Is giving up on stuff really the answer?

It was planned to write one day about the burring environment issue and the exasperating reasoning related to it. The next video was quite the last drop:




There's only two words for it: high-quality-custom-made BS.
First of all, it was one of the most politically cliched speech I've ever heard on the matter. All that was said was, poor people (especially Chinese), poisonous plastic, democracy (as if it had something to do), the little bottle, and the 2nd rate comedian puns; and NO real information to support any of these. The clamshell example reminded me of what a "world renowned scientist" and also dictator-wife once said: "How comes that cows make ammonia by themselves and you need all these high pressure and temperatures?" By the way, Biomimicry is the fundament of most of the human inventions, and it's being used without bearing a pompous name for centuries and centuries: planes are an obvious example of this.

On a more general scale the majority of the environmental talk are turned about plastics and I know you might say that I'm biased, but all of this is not about one product but more on a mentality. It goes like this: Something (plastic, cars, cow dung...) pollutes and it is bad, let's get rid of it. Well, my answer is the last 150 years are the source of this menace, technology is bad, rocks were alright, let's get back to the stone age.

What I don't understand is this tendency to advertise a backwards trend, when all it is needed is to go forward and improve the existent solutions or come with brand new ones. Of course, that what is superfluous needs to go and that can be pretty easily spotted. Let's take the example of plastics: for the technical solutions it is slightly impossible to revert to previous materials like metal or wood, but on the other hand some extra layers of packaging should go away. There are very few who could really do 180° and give up the cosines and easiness of today's comfort, probably very determined people and Amish communities; but for the basic somehow selfish human being, like myself, this is unimaginable: I mean why should we give up on stuff, which are about 75% useful, when we can do better? The military research still advances so new inventions should come up sooner or later.

Also, the ones involved in decision taking processes ought to be less biased (especially from a monetary point of view) and once a decision has been taken a whole mechanism should be put in motion to watch how things are done. Like for the chemicals inside toys and for waste disposal: every step has to be registered and so, no mistakes, involuntary or not, should appear. Example: companies should be forced to obey the stricter rule between the one of their country of origin or the one where they're selling the product; that's how regions with looser legislation won't end up with rejected batches from other corners of the world. The reasoning should be done on a planetary scale not on a petty wallet-size one. It may sound utopic but I still keep some hope on the human preservation reflex.

Another thing is about education: people should me more informed in a responsible way about everything coming in contact with them. This should be done in an instructional manner, without any materialistic or apocalyptic witchcraft-style way: plastic bottles are bad, they have chemicals in them! The thing is, that everything has chemicals in them and instead of seeing all this like kryptonite, we should learn to read a label and not take everything for granted.

In my opinion the major workshops of the present are: recycling - the intelligent way (not dumping into a hole and covering it up), non-fetishist or snotty alternative sources of energy, better fuel to energy ratio machines, less greed and dumb money-digging and population positive awareness.
To conclude, we generated our own freaking geological era, we can't go back, we should go forth but leave the blindfold and the spiked-boots behind.

Monkey Business

Here is an interesting study on TED:





Now, some personal comments:

There is a slight difference between the 'coin' insertion in human society and the one done in this study. The coins appeared as a development of the barter system, because it got difficult to transport and exchange merchandise for other merchandise. In the the monkeys case, there was no economic development, the currency was artificially introduced into their existence. So they still function on a barter system: the give away their useless chunk of metal in order to get very useful food. And they know that more trinkets mean more food so they steel the coins from others; this only proves the slick savage side in humans...
Also, they don't save up the coins; well, this option was never revealed to them, every time, one shinny disc equals food; this is also a false comparison with our society, because we save up money but do bad investments...This thing could only show is that there are no scientist monkeys to wonder what it would happen if 2 coins would be given away.
Last thing, about the gain/loss study, it is purely psychological, in one case there is a chance of winning nothing which we want to avoid and in the other one of losing nothing, which is more appealing. Faced with the 2 situations at once we would probably admit that they equivalent, but something inside makes us act in one way or the other. For the monkeys this thing is more visual, but I guess it resides in the same behavior pattern as us, only difference is that the monkeys can't evaluate probabilities...you will surely say that this was one of the aspects of the study; true, but still, I wanted to say this and to add that with statistics anything can be proved all that matters is how the topic is approached.

All in all, we have residual instincts which need to be channeled in precise directions and not to be left to wander and take control of purely rational decisions.

what's with wikileaks?...

During one of my "TED sessions" I watched this video:

Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks | Video on TED.com

it is about a Wikileaks, an "organisation" publishing confidential information that goes through the cracks in the system. It treated any kind of information and field: politics, economy, world peace/conflict, sociology and many more.
The main idea behind the interview is the role of this concept in the information world and its consequences.
That's what I'd like to point out briefly here.

I mean is it good or bad to give away info supposed to be kept secret.

My answer would be a "gray" one as always. In today's world we think to be and we demand to be more and more informed. So people should be told stuff, even critical ones as long as their security remains unharmed. Mainly these leaks hide information that is kept secret for the benefit of some individuals or for hiding "inglorious" military moments. In these cases, the truth should be known and the ones responsible brought upfront.
But information is also power, and as a comic-book uncle once said: "with great power comes great responsibility"; that is why I think that the impact of the information should be analyzed before its release. Because it can be really security-related, or of great psychological force or simply manipulative, and there are people who would not withstand the "shock" and could be led in certain directions using unfair means.
That is way in my slightly elitist view, I grant the governments the "right" to conceal critical data, and release it when the tides is gone, the sole interest being the well-being of it's citizens and of the entire planet. On the other hand I would prefer not to be fed crap; it consider that ignorance is better than lie. Last but not least, if the greater or lesser leaders fool around "off with their heads" metaphorically speaking; so this kind of media could be a great tool in the enlightenment of the people, just don't be like flies...too much light can burn.