Category: sustainability

2016 New Year’s resolutions

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That time of the year again.

Reflecting on what I have done. This year I went back to my old temple to visit my teacher, Harada Tangen Roshi after a 25 year absence. Unfortunately, he has been weakened with age and I was not able to meet him. I hope to go back again soon and continue my practice. His disciple (I ashamed to say I have forgotten his name) met us and looked after us.

Zen is an important part of me. It has influenced my life and outlook. I even gave a talk on Zen and language learning this year. They are not so different. Indeed, Zen is part of everyday life, part of the ordinary. And this is what makes Zen extraordinary. I am still in awe of the understand of Zen.

So I guess that is why my resolutions always revolve around Zen.

This year, I resolve to focus like I (am supposed to) do in Zen. What happens on the cushion is no different to what happens off it. That is what Zen is about. If you think meditation is something done on the cushion that is a misunderstanding.

And because I shouldn’t make too many promises, too many resolutions, I will end it with just one.

Happy New Year and I hope 2016 will be more peaceful one for all. Let’s try to make the world a better place.

Nuclear versus fossil fuel power

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In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident Japan had gone quite literally all non-nuclear for a while. The country had switched off all of its nuclear power plants in what amounts to a knee-jerk reaction to the disaster that still is happening now and will for many more decades to come. In its place we turned back to using coal importing more than we ever had. And all of the sudden nobody in Japan cared much about climate change and global warming anymore.

The question should never have been about whether we choose nuclear or fossil fuel for our energy needs, but rather how we can reduce our energy usage in the first place. Whichever we choose to use we are still using too much energy for the good of the planet.

And now that the dust (or is that nuclear dust) has settled from Fukuyama we have turned on the nuclear tap again to quench our nuclear thirst.

Nothing ever changes, does it.

Doing things for humanity; now doing things for the planet – Sebastian Salgado

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I love photography. I love photography for its power to contain what we feel in the stillness of a single moment. I particularly like black and white photography. I like it because by removing colour the photographer forces the viewer to focus on the details, on what is happening in the scene, on the content of the photograph. And no one does this better than one of my favourite photographers, Sebastian Salgado.

Salgado began as a social documentary photographer focusing on the people and societies, particularly that of the poor across the globe. But according to the following video he had seen too much violence, too much bloodshed, that so affected him that he literally became sick, mentally and physically.

At the advice of his doctor he had to stop putting himself through such torture. As a viewer we can close the books and stop viewing the photographs that he captures. We only have the moments of silence that he shows us, ones which we control as viewers. But for Salgado the tragedy is a streaming memory that does not stop with the shutter. It was for this reason that he gave up photography and returned to his hometown, to his family in Brazil.

The back story is that he grew up on a farm with his seven sisters that once was covered by 50 percent of rainforest. There they had abundant food needing only to go once a year on a 60-day round-trip journey to sell their cattle. But when he returned after his long absence as a globe trotting photographer what he had found was that almost all the rainforest had been destroyed, that the land had been left bare. This caused the rainwater to run off the land much quicker than is needed leading to desertification of the land (his analogy was that of his bald head which dries in seconds). And it was with this discovery back home that he began to work to reforest his land he had now inherited.

Salgado after this period in his life he had taken up his camera again and shifted his lens towards nature and animals. His message hasn’t change because he is still concerned about how we can arrive as a species. Only now he is doing this from the point of view of how we need to live in harmony with land and nature.

Salt of the Earth (page in Japanese) is showing in Hiroshima right now.

We are human animals

Warren Tang

What is our place in the world? Are we higher up in the “ranks” of the life forms which occupy the same world we called Earth?

David Suzuki often talks about the problem of the world is not only do but how we think of it. 

Loggers, he argued, saw the forests as economic resources and not as ecosystems of flora and fauna. The life contained within it did not seem to matter much as compared to the need to trade and sell the wood products. In other words, loggers have desensitised themselves to world. The old ways of objectifying things organic and inorganic are still at work. 

Human beings tend to believe they are different and better than the other beings in the world (apart from God). But human beings really are just another animal among other animals. Sure we can probably think of things that other animals cannot and that makes us clever, smart, intelligent or whatever adjective we would like to use. And perhaps the adjective missing from our choice of vocabulary is wise. 

No, we need to change our vocabulary if we are to be wise, to have wisdom. This is why I propose we start with redefining who we are by choosing a term for ourselves which reflect this. Rather than being humans or human beings, why not accept that we are animals? Or else call other animals “beings” as well. 

We are human animals in the humble sense. Or if you want to make the term derogatory then we we are (more) wild and unruly as the animals we choose to define ourselves against. We  are worse than the animals that have lived “peacefully” on the planet only to be exterminated by this one species that is more disease than medicine. 

Do countries that speak English have a higher probability of success in business because of the English language’s framework, structure, and words?

Warren Tang

The probability of you having a higher income, education and lifestyle is greater if you live in an English speaking country.

That can be shown by economic statistics. The chances of you being in the lower income, education and lifestyle brackets are much lower if you live in these countries. 

But whether it is the English that you speak that allows this is a problematic question. One can argue that the dominance of English as a world language has contributed to this and I will agree with that argument. 

Francois Lyotard called these grand-narratives where a dominant discourse shuts out other arguments. The best example is Communism. But also English as a world language and the promotion of that ideal is also a subtle and hidden shutout of all other arguments as well. 

I will say this though: English is only guilty because of its position as a world language. If it were another language, say, French (which had also vied for the same status as late as the late 20th century) the same grand-narrative posturing would occur. 

There can be no neutral world language. If there were someone somewhere would eventually find a way to use it to their advantage.

Money as medium of exchange

Warren Tang

One of the roles of money is to be a medium of exchange. This is usually explained in contrast to the barter system. Bartering is to exchange one type of good for another without the use of money. The problem usually pointed out is that a unit of one good is not equivalent to another unit of good. Clearly, trading a cow for a dog is not the same thing. And you may not want ten dogs for the one cow. Continue reading “Money as medium of exchange” →

How to slow down the destruction of the planet

Warren Tang

Today is the nine anniversary of Sustainability Dharma and me blogging. This post is in part a celebration of this event. I am not sure how many original followers I have left but thank you for reading. Let’s hope we can save our demise.

You have heard it before that we are comsuming more than the earth is renewing the resources. Industrialization is one reason for this. The efficiency with which a small number of individuals can produce a large amount of products is staggering. Think logging. Cutting down a tree took a lot more effort than it did a hundred ago. So when we say economical we don’t just mean efficiency by the end-user but also the producer. Now multply that by the staggering population we have now and you will understand nothing in this world is going to slow consumption except reduction per person and a reduction of the population.

Continue reading “How to slow down the destruction of the planet” →

A Battery With A Twenty Year Lifespan …

Warren Tang

It is all very well to produce a battery that will last 20 years. But is not that useless if your equipment lasts only three, maybe four years maximum? It is like having a heart built to last five-hundred when the rest of your body breaks down in 100.

Congratulations to Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi

Warren Tang

It is a shame that the Japanese people did not get the Peace Prize for Article 9 of the Constitution. But having said that Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi are far more deserving of the Award since they have inspired and at the same time done a lot more for the world. If the Japanese want a Peace Prize they would need to do a lot more than just make a petition.

Nature, Darwin, natural selection

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1.
I’d like to begin this three-section mini-essay with the concept of nature. If we think about it nature, by our misconceived conception, really is a space where things interact without the human intervention or existence. Thus the definition is one of absence of the human. It is also one of binary and opposition. In this sense, then, to be human is to be unnatural. But at exactly what point does the nature end and the human begin? To be more precise this is not a question of where but one of when.

Some time in history, or rather existence, we became aware of ourselves and began to define the self as apart from nature. Thus definition of nature and man came into being simultaneously. What once was one entity is now two by the act of defining, and no more.

2.
It would not have been easy for Charles Darwin to have decided to publish Origin of Species. He would have had the entire history of The Christian West to contend with. Even his family particularly his wife harboured doubts even though she was supportive. This proposal would not and could not have been taken lightly. The suggestion that humans are related to chimps and apes when until then we are said to have been the creation of the Creator, a discourse which unequivocally left little room for alternative possibilities. Such was Darwin’s time.

In essence Man (and it was mostly the male of the species who controlled the discourse) was the force behind the artificial rhetoric. This still-very-lost-gender of this species spends most of its time coming up with new versions of the story, the new paradigms. And this continues even today. For stories are necessary. The space must be filled, so to speak, with something other than a void.

3.
The story of Nature, then, is one in which we are still separate from. But if we are indeed the continuation of the long march of evolution (note: another story) then we must be the part of The Story of Nature. Thus the destruction we reek upon the place we call home, the place we share and interact with the other life forms is as natural as it is possible. The story must mean we are like a cancer (more: another story) killing off what is weak only to make the system a stronger more resilient one for the future, whatever it may be.