Category: sustainability

Population growth, governments and the media

Warren Tang5 Comments

After a two week break, a computer breakdown and the start of a new university term I am finally back online. I apologize for the long absence.

Every second, five people are born and two people die, for a net gain of three people each second. That means that 12 people were added to the worlds population in the time it took you to read the previous sentence. The world is adding about 78 million more people every year: the population of France, Greece and Sweden combined, or a city the size of San Francisco every three days. (from “The Environment” by Simon Ross and Joseph Kerski, 2005)

These are absolutely phenomenal numbers. I am ashamed to say that in my youth I had thought, “Great for human beings. It shows our strength as a species”. But today I know better than to think population growth has anything to do with a people or nation’s greatness. It is only culture, nationhood and species-hood that makes us think this way.

So you have to wonder why people think population growth is such a great thing. Headlines like “An Egyptian is born every 23 seconds“, the way in which the US Census Bureau keeps counting, or the panic Japan feels because the opposite is happening are all indications of an attitude which is egotistical and defies logic.

So how to understand population growth? Any population is regulated or controlled by its finite resource-based habitat. And human population does not stand outside this model. So looking at how population regulation and control occurs is useful. There are three ways (according to the Ross-Kerski book) in which population regulation can viewed.

Density dependent and independent
One is to see the density-dependent vs. density-independent mechanisms. An example of a density-independent mechanism is a flash flood which devastates an area. An ant colony within this area may lose ten members of its population or ten million. Therefore the flash flood is a density-independent. In layman’s terms it is all about chance. And a density-dependent mechanism is one where a population peaks because its supply of food (example: the predators’ prey) is finite. So due to this food shortage and certain number of the population die out. Density-independent events are unpredictable while density-dependent occurrences – to some degree – are. And the true model is is probably a mixture of both.

Intrinsic and extrinsic regulation
Growth and regulation can also be seen through the idea of intrinsic or extrinsic. An example of intrinsic regulation is spacing. Some animals prefer a certain area to be their own territory this inherent need to for space. This in-built characteristic means the density of an area is regulated by this animal’s need. Extrinsic regulation of this same animal will come from, for example, predation or fire. The distinction between the two at times can be difficult, since the need for space drives the animal to go beyond its normal boundaries in which it may perish due to accident. But this accident may not have occurred if the intrinsic mechanism did not push it beyond this limit. Therefore the death, though extrinsic, is a caused by an intrinsic incident.

Birth and death rate regulation
Crude birth and death rate, and population density is the third way in which we can look at population. As population increases beyond the means of an area to support it success of survival (death rate) decreases therefore regulating the population size. Birth rates are regulated also if the living population see the area and its density to population ratio as potentially not conducive of rearing.

How should we see global human population?
For the entire planet model looking at crude birth and death rate is the most common way to view population since we do not have increase from immigration or decrease by emigration. And the intrinsic-extrinsic model is seen as not applicable to the human species since he has all but “eliminated” his extrinsic influence. This I will argue because we may have rid themselves of predation, but in fact we are predators. This is why the density-dependent/independent model is a more accurate way of seeing population.

In the end the human species still depends on his environment for survival. We have reached a point we are using more than the planet can provide and no amount of technology can help. Producing more food per area of land may seem logical but really that can only happen by doing so need to bring in more resources from the outside to sustain such a model. Agricultural land simply becomes exhausted from the taxing methods we impose upon them.

So the reality is there will be a time when we will have food shortage. And when that happens the relative peacefulness the better half of the planet will use their power to secure their survival and the still poor will suffer for their actions.

We must change our view of population now. This also entails that we change our attitude from one that is economic-based to one that is non-economic. Money may seem to make the world go around, but in the end, whether there a single person on Earth to spend that money or not the planet still spins. It has done so for four billion years and it will do so for another four.

Colourful and confusing

Warren Tang9 Comments

My mother is retired. She surfs the net daily for things to read. Before the advent of the internet she would read from the “dead tree media”. Her favourite magazines were Time and Fortune. While these two magazines had some worthwhile things to say they were somewhat biased and popular in their opinion. And being young and stupid back then (instead of now being old and stupid) I read them and was persuaded by their arguments. We all have a time or an age when we do not question.

Recently she sent me this article. In it the author had wanted to point out that there are other arguments for the cause of global warming. One of these arguments is that the sun’s natural fluctuation is the main cause of our present situation. She had wanted me to read this and be convinced by its argument. But as a son who knows his parents all too well I understood her agenda.

Sure, the IPCC has made some pretty “solid” claims, and that the article I have mentioned here points out its decision making and presentation of the report have been somewhat unorthodox. The article continues by presenting a number of scientists whose views differ from the mainstream sustainability critics.

It has a point, but I do not completely agree.

I have no doubt that the sun’s natural fluctuation can be a cause of global warming. But in all probability it may not be the only cause. This argument again works exactly the same way as in the opponent’s argument. To say that our own actions are the only cause to global warming may be as shortsighted as saying the sun is the only cause. So, to me, both camps are in the wrong.

I can understand why the “blame human activity” camp feel they need to make it so black and white – to make the problem seem more urgent. But also the “it could be the sun” camp may want to highlight that its cause may be elsewhere.

Coming back to my mother’s agenda I mentioned earlier, I have to say that she has never been very green. She brought me up to be also not very green. But as I began to live my own life I realized just what and how exactly the non-green crowd works. In taking up this article my mother had wanted me to believe that it really all the sun’s fault, that the IPCC are lying, hiding an agenda of their own. But need it be this black and white?

Sure the IPCC may have failed in taking into account of the sun, and that they may have deceived us in believing it is all us. But equally people who think they can (mis)quote the article to absolve themselves of responsibility are wrong. That is not to say my mother was irresponsible. She and most of her generation had been persuaded to believe that they were doing right by progress. They use the argument to convince themselves their actions had nothing to do the problem, by becoming sceptical optimists or do-nothing optimists.

Personally, I think the article is a good reminder of the types of hidden agendas each group puts forward to “defend the utter fragility of [their] delicately constituted fiction” as Earnest Becker put it. And because we live in an age of information overload learning to filter and make sense of it all is not quite so easy. And that sometimes living away from loved ones and seeing them or talking to them again after a break may help us see the real picture which may be not be black and white at all but colourful and confusing.

What it takes to recycle all the cars in Japan

Warren Tang3 Comments

I had the opportunity to visit with my university the Ecotown Project in Southern Japan this week. Ecotown is an industrial zone in the town of Kitakyushu. The area was the site of Japan’s first modern iron steel works in the early 20th century and it was one of the most polluted industrial harbours in Japan.

But today, thanks to the efforts of the residents and industrial planners, the city of Kitakyushu is one of the cleanest industrial cities in the world. And it was honoured at the UNCED conference held in 1992 for its efforts.

I have to admit I had never heard of Ecotown prior to this trip. I had been to Kitakyushu before and have past through it several times en route to other places, but I did not know about its status as an environmentally friendly city until now.

Twenty-three industrial complexes within the industrial zone work to recycle as much waste products as possible. The range of recycled products includes:

  • paper
  • PET bottles
  • automobiles
  • office equipment
  • household appliances
  • fluorescent light bulbs
  • medical equipment
  • construction waste
  • non-ferrous metals
  • household waste

We were given an overview at the Welcome Centre (mainly on PET bottle recycling) and then given a tour of the automobile and office equipment recycling plants. But here I will focus only on the automobile recycling.

This automobile recycling plant was the first in Japan. It is perhaps the most efficient in that it recycles 95 percent of the car while the average in Japan 70-80 percent. The way it works is that it is similar to an assembly line but in this case it is a disassembly line. Disassembly is completely manually with the help of equipment. The disassembling is done in the following way:

  1. outer parts (bumpers, doors, windows, etc)
  2. liquids (oil, freon, etc)
  3. plastics (seat, carpet, etc)
  4. mechanical parts (engine, suspension, etc)
  5. non-ferrous parts (radiators, heater core, etc)
  6. crushed (in a compactor)

At the end of this process you have a lot of plastic and liquid which goes to other recycling plants, a bunch of parts which are cleaned to be sold and reused and a 600kg block of steel to be recycled. The five percent lost is basically the outer plastics of wiring in the melting process.

It takes on average forty-five minutes to disassemble one car. Our guide said 50-60 cars can be disassembled in a day. Assuming this to be the pace (minus weekends) 13,000 cars can be disassembled in a year at this one plant. And assuming the that we recycle all the 5 million (yes, that is the number of cars scrapped in Japan annually) cars scrapped is recycled it would take at least 300 such recycling plants to get rid of all disused cars in Japan.

Our guide couldn’t tell me how many such recycling plants existed in Japan. There are twenty-six “Ecotown-like” projects throughout Japan. And even assuming each one had one automobile recycling plant we still need to assume there are others outside such zones. A rough guess wouldn’t put it to be more than fifty. And even if we assume that a large bulk of the disused cars are sold overseas before scrapping (many vehicles are sold to Russia, China, and the Middle East) we still are falling short in terms of recycling.

While this was all very impressive – all this recycling and reusing – I had to ask our guide about the third ‘R’ – reducing. She said the city launched a project last year to reduce household waste by twenty percent. Kitakyushu was above the national average in their waste output. So they were trying to keep up the green image in this area as well.

This question I had posed to her during an earlier session on PET bottles so she didn’t answer it with transportation in mind. While it is important to recycle and reuse it is also necessary to reduce, at the same time, our use of anything including transportation and fuel consumption. To not maintain any one area of the 3 ‘R’s only counteracts the positive effects of the other areas. They need to be acted on as a whole. But having said this I still believe that reduction is the most important because reducing the numbers , in this case vehicles, will mean less need to be recycled and reused in the end.

Imagine if we could reduce the number of cars on the road by one-fifth, like household waste, what the roads (and air) would be like.

Low-tech is the answer… partly

Warren Tang7 Comments

In my last post I had neglected to mention another article in the Daily Yomiuri on the same page and day about how the spread of disease can be slowed simply by opening the windows. I had so much ground to cover (I covered too much) that I didn’t feel I could put that in. But I think it is important.

Technology – if you consider our literally rock-solid housing techniques as technology – runs counter to our desire to live. This, of course, is how the human species is today. We have chosen to live as far apart from the nature, to segregate “us” from “them”. Yet life’s four billion years in the making can end within our lifetime. Of course, it won’t. Humans are more resilient than we think, as are the “other animals” we share the planet with. But many will suffer unnecessarily for our lifestyle.

So open a window. Open the windows of your home, of your car, the bus, the train, the place where you work. Reconnect with the outside world again, not just to slow disease. Go beyond the city limits and remember the way man had lived for more than a hundred thousand years. Go beyond the forest and try to find a place where no human traces exist. It may feel “foreign” at first, but then again we must ask why it should feel foreign in the first place.

No, I am not trying to be mystical here. I am not trying on flower power. But neither am I saying we should take the other extreme and live so far from the reality that we forget how much of our life depends – has depended – on the entire fabric of the biosphere.

Stop this senselessness before it causes any more suffering. Say “less to technology” and more to living. Open a window instead of opening your browser.

Technology isn’t the answer

Warren Tang3 Comments

If you have been following this blog then you would know I dislike technology. You may be saying, “Well, if you dislike it so much then why are you using the internet?” A good question and one I will have to answer.

For me technology and science are not the same thing. You might be here thinking I am stating the obvious but I am not. Technology and science, of course, has a lot to do with each other. Many, if not all, of the great scientific discoveries have gone on to change our lives. But changing our lives can be done in many ways. A scientific discovery may help our understanding of our world. But there is a definite push, today, towards applying what we have learned and know to manipulate the world.

A while back I had read an excellent biography on Isaac Newton (of that title) by James Gleick. The feeling I get from this biography about the man (and the period) was that our concerns were – largely – about the knowledge and understanding of the nature of the world. While, of course, Newton was worried about credit due to him (he was a very secretive person) it was the knowledge that was important.

But this all seemed to have changed with the Industrial Revolution. Today in our concerns are on “how we can make the most everything”. Whether it is the money in our pockets, the time on our hands (or sometimes even the love that we receive). The word we use is efficiency. But our usage of it is misleading. We used to use the word to indicate little wastage. But before we can understand what we had meant by efficiency we will have to look at this word, waste, because this word also has metamorphosed over time.

It seems waste once had meant not using more than we need to. While we still use it in this sense we apply it to different values. The question is what? Not really that hard. I do not need to do an Z-score corpus analysis of the word to guess that “waste” these days collocates with “time”, “money” and “energy” (as in “a waste of time”). Otherwise it collocates with adjectives like “toxic”, disposal” and “radioactive” (as in “radioactive waste”). This second usage is interesting because it is now a product, a noun, and cannot be made into a verb. It no longer is an action but a thing.

I am just amused that no one actually has come out and say something like “All this waste is a waste”.

But coming back to efficiency. Waste and efficiency are not the same thing, though they are seen confusingly as such. Efficiency is about getting the most out of use. Waste (as a verb) is about using less of what is there. The philosophy is like the “half empty or half full” glass question. And the assumption with efficiency is that what is there is for us to use. And this way of thinking has rubbed off onto waste also. We can only see waste as mostly being about one’s time, money or energy.

No, the world around us is not there to be used indiscriminately by us. It may seem that way. But that is what the old fashioned capitalists, neo-liberalists and cultural imperialists want you to believe. Because it is about the money and the power to make the money.

I’ve strayed from the topic here a little.

If we use science to learn and understand the world we live in and how we should relate to it then we are on a safe and wise path. But we turn science into technology for profit and manipulation then we are losing our grip on the reality and respect for our home. The more I think about it the more that it is for money. The ability to manipulate the inanimate and animate world is for money.

Yes, with what I say, the livelihood of millions are at stake here. No, technology is not the answer. It is not even the real cause of all our woes (though it is the direct physical cause of the environmental problems). The origin is in the philosophy of technology which is manipulated by the philosophy of economics. This in turn has to do with our attitude. The story is complex and beyond a one thousand word post.

But let’s take a quick look at one recent article on technology and the environment. I found this in last week’s Daily Yomiuri – recordings of endangered species to use as cell phone ring tones to spread awareness. The creators of the ring tones, Center for Biological Diversity, believes that if people hear more of these sounds they will be inspired to do something about the environment.

But no, this isn’t the answer either. There are enough people out there, including me, who are getting people to notice. I wouldn’t say the message is falling on deaf ears. But rather we have dug ourselves so deep into this rely-on-technology hole that we cannot get out of it even if we want to.

That we have done without the mobile phones for a million years until now of human history, I think we can go without it for at least a day. And I certainly do not need a ring tone to know that the planet is in trouble.

So coming back to the internet. What am I doing online if I am so against it? Again, I am not against the internet as such but its indiscriminate use. I choose to use it not for entertainment but for learning and teaching (I can see the abuses coming in from this post now). Every person has a choice. I choose not to waste the tremendous energy required to run the internet for wasteful games, cheap laughs or loveless porn (no, there is no such thing as porn with love).

I choose to use it for the environment.

An Inconvenient Attitude

Warren Tang6 Comments

This month David Suzuki has kicked off a year’s schedule of talks across Canada. If you are fortunate enough to be able to get to one of the venues and hear him talk it is well worth the while. I saw a televised speech of his in Australia and I was changed by it. It is statements like this following one by him that made me understand what is wrong with the way we are living:

The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If a mountain is a deity, not a pile of ore; if a river is one of the veins of the land, not potential irrigation water; if a forest is a sacred grove, not timber; if other species are our biological kin, not resources; or if the planet is our mother, not an opportunity – then we will treat each one with greater respect. That is the challenge, to look at the world from a different perspective. (From A David Suzuki Collection)

I think respect is the key word here. We simply do not treat the world with respect. He mentioned earlier in the same piece I quoted from that if we could see how the world has changed in four billion years to become a life sustaining planet for all life including ours then we will be humbled by what we have, and understand that is not for us to indiscriminately take as though we own it, but to share with all other life.

This week I also saw An Inconvenient Truth. It was a little late in coming to Japan (early this month, to my neck of the woods). I was also too busy with final reports to make the seventy minute drive to see it in town.

The film had stated much of what I already knew. So I do not think the film is there to convince people like me. But rather it was a film to preach to those yet to be convinced or have not heard the message yet. In that sense it is a necessary film. But why does it have to be from a former politician before we will listen? Anyone could have said it with the same evidence in hand. People are already saying it. People like David Suzuki have already said it. So it must necessarily say something about the culture of America, to whom much of it was aimed, that they will only listen if it is from someone important.

Mr Gore did make one point which I have always harped about here – that disinformation and deliberately confusing the public by false talk has prolonged the problem. We have not been playing on a level field when it comes to information dissemination. By scare tactics and other means the public has been split into two or more minds. And it comes back to the concepts of propaganda, advertising and commercialism.

So how do we deal with the agenda of others which are not the best for sustainability? In the West that is dominated by advertising, a kind of capitalist propaganda if you will, the highest bidder gets to persuade us that buying is good, not just their product but any product. This idea is therefore not about just one producer but about producers as a collective. I don’t want to sound Marxist but Karl Marx had a point. What scares me is not the fact we don’t have choices, but that we are only seemingly making free choices when we are not. So Capitalism is no better than Communism, if you look at it this way. Personally both systems fail. There are only two choices in our current paradigm so we must only choose between the two evils.

The pseudo-choice concept isn’t new of course, but it needs to be remembered or recalled. Those studies of the 1970s and 1980s on advertising have all but been forgotten. My favourite books from that period have to be Ways of Seeing by John Berger and On Photography by Susan Sontag. It has a lot to say about our use of images and imagery still relevant (if not more) to today’s advertising-polluted world.

And just a final note: the strategies used in Mr Gore’s “award winning” documentary also come from this same well-honed philosophical logo-technology (as in “logos” or “word”). It is slick, almost too slick, but you can notice its agenda if you look hard enough.

Mind your language – Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness

Warren Tang11 Comments

You are what you speak.

We have come to understand in our postmodern age very well that words can betray your ideology. For example, Hegelian view on history on as a series of thesis, antithesis and synthesis reveals a preference to the idea of progress as something unidirectional and upward, when it is that goes both ways and possibly more. The very word ‘progress’ shows this. Or the Structuralists’s liking for concrete descriptions and fixity. Roland Barthes try as he may to go beyond the the restrictions of talking about things in terms of codes only gets stuck in the terminology which lack freedom.

This understanding is nothing new, of course. We have stuggled with this problem, seen through it, and returned to blindness by forgetfulness by being swept up in the heat of the moment. Our attention had been distracted for one moment and we have lost sight of the task at hand.

The rigor with which Derrida took to task was a guiding example of how language refuses to stop to deceive us. And his passing is also an example how we revert back to the norm all because of the nature of language – that things do not last forever. It hides its very nature like an entity which cannot perceive itself from where it stands. We must simply speak outside of language.

And in the same way the Buddha showed us that we must be mindful of what we do and what we say at all times simply because we are prone to inattentativeness.

So why am I not happy about Bhutan’s King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuk’s philosophy of Gross National Happiness? If language was a guide to our internal beliefs then this term says a lot about where its ideas come from. Having studied in Oxford the King has an “understanding” of the Western culture and ideas. But the choice of the term necessarily betrays that he may not understand the power of language.

Right speech is one of the basic beliefs of the Buddha and Buddhism. And in choosing to continue to use the psuedo-economic terms, to dress it in the langauge of money, is to fall into the linguistic trap. The idea has the potential to become a wolf in sleep’s clothing.

And this months signing of a new and “updated” treaty between India and Bhutan has, in my opinion, taken the country “three steps back”. In it Bhutan now has more freedom to control its own foreign policies and, in particular, the freedom to purchase non-lethal military arms means the country is ever moving closer to the Western ideals of nationhood, and moving away from the Buddhist ideals of self-control and vigilance. That the Pandora’s box had been open by the introduction of television and the internet in the last decade has caused unprecedented changes within the nation, its people and its thinking.

Some have called this a bold experiment but really I think this is just the beginning of a mistake. When people start to talk differently, talk like they are businessmen, then you know there is a problem. Again, it is not easy to see where careless wording can lead. Democracy is not about freedom of choice, it is really about the ability to sell you something you do not need. Democracy has been tied to capitalism more than liberalism. Freedom is only an excuse for opening up potential markets. And if the King cannot see this how can the nation.

Perhaps some have seen this and are hoping to profit. But that is only because they – the West – are “poorer spiritually” or “morally bankrupt” to use economic metaphors. It should be clear by now that finance, money and economics dominates our (Western) culture and it is “on the march” (military metaphor) globally.

Enough said. I think I’ll end all this metaphoric mumbo jumbo here.

Affluence, the individual and society

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About two months ago I was diagnosed with gout. Gout, for those who do not know what it is, is a disease caused by high levels of uric acid in the blood. This acid is caused mainly by the imbalance of food intake which causes the they build up of crystals in joints. And this build up in turn causes severe pain in these joints.

Over-consumption of liver, meat, fish and alcohol (especially beer) are the main causes of gout. But what over-consumption means to each person is of course different. For me it seems to be a low-tolerance case.

Last Friday night I went to yakiniku. Yakiniku is the Japanese version of a Korean BBQ. And like all BBQs meat is the main dish to be consumed. While I am on medication to reduce my uric acid levels (the cause of my gout) I was not instructed to change my diet too drastically. My doctor had probably wanted to find out just how much my diet is the cause of it. And as I write this at four o’clock in the morning, being woken up by the pain in my left knee, I would say the yakiniku plunder last Friday night was not a good idea.

In Japanese, gout is called tsuufuu which means pain-wind or pain-breeze. And I can assure you a slight breeze is enough to cause great pain. Perhaps the English word for it is a kind of exclamation of pain (gouuut!). It is also called in Japan the disease of the affluent in reference to an individuals dietary habits which is its main cause. Yes, I am most guilty of affluence.

While my body tells me that there is a problem in fairly short notice (in my case four days) the environment is not so quick. It could take decades before we see any symptoms of the problem. The case of CFCs – the chemical used to make our fridge and air conditioner work – is a good example. CFCs release into the atmosphere is the direct cause of the Ozone hole, a problem we recognized only after twenty or thirty years we introduced it as safe. Another example is deforestation. The accumulative effects of clearing land for farming and other purposes is becoming more noticeable now.

But even though I say the environmental signs are slow to show up it is only relative. In my short life of seventy, eighty years, fours days is quick. In the course of four billion years of Earth’s life 30 years is almost instantaneous. Thirty years only seems long in our time scale.

So maybe it is time to rethink our way of seeing time and the environment. Maybe it is a wake up call, a call we should be listening to. Planning for our (planet’s) future should not be about this year, five years or even our lifetime. People like David Suzuki say planning for the future should be about planning for seven generations. And not just forward in time but backwards to the past. You might say how do we plan for the past? Well, it all depends on how you look at time. The Western concept of time is not always the best. The same is true of affluence also.

Personal Note: I will be offline for about two weeks finishing up end of year term papers (seven to be exact). Hope to see you back here then. My apologies.

Gross National Happiness is, well… gross

Warren Tang5 Comments

In my last post I talked about “Tradable Energy Quotas” or TEQs and why I dislike the term. In a related conversation with growthmadness I mentioned why I like Gross National Happiness (GNH) as an alternative to such measures as TEQ, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Gross National Product (GNP), but not its name. So I guess I better explain myself.

The problem begins with the name. Gross National Happiness is poking fun at GNP, where Product is replaced by Happiness. This seems fine, until you think about the suggestiveness of the gross national. These two words are used together as a set, and it has connotations of economy and economics. So any term which are used with it will be linked to this two-word set. And in the same manner, TEQ reeks of economist’s deodorant.

The environmentalists’ choice of Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) and Ecological Footprint (EF) are milder terminology. Since progress has been enlisted into the Postmodern lexicon to have a negative meaning it has the ability to affect change.

GNH may need to be repackaged if it is to be accepted. The “karma” left by GNP must be exorcised. Apart from this Gross National Happiness is a great concept, one that may actually save us if implemented properly. The question is only, how?

My thumbs down to Tradable Energy Quotas

Warren Tang2 Comments

Lately people have been talking about “Tradable Energy Quotas” or TEQ. And I have been exchanging opinions with a fellow green blogger about it. The gist of my dissatisfaction with it is that I have seen many buzz words come and go that I do not think this one is any different.

By placing the environment in some kind of countable term and making it a national-level project immediately raises my suspicion of it. Instead of the environment being about countability it should be about accountability. And rather than it being on the national level it should be on the personal level.

Too often we are trying to make things a national or social responsibility. But it should start with each person. The more people needed to be involved in something the less effective it will be. That is why smaller groups and communities are more effective in tackling problems, not just environmental ones.

I used to scoff at family values. I used to do my scoffing most likely because I was single and I was at the minority end of the family unit. But now that I have own family I realise how important and how well it can work if there is trust. And that trust can only come from being familiar with every other member of the unit.

Community values work the same way. Growing up in the city I saw how neighbours kept to themselves, guarding their lives behind closed windows and drawn curtains. Privacy was the all consuming concern, and not how the neighbourhood, as a whole, is going. Having moved into a small rural Japanese community of three hundred people about four years ago I have come to understand how just important it is to be part of an open community and to work with people to create a better environment which does not end at your front door or property fence.

This unfettered trust can only come about by knowing the people who are in that unit or community. It is about (inter)personal responsibility, and not just responsibility by legality or social etiquette. Again the family unit is a place where this can be seen clearly; the access to personal space, finance, etc, areas open to abuse by other members are placed in check by only trust and responsibility.

Without these two factors – trust and responsibility – there can be no openness. And none of these can be measured, nor should they be.