Sustainability

One Sunday several months ago, I was sitting in the courtyard of a lovely little café in Durham called Vennels, eating lunch with various Quakers (as is something of a tradition among the younger – middle-aged people in Durham Meeting) and setting the world to rights (ditto).

F was telling us about how her daughter had spent part of her year abroad in a small town in Oregon where they had taken it upon themselves to live more sustainably and in greater community with each other. Residents could sign up to teach hour-long classes at a community centre for free in anything from knitting to accounting, and consequently share skills which might otherwise have been inaccessible. The council would come and dig a vegetable patch in your garden for free, even planting vegetables for you with the idea that once you had learned to grow and garden home-produce, you could help someone else the next year. I can’t remember any more examples off-hand and possibly they weren’t given – but what had really struck F’s daughter (and consequently F) was the degree to which these people had taken their own initiative. They hadn’t waited for someone to tell them what to do. They hadn’t been pressured into anything and they certainly hadn’t waited for the government to enforce regulations upon them. They had simply seen a problem and together started to work out a solution that would benefit everybody through give-and-take.

There have been various posts from various people recently on what our future holds for us, notably Jenny’s Apocalype or Liberal Democracy 2.0? and Dickie’s Crossroads. As Jenny says, I think the consensus is that the world cannot continue in its current way, and that sooner or later, all too possibly sooner, something is going to have to give. The Transition Towns movement, as I linked to in the comments of the above post, is a movement that is trying to prepare Britain for the time when Peak Oil runs out. Dickie’s argument that sustainability and climate change are two completely different issues is a slightly invidious one in my opinion, but I do think that he is right that the latter is focused on too much to the detriment of the former.

The problem is, is that we’re all waiting around for somebody to tell us what to do about it. We know that it’s happening, yes, and we’ll switch off our lightbulbs and recycle our newspapers like nobody’s business – and then go and sit down at our computers while the washing machine whirrs and sockets give out energy to appliances on standby. We tut at the sheer amount ending up in landfill, but yet we still buy more new stuff because we feel like having a new phone or a different outfit for the evening. I’m not saying that I’m any better here, incidentally, but it’s something I’m trying to be conscious of and something that I think that a lot of people don’t really appreciate – that sustainability is for life, not just for Christmas, so to speak, and that we’re all waiting for someone else to take the lead.

Some of you may have noticed the new icon just below the calendar on the right of my blog. It links you to the 10:10 campaign, a campaign which aims for its members to reduce their carbon emissions by 10% in 2010. And it’s not just about car fuel – it’s about food, it’s about consumer habits, it’s about household energy use, and it’s about promoting a lifestyle which takes notice of the world and the resources around us. Individuals and big businesses need to play their part.

It’s hard, yes. In technological terms we might feel like we’re regressing, yes. But surely we can’t have it both ways? If that technology is contributing to our world’s downfall, we may have to choose between the privilege of using it now and the privilege of living in a society with enough resources to support itself to a basic level in however many years time. Personally I know which one I’d choose in the long run, even if delayed gratification is not intrinsic to our natures.

And maybe everything will sort itself out, and our saving grace will appear, and God will come down from the heavens to keep us happy and rich and safe. We’re so convinced that it couldn’t happen to us that we shut our eyes on the fact that for many parts of the world, it’s already happened to them and they’re already dealing with the consequences. Let’s take our lead from that town in Oregon, shall we, and take some immediate responsibility?

Contention

There was a DSU (Durham Student Union) council meeting on Thursday at which the Environment and Ethics Officer proposed a thoroughly contentious motion – to boycott Israeli goods and majority-state-owned Israeli companies from the union premises as a protest against Israel’s human rights record, both in the recent disproportionately violent treatment of Gaza and in its treatment of conscientious objectors.

For those interested, the meeting’s documents can be found here, under the heading of ‘Thursday 22nd January’. The motion itself is contained within the Agenda file.

It was a long meeting and by the time that the union buildings had to be closed at 11:30pm, no consensus had been reached – a sufficient number of council reps had had to leave to catch buses that a vote would be meaningless. Quite what happens remains to be seen. There are calls for a university-wide referendum. There are calls for the motion to be kicked into the ground and ignored. Despite the best efforts of the DSU Exec to maintain a rational, measured discussion, it was inevitable that feelings were going to be running high, and one group of students in particular did themselves no credit by taking the discussion to a highly emotive and personal level.

There are arguments for, arguments against, and arguments why it should never have been brought up in the first place. Part of the problem is the general level of ignorance surrounding the exact technicalities of international and national human rights law, and while I hold up my hand there with most people, I’m afraid, it does not make for a productive discussion.

Those of you who know me and know my political views will probably know which side of the motion I supported – and here I would like to point out to any Facebook stalkers who have put two and two together that I would have held that opinion regardless of any personal ties or vested interests. As I wrote in an email to my college representative,

“This is not anti-Semetic. This is anti the abuse of basic human rights. Whether or not you agree with the Jewish cause for land, and whether or not you agree with national service this is about the freedom for innocent civilians to go about their lives in peace, and the freedom to stand up for one’s beliefs. If the latter in particular is not what a union should stand for and support, then I don’t know what is.”

Listening to this only reinforces my conviction (as well as being sheer genius on the part of Tony Benn :D)

I realise that even publishing this blog entry is risky in terms of the potential offence caused to readers. I have heard arguments going back and forth on the topic already. I’m happy to debate, and everything, but I suppose I didn’t post this to go over the pros and the cons of a boycott motion. I posted it as a reminder that sticking up for your beliefs is neither easy nor always black-and-white, but still fundamentally important if we dare to hope that the world can ever be a better place. Sometimes you just need to stand up and be counted.

Music and Silence

One of the offerings from Father Christmas this year (or Mother Christmas, to be more precise) was a novel – Rose Tremain’s ‘Music and Silence’. I read it in Shropshire, and I have to say that it was wonderfully written and I enjoyed it a lot (go read! go read!).

But what I really wanted to post was a rather lovely, and apt, couple of lines:

“For what is truly verifiable in life, I ask you? Only mathematics!
Two plus two will always and for evermore equal four,
but how is this going to resolve what boils in my brain?”

I don’t hate my degree, far from it, but sometimes it just doesn’t seem that important in life and that’s all there is to it.

Today, incidentally, is an OK day :-)

Interpretation

“Once you write something, it’s not your own anymore and it bears different meanings to everyone who reads it”

I read this today on one of the blogs that I read. It felt terribly appropriate, somehow.

Analysis

The trouble with being trained to think analytically is that you can’t turn it off. You analyse the world around you. You analyse your friends. You analyse yourself, and then because of the nature of self-analysis, you start to analyse your own analysis.

And slowly, slowly you drive yourself mad.

Gender Relations

There are twenty people in my Galois Theory lectures at the minute*, four of whom (including myself) are female.

That isn’t too bad as gender ratios go. Slightly unbalanced even for the Maths Department, but I’ve experienced much worse elsewhere. I don’t dislike having male company – if anything I find guys easier to interact with than other girls, at least in the short term – and let’s be honest, it doesn’t matter hugely one way or another. But there was still that moment, just before the start of the first lecture and before the other three girls walked in when I suddenly became conscious of being the odd one out.

The thing is, it doesn’t matter. Guys and girls may have physical and neurological differences. Guys and girls may have different social and cultural expectations placed upon them. The lecturing staff may be 90% male, stereotypes may be bandied about in jest, and the girls’ Chemistry Department toilets may be absolutely disgusting but that’s no hindrance, essentially, to being a girl learning Maths. In the eyes of officialdom, I am a student defined by a nine digit number alone, and in the eyes of everything that feminists have rightly stood for and fought for, that is how it should be – I would resent being picked out for being female on that basis alone.

And yet, I find that when the only girl in a group of guys, my subconscious instinct is to assert my femininity. Brush my hair, wear skirts and make-up, become generally ’softer’ in my attitude. I’m sure that a psychologist would have a field day analysing the associated sexual instincts, need for a USP, the degree of consciousness of such behaviour, and on ad infinitum… but as a self-declared assertive woman (who still agrees with Jenny here**), I just find the whole thing pretty damn scary. Is it just me?

x

*Tiny group! Not, though, as tiny as the group for ‘Approximation Theory and ODEs’ who allegedly have fifteen, indecisive ‘tourists’ inclusive. Given that that particular module description effectively read, “Numerical Analysis! Only more, and harder!”, I can’t say that I’m entirely surprised.

**This is NOT intended to be a strict continuation of the same discussion. If you want to argue about that one again, then do so on Jenny’s post, please – I’m sure she won’t mind!

Perfection

Perfection.

It’s about every apple been green, shiny, and bruise-free.

It’s about every voice being recorded in every studio with just the right conditions and enhanced with just the right technology so that it sounds clear, full, and natural, balancing out its accompanying instruments to create the optimum album – every time.

It’s about the ball dropping into the pocket with geometric precision.

It’s about not settling for ‘good enough’ in a relationship, because the dream guy is just around the corner.

It’s about every leading film actress being tall, thin, beautiful, glossy, attractive.

It’s about the email being sent now, the paper being crisp white.

It’s about achieving the average, the norm, the expected, the unattainable to all but the few.

It’s about discarding the blemished apples, the thin voices and the old microphone. It’s about the failure of the ball that was one degree too wide, the dissolving of the relationship because he didn’t hold the door that one time or sounded a bit distracted on the phone. It’s about the actress with the long nose and ageing skin being derided as ugly and unsuitable for the role. It’s about the job being lost because the email was sent a minute late due to a nose bleed, the application being rejected because the photocopier had only been supplied with yellow paper that day.

We have grown so used to the idea of perfection. If we work hard enough, if we invest the money, if we refuse to let anything get in our way then we can achieve anything! The world is ours to conquer! So long as we aren’t the ones composting the bad apples, that is.