Reviews for Living with Environmental Change

The average rating for Living with Environmental Change based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-01-02 00:00:00 Doug McKay I'm not sure what I was expecting from this, but it would be fair to say I was expecting less. I certainly wasn't expecting to be confronted with a wealth of fresh ideas and to have my perspectives on so many issues skewed. This is what I sometimes call a 'white board' book. Normally, books that remind me of a teacher at a white board filling in a mind-map around a single term are the worst books I've ever read. But this shows what comes from someone really thinking through an idea in all its manifestations. What is waste? It is fundamentally that which is not needed, but that is necessary in producing things that are necessary. Bauman reminds us of what Michelangelo was supposed to have said when asked how he produced such amazing statues - I just chip away all the bits that don't belong and I'm left with what does. Our effort to make the perfect society have tended to try to follow Michelangelo's advice. There was a time when human waste (or waste humans rather )- the people our society produces who 'do not belong' - could be shipped off somewhere 'empty' so that we could be done with them. The problem now is that the world is full. There are no 'empty' places. Terra Nullus no longer exists. But our societies continue to produce wasted humans - in fact, at an increasing rate. Marx referred to these people as necessary to Capitalism in the sense that they provided a 'reserve army' of the unemployed. But today these people are no longer really 'unemployed' - rather they have become redundant. They can not be recycled, re-employed - they are literal waste. Once our society could be considered comparable to a farm. Life had cycles and there was a sense of progress within these cycles. You plant a seed and you harvest many seeds. You raise a sheep and it produces many sheep. But Capitalism is better compared to a mine than to a farm. Value is extracted and once extracted it is gone forever. In the process of extracting that value it is inevitable that there will be waste. Slag and environmental destruction seem inevitable consequences of mining. To get at the bit you need you must separate it from the waste and rubbish. There is no cycle and there is no commitment to an ongoing relationship - these is just extraction and making off with the goods. And as with mining, so with Capitalism. There is a fascinating part of this book where he discusses Enron. How they had, what he calls, a ritual sacking of 15% of their workforce every year, with a further 30% put on notice to lift their game. The interesting thing here is that no matter how well the organisation was going there would always be a bottom 15%. Such is the grinding necessity of averages. Utter dedication was required, but with about one in every six employees disappearing due to under-performance every year and nearly half being negatively assessed, only Dr Pangloss would feel optimistic of a long term future with the company. That is, the company might expect hard work from its employees (out of fear), but loyalty and commitment would probably match that shown to the employees by the company. We truly are the waste society. There was a time when we spoke of 'programmed obsolescence' - where companies would design flaws into their products to ensure we would turn them over and buy new ones once they failed. Now, this isn't even necessary. We replace things that are virtually brand new so as not to be seen as 'falling behind'. He mentions an ad for a washing machine which said, "If someone tells you there is a better washing machine they are lying." But the company is lying here too, as in a year or two they will be telling you there is a better washing machine and that this one is now obsolete, old fashioned, and ruining your life. Change is the only absolute - and change is constant and increasingly meaningless. It isn't about change to achieve a better approximate of perfection - we have forgotten about perfection along the way. Change is now its own justification. Once I attended a meeting in my role as a union organiser where a manager was explaining a new organisational structure. He said that if staff were unhappy with the structure they should just wait, as it was inevitable that there would be a new one in a year or so. You may think he was being cynical or perhaps even ironic - but he was perfectly serious. He wanted people to understand that this situation was 'normal'. There is no optimum arrangement, just different arrangements and change is the only good. Bauman relates this to art too. There was a time when artists sought perfection too. However, today artists are much more likely to create 'events' rather than 'masterpieces'. I'm not sure how I feel about this, as I do believe there is a strong tendency in the notion of the art event that is a rejection of capitalist commodification. If I paint a picture it gets put in a frame and sold to the highest bidder. If I stage an event, that is much more difficult to turn into a commodity. Except, of course, that tickets can be sold and the 'event' can then have the same 'programmed obsolescence' as everything else. Where I found this most interesting and most challenging was around the notion of the infinite. There is no exclusion in the infinite - the infinite includes all. He discusses the notion of an infinite God and how the Biblical God required His followers to fully submit to His will to gain His favour. But what is particularly interesting here is that Bauman talks of this as people submitting to God as a means of overcoming their fear of the infinite - the uncaring infinity against which we are nothing. An infinite that doesn't care at all about our welfare or well-being. But even this God becomes what it sought to replace. Rather than an uncaring universe, we are left with the book of Job - once again we are left with the inscrutable will of God and us merely His playthings. In his discussion of the Devil I suddenly realised I don't really understand the Devil at all. Why doesn't God seek the redemption of Satan and the fallen Angels? Surely, they must be worth more to him in his creation than we are? Oh, by the way, I am not really interested in answers to these questions - that would be like you supplying me with answers to why Harry Potter should have had dark hair. Whatever interest your speculations may have would be of interest to you alone, I suspect. The nature of refugees as the ultimate in human waste - how our society needs them to justify its own excesses - how globalisation and the free movement of capital is also premised on the restricted movement of certain people (non-people, really) - how the world is over-populated with 'them', but there is always room for more of us (all the concern with the population explosion in the third world - places where the population density is often the lowest on the planet - but our constant concerns with declining birth rates and ageing populations at home, in some of the most densely populated areas on earth). As he says, "if the whole population of China and India moved to continental USA, the resulting population density wouldn't exceed that of England, Holland or Belgium." This is a chilling vision. We are all tormented by the threat of our becoming waste. All of us know that it is far too easy for us to be defined as waste and as redundant. And we all know the consequences of such a designation. But we ignore the consequences that are already playing out in terms of mental illness and general fear. Our compliance is assured as soon as our 'security agencies' issue another threat of attack by 'Islamo-fascists' or whatever the current panic term is. How amusing this ought to be, this idea that underdeveloped nations will somehow overthrow the world's most developed nations. As if more than twenty centuries of history had not been enough to prove the opposite is virtually always the case. That we panic rather than laugh at such propaganda is symptomatic of the depth of our complicit acceptance of the 'defend at any cost' our way of life. That we accept that Afghanistan is both over-run with people worse than Hitler and a safe place to return refugees to, shows the depth of our rationalisations and self-interested selective memory. This is a remarkably concise and clearly written book. This holds no punches. It is clear in ways few sociologists are clear. And it is challenging in ways that will have me thinking about the implication of some of what he has to say for many weeks and months to come. This book offers no real solutions - but for holding up a mirror in which we can see ourselves reflected back, it provides us with a service I suspect too few of us will be grateful for. The alternative is to just look away - but that alternative is becoming daily more difficult.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-11-12 00:00:00 Bhone Maw Not Bauman's best. It continues unpacking ideas he expressed in Liquid Fear, and his other books. Mainly the futility of seeking local solutions to global, systemic problems. He adds the idea that modernity by definition involves an attempt to improve society through design. Designs always involve waste, and thus any 'designed society' will involve wasted lives.