values

More than once I've seen a small child squealing with delight when given a few dollars. But, when presented with a spider or beetle, the same child will often squash it without hesitation. To me, this illustrates the absorption of a twisted set of values.

The values that encourage our assault on the natural world and each other are relentless in our culture. We are taught that the planet is inert, plants are insensate, and animals are incognizant. We are taught that our own bodies are crude and inappropriate. This fallacious bifurcation of the mind from the world it inhabits encourages all manner of destruction. The essential assumption of our society is that intelligence, that most characteristic trait of humankind, earns our species the right to strive for complete mastery over the physical world.

This idea, that it is the special purview of humanity to own the land, control its resources, and command the very forces of nature, drives us to extremely self-endangering behavior. Vital ecological systems are dismantled in the name of human growth and it isn't perceived as problematic because the human mind is something other than the rest of the world--something higher. The casual threads that connect us to the rest of the whole aren’t truly acknowledged and we can therefore act upon the planet without seeing how we ourselves are affected.

The perceptual disjunction of humankind from the world is embodied in so many of our philosophies and institutions it is all but invisible by virtue of its ubiquity. Politicians and economists refer to complex communities of interrelating life as “resources” and nearly all of the major religions write the Earth off as a prologue to an infinite afterlife or call it a painful illusion to be transcended. We reduce the global community of life that molded our species to abstractions and in denying its subjective existence make it that much easier to behave as if the whole of creation was set into motion for our sole benefit. Among the results is an anthropogenic mass extinction on a scale equal to that of an asteroid impact with all that that implies for the future welfare of humanity. Clearly what we value is not life—neither our own nor that of the rest of the biosphere.

presidents and parliaments

Seeing as it's election season here in the US, I've been thinking how much we take for granted our particular sort of government. The two-party, presidential style of governance is actually among the less common forms in the world, even among functioning democracies. Multiparty, parliamentary governments are common outside the United States and it's been found that they are less prone to corruption than presidential systems.

The primary benefit often cited for presidential government is the concept of a separation of powers among different branches of government, thereby preventing one branch from becoming too powerful. However, presidential systems often fail in this capacity as power tends to accrue in the hands of the executive branch over time. You could also make the case that multiparty, parliamentary systems actually achieve a separation of powers amongst different parties instead of different branches. In this way, power is distributed among groups which represent different segments of the populace.

Parliamentary systems work successfully in many countries all over the world. In a time when the President of the United States has more power than ever before in history, I can't help but wonder if it would work here.

cradle to cradle

Looking ahead, I feel that Green Design will be to the 21st Century what Modernism was to the 20th. The truly revolutionary spirit of Green Design is perhaps best expressed by the concept of Cradle to Cradle Certification.

The goal of cradle-to-cradle design is that, instead of our traditional cradle-to-grave (i.e. factory-to-landfill) production "cycle," we design products from the outset with the intention of reusing their materials. To be truly effective, this requires a re-envisioning of the design and production process. Instead of viewing a product as something created and sold, designers could see their design as one possible "incarnation" of the materials used--one of many. Inspired by the continuous recycling of biological material in an ecosystem, the cradle-to-cradle designer creates with the intention that his product has a finite lifespan after which its components find new life in other products.

Currently, cradle-to-cradle certification serves to both recognize products that are healthier for people and the planet and goad the industry into coming ever closer the ideal of an "industrial ecosystem" production cycle.

stark divide

I ran across this chart from the Washington Post today outlining the tax plans of McCain and Obama:


It's a pretty clear divide. Obama is increasing taxes on the top two brackets and lowering it for almost everybody else while McCain is decreasing taxes for everybody with the tax cuts growing larger the higher the income. If you think it's a good thing for rich people to get richer while everybody else is left to get by on the scraps, then obviously McCain's plan is for you.

Now I'm aware it's become increasingly common for people these days that to think the "reasonable" perspective is to assume the truth always lies between two points of view. In a political context, this often takes the form of "I'm conservative about the economy and liberal about social freedoms." But if you really look at this chart you see that 60% of the population is in the lowest 3 brackets. If that's what's good for the economy than the economy isn't good for most people.

looking past green

We hear a lot, these days, about being Green, eco-friendly, or environmental. Indeed, these are words that have appeared on this blog already and will certainly appear frequently. Usually, these words are applied to products. The "Green trend" is so well-established that it's a marketing tool. There's even a word for giving a product that eco-friendly image: Greenwashing. While it's important to buy Green if/when you can, it often appears that the solution to our ecological problems is as simple as swapping one brand of fabric softener for another. There's a lot more to it, of course. Sometimes it helps to look ahead, and imagine what kind of world we can really achieve. The folks over at WorldChanging have done just that by inviting us all to Imagine What Comes After Green. It's a reminder to all of us that the whole point of the Green movement is to create a better world and a healthier planet.

mad times

As a perennial late-comer to TV shows, I've just discovered AMC's hit program Mad Men. Chronicling the lives of a group of Madison Avenue advertising execs (and their friends and families) in the early 1960s, the show is a fictionalized snapshot of a particular segment of American life at a pivotal period of our history.

There's a lot I like about Mad Men; the buffet of midcentury furnishings is enough by itself to make a design nerd like me drool. But one aspect of the show that I find especially fascinating is its depiction of women in the 60s. The wives, girlfriends, and secretaries of Mad Men live in a world in which women are systematically disempowered. Where men don't exercise complete control (in one scene, a gynecologist threatens to cut off a character's birth control prescription if he feels she's "abusing" it) they retain a subtle power over the women in their lives: it's assumed that the women will defer to their men in every situation. To think that a woman nearly won her party's nomination for the presidency a scant 48 years after the male-dominated world of Mad Men (to put that in perspective, Ms. Clinton was 13 years old in 1960, the year the show's first season takes place) is a stunning example of how far we've progressed. It's also a reminder of the attitudes that underlay our perspective today.

I can't wait for Season 2!

debut

Welcome to the Anthropist. Anthropy is humanism, which is defined as follows:

1.	any system or mode of thought or action in which human interests, values, and dignity predominate.

2.	devotion to or study of the humanities.

3.	the studies, principles, or culture of the humanists.

4.	a variety of ethical theory and practice that emphasizes reason, scientific inquiry, and human fulfillment in the natural world and often rejects the importance of belief in God.

All of these definitions describe, to varying degrees, the subject matter of this blog. Topics can and will include politics, design, religion, fashion, culture, science, and technology interspersed with anecdotes from the lives of my friends and I. Like any blog, it's a soapbox for me to think aloud about anything that interests me. Here's hoping it's as interesting for you.