What Can India Offer?

The Indians know what they have to learn from Europe and they have been learning it for centuries on end. Europe, by contrast, rests content with descriptions of India as superstitious, corrupt, and underdeveloped. Or with woolly notions about meditation, yoga, karma, vedic astrology...

S.N. BALAGANGADHARA
Today, India has become a global player of significant political and economical impact. Europe and India are facing each other as equal partners in pursuit of greater economic and political co-operation. This confronts both India and Europe with a challenge. The intelligentsia, the business world, politicians, educators and others, will have to answer the following question: What can India offer to the world of today and tomorrow?

I will not tackle this problem directly but instead take up one of its sub-questions: to whom is this problem important and why? I believe it is important to both Indians and Europeans but for different reasons. In this article, I will spell out and reflect upon some of these reasons.

For the first time in the last four to five hundred years, non-white and non-Christian cultures will have a significant impact on the affairs of the humankind. Here, India will play an important role. As a result, the need to explicate what it means to be an Indian (and what the ‘Indianness’ of the Indian culture consists of) will soon become the task of the entire intelligentsia in India. In this process, they will confront the challenge of responding to what Europe has so far thought and written about India. A response is required because the theoretical and textual study of the Indian culture has been undertaken mostly by Europe in the last three hundred years. What is more, it will also be a challenge because the study of India has largely occurred within the cultural framework of Europe.

In fulfilling this task, the Indian intelligentsia of tomorrow will have to solve a puzzle: what were the earlier generations of Indian thinkers busy with, in the course of the last two to three thousand years? Let me use a contrast with the European culture to exhibit the nature of this puzzle and its importance to the theme of this article.

What were the European intellectuals busy with, during the last two thousand years? It is almost impossible to answer this question without describing the history of Europe. Still, we can say they produced theologies, philosophies, fine arts, natural and social sciences … The list is so varied, so diverse and so huge that one does not know where to begin or how to end. Despite this, the fact remains: all interesting theories about human beings, their cultures and societies, which we use today, are products of the European intellectuals. So too are the institutions and practices that most of us find desirable: democratic institutions and courts of law, for instance. The sheer size, variety and the quality of the European contributions to humanity is overwhelming.

What were the Indian thinkers doing during the same period? The standard textbook story, which has schooled multiple generations including mine, goes as follows: caste system dominates India, women are discriminated against, the practice of widow-burning exists, corruption is rampant, most people believe in astrology, karma and reincarnation … If these properties characterize India of today and yesterday, the puzzle about what the earlier generations of Indian thinkers were doing turns into a very painful realization: when the intellectuals of one culture, the European culture, were busy challenging and changing the world, most thinkers from another culture, the Indian in our case, were apparently busy sustaining and defending undesirable and immoral practices. Of course there is our Buddha and our Gandhi but that is apparently all we have: exactly one Buddha and exactly one Gandhi. If this portrayal is true, the Indians have but one task - to modernize India - and the Indian culture but one goal - to become like the West as quickly as possible.

However, what if this portrayal is false? What if these basically European descriptions of India are wrong? In that case, the questions about what India has to offer the world and what the Indian thinkers were doing become important to the Europeans. For the first time, their knowledge of India will be subject to a kind of test that has never occurred before. Why ‘for the first time’? The answer is obvious: the knowledge of India was generated primarily when India was colonized. Subsequent to the Indian independence, India suffered from poverty and backwardness. In tomorrow’s world, the Indian intellectuals will be able to speak back with a newly found confidence and they will challenge the European descriptions of India. That is, for the first time, they will test the European knowledge of India and not just accept it as God’s own truth. Moreover, the results of this test are not of mere scientific interest; they will also have serious social, political and economic repercussions on the European societies. If true, the question becomes: what kind of ‘knowledge’ about India will be tested?
As an example, consider one of the things that Europe ‘knows’ about India: the Indian caste system. Almost everyone I know has very firm moral opinions on the subject. Many see in it the origin of all kinds of evils in India: from the denial of human rights to oppression; some see in it obstacles to progress and modernization and so on. I suppose we agree that we need to understand a phenomenon before making moral judgments. With this in mind, if you try and find out what this famous caste system is, and why people either attack or defend it, you discover the following: no ancient book exists that tells us what the principles of the caste system are; no Indian can tell you about its structure or its organization; no scientific theory has been developed that explains how or why it continues to exist. Simply put, nobody understands what it is or how it functions. In that case, how can anyone be pro or contra the caste system? If we focus on how people normally describe this system and understand how easy it is to turn such a description upside down, the absurdity of the situation becomes obvious. While emphasizing that I do not attack and much less defend the caste system in what follows, let us look at the existing descriptions and their consequences.

(a) Caste is an antiquated social system that arose in the dim past of India. If this is true, it has survived many challenges - the onslaught of Buddhism and the Bhakti movements, the Islamic and British colonization, Indian independence, world capitalism - and might even survive ‘globalization’. It follows, then, that the caste system is a very stable social organization.

(b) There exists no centralized authority to enforce the caste system across the length and breadth of India. In that case, it is an autonomous and decentralized organization.

(c) All kinds of social and political regulations, whether by the British or by the Indians, have not been able to eradicate this system. If true, it means that the caste system is a self-reproducing social structure.

(d) Caste system exists among the Hindus, the Sikhs, the Jains, the Christians, the Muslims… It has also existed under different environments. This means that this system adapts itself to the environments it finds itself in.

(e) Because new castes have come and gone over the centuries, this system must also be dynamic.

(f) Since caste system is present in different political organizations and survives under different political regimes, it is also neutral with respect to political ideologies.

Even though more can be said, this is enough for us.A simple redescription of what we think we know about the caste system tells us that it is an autonomous, decentralized, stable, adaptive, dynamic, self-reproducing social organization. It is also neutral with respect to political, religious and economic doctrines and environments. If indeed such a system ever existed, would it also not have been the most ideal form of social organization one could ever think of?

How can we try to understand this odd state of affairs? The question of the immorality of the caste system became immensely important after the British came to India. Consequently, there are two interesting possibilities to choose from: one, Indians did not criticize the caste system (before the British came to India) because Indians are immoral; two, the Europeans ‘discovered’ something that simply does not exist in India, viz. the social organization that the caste system is supposed to be.

The reason why I have spent time on this issue is to signal in the direction of a problem, which has very far-reaching consequences. If what Europe knows about India resembles what it claims to know about the caste system, what exactly does Europe know about India or her culture? Not very much, I am afraid. Precisely at a time when, to survive in a ‘globalizing’ world, knowledge of other cultures and peoples is a necessity, it appears as though Europe knows very little about either of the two.

Perhaps, the absence of knowledge is felt most acutely by the Europeans who invest in India. They rediscover that they are not well-equipped to do business in India. They understand neither the culture, nor the role of cultural differences in management structures and organizations. The books and articles on "culture and management" are full only of platitudes; on top of that, the newest trend in anthropology tells us that the notions of "culture" and "cultural differences" are almost of no use in understanding people.

In other words, I am suggesting the following: Europe’s ‘knowledge’ about India will be tested during this century. What the Europeans think they know of India tells us more about Europe than it does about India. In that case, quite obviously, the earlier generations of Indian thinkers were not merely busy instituting and defending immoral practices. What else were they doing then? Now, the puzzle becomes very intriguing: what were the Indian thinkers doing in the course of the last two to three thousand years? What did they think and write about? Did they make contributions to human knowledge? If yes, what are they? Answering these and allied questions will become one of the primary preoccupations of the Indian intelligentsia in the course of the twenty-first century. This puzzle is important to the Europeans too. Let me say why by setting the context first.
Let me sketch the context by raising a question: what has the world to learn from Europe? Here are the familiar answers: science and technology; democracy and the legal system; respect for human rights and ecological awareness; becoming modern and cosmopolitan… When such answers are given, one does not mean that the rest of the world has to learn this or that scientific theory, or a solution to this or that mathematical problem from Europe. One means something like this: the rest of the world has to learn a particular way of going-about with the world from the European culture. That is, one believes that this way of going-about is the unique contribution of the European culture, something that is absent in other cultures. Let us now reverse the question: what has Europe to learn from India? In all the thirty years I have spent in Europe and in all the thousands of books I have probably read, I have not come across a satisfactory answer.Most do not even raise the issue; those who do, mumble about ‘learning’ things that Europe once knew but has forgotten since. How to understand this situation?

The first possibility is that there is nothing to learn from India. This is possible, but implausible. It is possible that, much like the ‘chosen people’ that the Jews believe they are, Europe is the ‘chosen’ culture from all the cultures that populate the planet. However, it is implausible because I have not come across any explanation for this ‘European miracle’. Nevertheless, if there is nothing to learn from India, we can all sleep peacefully: the world, as we know it, will not be disturbed. This is the first possibility.

Consider the second possibility now. Europe has ‘something’ to learn from India but many Europeans do not yet know what. Some give the following answers: meditation, yoga, notions of Karma, Vedic astrology… These will not do: not only are there native meditative and astrological traditions in Europe, but such answers are also inadequate. It is like saying that one has to learn partial differential equations from Europe. So, let me push the question further: what is this ‘something’ Europe has to learn from India?

At this stage, I normally encounter silence because there does not appear to be any answer to give. Surely, this is strange: Europe has been studying India for centuries; it has colonized her territories and people; it tells Indians what is wrong with their society and culture… And yet, no answer is forthcoming. The Indians know what they have to learn from Europe and they have been learning it for centuries on end. Europe, by contrast, apparently has no proper answer to the question. By virtue of this, the second possibility, i.e. that Europe has something to learn from India but does not know what, is very disturbing. One culture, the Indian, has been learning for generations and centuries; the other culture, the European, does not know what to learn or even whether there is anything to learn. And these two cultures, for the first time in so many hundred years, will meet each other on the world arena as equals and as competitors. What will the outcome be?
Whatever the outcome, the meeting between these two cultures sets the context for the puzzle I spoke of earlier. Let me remind you what that puzzle is: what were the Indian thinkers doing in the course of the last two to three thousand years? What did they think and write about? Did they make contributions to human knowledge? If yes, what are they? To these questions, we have one set of indirect answers. In course of the last three hundred years or so, the mainstream theories in social sciences and humanities carry on as though Indian thinkers have made no substantial contributions to human knowledge. However, almost without exception, this splendid corpus of writings about human beings embodies assumptions of the Western culture. Not only have the Western intellectuals created these theories in humanities and social sciences; they also express how this culture has looked at the world so far. Generations of Indian intellectuals have accepted these answers as more or less true as well. The future generations will not be so accommodating though: they will test these answers for their truth. Even today, more and more people in India are gravitating towards this kind of research. This is not of mere academic interest to such people, whose numbers steadily increase. More than most, they realize that answers to these and allied questions have the potential to ignite an intellectual revolution on a world scale.

My own research, and that of many more in India and Asia, is focused on answering the puzzle.Within the scope of this article, I cannot even hope to tell you what the research results are. Therefore, I am forced to take a rain-check. Nevertheless, let me indicate the far-reaching nature of these results.

Even a limited acquaintance with the Indian or Asian culture tells us that their thinkers have also produced multiple ‘theories’ about human beings, which express the way the Indian or even Asian culture looks at the world. Yet, these theories are also contributions to human knowledge. This knowledge is about many things: the nature of human beings, the nature of ethics and morality, how human beings learn, what happiness is and how to reach it, what we could know about human beings… In short, this is knowledge about us; it is also about what we can know, what we might hope for and what we should be doing. As the Indian and the European cultures differ from each other, so do their views about human beings.

The European intellectuals have elaborated their stories so far. The Indians and the Asians will do the same in the course of this century. These two sets of theories will meet on the world arena too, as equals and as competitors. Today, we think that the European story about human beings constitutes knowledge. That is because there are no competitors to this story as yet. How about tomorrow, when there will be competition in the marketplace of ideas, and Indians and Asians come up with other and different theories?

So, by the end of this century, there will at least be two different sets of stories about human beings, their societies and cultures. One that the West has produced and the other that India and Asia will develop. Only one of these can be true or both will be false. However, these are issues for tomorrow. Today, let us merely appreciate why the theme of this article is so important to all of us.

S.N. Balagangadhara is Director of the Research Centre Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap, Ghent University, Belgium and Project Coordinator of the European Commission Asia-Link project DEVHAS -- Development of Human Resources And Strategies -- and this article was written for a DEVHAS project for education on the stereotypical images and cultural differences between Europe and South-Asia, within the European Commission Asia-Link Programme - a programme dedicated to higher education networking between Europe and Asia.

Put Away The Flags

by Howard Zinn; Countercurrents.org; July 03, 2007

On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.

Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder -- one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?



These ways of thinking -- cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on -- have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.



National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica and many more). But in a nation like ours -- huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction -- what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.



Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.



That self-deception started early.



When the first English settlers moved into Indian land in Massachusetts Bay and were resisted, the violence escalated into war with the Pequot Indians. The killing of Indians was seen as approved by God, the taking of land as commanded by the Bible. The Puritans cited one of the Psalms, which says: "Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the Earth for thy possession."



When the English set fire to a Pequot village and massacred men, women and children, the Puritan theologian Cotton Mather said: "It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day."



On the eve of the Mexican War, an American journalist declared it our "Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence." After the invasion of Mexico began, The New York Herald announced: "We believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize that beautiful country."



It was always supposedly for benign purposes that our country went to
war.



We invaded Cuba in 1898 to liberate the Cubans, and went to war in the Philippines shortly after, as President McKinley put it, "to civilize and Christianize" the Filipino people.



As our armies were committing massacres in the Philippines (at least 600,000 Filipinos died in a few years of conflict), Elihu Root, our secretary of war, was saying: "The American soldier is different from all other soldiers of all other countries since the war began. He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of peace and happiness."



We see in Iraq that our soldiers are not different. They have, perhaps against their better nature, killed thousands of Iraq civilians. And some soldiers have shown themselves capable of brutality, of torture.



Yet they are victims, too, of our government's lies.



How many times have we heard President Bush tell the troops that if they die, if they return without arms or legs, or blinded, it is for "liberty," for "democracy"?



One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on Sept. 11 becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq.



And nationalism is given a special virulence when it is said to be blessed by Providence. Today we have a president, invading two countries in four years, who announced on the campaign trail in 2004 that God speaks through him.



We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history.



We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.







Howard Zinn, a World War II bombardier, is the author of the best- selling "A People's History of the United States" (Perennial Classics, 2003, latest edition). This piece was distributed by the Progressive Media Project. Email to: Progressive Media Project using our contact form.

Where did the white man go wrong?"

 

The old Red Indian Chief sat in his hut on the reservation, smoking the
ceremonial pipe, eyeing the US government officials sent to interview him.
 
"Chief Two Eagles," one official began. "You have observed the white man
for 90 years.
 
You have observed his wars and his material wealth. You have seen his
progress and the damage he has done." The Chief nodded that it was so. The
official continued, "Considering all these events, in your opinion, where
did the white man go wrong?"
 
The Chief stared at the government officials for over a minute, and then
calmly replied, "When white man found the land, Indians were running it.
There were... no taxes, no debt, plenty buffalo, plenty beaver, women did
all the work, medicine man free. Indian man spent all day hunting and
fishing, and all night made love to his woman."
 
Then the Chief leaned back and smiled, 
 
"White man dumb enough to think he could improve system like that." 

---

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Blair the missionary

M.J. Akbar

One must not be harsh: it is not true that liars do not have a conscience. Why else would Tony Blair edge, at the cautious pace that public life demands, towards the Roman Catholic Church? He dropped in on Pope Benedict XVI in Rome on his farewell free ride around the world, and British media is full of stories about his proposed conversion to Catholicism.

Why would Blair want to become a Catholic except to confess? This Catholic practice has a unique advantage. Its details can never reach the front pages of the "feral" British newspapers. The Father Confessor shares details of the guilt only with God. Such a privilege is not available in the many schools and sects of the Protestant dispensation, a revolutionary theological movement inspired by a German reformer in the early 16th century, Martin Luther, because, in his view (with much evidence to back him) the Papacy had become dissolute. There were many venal sins that individual Popes were prey to, but Luther was angered most by the degeneration in the system of "indulgences" by which a sinner could, literally, pay his way out of sin. Money to the Church purchased forgiveness. The key to heaven lay in the treasury of the Vatican.

Protestants seek a solution. Catholics can get an absolution. True, matters are not quite so simple, for the Roman Church has long ended such deviations. Blair can’t sell the mortgage of his homes in London, and send a cheque to the Vatican appropriate to the dimensions of his lies on Iraq. But he is not turning into a Catholic to find out how many angels can dance on the head of a needle. Somewhere in his conscience there must be a thirst for redemption. The guilt of young lives sentenced to war must be heavy.

It is entirely in character therefore that he is trying to relaunch himself as a missionary, with Palestine as his mission.

There is some confusion about the precise profile of the mission. His few remaining friends are suggesting that Blair has been appointed some sort of High Plenipotentiary who will bring peace to the Middle East with the same skills that he displayed to bring amity in Ireland. But Blair’s Boss, George Bush, has just put in a corrective. State Department officials clarified on Wednesday 27 June that his only responsibility is "shoring up" Palestinian institutions, and not trying to negotiate a peace deal, or "final status", between Israel and the Palestinians. This latter job is for the Big Boys. And for a Big Girl. The State Department said that Condoleezza Rice would handle the serious bit herself, because, as she and Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have said, the United States is the only country Israel trusts as broker. Blair is a "true friend of Israel" agrees Olmert, but Britain is not the United States.

Blair’s mandate is really not much more than to ensure there is enough money for the Ramallah municipality to clear the garbage, and wheedle out all the Palestinian cash that Israel has withheld on one excuse or the other.

Blair’s parish is not even the whole of Palestine. He deals only with the part under the control of Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas and Gaza are out of his bounds. As presently defined, Blair has even less responsibility than once entrusted to the former World Bank President, Jim Wolfensohn, by the Quartet (America, European Union, Russia and the United Nations). Wolfensohn was told to get on with the economics of Palestine but to keep out of politics.

Blair, to state it simply, is no longer one of the Big Boys. He may or may not get a salary in his new mission, although he will certainly get a plane. I do hope, however, they don’t send the bill for the costs of the plane to Mahmoud Abbas. Nothing is impossible in the worldview of accountants.

Wolfensohn, whose sincerity and stature were beyond question, failed because the economics of Palestine is inextricably linked to its internal and external politics. Assuming Blair can manage more elbow room than a World Bank official, can he do any better at a moment of severe crisis?

What can Blair do as part-time envoy over the next one year that he could not do during ten years as full-time Prime Minister?

What can anyone do during an American election year, when balance is held hostage to election sensitivities? This process used to last less than a year. It has now extended to almost two years. New ideas do not get an airing during the missile wars of election debates. The risk of a missile becoming a boomerang is too high.

Blair’s mandate is limited to the patch controlled by Mahmoud Abbas. But the difficult part of the story is Hamas and the support it commands, not Abbas. Or is it the new strategy that Blair can mollycoddle Abbas while Israel goes to war with Hamas? It would be an easier war for Israel than Lebanon last year. Unlike hilly Lebanon, Gaza is flat, and Hamas is not Hezbollah.

Can Blair, perceived by most Muslims as part of the problem, reinvent himself as part of the solution? Blair represents a past that must be swept out of the way if a new route map is to be found. His successor, the new Prime Minister of Britain Gordon Brown, understands this. He has appointed David Miliband, a critic of the Iraq war and of Blair’s foreign policy, as his foreign secretary. Jack Straw led the campaign to make Brown Prime Minister but did not get his old job back because Straw was too closely identified with the war. Even before being sworn in, Brown said, "I would like to see all security and intelligence analysis independent of the political process and I have asked the Cabinet Secretary to do that." This was as sharp a slap across the Blair face as it was possible for a colleague to deliver. It was candid admission that Blair had manipulated intelligence (a charge Blair has assiduously denied) to build his case for the Iraq war.

A last question: was giving Salman Rushdie a title the best career launch for a job as middleman in the Middle East? Or even for a role as do-gooder for Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestine?

But there is some good news for Blair. His famed and accomplished ability to lie with smouldering conviction should stand him in very good stead in his new mission. Who wants the truth in the Middle East? No one. The truth would upset too many governments. It might even uproot some of them.

Blair now accepts that Iraq is a "disaster". In his farewell remarks, he expressed his sympathy for the British troops who had sacrificed so much in his cause. He wished both his friends and his foes well as he said goodbye, but could not hide his long-suppressed hatred for the "feral" media (in a category beyond either friendship or enmity) which had been instrumental in aborting his term to a mere ten years. But at no point during his long goodbye did Blair apologise for Iraq.

Being Blair means never having to say sorry. Except, possibly, in the solitude of a confession in a Roman Catholic church some time soon.

Fatherhood? No thanks!

Jug Suraiya


Sartre, that exemplary anti-Dad, had it right: To beget children, nothing better; to have them, what iniquity. To give birth to children was not just a good thing but a necessary process if the human species were to survive. However, to have children — in the possessive sense that one has a job, or a car, or a career — is both different and undesirable.

A distinction must be made between fatherhood and motherhood. Motherhood is entirely natural; fatherhood isn't. Gender isn't destiny. But it is design. Women are designed to bear children — if they should choose to. Elective motherhood — single moms, lesbian moms, even conventional married moms — is fine. Obligatory motherhood, literally thrust upon women by a patriarchal society, is not.

Men are barren, in that they aren't designed to bear children. In this sense, fatherhood is based on a claim of dubious possession: my son, my daughter. Only too often, the emphasis is on the 'my' rather than on the 'daughter' or the 'son'. This possessiveness, this insistence on trying to make their children into moulded replicas of themselves, is born out of something more primal than mere egotism or selfishness; it is born out of deep-seated genetic insecurity. As sociobiology says, only mothers are real mothers, in that they know for sure their children are really theirs; all fathers are only putative fathers, whose children may really belong to someone else, carry another's genes.

To compensate for this doubt, men try harder to be fathers, to bring into this world, by the circuitous route of another's womb, replicas of what they hope are themselves. The poor guys can never be sure. And the less sure they are, the more insecure, possessive and patriarchal they get: no daughter of mine will marry into a different community, go out late at night, wear tight jeans; no son of mine will be anything other than a doctor/ engineer/carrier-on of the family business. If the operative words of motherhood are 'we' and 'ours' (We will have a child, it'll be our child), the operative words of fatherhood are 'me' and 'mine', the vocabulary of the patriarchal tyrant.

And the ultimate Patriarchal Tyrant, of course, is God, who according to Judeo-Christian theology made man in His own image. Looking at His handiwork, that doesn't say much of Him or His image. According to a more elevated view, God is not the Father of man, but the other way round: man created God in his image, and so is not the son of God but His father. In whichever case, between the two of them, man and his God, they've made awful hash of things. Baap reh baap , what an ungodly mess? You said it.

My 30 Days of Consumer Celibacy

By Wendee Holtcamp, OnEarth Magazine
 

A few days into a vow of shopping celibacy, I visit a Hallmark store with my kids. The 75-percent-off rack draws me in. I've forgotten that I'm supposed to be living according to the Compact, an agreement to avoid all new purchases in favor of used goods in an attempt to reduce my impact on the environment.

'Look at these cute penguins,' I say, showing them to my kids.
My 10-year-old son, Sam, picks one up. 'Cool. They poop candy.'
I pay and leave the store before realizing what I've done. I stop short. 'I am not supposed to buy anything new!' I yelp. My kids glare at me. 'Well,' I say, taking a deep breath, 'I will just have to start again tomorrow.'
The original Compacters, who formed their group in early 2006, did not intend to start a movement. It was just 10 San Francisco friends trying to reduce their consumption by not buying new stuff for a year. The group's manifesto was simple: to counteract the negative global environmental and socioeconomic impacts of U.S. consumer culture. Named after the Pilgrims' revolutionary Mayflower Compact, the small idea led to a Yahoo Web site that has attracted more than 8,000 adherents and spawned some 50 groups in spots as far-flung as Hong Kong and Iceland.
What they don't say on the Compact Web site: Kicking consumerism may require its own 12-step program. So after my Hallmark relapse, I started again from square one. According to the guidelines, I must buy used, or borrow. No new stuff, with the exception of food, necessary medicines and health care items, and -- no joke -- underwear.
'This all started over a dinner conversation about the limitations of recycling,' says Rachel Kesel, a professional dog walker and one of the original friends who established the Compact. What else could people do to tread more lightly on the earth? 'One of the solutions is not to buy so much crap.'
The average American generates about 4.5 pounds of trash a day -- a figure that, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, includes paper, food, yard trimmings, furniture, and everything else you toss out at home and on the job. That makes the United States the trashiest country in the industrialized world, followed by Canada at 3.75 pounds a day and the Netherlands at 3 pounds a day. In part, we can thank the corporations that spend billions to convince us that the newest, shiniest widgets will make us happy and attract friends and lovers.
What's more, each new widget is designed to wear out or otherwise fade into obsolescence, so we'll have almost no choice but to buy more and more. In the words of Dr. Seuss's Once-ler in The Lorax, 'A Thneed's a Fine-Something-That-All-People-Need!!' The old Thneed -- often in working condition -- goes out with the trash. And in the process of making thneeds, the Swomee-Swans get smog in their throats and the Super-Axe-Hacker whacks all the Truffala-Trees, and the gills of the Humming-Fish get gummed up with Gluppity-Glup.
I was already an eco-savvy consumer when I began my moratorium on new stuff. I bought organic produce, 'green' beauty products, compact fluorescent lightbulbs, and the like. 'A month won't be too bad,' I told my preteen daughter. Without thinking I added, 'I'll just buy everything I need beforehand.' She laughed. As if I were joking.
The Compact has, for the most part, attracted people who were already living frugally or eco-consciously and whose dismay over society's overzealous buying habits may have been brewing for some time. Such feelings are not universally shared. On a Seattle radio show that aired just after the group formed, the host ripped into John Perry, one of the original Compacting friends, saying, 'You people are bad for America and you're bad for the American economy.'
A Web forum mocking the Compact sprang up, one of the first posts proclaiming, 'Today I'm starting a Compact wherein no one can buy anything yellow. Except bananas. And lemons. ... Oh, wait. I need legal pads.' The Compact founders were called pretentious, since they live upper-middle-class lives, and hypocritical, since one of them works in marketing -- the art and science of selling goods.
After this criticism, the Compacters consulted several economists about the soundness of their premise. Alex Tabarrok, a professor of economics at George Mason University, theorizes that if throngs of citizens shopped secondhand, it would drive the market to produce higher-quality, more durable goods. Some sectors of the economy would expand, he says, as people spent more money on services or used goods, which are often sold by smaller, independent business owners. But if enough of us started buying less stuff, wouldn't corporate profits fall, leading to layoffs and a drop in the gross domestic product -- that classic index of the economy?
I ran this by Bob Costanza, a professor of ecological economics at the University of Vermont who has given some thought to the question. 'If 'growing GDP' is considered to be the goal, then yes, buying secondhand will hurt 'the economy' because less stuff will be produced per unit time,' he says. 'But this just shows how wrong this narrow conception of the economy is.' So maybe we need to rethink the way we define a strong economy to encompass not only the health of our financial markets, but also the health of our natural resources.
Still, not everyone immediately grasps why buying used products has less impact on the environment than buying new ones. When you buy a new widget -- a cell phone, for example -- the store orders a replacement, instigating a chain of events that eventually leads to more raw material being mined from the earth. In contrast, when you buy used, the seller -- at a garage sale, a thrift store, or on eBay -- does not put in a replacement order. The chain stops there. I nearly lost a friend once when I bought a used teak table after I had exhorted her never to buy anything that wasn't made from sustainably harvested wood. My purchase did not cause a living tree to be cut down, I told her. She didn't get it.
Giving up new stuff forced me to shop creatively. A visit to Goodwill yielded a travel mug for my Starbucks visits, clothes for my daughter, and a bongo drum to substitute for the practice pad my son needed for his drum lessons. Buying a basketball net proved more challenging. I found one through Freecycle, a Web site where users trade belongings, but it had so much rust it wouldn't have passed muster with my suburban homeowners' association. After much looking, I bought a like-new one for $30 on my local Craigslist Web site. Then it took two weeks and 55 e-mail, text, and voice messages before I got my basketball net.
When my laptop went on the fritz, I panicked. I needed a working computer, so I went shopping for a new one. This time, the widget-maker's plan to lure me into buying the newest, shiniest model backfired. Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system won't work with the perfectly good computer accessories I already own, so if I were to fork over a grand for a new laptop, I'd also have to buy new software, new drivers, and new Microsoft Office programs. Exasperated, I took a deep breath and went home. Sticking to my Compact vow, I hauled an old dinosaur of a computer out of the closet while I waited, impatiently, for laptop repairs.
I wondered: Am I really making a difference? Do I need to eliminate everything I would ordinarily buy new? The answer surprised me. In The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices, Michael Brower and Warren Leon of the Union of Concerned Scientists calculated the impact of various consumer purchases on four environmental problem areas: air pollution, water pollution, global warming, and habitat alteration.
They analyzed the environmental footprints of everything from cheese to carpet to feminine products and then aggregated them into 50 categories of goods and services. In the end, they found that just 7 of the 50 categories were responsible for the lion's share of environmental degradation: cars and trucks; meat and poultry farming; crop production; home heating, hot water, and air conditioning; household appliances; home construction; and household water use and sewage treatment.
Interestingly, the personal items I worked so hard to forgo are not among the worst offenders. Clothing, books, magazines, and toys account for a relatively small fraction of the total environmental destruction wrought by our modern lifestyle. Brower and Leon suggest that we focus on choices that matter most: alternative energy utility providers, energy-saving appliances, organic food, and fuel-efficient or hybrid cars. Over time, buying smart may be more important than buying used.
I grew up in a log cabin with a hippie dad who chose simplicity. We had an outhouse, wood stoves, chickens, and a vegetable garden. Compacting should be second nature to me. Still, I found myself rebelling. I'm a self-employed single mom!
Call me an impatient American consumer, but the truth is, I both care passionately about the environment and live in a world where I often have zero extra time. And shopping for used stuff takes lots of time. I made a commitment some time ago to use my purchasing power to help the environment, and spending a month Compacting forced me to reexamine my priorities. It also helped me reconsider my needs versus my wants. We could have forgone the candy-pooping penguins, and I can find many perfectly good things used -- and at less cost. But eventually, I will need a brand new laptop.
'I don't think everyone has to stop shopping to change American consumption habits,' Rachel Kesel tells me. 'But a lot of people need to be put on detox for a while.'

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The Bunkum Olympic Legacy

The Olympic Games are supposed to encourage us to play sport; they are meant to produce resounding economic benefits and to help the poor and needy. It's all untrue.

GEORGE MONBIOT

Everything we have been told about the Olympic legacy turns out to be bunkum. The Games are supposed to encourage us to play sport; they are meant to produce resounding economic benefits and to help the poor and needy. It's all untrue. As the evictions in London begin, a new report shows that the only certain Olympic legacy is a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.

Both Lord Coe and the sports secretary Tessa Jowell, like the boosters for every city which has bid for the Olympics, have claimed that the Games will lever us off our sofas and turn us into a nation of athletes. But Jowell knows this is nonsense. In 2002, her department published a report which found that "hosting events is not an effective, value for money, method of achieving . . . a sustained increase in mass participation."(1) One study suggests that the Olympics might even reduce our physical activity: we stay indoors watching them on TV, rather than kicking a ball around outside(2). And this is before we consider the effects of draining the national lottery: Sport England will lose £100m.

The government's favourite thinktanks, Demos and the Institute of Public Policy Research, examined the claim that the Olympics produce a lasting economic boom. They found that "there is no guaranteed beneficial legacy from hosting an Olympic Games ... and there is little evidence that past Games have delivered benefits to those people and places most in need."(3) Tessa Jowell must be aware of this as well -- she wrote the forward to the report. A paper published by the London Assembly last month found that "longterm unemployed and workless communities were largely unaffected [by better job prospects] by the staging of the Games in each of the four previous host cities"(4).

But far more damning than any of this is the study released last week by the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions. In every city it examined, the Olympic Games -- accidentally or deliberately -- have become a catalyst for mass evictions and impoverishment. Since 1988, over 2 million people have been driven from their homes to make way for the Olympics(5). The games have become a licence for land grabs.

The 1988 Olympics in Seoul are widely considered a great success. But they were used by the military dictatorship (which ceded power in 1987) as an opportunity to turn Seoul from a vernacular city owned by many people into a corporate city owned by the elite. 720,000 people were thrown out of their homes. People who tried to resist were beaten up by thugs and imprisoned. Tenants were evicted without notice and left to freeze: some survived by digging caves into a motorway embankment. Street vendors were banned; homeless people, alcoholics, beggars and the mentally ill were rounded up and housed in a prison camp. The world saw nothing of this: just a glossy new city full of glossy new people.

Barcelona's Olympics, in 1992, are cited as a model to which all succeeding Olympic cities should aspire. But, though much less destructive than Seoul's, they were also used to cleanse the city. Roma communities were evicted and dispersed. The council produced a plan to "clean the streets of beggars, prostitutes, street sellers and swindlers" and "annoying passers-by"(6). Some 400 poor and homeless people were subjected to "control and supervision". Between 1986 and 1992, house prices rose by 240% as the Olympic districts were gentrified, while public housing stock fell by 76%. There was no consultation before the building began -- the Games were too urgent and important for that. Around 59,000 people were driven out of the city by rising prices.

Even before the 1996 Olympics, Atlanta was one of the most segregated cities in the United States.But the Games gave the clique of white developers who ran them the excuse to engineer a new ethnic cleansing programme. Without any democratic process, they demolished large housing projects (whose inhabitants were mostly African-American) and replaced them with shiny middle-class homes. Around 30,000 families were evicted. They issued "Quality of Life Ordinances", which criminalised people who begged or slept rough. The police were given pre-printed arrest citations bearing the words "African-American, Male, Homeless": they just had to fill in the name, the charge and the date. In the year before the Games, they arrested 9,000 homeless people(7). Many of them were locked up without trial until the Games were over; others were harassed until they left the city. By the time the athletes arrived, downtown Atlanta had been cleared for the white middle classes.

In Sydney there was much less persecution of the poor. But the economic legacy was still regressive: house prices doubled between 1996 and 2003. No provision was made for social housing in the Olympic Village, and there were mass evictions from boarding houses and rented homes, which the authorities did nothing to stop. The old pattern resumed in Athens, where the Olympics were used as an excuse to evict 2700 Roma, even from places where no new developments were planned.

In Beijing, 1.25m people have already been displaced to make way for the Games, and another quarter of a million are due to be evicted. Like the people of Seoul, they have been threatened and beaten if they resist. Housing activists have been imprisoned. One man, Ye Guozhu, who is currently serving four years for "disturbing social order", has been suspended by his arms from the ceiling of his cell and tortured with electric batons. Beggars, vagrants and hawkers have been rounded up and sentenced to "Re-Education Through Labour". The authorities are planning to hospitalise the mentally ill so that visitors won't have to see them.

London is about to establish its credentials as a true Olympic city by evicting gypsies and travellers from their sites at Clays Lane and Waterden Crescent. 430 people will be thrown out of the Clay's Lane housing co-op and an allotment 100 years old will be destroyed to make way for a concrete path that will be used for four weeks(8). Nine thousand new homes will be built for the Games, but far more will be lost to the poor through booming prices: they are rising much faster around the Olympic site than elsewhere in London(9). The buy-to-let vultures have already landed.

The International Olympic Committee raises no objection to any of this. It lays down rigid criteria for cities hosting the Games, but none of them include housing rights(10). How could they? City authorities want to run the Games for two reasons: to enhance their prestige and to permit them to carry out schemes that would never otherwise be approved. Democratic processes can be truncated, compulsory purchase orders slapped down, homes and amenities cleared. The Olympic bulldozer clears all objections out of the way. There can be no debate, no exceptions, no modifications. Everything must go.

None of this is an argument against the Olympic Games. It is an argument against moving them every four years. Let them stay in a city where the damage has already been done. And let it be anywhere but here.