Friday, December 26, 2008
Inner Landscapes
AKAirways is an art group based in New York City, led by Anakin Koenig. Their focus is sculpture/installation centered on inflatable objects. The installations are transient and ephemeral, dependent on interaction and engage the environment in which they are deployed. These dynamic works are constantly changing and evolving. The group's work has been presented in a variety of contexts, from the Museum of Modern Art to underground raves, from NASA to the Whitney Biennale.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Arithmetic of Compassion
Ever since he was a child, David Ulansey has been searching for a certain number: namely, the figure for the annual Gross World Product (GWP). The GWP is the value of all goods and services produced each year by the entire human species, and the reason he was searching for this number as a child is that he wanted to take it and divide it by the number of people in the world, so that he would know what each human being was actually entitled to if the world's resources were divided fairly and equitably.
He finally ran into this number recently, and he has now performed the simple arithmetic of compassion. It turns out that the Gross World Product is now $65 trillion. It is important to note that this figure of $65 trillion - arrived at independently by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the CIA - has been adjusted in advance to take into account what is called 'purchasing power parity' (PPP): which means that the figure is 65 trillion units, each unit of which represents what one U.S. dollar will currently buy in the US (The PPP adjustment eliminates from the very start any strategies of denial such as: 'Oh, that doesn't mean anything, you can live like a king in India for $5,000 a year'. No. Wrong.).
Now to the arithmetic of compassion: Since the GWP is 65 trillion U.S. dollars, if we divide that figure by the number of people in the world - 6.8 billion - we get a rough estimate of the maximum annual income that anyone in the world is morally entitled to (assuming that it is moral to strive for an equitable distribution of the world's resources to all of humanity).
So, dividing $65 trillion by 6.8 billion we get about $9,000 per year (again, that's already adjusted for purchasing power parity: it's 9,000 units, each unit of which is what one U.S. dollar will currently buy in the United States). That's what each of us is actually entitled to - $9,000 a year - and any more than that represents institutionalized and socially sanctioned armed robbery: indeed, every additional increment of $9,000 (beyond the maximum moral income of $9,000 a year) represents one slave somewhere in the world whose entire life, birth to death, is completely devoted to getting us our 'stuff'.
And unfortunately we can't "grow" our way beyond this $9,000 a year figure, since at the current level of $65 trillion GWP we have already overshot by 30% what the Earth actually produces. The fact that the human species is already in 30% overshoot means that not only can we not 'grow' our way beyond the $9,000 maximum moral income level, we actually need to shrink that down to $6,000 just to come back to a level where humanity is merely using 100% of everything the Earth produces (rather than using 130% of what the Earth produces, as we are very temporarily doing!). This is especially the case since the world population is due to increase by almost 50% - to more than 9 billion people - by 2050: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=21847
Of course a $6,000 a year income may sound rather frightening to those of us who have become accustomed to the "first world standard of living." However, to place this figure in its proper perspective, it is helpful to keep in mind that according to the World Bank, at this very moment almost half of the people in the world (3 billion people) live on less than $2.50 (PPP) a day - $900 a year - and a quarter of the world's population (1.4 billion people) live below the official world poverty level of $1.25 a day - $456 a year.
In fact, three years ago World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern estimated that a European cow receives $2.50 a day in subsidies, while 75% of Africans live on less than $2 a day. So although $6,000 a year may sound disturbing to us, for the majority of the people in the world it would literally constitute wealth beyond their wildest dreams. Finally, it is crucial to realize that $6,000 a year per person is actually still far too high to be sustainable, even if there were no population growth ahead at all. This is because at the level of $6,000 a year per person for 6.8 billion people, we would still be consuming 100% of what the Earth can produce, and would thus be doing absolutely nothing to prevent the two greatest threats facing us in our own lifetimes: (1) a mass extinction of the Earth's biodiversity resulting from habitat destruction, pollution, invasive species, and over-harvesting, and (2) catastrophic climate change that could render the earth uninhabitable for much of higher life including our own species.
The solution is clear: we must immediately and drastically reduce our levels of consumption. Something like $4,000 a year per person is probably in the right ballpark for what is ecologically possible and morally justifiable. Again, that may be difficult for many of us to hear, but remember that $4,000 a year is more than 4 times the amount that half of the people in the world live on at this very moment. In fact, according to the World Bank, 95% of all people in developing countries (which means almost 80% of all human beings) live on less than $10 a day - less than $4,000 a year.
Of course then the question is: how can we in the 'developed' world accomplish such a reduction? One common answer to this question is simply unworthy of discussion: namely, 'It's impossible'. Whenever I find that answer spontaneously rearing its ugly head in my own imagination, I like to remind myself that Eskimos live in houses made of ice, but their lives are filled with just as much love and beauty, and their children laugh and play with just as much joy - perhaps more! - as our own.
Beyond all its other characteristics, Homo Sapiens is a species capable of extreme adaptability. The time has at last arrived for us to become actual human beings, and to allow compassion - and celebration! - to guide us into a radically new world: a world where we experience 'quality of life' for ourselves as being indistinguishable from 'equality of life for all.
He finally ran into this number recently, and he has now performed the simple arithmetic of compassion. It turns out that the Gross World Product is now $65 trillion. It is important to note that this figure of $65 trillion - arrived at independently by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the CIA - has been adjusted in advance to take into account what is called 'purchasing power parity' (PPP): which means that the figure is 65 trillion units, each unit of which represents what one U.S. dollar will currently buy in the US (The PPP adjustment eliminates from the very start any strategies of denial such as: 'Oh, that doesn't mean anything, you can live like a king in India for $5,000 a year'. No. Wrong.).Now to the arithmetic of compassion: Since the GWP is 65 trillion U.S. dollars, if we divide that figure by the number of people in the world - 6.8 billion - we get a rough estimate of the maximum annual income that anyone in the world is morally entitled to (assuming that it is moral to strive for an equitable distribution of the world's resources to all of humanity).
So, dividing $65 trillion by 6.8 billion we get about $9,000 per year (again, that's already adjusted for purchasing power parity: it's 9,000 units, each unit of which is what one U.S. dollar will currently buy in the United States). That's what each of us is actually entitled to - $9,000 a year - and any more than that represents institutionalized and socially sanctioned armed robbery: indeed, every additional increment of $9,000 (beyond the maximum moral income of $9,000 a year) represents one slave somewhere in the world whose entire life, birth to death, is completely devoted to getting us our 'stuff'.
And unfortunately we can't "grow" our way beyond this $9,000 a year figure, since at the current level of $65 trillion GWP we have already overshot by 30% what the Earth actually produces. The fact that the human species is already in 30% overshoot means that not only can we not 'grow' our way beyond the $9,000 maximum moral income level, we actually need to shrink that down to $6,000 just to come back to a level where humanity is merely using 100% of everything the Earth produces (rather than using 130% of what the Earth produces, as we are very temporarily doing!). This is especially the case since the world population is due to increase by almost 50% - to more than 9 billion people - by 2050: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=21847
Of course a $6,000 a year income may sound rather frightening to those of us who have become accustomed to the "first world standard of living." However, to place this figure in its proper perspective, it is helpful to keep in mind that according to the World Bank, at this very moment almost half of the people in the world (3 billion people) live on less than $2.50 (PPP) a day - $900 a year - and a quarter of the world's population (1.4 billion people) live below the official world poverty level of $1.25 a day - $456 a year.
In fact, three years ago World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern estimated that a European cow receives $2.50 a day in subsidies, while 75% of Africans live on less than $2 a day. So although $6,000 a year may sound disturbing to us, for the majority of the people in the world it would literally constitute wealth beyond their wildest dreams. Finally, it is crucial to realize that $6,000 a year per person is actually still far too high to be sustainable, even if there were no population growth ahead at all. This is because at the level of $6,000 a year per person for 6.8 billion people, we would still be consuming 100% of what the Earth can produce, and would thus be doing absolutely nothing to prevent the two greatest threats facing us in our own lifetimes: (1) a mass extinction of the Earth's biodiversity resulting from habitat destruction, pollution, invasive species, and over-harvesting, and (2) catastrophic climate change that could render the earth uninhabitable for much of higher life including our own species.
The solution is clear: we must immediately and drastically reduce our levels of consumption. Something like $4,000 a year per person is probably in the right ballpark for what is ecologically possible and morally justifiable. Again, that may be difficult for many of us to hear, but remember that $4,000 a year is more than 4 times the amount that half of the people in the world live on at this very moment. In fact, according to the World Bank, 95% of all people in developing countries (which means almost 80% of all human beings) live on less than $10 a day - less than $4,000 a year.
Of course then the question is: how can we in the 'developed' world accomplish such a reduction? One common answer to this question is simply unworthy of discussion: namely, 'It's impossible'. Whenever I find that answer spontaneously rearing its ugly head in my own imagination, I like to remind myself that Eskimos live in houses made of ice, but their lives are filled with just as much love and beauty, and their children laugh and play with just as much joy - perhaps more! - as our own.
Beyond all its other characteristics, Homo Sapiens is a species capable of extreme adaptability. The time has at last arrived for us to become actual human beings, and to allow compassion - and celebration! - to guide us into a radically new world: a world where we experience 'quality of life' for ourselves as being indistinguishable from 'equality of life for all.
The Present of Presence
Most people have not yet fully processed the magnitude of the economic crisis that will continue to deepen in the next years. Our lives may depend upon working through the causes and logical consequences of this disaster, which can be blamed on the greed and ineptitude of the ruling elite. The short-term prognosis is devastating. The hundreds of billions, potentially trillions, of dollars created by governments for bailouts should lead to hyperinflation and a sharp rise in the price of basic goods. At the same time, analysts are predicting that some governments will be insolvent by next year and forced to declare bankruptcy.
One consequence of the credit freeze has been that many farmers around the world, who often live on narrow margins and depend upon loans to see them through the annual harvest, have not been able to get credit. This could lead to diminished production of food at a time when climate change is reducing the amount of arable land. Last year, there were already hunger riots in a number of countries, and by next summer we may see famine on a larger scale.
Hunger may also become a problem in the developed world. While layoffs and mass foreclosures continue and economies contract, a large segment of the populace (who have no savings and much debt) could become a new pauper class. We have already seen over a million homes turned over to banks in the US alone. One can only wonder where those people, and the millions more soon to join them, are going to end up.
Meanwhile, the turmoil in the markets will continue, potentially getting much worse. Apparently, hundreds of trillions of virtual dollars spin in the roulette machine of the derivatives market, which is beginning to disintegrate. The collapse of the housing market may be followed by mass waves of credit card defaults. The world economy was a house of cards, based on the extraordinary premise that ever-expanding debt was a desirable product, and it is now falling down upon us.
We are facing a time of great change and spiritual challenge. Those of us who have undergone a process of awakening and initiation during the last decades will be called upon to act as truth-tellers, leaders and compassionate caretakers for the multitudes that have been duped and deluded by the system. We may have to abandon our comfort zones and personal ambitions to be of service to the situation as it unfolds.
In the time available to us before the situation becomes critical, priorities include strengthening local communities and disseminating techniques of self-sufficiency, such as getting many more people to grow their own food. It is tragic that our mass media continues to act as a mechanism of distraction. The media could be used to explain to people how our world is changing, to teach them the basic life skills that we forfeited a few generations ago, and to imprint new behavior patterns based on sustainable life-ways. Perhaps public broadcasting, at least, can be repurposed for this necessary effort.
The partial nationalization of financial institutions around the world reveals the failure of capitalism; the end of capitalism in its old form. In the future, it should be obvious that capitalism was a transitional system for our global community. Capitalism meshed the world together through networks of trade and communication, while maintaining monstrous inequities and irrational misuse of resources.
The question that faces us now is: what comes after capitalism, and how do we get there? In the short term, we may see dangerous efforts at authoritarian control. The longer-term answer may be a collapse of centralized structures of authority and the blossoming of a new form of global direct democracy; what the anthropologist Pierre Clastres called "society without a state." By necessity, our future system will be collaborative rather than competitive.
If the crisis now confronting the human community is mishandled, vast populations will experience untold suffering and starvation in the next few years. If "we the people" can rise to the occasion, we may be able to radically change the direction of human society, along with the basic paradigms and underlying operating systems of our culture, in a rapid timeframe. This appears to be the message of many prophetic traditions which have anticipated this climactic passage in human affairs - as has been said:"We are the ones we have been waiting for".
As we approach the holiday season and the Gregorian New Year, we can give thanks for having been born into this extraordinary, precious time. Our actions over the next few years could have tremendous consequences for humanity's future on this planet. At such a juncture, the best present we can give to the people around us is our authentic presence; our willingness to listen, learn and remain open to transformation, as the pace of change quickens around us.
One consequence of the credit freeze has been that many farmers around the world, who often live on narrow margins and depend upon loans to see them through the annual harvest, have not been able to get credit. This could lead to diminished production of food at a time when climate change is reducing the amount of arable land. Last year, there were already hunger riots in a number of countries, and by next summer we may see famine on a larger scale.
Hunger may also become a problem in the developed world. While layoffs and mass foreclosures continue and economies contract, a large segment of the populace (who have no savings and much debt) could become a new pauper class. We have already seen over a million homes turned over to banks in the US alone. One can only wonder where those people, and the millions more soon to join them, are going to end up.
Meanwhile, the turmoil in the markets will continue, potentially getting much worse. Apparently, hundreds of trillions of virtual dollars spin in the roulette machine of the derivatives market, which is beginning to disintegrate. The collapse of the housing market may be followed by mass waves of credit card defaults. The world economy was a house of cards, based on the extraordinary premise that ever-expanding debt was a desirable product, and it is now falling down upon us.We are facing a time of great change and spiritual challenge. Those of us who have undergone a process of awakening and initiation during the last decades will be called upon to act as truth-tellers, leaders and compassionate caretakers for the multitudes that have been duped and deluded by the system. We may have to abandon our comfort zones and personal ambitions to be of service to the situation as it unfolds.
In the time available to us before the situation becomes critical, priorities include strengthening local communities and disseminating techniques of self-sufficiency, such as getting many more people to grow their own food. It is tragic that our mass media continues to act as a mechanism of distraction. The media could be used to explain to people how our world is changing, to teach them the basic life skills that we forfeited a few generations ago, and to imprint new behavior patterns based on sustainable life-ways. Perhaps public broadcasting, at least, can be repurposed for this necessary effort.
The partial nationalization of financial institutions around the world reveals the failure of capitalism; the end of capitalism in its old form. In the future, it should be obvious that capitalism was a transitional system for our global community. Capitalism meshed the world together through networks of trade and communication, while maintaining monstrous inequities and irrational misuse of resources.
The question that faces us now is: what comes after capitalism, and how do we get there? In the short term, we may see dangerous efforts at authoritarian control. The longer-term answer may be a collapse of centralized structures of authority and the blossoming of a new form of global direct democracy; what the anthropologist Pierre Clastres called "society without a state." By necessity, our future system will be collaborative rather than competitive.
If the crisis now confronting the human community is mishandled, vast populations will experience untold suffering and starvation in the next few years. If "we the people" can rise to the occasion, we may be able to radically change the direction of human society, along with the basic paradigms and underlying operating systems of our culture, in a rapid timeframe. This appears to be the message of many prophetic traditions which have anticipated this climactic passage in human affairs - as has been said:"We are the ones we have been waiting for".
As we approach the holiday season and the Gregorian New Year, we can give thanks for having been born into this extraordinary, precious time. Our actions over the next few years could have tremendous consequences for humanity's future on this planet. At such a juncture, the best present we can give to the people around us is our authentic presence; our willingness to listen, learn and remain open to transformation, as the pace of change quickens around us.
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