something completely unbloggy (that's a word, right?) I wrote it like I would write a research paper: formal and informative and dry and so painfully god awfully boring.

 

But then I realized that this blog can't be boring because this topic isn't boring: it is real and it effects people all over the world. Thomas Malthus basically said that growing populations are the root of all problems. I can try lead an unbiased discussion about this argument, but the truth is that, as a Geology student, I think that there is enormous validity in this argument. Rising carbon dioxide levels, a depleting ozone layer, and overconsumption of nonrenewable resources all directly correlate with human population growth. Just check out these two graphs.

 

The first is human population growth, and the second is global carbon dioxide levels. They look pretty similar, don't they? Hell, they could basically be superimposed and match up exactly. It's hard to look at these graphs and disagree with the Malthusian argument. The proof is undeniable that bad things, both for the environment and for people, accompany population growth.

 

However, exponential population growth is not the singular cause of our unbalanced world. As the text said, inequality is rooted in both development and underdevelopment. While there are correlations between population and development (the most underdeveloped countries in the world have the fastest growth rates), one is not necessarily the cause for the other. One of the beauties of a blog is that awesome videos can replace my scholarly arguments, so enjoy. Also, he has a great accent and goofy movements.



 

This video reflects some of the ideas of the section we read. A country's placement on the curve was not dependent on its size--some of the biggest were at the front while some of the tiniest were at the back, and visa versa.

 

As this reading suggested, there is no purely Malthusian argument, nor is there a purely Anti-Malthusian argument. There are various reasons that the world experiences inequality. While one of those reasons is population, it is not the sole bandit creating "poverty, hunger, misery, and resource scarcity" (Bell 96). It is unlikely that a singular reason will ever be pinpointed and completely resolved (although perhaps the abolishment of the Bretton Woods institutions would be a good place to start). The point is that whatever kind of corrupted world we're creating right now is the same one that 9 billion people will call home by 2050. Wouldn't it be nice if they found it directed by the policies of globally-minded activists rather than those of self-absorbed bureaucrats?

 

I have one last video to wrap up this chapter into one nice little packet. I have to say, this blog wasn't as painful to write as I thought it might be. I've come away with no broken bones, no cuts, and no carpal tunnel. First blog post: accomplished. Hey, that was easy and fun.

 



Population Clock

Check out the U.S. and world population clock. 

What Have You Done for Me Lately?

I am quit the fan of the saying, "What have you done for me lately?" This saying can be used in many ways, but I'm most familiar with it in sports sense. Let's say a Quarterback in the NFL is struggling (cough RG3 cough) and the coach is contemplating benching him, the coach voices his concerns to the QB and the QB is in disbelief and may ask, "Why?" The coach could simply respond, "Well, what have you done for me lately?" We're all a team here and NAFTA is our quarterback. If you haven't noticed our QB is struggling. So, NAFTA, what have you done for US lately?

NAFTA's goal was, "the spark of wealth would, it was argued, jump across the border, bringing freedom, enterprise and the Good Life from a country of high potential to one a little less charged". (Patel 56) However, the opposite has flourished. NAFTA has done nothing but hurt the entire economy of Mexico. The main crop in Mexico has for many years been corn. Corn is their backbone, it is what they use to make tortillas. If we know anything about Mexican food its that tortillas are highly important. Unfortunately, NAFTA has completely knocked Mexico out of the corn game. "The cost of producing corn in Mexico was far higher than the subsidized US level." (Patel 57) The US level to produce corn was $2.66 in 2002, and we can only imagine what the rate in Mexico was. This is simple economics, Mexico could not afford to produce their staple food anymore because the cost of production is severely higher than the price of consumption. This caused the Mexican peso to take a huge crash soon after NAFTA started.

So, what has Mexico turned to? The previous blogger, Pat Heckman, touched on this, but I think it is important to bring up again. With NAFTA driving out what Mexico has leaned on for many years, they had to find alternate work. Let's face it, these drug cartels did not magically appear. NAFTA forced the people of Mexico to turn to illegal drug trade. Mexican drug cartels have become a national phenomenon recently. Mexico is deemed one of the most danger countries solely based on these cartels. This is an example of Marx's Social Alienation Theory. In this theory, we as a society create something. That something keeps growing and growing and eventually comes back to control us and we cannot escape it. We created NAFTA, NAFTA created these drug cartels, and now these drug cartels are controlling us. (not literally) However, we as Americans are spending money on a huge increase in border patrol and customs. We are obsessed with fighting these drug cartels from Mexico to keep it out of our beloved country, when in reality we might have just asked for this.

So we ask our Quarterback, NAFTA, what have you done for us lately? His response would probably be something like this: "Well, I destroyed the staple crop of Mexico, corn, because they can't afford to produce it anymore. Oh yeah, I destroyed the value of the peso because of this. I also may have created a huge trend in Mexican drug cartel activity because so many people are jobless in the country. Oh, and in America I have caused their government to spend more money on border patrol and customs to keep the drug cartels out." If I'm the coach of this quarterback I'd say it's time to put NAFTA on the bench. Nope, not just bench, let's release him .

Drugs, Murder, and Prostitutes - Thanks NAFTA

     As chapter 3 pointed out, NAFTA was this “great” plan for developing an equal playing field amongst the US, Mexico, and Canada so that all of us could play in the same sandbox together. And sharing our toys is ok for some of us until Hank’s older brother hides his pot in our favorite toy car that we’ve been allowing into our sandbox without any hesitation.

     Maybe that metaphor doesn’t exactly portray the issue at hand, but it’s a start. NAFTA has tried to open up the gates for free trade since 1994, and only a handful of producers from Mexico gained an advantage, unless you’re into smuggling drugs. Opening our borders to trade for legal goods opens the gate for pretty much anything else as well.    

“Fueled by easy access because of NAFTA, the Mexican drug trade has made a handful of drug kingpins as powerful as any government official in Mexico.”

     Now imagine that you’re a Mexican trying to illegally cross the border into the US, you’re not selling drugs, just trying to start a new life with your family. You’re vulnerable, scared, and willing to do anything to get across that 14 foot wall. You and your family are a mile away, and suddenly a gang of Mexican “narcos” roll up with AK-47’s pointed right at you. They pay you 400$, give you a bunch of drugs to give to their friends on the other side, and if you disagree they shoot you.

     NAFTA has made these transactions possible because the “narcos” (a term used to describe the Mexican drug lords that control every aspect of business in Mexico) can ship drugs, guns, and even prostitutes across the border, with only 1 out of 5 trucks being inspected.  

     We’re told that Mexico is a dangerous place due to the drug cartel that has little reservations about murder, but we probably don’t realize that our free trade agreement has created the perfect infrastructure for their illegal business. So I guess in a perverse way, NAFTA worked. It brought money to producers in Mexico, but probably not the producers we had in mind. Maybe we shouldn’t be so worried about the hardworking families that are trying to play in the sandbox, and instead focus on that seemingly fun toy car filled to the brim with illegal drugs, and the murder and corruption that allowed it to get there.  

http://wordswithoutborders.org/article/violence-and-drug-trafficking-in-mexico
http://economyincrisis.org/content/nafta-fueling-drug-trade

Migrant Children

In the past two chapters, we have looked at how the farming industry exploits adults and small farmers. One thing we haven't looked at is how often children are exploited in the same fields. Children under 13 can be subject to working in the agricultural industry. Many of these children are immigrants or children of immigrants. They may work because that is the only way a family can stay afloat.

In some situations, such as when farms are raided for illegal immigrant workers, families can be destroyed. If a child is born in the United States, he or she is a United States citizen. However, his or her parents would not be citizens if they came into the country illegally. This can lead to the destruction of a family because the parents may be deported, while the children are sent into foster care.

The pay for adults migrant workers is very low to say the least. However, the pay of child workers is estimated to be even lower. The chart below shows the distribution of money from tobacco products.

The tobacco industry makes around $90 billion a year. With less than half of percent of that going to workers, it isn't hard to see why some families would allow their children to work on farms. 

The exploitation of workers is at a ridiculous level. In some cases, children under the age of 12 are being forced to work 6 or more days a week to help their family. They also face the threat of deportation. Looking at the terrible situations like this, it isn't hard to see why so many farmers turn to suicide as the only way to solve their problems.

Farming: Highly Hazardous

After watching this video, I was able to better understand the severity of the use of using pesticides. My favorite quote from the video was when the wife of the farmer said, "Farming is supposed to be such a healthy occupation...you are in the country side and it is absolutely lovely...and then there is this dreadful hazard...it is so frustrating." When I think about farming I do tend to think about things being simple, but what do I know about farming? In other countries, like India, there are no lush, green fields of tranquility and purity, rather there are paper masks being used to prevent harmful chemicals from being inhaled. Thousands of people die every year from the use of dangerous pesticides. 

In Stuffed and Starved, Raj Patel explains that the deaths in India are not all just from unintentional chemical poisoning, rather most of the deaths were suicides, "In 2009, 18 of India's 28 states reported increased farmer suicide rates. During that year alone there were 17, 638 recorded farmer suicides, one every 30 minutes."[33] Let’s put this into retrospect. If an average college student at Hanover has 4 hours of class in a day then that means that for every hour of class there were two farmer deaths. Two farmer deaths times four is eight farmers dead by the time class is out.

So what seems to be the problem? 

• One of the problems is that farmers are not able to afford the necessary protection needed in order to properly use these chemicals; protection is just out of the question. I mean these people can barely even provide money for their families to eat every day.
• Too many farmers are in debt because they cannot repay the government for the money that they have borrowed in order to try to make a living.

These living conditions and farming conditions are just an externality to us Americans. We do not see the families destroyed everyday just so that we can have certain foods. Instead, we just want to know why the price is so darn high. Think about it. These farmers have to work with a chemical that Patel claims the World Health Organization classified as "highly hazardous" [32]. It is said that there is no safe way that it can be used. So again I ask: why do people keep using it? 

      

 "...If they [banks] don't get it, they die the way you die without air without side-meat. It is a sad thing but it is so. It is just so."

- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath [39]

-Tessa

Future Living - 2015

~This was uploaded 3 years ago. 

Horrifying

India's Rich vs. Poor

• By 1970s standards, 87% of India's population is living under the poverty line.That is the equivalent of 273 million of 313 million people in the United States living on less than $11,490 per year.
• India's economy effectively skipped the industrial development step that benefited both the United States' and Europe's blue collar workers.
• India is de-industrializing (moving to an economy based on knowledge and communication) while one third of the population if illiterate.
• In 2009 there were 17,638 recorded farmer suicides. That is 1 every 30 mins for an entire year.
• The kinds of men and women who decided to take their lives in response to losing their farms or being hugely in debt: middle-aged, devout, well-liked, a little introverted, and dedicated to their families.

As terrible as the facts are, it seems to me that this is partly our fault. The United States pushes others to be at the same level as us (even if our level isn't as fantastic as it could be) and, as a result, pressures people internationally to conform our standards and social norms with no though as to the consequences our lifestyle and peer pressure (so to speak) might have on the culture, economy, and people of that country. We brought our ideas and multinational companies ans as a result, it can be said that India basically skipped being an industrial nation/economy. This greatly diminished the middle class and further polarized India's social classes.

Our class inequality is increasing and the gap between the rich and the poor has never been bigger than it is now. Imagine how our economy would fair if blue collar jobs were completely extinguished, but the government still insists that the percentage of poor people in the US is decreasing.


Jane

Airbrushing the Countryside

"Airbrushing the Countryside" is a description that Bell uses to describe what some people living in suburban and urban areas do when thinking about the rural way of life. Most people, even those familiar with farming, don't realize the hardships that people in the countryside face.

We eat fruits, vegetables, and meat on a daily basis, yet we seldom think about how they got in our pantries and on our plates. In Bell's chapter titled "A Rural Autopsy", he works to show what life is truly like in rural places across the world rather than "airbrushing the countryside".

I  often hear people talk about there being more drugs and drug related murders in the city. Therefore, a shocking fact that I read in the book "Stuffed and Starved" is as follows:

"In the US, more drug-related killings happen in rural America than in it's cities"

Not only are murders an issue, but suicides of farmers are very prevalent as discussed in the introduction of "Stuffed and Starved". In India, as well as the rest of the world, suicides are common in rural areas due to the struggles that farmers face financially. Purposeful pesticide poisoning was the first leading cause of death in Sri Lankan hospitals that were located in rural areas. These problems also occurred in the U.S. It is just very sad to me that men across the world are feeling so helpless, guilty, and worthless, that they are willing to take their own life because they can't support their own family.

"In the US, during the 1980's farm crisis, the Midwest suffered a spate of suicides."

While we are sitting around the dinner table eating delicious food that is easily accessed, a large number of farmers around the world are feeling so guilty that they aren't able to provide for their families, that they kill themselves. We are not at fault for their suffering, but shouldn't we still feel a little guilty?

Rural areas in America continue to become more and more poor. I hate to keep quoting directly from the book, but the statistics found in it regarding this topic are shocking.

" In 2003, only eleven of the two hundred poorest counties in the US were metropolitan, and while drug related homicide rate fell in urban areas in the 1990's, it tripled in rural areas."

These facts are so shocking, because I am so used to hearing more "airbrushed" talk about rural areas. I, like many others have been blind to the harsh reality.

After only the 2nd chapter of this book, I feel guilty for many things.

1. We waste food when so much work has gone into producing it.
2. Farmers in some places make only fifty cents for their long hard day at work.
3. We take produce, meat, and dairy products for granted.
4. There are people around the world committing suicide because they can't support their families, and we are worrying about much smaller, petty problems in our own lives.



Lindsay

Reliance on Technology.

We, as humans, don't necessarily like quick changes, however, we tend to ignore it and just adapt . Each year, we allow technology to develop. 

Each year we allow it to advance quicker than the year before that. 

We may or not may not speak up about the changes, but either way, we accept the changes one way or another.  

Have you ever thought about how life would have been like without technology?

~ Check out the Youtube link below and think of all the things you or someone you know uses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5SxJsW8Drk

~Now after watching the link, how difficult do you think it would be to wake up in the morning without your alarm clock, coffee maker, car, laptop, and phone?

Without my alarm clock, I personally don't think I would be able to wake up at the time needed for a meeting; being so, I'm already late  and don't have time to make my morning coffee- meaning I'll be tired and cranky all day- I then have to catch public transportation, but hey, I'm 3 minutes late, so I have to wait 27 minutes till the next train. It will now take me even longer to get there, and have no way of informing them about my situation.

To me, this seems like a stressful day. 

Even though we humans, created technology, we allowed technology to change every part of our life. It has changed our education, our work, our community, and also, our way of communicating with one another.

Yes, there are many advantages of technology, but do you ever think about the disadvantages? 

At one point in my life, I honestly avoided the issues that rose with technology, only because 'it had no effect on me'. However, at that time it didn't, and now it does. I drove to visit my aunt and hoped to spend some quality time with my younger cousins (10 and a 2 year old girls, 7 year old boy), but instead, I end up spending some quality time with my iPhone (even though I'm speaking against it now), as they do with their laptop, iPhone, and iPad. It's so crazy to think of what the world has come to, don't you think so?!? I remember being their age, and loving the fact that I was OUTSIDE  playing with my siblings and hating the time when my mom would call us inside for dinner. These kids on the other hand, one has to beg them and give them reasons to enjoy playing outside.

I was just wondering what their kids will look like, but no need to wait that long, with the quick advancements that technology is experiencing, who knows how the world will be like by 2030; after all, it is those kids that will structure technology then, if not already by now. 

Leaving my aunts house because of boredom, I decided to pick up one of my friends, and just cruise around town. Is that a good enough reason to use the gas, and pollute the environment? 'Because of boredom.' Of course not. But, I think to myself, I could, so why not? 

~If I think that way, many others do as well. It's an issue that we, the society, have constructed, and avoid. We are selfish. We only think of what the best thing is for us. Our needs, have now become desires. We take advantage of our environment, with our technology. 

Every car has at least one window, but we still decide to turn the AC on. You know, just for the pleasure of it. I've seen my parents and siblings do it, so I guess I get to enjoy it as well. But really though, how long will I enjoy it for before something new comes out?

It has become a routine for us to go from one technological advancement to another. 

It has become our routine not to ask questions, and just adapt.

Is this fair for our environment?  Is this fair for the younger generation?

We know best, yet we are not making the smartest decisions in our day-to-day life.

It is us, humans, that make the world the way it is. 

-Nardeen B Turjman.

The "Dream Machine"

     Machines and technology have always been apart of our generations lives. The baby boomers have been introduced to it and now generations grow up with it and are becoming even more intertwined with it. Even as a little toddler we are effected by technology. As a toddler you are conditioned to enjoy it, use it, and to live with it. The most prominent example in everyone's case is a vehicle.

     As a baby generally you are conditioned to cars very well especially in the case of most boys. No the baby not be aloud to drive the car by any means however what do we buy our children? We buy them power wheels. We buy them matchbox cars or the new Barbie Corvette. Next in the child's development they begin to discover professions, and watch TV and be able to understand it. For example "Cars" the series of movies about cars who can actually talk to one another, which has even produced spin offs like "Planes".Then as the child gets a little older you might introduce them to bicycles or possibly if they have excelled with that a motorbike or ATV. No it's not exactly like a car, however it makes the child think of freedom. Being free to roam the fields or woods. Then as the child becomes a teenager and begins to be around cars, and start to drive, get there permit, and then their license they plan their lives around cars. They learn about the economy, prices of gas, how far a tank of gas can go. They must learn budgeting of sorts, especially if they are attending school and are required to work to pay for their own gas. Most kids want their "dream machine", they aren't really conscientious about how much it costs, what kind of gas mileage it gets, or how efficient it is. They want the cool vehicle, the in-style vehicle. Manufacturers have taken to this kind of technological dialogue and have pointed it to their advantage. There are on average 50-60 million cars made in the US every year compared to the nearly 1 billion cars made in the world.
     Not everyone drives though, they might catch a ride from a friend, ride the bus, the subway, or maybe even bike to work, which is all still of course a technological advance. The U.S. however has about 256 million vehicles for its only 202 million drivers. In the chart below it shows the amount of vehicles per type in the United States in 2012.

press.experian.com

     So this many vehicles on the road along with the amount of people that will begin driving in the near future can only mean one thing. More cars will be made to exceed the amount of people to car ratio we have. But it also leads to some negative externalities. (An externality is a cost or benefit that results from an activity or transaction that affects an other wise uninvolved party who did not choose to participate.) Some examples of negative externalities include car crashes and pollution. Vehicle pollution accounts for nearly 27% of the CO output in the United States. What happens if we add more cars? The % will increase. Car crashes are also another negative thing that happens from driving a vehicle. There are over 5.5 million car crashes in a year. Which leads to over 36,000 deaths per year. Human deaths are only one part of the equation however. There are also a large amount of other animal deaths due to vehicle accidents, many of which go un-reported. A very interesting site to check out on vehicle accident statistics is "http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/transportation/motor_vehicle_accidents_and_fatalities.html"

     So what should you take out of reading this blog about the dialogue of technology? Just because technology is something we have become accustomed to doensn't mean its a good thing for everyone. And just because I used vehicles as the example here doesnt mean you can forget about cell phones, computers, and any other form of technology whether an actual piece of machinery or the technology of your mind and thinking about all these processes. We as the human race are evolving. Morphing technology into every aspect of our lives. What will become of our future generations? More importantly what is to become of the state of our planet?

Technology Dependence is our Existence

The major question I had when reading this section is why are we (as a culture) so dependent on technologies that have such a negative impact on our environment?

Is it a connivence issue? 

Is it the way the world around us is organized making technology the only way we can do things for ourselves?

I dont believe there is one clear defined answer to any of the questions we have about our reliance on technology.

I believe as a culture, one of the major things we can do to start tackling the issue of our dependence on technology is identifying that we do have a serious problem with this reliance.

        Technology has become such a normal part in our daily lives that we no longer consciously think about our use of technology. It has become so easy to pick up our phone and know in two seconds, how your friend that you haven't seen in a year is doing. Or to get in your car, and pretty much in an instant, have a fully cooked meal coming through your window. What is even more strange to me than our ignorance of using technology, is the huge social and enviromental impacts technology has on everyone's daily lives that we constantly ignore. We all, in some way, know the environmental impact that cars have on the earth. We all know the health impacts a poor diet due to convenience or cost has on our health. But still we ignore this because technology use, which is one of the major reasons these problems are now coming about, are not being changed or even talked about. People know the solutions to environmental or health problems but we still do nothing to change it. These changes are so simple at a fundamental level but still not much is happening to change it (this includes myself). For example, cutting out fast food and exercising regularly can prevent heart decease. Seems like a simple solution right? But still heart disease is at the top of the list for causes of death every year around the world.

            In the section titled "Technological Somnambulism" Bell tries to explain this situation that I described above. He quotes Langdon Winner as he describes Technological Somnambulism by stating "is that we so willingly sleepwalk through the process of reconstituting the conditions of human existence (Bell, pg. 90)"- a phenomenon Winner called technological somnambulism. He then goes on to describe three different aspects of Technological Somnambulism which includes "phenomenology", "culture" and "politics".  The sections that struck me was phenomenology because it is very apparent in our daily lives. 

            Phenomenology was described by Bell as, "the manner in which we experience the phenomena of everyday life (Bell Pg. 90)." He then goes on to talk about routinization. Routine is good way to help understand our dependence of technology and our resistance to change our behavior as a result, even when there are huge impacts we see but choose to do nothing about. A quote from Bell really stood out to me, he states, "The point I am trying to establish is that our technological routines tend to lock us into continuing those routines and into trying only new routines that mesh well with our older ones (Bell, Pg. 91)." I believe this simple statement sums up why we can't make simple changes in our daily behaviors that would reduce some, if not all of the major problems we have; such as health issues and environmental problems. 

           I have found a Youtube video (wow I am relying on technology to make this blog interesting...) that describes some of the issues I found important that were described in the section. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7CKyfW7AbE 

This clip talks about "Changes" in an organizational setting, but I believe some the examples and explanations this interview provides, has some real life applications that we as a culture can use for many situations. These examples can apply to things like technology dependence all the way too daily activities that effect our environment or personal health.

Please comment with any questions you might have about my thinking process of this section. 

Also think about what you do in your daily activities that can be attached to some of the topics in this section. I know personally, I found myself thinking about things I do everyday that could be described in every portion of this reading. 

- Thanks,

     Derek Coe

No, you do not need a new phone

Check In!

People enrolled in Environmental Sociology! Comment on this post so I know that you have access to this blog and are ready to start posting!

While you're here, feel free to check out this example of green advertising (there are polar bears).