I never met my great-grandparents, but do remember one grandfather on my father’s side and both grandparent on my mothers side, whilst they were alive. My grandfather (on mother’s side) is also my godfather. During their lifetimes the world began to change. Oh, the world is always changing, but this change comes with consequences, as every change does. Most of the year I lived life in the city of Kassel, in Europe, located on the river Fulda, approx. 350km north of the river Rhine.
My grandmother lived in a small village near the Rhine, close to the rock of Lorelei, where her legendary sirens echo from the rocks. Most in the area grow grapes and the fine wines are still highly valued to this day. Her village was named ‘Werlau’, placed high on the Rhine valley with beautiful spots to see the river snake its way towards the North Sea. I spent most of my summer holidays with her. My grandmother was a very religious lady. Reading and praying the Rosary were part of my childhood duties (chores), which I found rather boring. At that time, God was to be feared, although in nightly monologues I tried the art of diplomatic negotiations, making deals to pay for my sins. Sundays were holy days, nicely dressed, starting with a visit to the church down a steep road, past the Burg Rheinfels (Rheinfels Castle), into the Rhine Valley at St. Goar. Often my brother and I would walk the 4km distance, as it was just a beautiful place to take in. We called to the rocks and waited for the echoes to bounce back. The church inside was fascinating, due to the many art works and carvings and good acoustics. The ice-cream afterwards held a special attraction; I took it as reward for being still for an hour.
But going shopping with my grandmother was great, up in the village. The local bakery had various rolls (Wasser Wecke, Milch Broetchen, Breadrolls made with water, others with milk, both my favourites and many other goodies). But the rolls were uniquely shaped, as unique as the butter, which was a yellowish lump, wrapped in grease proof paper, weight approximately that much, all for a few coins. Milk came fresh from the cow, including some hair, warm as her udder from the next door neighbour’s cow shed, just across the road.
Once I went to a local fish shop and the slippery herring didn’t feel like being sold. The customer, a very vocal lady of advanced years in black folk dress laughed, and through teeth less smile she called to the sales assistant, ‘Losse do nenn hippe,’ then exploded in a huge holler of laughter. It took me awhile to dissect the heavy dialect, which was far removed from a news reader’s language. It had to do something with the fish and perhaps its slipperiness. ‘Losse do’, came close to my kasselaenerisch ‘Lasse doch’, in proper lingo ‘Lass sie doch.’ ‘Nenn hippe’ was a little harder, but since the fish ended up in a plastic bag it could have meant ’nein hippe, ‘nein huepfen, ‘herein springen’, or ’Lass ihn doch hereinspringen’, ‘Let him jump into it.’ Since she expected some sort of response from me, I nodded, returning her smile, and was glad that I could understand my grandmother most of the time, without the need to dissect every sound.
‘Why not shop in a shopping centre?’ I asked her, ‘oh no,’ I shouldn’t have asked that. ‘If I don’t buy from the locals, in time, there will be no locals to buy from,’ she explained.
The weekdays were the best. As city boys, we were invited into many homes, lived not just with my grandmother, but had access to many families in the village. Went out on the wagons, drawn by cows, another neighbour used a horse, just short of 1 hp, he was old. The horse was much easier on the eye than the behind of a pair of cows walking slowly. In some farm houses the chicken were part of the furniture, flying onto the breakfast table. It was an experience. All eating from one bowl in the centre of the table was another. We lent a hand on the land surrounding the village and got a feeling of what it is like when the harvest is brought in. We’d sit high, atop of the laden wagons, swinging to the potholes on the dirt-tracks. Beautiful memories and itchy backs, and what ever happened to…, what was her name? She wore her dark brown hair in two long plaits and had a country girl’s name, perhaps Emma, she used to get under the cow, hold a teat and squirt the milk like a water pistol. Great fun, when you’re 6 or 7.
Sometimes I stayed longer and attended the local school. It was so small that all grades fitted into one class room and one teacher taught all. In a small place like that, no one is a stranger for long.
Each year things changed slowly, tractors came in and so the drive to the outlaying fields became a little faster. The cobble stone streets became cleaner, as fewer animals were used to draw the wagons. In front of the houses were still the concrete framed pits that stored the soiled straw and animal waste, in smelly display of unpleasantness. When I was 8 my grandfather died. Everyone wore black for a year. A town crier used to spread local news, walking up the small lanes, ringing his bell and yelling with massive voice his message from place to place. Low flying swallows would indicate a change in weather.
In 1988 I had left my childhood far behind, flew back to Werlau, which was once my mother’s hometown. It did not exist anymore. Werlau had become a part of St. Goar. The new name is St. Goar-Werlau. The graves of both my grandparents are neatly kept by the family. The baker’s store has become part of the baker’s children family house. The place, were we got the butter from no longer makes any. Next door, the 12 or so cows and tractors, and all the farming machinery, and the smelly pits are gone. The farmer’s children have a job to go to. The outlaying properties have been absorbed by the largest farmer of them all. They use the modern gear that does as much as the whole village did together. Speckkuchen (a type of bacon quiche on a dough base) that was made by many of the women in the communal ovens, where long handled devices were used to retrieve them from the hot belly of incubation, when I was a kid, were no longer made. The place now used for another purpose. And so are the places of butchers, shoemakers, blacksmiths, as well as the dressmakers, milliners and of so many others, now used for something else. The uniqueness of their products is now replaced by the ‘we buy in bulk’ supermarkets, most likely cheaper and with no hair in the milk.
There is no longer a need to wash the aluminium can to get a refill of raw milk. The new milk is all pasteurised, free of E. coli 0157:H7, Staphylococcus aureus, Listeria, Campylobacter, Salmonella and T.B. Every time one buys it, it comes in a brand new sterile container. The neighbours tractor, in the once Werlau, has long been traded in for a car. The tractor lasted many years, perhaps still works today, but the first car it was traded for has been replaced countless times. The cars that ran on ‘Standard’ long gone, the ones on ‘Super’ are history; the cars that run on ‘unleaded’ are becoming history. Tractors were a lot simpler, they had a power take-off at the rear, and the older ones also had a wheel at the sides that could power all sorts of gadgets, like a saw and auxiliary farm equipment. But a tractor was a tough machine and details like leather seats, built-in radio, CD players, and safety doors were no issues. At least a bottle holder and lunch pack box would have been appropriate accessories. Tractor manufacturers were not yet on the ball, as tractors were not a status symbol.
Cars changed all that. The little letters at the rear, GT, SE, SL, 5l, 6l, 8 cyl, 500, oh no, my ego needs a 600 at least, better make that 6000. Fridges changed all that too, freezers, bathrooms, kitchens, TVs, and washing machines, telephones and internal water-flush toilets, all did their little bit to change the world. None of them are status symbols anymore. Dishwashers, electric inline water heaters, long since replaced by others types. The new world of white goods replaced countless times with monthly changing models and additional innovative devices, the electric toothbrush, meat slicer, remote control garage door, vacuum cleaner, in short, more electricity eating paraphernalia than a house could nurse with power points. The wood and coal fireplaces replaced by oil installations, providing central heating.
The film formats of a few changed to the video formats of the many, to be replaced and improved and with 200% certainty to be replaced again. The 16k computers jumped to 64k, to 4Mb, to 64Mb, to 1TB and may end up thousands of TB next week or thereafter. The records started turning faster, became a tape, which became a cassette tape, which became a CD, a DVD and memory chip.
How many goods in working order will have been replaced in the household over the lifetime of the occupier?
A ‘Lloyd Alexander TS’ was my first car. It had 600cc, 25hp, 2 cylinder/ 4stroke. It had 4 gears on the steering column and a rated top speed of 100km/hr. I got it to go 150km/hr down a long hill on the Autobahn; the needle wouldn’t go that far, a friend confirmed the speed, but the Lloyd did it only once. It gave up the ghost after that. I was 18 then.
Have lost count of how many cars I’ve been through, nor do I remember how many fridges, washing machines, lounges, and whatever else I’ve been through. How much of the pollution up there is my doing? How many degrees or fractions of degrees am I responsible for? How many mines, trucks, heavy machinery, planes did I keep operating, how many trees are on my conscience? How many miles have I travelled, how much pollution pumped out?
When I was 18, I never looked at the price of fuel. I never looked at the price of anything. Since then, the chase for the lowest number behind the decimal point has become common practice. I listened to the Marketing people, ‘why pay more?’ and abandoned the corner stores, which could never keep up with the big guys. And in doing so, the big guys have become bigger, the rest had to find a niche or go under.
So how do the big guys do it so cheap, do I know, do I care? Do I know that the grower gets a pittance of the charged price, the child labourer slaves all day, gets no penalty rates for extra long hours? Do I know that the cheapest meats contain the worst ingredients, responsible for future sickness? Do I know that the freshest apples are some years old? Despite, the owners rake in piles, their accountants used as sniffer dogs to squeeze another cent out here and there. The scientists employed to modify seeds and crops, livestock, the heritage of evolution, for longer shelf life, for faster and consistent growth rate, for animal-less steaks, for chicken-less eggs, for crops that have no seeds. Progress and innovation are possible as the result of consumption. The ever rising GDP used as measure of economic health. Negative growth a bad thing, depression or worse, recession, doom, jump out of the window time.
Consumption means many things, in the old films it referred to a wasting disease. Consume means devour, squander, destroy, waste, deplete, wipe out. A consumer is then a person that destroys, devours, squanders, wastes, depletes and wipes out.
But the more consumers we have, the better for the economy, and as a result the sooner we’ll have to face a serious dilemma. We can no longer rob the colonies (not officially); it’s going to get harder to find cheap labour countries, but not impossible. No longer will the ‘Indians, natives, aboriginals, indigenous,’ or which ever name we graced the ones who are different, accept a broken piece of mirror for their gold, perhaps they would, but no longer have they any gold to trade. Most goods are paid with currency, which can be used to buy the products made by them and those. The physical goods paid for with notes of apparent value, which are traded for other physical goods, plundered from the earth and ‘value’ added.
The search for cheaper suppliers will also create new markets, increasing demand even further, all becoming consumers that with every purchase consume parts of the planet. Bauxite under fertile ground, a fateful combination, mine sites near the food bowls’ water table is another, oil rigs and shipping near sensitive eco systems, each compromise brings us closer to the edge. Hills and mountains change their shapes as crushers eat them up and dipped in black tar become freeways, highways and toll roads.
Food is used as fuel, our poison and garbage sold to countries that live on the edge of survival, and with a philosophy or consumerism, constantly increasing turnover, increased GDP, return on investment all play a part that traps us in a vicious cycle. The poor sift through mountains of stinking debris to reclaim copper, metals, and anything that can be recycled, to be exchanged for paper money, surrounded by smoke and poisonous gases.
Wars of ideology become wars for resources of any kind, fought with robot man and AI devices controlled from afar. But a cycle it is not, as the blundered goods don’t regrow in the earth, the extracted oil has turned to fumes, which will not converted back to oil. The cycle is a spiral of demise. This we shall leave to our yet unborn.
The beginning of the industrial revolution, from the steam engine days to now, mere micro seconds in the life of time.
Population growth is in slow decline in Europe, steady in many countries, on the increase in many African nations, many of whom can not feed their own. The constant repetition of starvation, due to many causes, ruthless selfish rulers, corruption, unsustainable offspring numbers, mismanagement of funds and resources, climate change, the blundering by other nations, or a combination of many others, draws a picture of imbalance and moral dilemma.
The milk of mother earth is drying up. Perhaps intelligence can safe it, else we drink our mother’s blood in thirsting. Intelligence is a word with many meanings.
The CIA’s definition of intelligence is: The information our nation’s leaders need to keep our country safe. Put in context: The information the world leaders need to keep the world safe. Do we have leaders or have we become followers? Do we follow performers or people with vision? Does their vision transcend borders? How short is their vision?
Intelligence is the faculty of understanding. A pig with too many piglets will squash a few, so that its siblings have a chance of survival.
(intelligence – (learning – prior experience – memory)) = hard wired instinct.
Intelligence:
The ability to comprehend; to understand and profit from the experience;
The gathering and interpreting information about an enemy;
The ability to absorb information, reason, to formulate goals and make plans;
The ability to interact with the environment, adapt to changes;
The ability for original, productive thought, and there are so many more definitions for the same word.
It was intelligence that changed the world, started the industrial revolution, which is still continuing. In the process intelligence reached higher levels, starting other revolutions that changed the world. But too often intelligence partnered with self serving interests did and does little for the common good.
Intelligence combined with greed, power, ego and selective vision can be a destructive combination.
Sir Joseph Whitworth, who amongst many other inventions, devised a standard for screw threads in 1841. It became the first nationally standardised system. This eventually became a British Standard. It meant that one nut of a given size, angle and pitch would fit onto a bolt of the same shape, no matter who produced it. In expanded form it made mass production possible, each adhering to given standards.
A look inside a supermarket quickly demonstrates the greed and madness of manufacturers that has been accepted by the consumers of computer printers and the ink that goes with it. An entire wall is needed to feature the various brands to suit the countless models, most carrying black and red, green and blue ink in different sized containers, which as ink cartridges are a few dollars less, than an entire printer including its ink. If your printer is older than xyz years, rest assured, it will end up on the dump somewhere, as print cartridges are no longer available for that model. The ink is worth pennies, but because your printer needs it, it costs dollars.
A new model car costs a small fortune to develop, often put together from existing engines, some other undercarriage, and whatever else, so that each knows the newer model is the one that delivers all your dreams. It has become a world of throw away items and replacement goods, where wear and tear is finely matched to ones income capacity.
We have not realised that we are as one, no matter what we look like. The clan instinct is still very much alive, mostly just under the surface. We rather identify with select interest groups than the whole of humankind.
The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council drawn from the victors of WW2. All have nuclear weapons. Four of the five are also the biggest arms exporters. The objectives of the UN Security Council are to maintain international peace and security.
Going back to the original thought, we all too often see more of our differences than what we have in common. Backroom deals, stooges, opinion makers, lobby groups, all unelected self serving groups that either have voices, power or money to twist the arms of others. And if it’s not them, then the local heroes or preachers of fear and doom, or the prophets of heavenly bliss will have their ten cents worth of influence.
Each has tried and ideologies have led to persecution, wars and destruction, love thy neighbour has killed so many. The preachers had a demand, a claim on heaven, theirs the only true word. They dismissed the faiths of millions of others, as misguided ideologies. Various interpretations of scriptures and manipulations to meet objectives, all the influence of men’s imperfections presented as truth.
1970, 80, 90, the hope, oh in the year 2000 everything will be so different. The New Year started from the east, crossing the timelines of all during the following 24 hours. Each city was celebrating with joyous faces, heralding a new beginning that leads us out of the dark ages, a moment of worldwide common feeling. I took a picture of the sunrise 1. Jan 2000, perhaps many others did too, as symbol of a new era, a time of promise. No one made such promise, many had expectations.
Is there a common conscience, a global comprehension of what needs doing? By saying ‘mine is better’, we also mean ‘yours is not.’ Is not intelligence also our enemy?
We see ideals, patriotism, the honour for the flag (whatever colours your country may have) as noble traits, our cultural, political, religious and ethical identity as something worthy to cherish and defend. Often our upbringing, our belonging forges our being into believing this, that or the other is what one needs to keep as ongoing legacy.
As far back as 1966, I had discussion with a friend of mine, who entered the then new profession called ‘Umweltschutz’ (Environmental Protection). How long have scientist wailed their warnings. How many disproved their colleagues for whatever reason. At least now, carbon trading has a value, there are deals to be made. It may not buy a clear sky, but it looks like someone is doing something. Of course a low wage country producing all the goods will also produce the pollution that goes with it, as long as the country is on the lee side of the wind. ‘Smoking is good for you,’ paid stooges claimed without batting an eyelid. ‘There is no pollution under your houses, schools, suburbs,’ the paid experts exclaimed, while the poison seeps into the residents, killing them with cancers following years of suffering.
We sent signals into space to establish communications with aliens, yet fail to understand the language of our animals and are too often incapable to comprehend the reasoning of our fellow men. Can we not hear the missing sounds of those we helped to wipe out? The scraped up DNA samples used as comfort, perhaps one day used to fix it all.
The tribes that could live in harmony and sustainability in their environment are now reduced to dance for coins, some have become drunken derelicts, living in another world, displaced and ripped from their roots.
Some have proven that it is possible to amass a personal wealth in excess of US$56 billion in less than a lifetime, and in doing so become as beacons to others, as anyone can reach that level too, in theory. Once, being a millionaire meant to be rich in wealth. Now the list of billionaires having over US$15 billion each is getting very long. Yet each dollar in a billionaire’s pocket is a dollar less in everyone else’s. Time has shown that this imbalance is steadily increasing.
The poorest of us all has 65% of his/her bodyweight in oxygen, a bit of carbon, hydrogen, a little bit of nitrogen and calcium, and a very little bit of various other compounds. That’s all. He/she may crave a drop of water, a piece of bread, some medication for their kids, perhaps a sheet of plastic as a home or less.
By property deed we believe to own a speck of dirt or a place at the water front, yet we are tenants at best. Each speck we claim is taken from someone else, be that a bear, a fox or a thousand birds. From my grandparents to now, what have we done to our home?
There is no ‘us’, no ‘we’, no common identity. We are not earthlings; we are females, males, lots of genders beyond that, adults or kids, Europeans, Asians, Africans, Jews, Moslems, Catholics, French, Lebanese, Koreans, lower class, middle, upper class or classless, engineers, thinkers, plumbers, artists, makers and takers, followers and individuals. Each identifies with one or another idea, believe, concept and direction, or none at all.
We are animals of the kingdom ‘Animalia’, from the class ‘Mammalia’, the order of ‘Primates’, the family of ‘Hominidae’, the genus ‘homo’, the species ‘homosapiens’ and subspecies ‘homo sapiens sapiens’. Homo sapiens, taken from Latin meaning ‘wise human’ or ‘knowing human.’
We can recognise ourselves in a mirror, not many in the kingdom of Animalia can do that. We can crawl, climb, swim and dive, even fly, we enjoy sex (with few exceptions), we reach orgasms, some wonder about the paint on the ceiling, we think abstract thoughts, create, invent, handle tools and, and, and no other animal can do all that as one species. Although many animals can do many things better than us, with applied intelligence and appropriate tools we’ve overcome many of our shortcomings. We can outrun a cheetah by sitting down with the foot on the gas, we see further than an eagle’s eye with satellite images, with massive sized antennas. We are faster than any fish and can adapt to most environments.
Other animals have no votes, no voice, no decision making powers. Trees, plants and insects have no voice either. All are made of cells. Yet we share and need our fellow animals and plants. A wagtail may just had a chance to avoid an approaching rifle bullet, but it will not escape a 5000mph 8 mega-joule electromagnetic rail-gun, or a million bullets per minute, or an airborne chemical oxygen iodine laser, or electromagnetic radiation, microwave beams, which will burn off all its feathers before it knows what hit it. But a wagtail is no enemy of any men. Wolves and bears, white pointers, snakes, crocodiles and lions, tigers, germs and viruses, all capable of bringing men down. But h-bombs, a-bombs and e-bombs are not directed at the kingdom of Animalia, just at one of the species therein. The thousands of others that become fried to a crisp are collateral damage. Napoleon is perhaps one of the last leaders actually riding alongside his army, being close to the action. Presidents, Prime Ministers, Chancellors and Emperors remain far from the battlefields. Their armies do the deed, some as joystick soldiers firing weapon systems that leave no sound in the faraway ‘homeland’, the screams of the dying unheard. Sympathy has little chance to grow, as those are the bad guys, we certainly are not; they, the baddies are very different from us.
A single room, where each country leader could sort out their differences with the enemy’s leader, would save massive costs and lives on all sides. Both could assume to be the last men standing, instead of wasting the lives of the people they are meant to serve. No need to fight to the last drop of every citizen.
The weapon’s manufacturers and their directors are maybe the first to oppose such idea, with the shareholders not far behind. Perhaps the leaders of industry would also oppose that thought, after all, if destruction can go hand in hand with re-construction the economic returns make it all worthwhile (my pardon for being sarcastic).
1988 saw the attack on a common enemy of men, poliomyelitis, which did maim 350000 children per year with paralysis. Polio is now mostly confined to 4 countries, currently claiming just over 1000 victims globally (Data in WHO HQ, Aug 2008). This world is based on the survival instincts of the fittest, be that men or the cancer cells within men.
What if we had no past, we most likely would create a different future. Imagine there is no hell. No history, no traditions, no customs, no hierarchies, no rituals, no past scores to settle, no religious battles, no superior race, no borders, no domination over another, each has claimed a lot of blood and will continue to claim more. Would we feel lost without it? If we were any other animal and watched what men is doing to the planet and its own species, would we not think of humankind as polio?
Population statistics indicate 25 out of 230 countries have a negative population growth rate; all other countries will increase the number of their population to various degrees. If one takes the total world’s population in the year 1AD at approx 300000, in 1000 at 310k, in 1250 at 400k, in 1500 at 500k, in 1900 at 1650k, in 2000 at 6124k, today (Aug 2008) at 6835k and estimate in 2050 at 9294k
(Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_growth_rate).
The average world population rate is 1.17%. Based on this, the population will double in just less than 60 years to 13.670 billion people. Never in known history has such a rapid increase in the world’s population been experienced, in particular as in the last 500 years.
Taking stock of the rapid changes, upheaval and tempering of nature’s finely balanced systems over the last 200 years, has had an impact on every continent and the oceans on earth. In men’s mind, the future is a forward projection based on the past.
Will the next 200 years be a progression of our past? The numbers don’t seem to support this, especially if each expects a living standard that is unsustainable. The dream of happiness may well be limited to food, shelter and reasonable health, which even today is not guaranteed, much less so in the future.
Imagine there is no humankind. The rivers and oceans will find a balance, nature has time to recover, trees and forests have a chance to regrow, filter our poisons, animals and plants find ways to recover. Healing is given a chance. If no child is born, the world is free of humankind in 100 years. Perhaps this thought goes against our built-in instincts, against all religious teachings, against all we have come to accept. Perhaps a sensible reduction in numbers could lead to a world where we don’t become the endangered species.
We do have the ability to adapt. In local and global emergencies we can act as one. Often these times of natural disasters bring out the best in men, can unite communities, display a genuine desire to assist and help with whatever means. In such times we can lose our sense of hierarchy, be selfless, be concerned for the other, irrespective of who the other is. Anyone would jump without hesitation into a pit of mud or worse to save a life. Many who have gone through disaster, be that floods, cyclone, earthquake will also have noticed the change in men, the courage, commitment and self sacrifice we are capable of.
We also have the ability to bring down borders, build bridges across nations and ideologies, reach out and share in the life of the individual, through friendships and associations.
The gods of money are paper-thin, have no substance, have little worth.
If we don’t find an answer, nature certainly will.
Links of interest:
http://www.poodwaddle.com/clocks2.htm
© Heinz Ross, Gold Coast, Australia
21. Aug 2008
Afterthought:
Since writing the above, fuel has reached the highest level ever, fuel has crashed too, financial markets have crashed, unemployment on the rise everywhere, large and small businesses go to the wall. The worth of many appears worthless. The basics have reached a new importance.
