Towards a world of thoughtful design
We seem to have reached the limits of a world which enjoyed the carefree use of resources, like oil, and an economic growth model which endlessly has driven down cost. At first this depressed me. Now I'm becoming excited as I've seen more clearly the downsides of the poorly designed world most of us live in. It's not hard to think about a future that is better than the one we have now.
Let's take fossil fuel use first.
It doesn't matter if you are a peak oil theorist [someone who believes that half the oil in the world has been used up] or a technological optimist, the likely future is one where we will design our travel with much more care than we do now. Costs will force us to. As we do, it's quite possible that we might design a way of living that has less stress in it with less time spent in traffic jams and more time spent in and around those communites that we have created for our desired lifestyles.
Which brings us to the cost thing.
Most of us have a very narrow definition of cost. We think of value only through the price we paid at the check out counter. We forget we pay through community taxes for disposal and ignore the adverse envirnmental impacts that might have been part of the manufacturing process. But one way or another, sooner or later, we all pay. It's just not calculated in the original purchase price. Few of us stop to think about the effects of many large scale enterprises focused solely on low cost. The reality is that they, probably unconsciously, have driven down the living standards in the communities in which they operate. Firstly to survive they must outsource to the lowest cost of manufacture - and for most places that is offshore. In the process they make local manufacture uncompetitive. Secondly they have a formula which keeps wages low which in turn reduces the spending power in communities. We can't really blame the businesses we can only blame ourselves as we seek more and more 'bargains'
So what does this all mean?
It means that we need to have different kinds of discussions [and given our trashy media that's difficult] and we need to spend just a little time thinking about what kind of future we really want to create. For me it is a future that's gentle on the environment, and me as I get older, that encourages us all to enjoy discovery and change, allows people to get on with their own lives in their own way and which helps all of us to remember that there is more to life than work. That I think is what the navigation option is all about.
Let's take fossil fuel use first.
It doesn't matter if you are a peak oil theorist [someone who believes that half the oil in the world has been used up] or a technological optimist, the likely future is one where we will design our travel with much more care than we do now. Costs will force us to. As we do, it's quite possible that we might design a way of living that has less stress in it with less time spent in traffic jams and more time spent in and around those communites that we have created for our desired lifestyles.
Which brings us to the cost thing.
Most of us have a very narrow definition of cost. We think of value only through the price we paid at the check out counter. We forget we pay through community taxes for disposal and ignore the adverse envirnmental impacts that might have been part of the manufacturing process. But one way or another, sooner or later, we all pay. It's just not calculated in the original purchase price. Few of us stop to think about the effects of many large scale enterprises focused solely on low cost. The reality is that they, probably unconsciously, have driven down the living standards in the communities in which they operate. Firstly to survive they must outsource to the lowest cost of manufacture - and for most places that is offshore. In the process they make local manufacture uncompetitive. Secondly they have a formula which keeps wages low which in turn reduces the spending power in communities. We can't really blame the businesses we can only blame ourselves as we seek more and more 'bargains'
So what does this all mean?
It means that we need to have different kinds of discussions [and given our trashy media that's difficult] and we need to spend just a little time thinking about what kind of future we really want to create. For me it is a future that's gentle on the environment, and me as I get older, that encourages us all to enjoy discovery and change, allows people to get on with their own lives in their own way and which helps all of us to remember that there is more to life than work. That I think is what the navigation option is all about.
posted by Mike at 4:04 PM
1 Comments:
Ah, so true. But what if your original cafe is still open, still has lots of great coffee, but is just refusing to serve YOU!?
Personally, I like trying lots of different cafes, but that is not to everyone's taste.
Guess who.
Post a Comment
<< Home