Surge pricing goes universal: some effects

Here's something I learnt today in an article which definitely deserves pondering by those concerned with culture, social justice and keeping an eye on corporate tactics.

In 1861 a shopkeeper in Philadelphia revolutionised the retail industry. John Wanamaker, who opened his department store in a Quaker district of the city, introduced price tags for his goods, along with the high-minded slogan: “If everyone was equal before God, then everyone would be equal before price.” The practice caught on. Up until then high-street retailers had generally operated a market-stall system of haggling on most products. Their best prices might be reserved for their best customers. Or they would weigh up each shopper and make a guess at what they could afford to pay and eventually come to an agreement.

Now, I never knew that history, though I suppose any of us would have guessed that perhaps there had to be a first place to move from haggling (and the personalised pricing that must have meant) to fixed ticket pricing. I am intrigued and delighted by the insight into how a simple change alters a whole culture for a couple of centuries across the globe. I note how it plays well with massification and the then-developing ideology of free trade.

Downsides not mentioned: this would blow a hole in rpi calculations and render difficult or impossible inflation calculations and thus problematise things like index-linked pensions or other payments relying on rpi systems (note the comment in the article "Increasingly, there is no such thing as a fixed price from which sale items deviate"). There's an interesting feed-back loop potential in that. And then there is the hint in the article that poorer people might not come out well, that they would be given higher quotes on the basis that they are less likely to buy lots.
It might also become difficult to argue for the price-lowering effects of the Market (capitalisation intended) if in fact such selective pricing is taking place. Interestingly this exposes, possibly, the reliance that market economics may have on fixed pricing as its ideological support. Now I understand that 'surge pricing' or whatever does rely on free-market justification but I suggest that offering a price based purely on demand at a particular point is not the same as offering personalised prices based on what the algorithm suggests that you are willing or able to pay. If the algorithms are using the same or similar digital shadows for you or me, they will all tend to offer similar 'deals' to us. Thus the possibility of shopping around with the consumer power that commands is nullified: this could become a sort of cartel/oligarchy arrangement powered by algorithms. This would create its own algorithmic feedback loop having the effect of ratchetting up prices over time. And I say that in contradiction to the article's assessment towards the end:
This looks a lot like the beginning of the end of John Wanamaker’s mission to establish “new, fair and most agreeable relations between the buyer and the seller” and to establish something closer to a comparison site that works both ways – we will be looking for the low-selling retailer, while the retailer will equally be scanning for the high-value customer.
I'm not sure that the algorithm's will be sufficiently differentiated. If you want a sense of how this might work, spend half an hour looking at the prices of rarer second-hand books on a variety of sites, asking yourself the question about who would buy at that price -yet probably the prices have been set by an algorithm: the idea that second hand means cheaper in most cases has been blown. Unless of course someone creates price-busting algorithms that have the consumer's better price interests at heart. Algorithm price-wars, anyone?

My own response is surprisingly visceral at a personal level. I feel that somehow this seems like a violation of natural justice -I resonate with Wanamaker's slogan about equal before God and price. And yet I find myself questioning how far that gut feeling is actually an artefact of a lifetime's exposure to fixed pricing and the way that it has become part of the way that I calculate swathes of everyday life.
Perhaps this kind of response is why "Horgan suggests that British retailers are still a bit terrified that customers will be put off by changing prices ".

I'm also thinking that it is likely to bring to the fore questions of profit; charging what the market /consumer will bear may increase an awareness of how questions of relative power are framed. Is the retailer really adding "that much" value to the product? Is the price of status projection really that high? Most of us don't quibble about the idea of a reasonable mark up for costs and a living wage, but some 'surge pricing' seems to be sheer profiteering and this would be a mechanism for that. 

So, I'm wondering whether we need to have a set of standards for algorithms which give a quality assurance which guarantees the protection of consumer interests?

The Divine Commodity: Discovering a Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity

Skye Jethani has written a great set of reflections on the way that USAmerican Christians, especially Evangelicals, have been seduced and co-opted by the marketisation of their culture. One of the prima facie odd things about this book is the way that Skye uses Vincent Van Gogh as a way to help us into the key insights he wishes to convey. In fact this works well and helps us to learn about Van Gogh and to retrieve him as a Christian worth listening to for what he can help us to appreciate about Christian responses to culture and social issues.
 There are some good insights into the way that a wrongful assimilation to culture have affected the way we conduct church and worship.
See ...

Quotes and notes

Over a century ago another struggling Christian fled the church to find God in the stars. Vincent van Gogh is remembered for his volatile mental health, severing his ear, and later taking his life. But the tortured artist also had a volatile relationship with Christianity, oscillating between devotion and rejection. At one time his fervor was so intense he became a missionary. Later he announced, “That God of the clergymen, he is for me as dead as a doornail,”1 and called himself “no friend of present-day Christianity.” His paintings and letters show us a man wrestling to synthesize his faith with modern thought. But his struggle was primarily with the institutional church, not Christ. In his final years, as his mental illness became more severe, van Gogh reveals a profound devotion to Jesus while remaining disillusioned with the church. His most celebrated painting from this period, Starry Night, captures this sentiment. The scene of a quiet hamlet beneath a churning sky of stars was composed from his imagination. For this reason Starry Night depicts the vistas of van Gogh’s soul more than the countryside surrounding Saint-Rémy, France. The deep indigo of the sky was used by Vincent to represent the infinite presence of God, and the heavenly bodies are yellow — van Gogh’s color for sacred love. The divine light of the stars is repeated in the village below, every home illuminated with the same yellow warmth. For Vincent, God’s loving presence in the heavens was no less real on the earth. But there is one building in van Gogh’s imaginary village with no light, no divine presence — the church. Its silent darkness speaks van Gogh’s judgment that the institutional church was full of “icy coldness.” Like many people today, van Gogh struggled to find God in the confines of institutional, programmatic religion. Instead, he found himself drawn outside the respectable piety of the church to commune with peasants and prostitutes. And his devotion to Christ was inspired by nature — the radiance of sunflowers, the knuckled contortion of olive trees, and the silent providence of the stars. Rather than visiting the church, van Gogh said, “When I have a terrible need of — shall I say the word — religion, then I go out and paint the stars.” location 135

A more recent painting by pop artist Ron English captures the church’s condition today. A parody of van Gogh’s work, Starry Night Urban Sprawl replaces the original French village with the architecture of consumerism — fast food restaurants and Hollywood icons. The church steeple is crowned with McDonald’s golden arches and King Kong straddles the roof. Unlike van Gogh’s Starry Night, in Ron English’s composition the church is not dark. Light diffuses through every window and door, but it is not the sacred yellow light of the stars above. Instead, the church repeats the electric white light of the franchised stores and restaurants around it. It reflects the values of the earth, not the values of the heavens. This church is a corporation, its outreach is marketing, its worship is entertainment, and its god is a commodity. It is the church of Consumer Christianity. Richard Halverson, former chaplain of the United States Senate, is said to have observed that: In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centered on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece, where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome, where it became an institution. Next, it moved to Europe, where it became a culture. And, finally, it moved to America, where it became an enterprise. location 156

Our minds are so captivated by these ideas that we’ve lost the ability to think an alternative thought. As a result, the imagination has become the critical battleground between the kingdom of God and consumerism, and before we can hope to live differently we must have our minds released from consumerism’s grip and captivated again by Christ. As Thomas Kelly contends, before we can live in full obedience to God we must be given a flaming vision of such an existence. This burning image comes to us through our intuitive faculties. “Holy is imagination, the gateway of Reality into our hearts.” location 197

cannot imagine how to carry out the fantastical mission of our leader. Wanting to obey Christ but lacking his imagination, we reinterpret the mission of the church through the only framework comprehendible to us — the one we’ve inherited from our consumer culture. location 299

who dismissed Jesus’ words, they had eyes but they could not see. Vincent believed the ability to perceive the unseen was achieved only by the grace of God. He wrote, “You need a certain dose of inspiration, a ray from on high, that is not in ourselves, in order to do beautiful things.” location 425

the Gospels are dominated by Jesus telling stories and weaving parables. He used these verbal Trojan horses to sneak radical truths past his listeners’ defenses and into the chamber where their imaginations slumbered. And as they began to awaken, Jesus’ stories illuminated a new vision of the world. They disentangled reality for his listeners, and his disciples slowly perceived the kingdom of God that Jesus saw all around him. It was a kingdom that defied the conventionality of his day. location 458

If we are to effectively make disciples of Jesus Christ and teach them to obey everything he commanded, we cannot neglect the imagination. Knowledge and skills are important, but neither will be employable if the mind is still imprisoned by the conventionality of the surrounding culture. location 476

Who would want an uncontrollable, mysterious, and holy God when you could have a genie in a Bible? location 632

Sometimes amnesia can be very convenient. Without awareness of one’s story or context a person can be whomever and whatever he or she desires with no worry of repercussion. Without context there is no responsibility. location 730

items are rarely packaged to convey the story of their creation or the human lives impacted by their production. Instead the packaging reinforces our consumer amnesia by appealing only to our desires. Marketing actively discourages shoppers from contemplating where items come from, nor do we want to. We simply want to buy them, use them, enjoy them, and discard them with no larger responsibility. location 746

a brand is a manufactured idea that infiltrates the imagination. location 898

Colin Bates, a marketing expert, says “a brand is a collection of perceptions in the mind of the consumer.” location 898

Nothing in the commercials explicitly communicates PC users are dullards or klutzes, but that is the power of branding. It triggers the imaginative ability of the mind to make these associations automatically. Branding has allowed Apple to become a seller of identity and not merely computers. location 944

Should it scare me that my five-year-old has memorized more corporate brands than prayers, Bible verses, or even names of relatives? location 980

Ford and Pizza Hut spend millions of dollars marketing in preschools?18 Three- and four-year-olds cannot order a pizza or buy a car, but by planting a branded seed in the kids’ imaginations and associating it with positive feelings, these corporations hope to reap the fruit when these children begin to form their identities as teenagers. This sort of brand marketing has been so effective that the average ten-year-old has already memorized between 300 and 400 brands. location 987

After studying recent Social Security records he’s reported an increase in the number of children named after popular brands. location 994
Note: of ccourse thisshould be reflected on in the light that conventional names are often saints ...

Brands are the little gods of modern life, each ruling a different need, activity, mood, or situation. Yet you’re in control. If your latest god falls from Olympus, you can switch to another one. location 1014

appears that God’s people are constructing and expressing their identity through the consumption of Christ-branded products. As Mark Riddle observes, “Conversion in the U.S. seems to mean we’ve exchanged some of our shopping at Wal-Mart, Blockbuster, and Borders for the Christian Bookstore down the street. location 1019

becoming synonymous with “unclean” or “heathen.” Because the absence of a foreskin carried so much meaning in the ancient world, in a real way it was the prototype religious brand — location 1071

When the church gets into the business of staging experiences, that quickly becomes idolatry. MS: I’m stunned. So you don’t encourage churches to use your elements of marketable experiences to create attractive experiences for their attenders? Gilmore: No. The organized church should never try to stage a God experience. location 1383

We’ve come to regard our church buildings, with their multimedia theatrical equipment, as mountaintops where God’s glory resides and may be encountered by mere mot-als. location 1503

Others may simply be carried along by the music, crowd, and energy of the room. Whether a result of God or group, what is beyond question is that many people depart feeling spiritually rejuvenated and capable of taking on life for another six days. The problem with these external experiences, as Moses discovered, is that the transformation doesn’t last. In a few days time, or maybe as early as Sunday lunch, the glory begins to fade. The mountaintop experience with God — the event you were certain would change your life forever — turns out to be another fleeting spiritual high. And to hide the lack of genuine transformation, we mask the inglorious truth of our lives behind a veil, a façade of Christian piety, until we can ascend the mountain again and be recharged. location 1510

Far more energy is poured into the Sunday morning experience than actually equipping people to internally experience God throughout their “common business.” location 1596

from a smiling Quaker man, or syrup from Aunt Jemima? Through branding corporations came to possess names, faces, and even personalities. They became people in the public’s imagination just as they had gained personhood in the courts. Advertising has formed us to give our affection not only to the products we consume, but also to the personified corporations that supply them. location 1757

Through branding a church differentiates itself from all the others offering the same basic product — God. After all, in a competitive religious market the goal is not simply for believers to be dedicated to God, but to the particular institution who supplies him. location 1776

people became, the more dissatisfied they were with the church. In fact, those recognized to be the most Christ-centered were the least enthusiastic about engaging church programs. Rather than a utilitarian ocean liner transporting them closer to God, the church was seen as a lumbering cruise ship full of entertaining distractions, and the more mature Christians were eager to get off. location 1989

In less than a century, Christians have gone from opposing over-consumption at Christmas to demanding it be done in Christ’s name alone. location 2069

Ads became the prophets of consumerism — turning the imaginations of the people toward the goods they didn’t know they wanted. location 2096

a consumer culture designed to keep adults thinking, and buying, like children. Maturity and rationality are the enemies of our desire-based economy. As Benjamin Barber says, “For consumer capitalism to prevail you must make kids consumers and make consumers kids.” location 2144

The ideal consumer remains a child from the womb to the tomb. location 2150

The dilemma posed by consumerism is not the endless manufacturing of desires, but the temptation to settle for desires far below what we were created for. The forces of marketing have captured our imaginations and convinced us to desire mud pies and sneer at the possibility that greater pleasures even exist. We have been reprogrammed to desire immediate satisfaction rather than infinite satisfaction. location 2223

The redemptive affect of sorrow, its power to redirect our desires from the immediate to the infinite, was the subject of an English sermon van Gogh delivered in 1876: Sorrow is better than joy . . . for by the sadness of the countenance, the heart is made better. Our nature is sorrowful, but for those who have learnt and are learning to look at Jesus Christ, there is always reason to rejoice. It is a good word, that of St. Paul: as being sorrowful yet always rejoicing. For those who believe in Jesus Christ, there is no death or sorrow that is not mixed with hope — no despair — there is only a constant being born again, a constantly going from darkness into light. location 2272

Perhaps the complicated interplay of sorrow and joy he recognized in Gethsemane eluded even his artistic brilliance. In 1889, his friends Gauguin and Bernard sent him photographs of their paintings of Christ in the Garden ofOlives. Vincent said the paintings “got on my nerves” perhaps for the same reason he abandoned his own attempt. They could depict Jesus’ suffering, but not the inner joy that led him to accept the Father’s will. Rather than painting Jesus in Gethsemane, Vincent used the olive trees themselves to illustrate the truth of the story. He believed “that one can try to give an impression of anguish without aiming straight at the historic Garden of Gethsemane.”26 Instead, he saw in the contorted trees a representation of Christ’s pain. By giving the olive trees a vaguely human form van Gogh hoped to “make people think” more than if he had depicted Jesus explicitly. In this way the trees could be the symbol of Jesus’ pain as well as his own. location 2292

This kind of pain comes in two varieties — there is suffering we don’t choose, which is often referred to in the New Testament as a “trial,” and there is suffering we do choose, which we call a “discipline.” location 2325

The table of Christ confronts and abolishes our consumer tendencies. It mocks our desire for comfortable community, and it abolishes the principle of homogeneity because we come to the table of Christ as guests and not the host. We have no control or authority over who is invited. Instead we are asked to surrender control and simply take our seat with the other wounded souls redeemed by the broken body and shed blood of Jesus. location 2655

In Starry Night the golden light of the heavens, his color for divine love, is not seen in the church building. Instead, he reserves this sacred hue for the houses of his imaginary village. location 2736

“The structure of the suburb tends to confine people to their houses and cars; it discourages strolling, walking, mingling with neighbors. The suburb is the last word in privatization, perhaps even its lethal consummation, and it spells the end of authentic civic life.” location 2757

Note: this may relate to Actor Network Theory but in any case tells how physical non human stuff affects culture and organisation of humans

In many ways the suburb is the topological manifestation of consumerism, the ethos of commodification lived out in architectural form. Suburban living means dividing life into clearly discernable parts. Professional, recreational, industrial, and residential activities each have their zone. These zones are connected by roads where we drive alone in our cars, minivans, or SUVs. Socioeconomic zones are separated by neighborhoods and school districts. Family zones are demarcated by fences. And within the home, family members are zoned into private bedrooms — each with a television, Internet connection, and telephone. The suburb, like the consumer worldview from which it came, forms us to live fragmented and isolated lives of private consumption. location 2761

most homes are set as far back from public spaces, the street and sidewalk, as possible. The rooms facing the street tend to be the spaces we use least — the formal living room or dining room. The spaces where real life happens, the kitchen and family room, are hidden in the back. Outdoor recreation is also confined to the back of the house, usually behind a fence. Everything about suburban home design communicates to the passerby, “Leave me alone!” location 2774

With no real sense of self apart from our possessions and preferences, every telephone ring, knock at the door, or alert from our inbox is not welcomed as a human-to-human connection, but merely an attempt to invade our personal zone to take some commodified part of “me” away. We instinctually assume that every stranger we meet has a hidden agenda. In our society it has become altogether implausible for anyone to be genuinely interested in us. location 2792

we aren’t actually interacting with real people online but “phantoms.” The medium allows us to abandon real identities to become whoever we want, or whoever we think people want us to. location 2798

Note: this may relate to the idea that in corporisations we are roles rather tha whole people. Do we transfer that or is something else going on? cf also I and Thou and the Secular City

Van Gogh’s painting from 1888 is clearly modeled from Millet’s work, but the sower neither fills the canvas nor dominates the composition. Instead, Vincent’s painting is dominated by a radiant citron-yellow sun that saturates the sky with light. We know from his letters to his friends that van Gogh used yellow light and the sun to represent God. It is Christ who dominates his Sower painting, rather than the humble servant in the field. location 3229

Van Gogh’s painting reminds us that we have a role to play, but we are minor actors in a much larger cosmic drama. Our work certainly matters, but probably not as much as we’d like to think — because ultimately the outcome of our labor is not in our hands. We work, and the world is changed, but exactly how this spiritual impact occurs remains a mystery. location 3237

Rather than abandoning the outcomes to God, we’ve been formed to judge a ministry’s legitimacy, and our own, based on measurable outcomes. The most common are referred to as the ABCs of ministry: attendance, buildings, and cash. If these three factors are increasing, we assume that our ministry is effective, our church is legitimate, and our community is blessed. But what if Jesus, Paul, and Vincent are right? What if the outcome of our labor is beyond our control? What if we are not the primary agents behind bountiful growth or its absence? What if we stopped judging ourselves and others based on outcomes which rightfully belong to God, and rediscovered the humility of the sower — the one who rises day and night, casts the seed upon the ground, and marvels as it grows? location 3257

The shock-and-awe approach to mission is extremely appealing to people shaped by consumerism. location 3278

we ask, How does Coca-Cola impact the world? How does Disney impact the world? How does Starbucks impact the world? And we forget to ask the only question that really matters: How does Jesus impact the world? location 3286

We have incorrectly made the scale of our methods conform to the scale of our mission. location 3288

God’s plan to redeem creation (big) is achieved through his incarnation as an impoverished baby (small). Jesus feeds thousands on a hillside (big) with just a few fish and loaves (small). Christ seeks to make disciples of all nations (big) but he starts with a handful of fishermen (small). Even Goliath (big) is defeated by David with a few stones (small). location 3302

Phil Vischer came to embrace the counterintuitive wisdom of God after losing his Daisy Cutter dream. He now advises other followers of Christ to embrace a mustard seed approach to changing the world: location 3313

The premise of this book has been that the Christian imagination must be free to sing a new song before the world can hear our music. This requires a process of deconstruction and reconstruction: Deconstructing our commodified view of God, and reconstructing a sense of wonder through silence. Deconstructing our branded identities, and reconstructing identities rooted in faith through love. Deconstructing our attempts at transformation through external events, and reconstructing internal transformation through prayer. Deconstructing our devotion to institutions as God’s vessels, and reconstructing relationships with our brothers and sisters in Christ. Deconstructing our unceasing pursuit of pleasure, and reconstructing the redemptive power of suffering through fasting. Deconstructing our contentment with segregation, and reconstructing the unity of all people through the cross. Deconstructing the individualism pushed by consumerism, and reconstructing our love for strangers through hospitality. All of this razing and building begins in our own imaginations. location 3330

the recommendations in this book have been primarily personal disciplines to awaken and transform, rather than calls for changes within the church. Silence, prayer, fasting, love, hospitality, and friendship — these are what I need to loosen consumerism’s hold on me. And it is only when minds are illuminated, imaginations set free, and wounds healed, one by one, that real transformation can come to the church. location 3390


The Divine Commodity: Discovering a Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity: Amazon.co.uk: Zondervan: Books

We live in a stuff-a-lanche.

This is a piece to read in the run-up to Advent; oh yes; most definitely: Charlie Brooker | There's too much stuff. We live in a stuff-a-lanche. It's time for a cultural diet | Comment is free | The Guardian Perhaps the flavour of the article can be well-seen in this excerpt:

"My options need limiting. Last week I watched the first part of Electric Dreams, the 1900 House-style TV show where a family lives with old technology for several weeks. For episode one, they were stranded in the 1970s, with no internet, no DVDs or videos, and only three channels on the TV.... to me the limited options looked blissful. You couldn't lose yourself online, so if you didn't want to watch Summertime Special or World in Action, you had to read a book, go for a walk, or in extreme circumstances, strike up a conversation with a fellow human being."

He goes on to plead for someone to take choices away from him because, as he's said earlier in the artcile: he has passed a tipping point where he would be capable of 'consuming' what he's already bought: the hours written on the backs of the DVDs already add up to more time than he believes he has available -and that's before he reads the books that have mounted up (I can grok that latter point). Of course, no-one's going to do that for him or for us. We have to do that ourselves. But I'm just starting to wonder whether that is perhaps a task for Advent: as we approach the feast of Consumermas; to take stock,pass on (charity shop boom time, anyone?) and focus on the important 'stuff' in our lives ... just a thought ...

Philips accepts recycling responsibility

They campaigned and it worked. Note that activism can achieve things: VICTORY! Philips accepts recycling responsibility | Greenpeace International: "Philips had been the biggest obstacle in the electronics industry to tackling the growing problem of e-waste. And we have been calling on them since 2007 to stop actively opposing laws that would oblige electronics producers to accept financial responsibility for the recycling of their own products.
After several actions and 47,000 messages from our supporters, the company has finally agreed to our demands. This is a big step forward, and makes Philips a new green leader in the electronics sector."
It's important that these things happen at the level of the producers; too many things devolved to consumers will not happen widely enough because of laziness and cussed contrariness. If we do it right in the first place we won't need to clear up the mess!

The Story of Stuff

Not the first time I've mentioned it but it really deserves a plug, especially as this is the whole thing but with on option for chapterisation. The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard

Misery Is Not Miserly

What a fascinating piece of research this is: Misery Is Not Miserly: Why Even Momentary Sadness Increases Spending. It first of all throws into question some of the marketing tactics about associating goods and brands with happy, warm and comfortable imagery and connotative meanings of contentment etc. Though it does fit with the marketing ploy of trying to engender a sense of discontent and the link to the research in this case would relate to this hypothesis arising from the findings.

"Why might a combination of sadness and self-focus lead people to spend more money? First, sadness and self-focus cause one to devalue both one’s sense of self and one’s current possessions. Second, this devaluation increases a person’s willingness to pay more for new material goods, presumably to enhance sense of self. Notably, the “misery is not miserly” effect may be even more dramatic in real life, as the low-intensity sadness evoked in the experiment likely underestimates the power of intense sadness on spending behavior. The effect could extend to domains beyond purchasing decisions, causing people to engage in increased stock trading, for example, or even to seek new relationships-- without conscious awareness that they are being driven by their emotions."

For me this needs to feed into my thinking about culture-jamming liturgy and how we worship against a consumerist cultural backdrop. The importance of liturgy that enables us to regain a sense of God's love, of contentment with God's provision and of recognising before God our state and being able in confession to recognise our decisions and motivations become clearer in the light of this research.

Fair Trade, Organic and Eco-friendly Shopping - Ethical Superstore UK

Annie Porthouse put us at the Generous list on to this: Fair Trade, Organic and Eco-friendly Shopping - Ethical Superstore UK: "one stop shop for ethical gifts, eco-friendly gadgets, fair trade and organic groceries"
Definitely worth bookmarking.

32: the number of the problem of life on earth

An interesting article by Jared Diamond in this month's Edge 233: he writes about the number 32 which happens among other things to define the rough consumption rate of the 1 billion of us in the rich chunk of the world compared to the rest. He goes on to spell out the consequences fairly starkly.
"If India as well as China were to catch up [with first world rates], world consumption rates would triple. If the whole developing world were suddenly to catch up, world rates would increase elevenfold. It would be as if the world population ballooned to 72 billion people (retaining present consumption rates). Some optimists claim that we could support a world with nine billion people. But I haven't met anyone crazy enough to claim that we could support 72 billion. Yet we often promise developing countries that if they will only adopt good policies — for example, institute honest government and a free-market economy — they, too, will be able to enjoy a first-world lifestyle. This promise is impossible, a cruel hoax: we are having difficulty supporting a first-world lifestyle even now for only one billion people."

Trendy trees add to waste mountain

Eco-friendly tree tips

� Buy British trees certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

� Buy 'living' trees and replant in the garden (and remember to water during the summer).

� Recycle your tree after Christmas.

� Remember: an artificial tree is for life, not just for Christmas.

Eco-friendly decorations

� Use old, misshapen ones from the loft.

� Make your own.

� Check out 'free' websites such as Freecycle.

� Look for secondhand and Fairtrade decorations in charity shops.

Trendy trees add to waste mountain at Christmas | Environment | The Observer:

The story of stuff

Introduction in easy terms to externalities or how it is that we don't pay the true costs of the stuff we buy.
Commended. Go see.

Downloads

When the going gets tough the tough go shopping ...

Interesting article, this. It starts by reminding us of what is known:

there is a madness at the heart of this economic model with its terrible environmental costs. It's best illustrated by a graph used by the US psychologist Tim Kasser at a Whitehall seminar last week. One line, representing personal income, has soared over the past 40 years; the other line marks those who describe themselves as "very happy", and has remained the same. The gap between the two yawns ever wider. All this consumption is not necessary to our happiness.

And then moves to some interesting ideas which ought to be of interest to Christians and others of good will in Western cultures.

Kasser's graph has both hopeful and disturbing implications. On the hopeful side, this is good news: a low-consumption economy wouldn't mean misery. But what's disturbing is how we continue to shop when it doesn't make us happier. He argues that our hyperconsumerism is a response to insecurity, a maladaptive type of coping mechanism.

The malaise is, as some thinkers in spirituality and some theologians have been saying for some time, a spiritual one within western culture which needs more than the fixes currently offered or conceived in popular culture because it is that popular culture that is the problem, formed in response to the insecurity but adopting the maladaptive strategy just mentioned.

a win-win scenario; a low-consumption economy oriented towards facilitating the real sources of human fulfilment. Most of us dimly recognise that huge lifestyle changes are necessary, but we're waiting for someone else to initiate the process. It's a question of "I will if you will" - the title of a thoughtful report last year from the government's Sustainable Development Commission.Hearteningly, we know it can be done - our parents and grandparents managed it in the second world war.

Hmmm. Yes; we need to work towards helping people to recognise where fulfilment is and isn't found (and that means the uncomfortable task of showing that the ideology we call 'consumerism', really does have no clothes. That we have to help people take stock of the fact that shopping only brings a temporary relief and has an almost inevitable 'let down' once the purchase is made. The parallel with substance addiction is all-but inescapable (I guess that would make it, at least for some, a process addiction). But, as the article points out, sudden withdrawal may be catastrophic as it would amount to a precipitous drop in the velocity of circulation of money (this is my more economic paraphrase) which would amount to a steep deflation and economically would be rather like pulling the rug out from under the table we dine at: things would come crashing down and there would be quite a lot of suffering as means of support were withdrawn from the most economically precarious and concentrated in the hands of the most capitally secure. So the management of such a withdrawal would be needed, and -I would argue- a transition to an economy based on service rather than on 'stuff'. A message that Christians can back, along with many other spiritual seekers and religious adherants.
Some of the comments are interesting too. Someone called Steve Jones writes:

What the government is doing regarding climate change is passing the buck on to the individual.
It could easily ban incandescent light bulbs, air conditioners, insist that public buildings only be heated to 18 centigrade, give the subsidies the Germans do to those who invest in renewable energy, bring in strict laws regarding energy efficiency for new houses, stick an additional tax on electronic goods that don't go into proper standby, insist of aircraft fuel being taxed at the same rate as petrol and diesel, forbid subsidies from local or regional authorities to local airports or budget airlines, and a fair number of other measures.
Expecting the consumer to follow his conscience is a recipe for making people feel miserable and harrassed without significantly reducing energy use.

I think he has a point worth pondering more.
And there is the sting in what I mention above in relation to money and deflation: "Lower consumption means a much lower tax base because of the recent move to consumption taxes.", so we'd need to reconsider taxation and welfare: though I'm thinking that a land value tax would be a great help in this regard.
But the big achilles heel, as a number of comments point out in various ways is that in wartime Britain there was quite a big bearing down on civil liberties to achieve the lower consumption. It wasn't just propaganda that did it, probably not mainly even, after all, there was the black market ... I suspect that strategic taxation and careful regulation as mentioned by Steve Jones is actually quite important, without going into the kind of quasi police state that was wartime Britain.

Anyway, developing a spirituality which is robustly anticonsumerist without being a bad neighbour is quite important: taking in the insights of addiction treatment including 12-step programmes, being economically savvy and offering a fulfilling and celebratory goods-based downward mobility ... funny, I seem to recall all sorts of groups over the last 30 years saying this kind of thing: have we woken up and realised they might have been on to something, then?
Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Eat, drink and be miserable: the true cost of our addiction to shopping

Celebrating Christmas: you do it your way, I'll do it the right way...

It may be a couple of weeks before this is generally available but it looks at an issue I've been interested in for a good while: how we celebrate Christmas Christianly in the face of the secular world's midwinter festival. The nub of the issue, it seems to me is that the Christian kalendar is based on 12 days of Christmas which begin on December 25th. The secular world has an approach where Christmas begins in early December and ends effectively on December 26th and is followed by a period of relative rest until new year. This throws up a tension which is articulated well in this Church Times article (which may not be totally viewable for a week or two for non-subscribers) by Sr Rosemary of the Community of the Holy Name. She writes,

"if we obey the liturgical rubrics, the main Sunday services continue doggedly to proceed as though the nativity has not yet happened, when everything around them proclaims that it has. OUR SISTERS put up no decorations until Christmas Eve, and our feasting starts on Christmas Day (and is well worth waiting for). But the staff who work with us find this austerity unnatural, and do their best to cheer us up by bringing in cards and candles and boxes of chocolates, and — of course — mince pies. For years, I have struggled with this, trying to keep an Advent stillness within myself, while being assailed by premature festivities all around, and sometimes being required to provide them. Last year, I declined to attend a glorious cathedral carol service in the first week of December. I would have loved to take part in it after Christmas, but it was not on offer then."

That articulates the dilemma very acutely and nicely. And I have over the years tried to hold something of a line over this, mainly because I keep hearing moans about the commercialisation of Christmas and the way it loses its meaning and have felt that perhaps trying to work with the 12 days of Christmas and observing Advent more disciplinedly could help with that. I do think that part of the problem is that the extension of the season into late November and the focus on all the present giving on one day is part of the problem. Smearing the season over a month seems to trivialise some of the meanings and inoculate us even more to the meanings in the carols of gospel messages. There is an important function psychologically and sociologically to having seasons of preparation which include restraint and self-discipline before festival seasons. It's about rhythm, appreciation, capacity building for enjoyment and wholistic appreciation of the context of celebration in a still-suffering world.

However, I'm beginning to think that being too counter-cultural may be a lost cause and we may be better to recognise the reality and -once again- go down the route of weaving significant aspects of the non-Christian festivities into a Christian framework.
Sr. Rosemary writes,

"When I reflected ... the truth finally hit me. December is note a preparation for Christmas; it is Christmas. Keeping Advent in December is a lost cause. Does that mean that the profound spirituality of Advent has been lost too? Not necessarily, if the churches could only decide to accept the suggestion tentatively offered in The Promise of His Glory: Services and Prayers for the Season from All Saints to Candlemas (Church House), ... and move the time of preparation to the real pre-Christmas period: November. In this less eventful month, people could be encouraged to attend a short study course, or gatherings for quiet prayer, at a date when they need not worry about meetings clashing with parties. Preaching and meditation on the traditional four Last Things could very suitably be linked with All Saints, All Souls and Remembrance Sunday, at a time when Common Worship: Daily Prayer (Common Worship: Services and Prayers for the Church of England) already directs us to focus on the Kingdom."

My own experiments so far with this ran to having Advent start on or after 17th November as part of honouring our Celtic heritage and links to Eastern Orthodoxy who had and have a 40 day season of preparation for Christmas analogous to Lent. So perhaps, combined with the All Saints and All Souls/remembrance idea this could make a coherent approach.
Sr Rosemary points out a further advantage to approaching things in this way:

"Preaching in these weeks could offer extended consideration of the great mystery of the incarnation. I have often felt frustrated at the lack of opportunity to invite the congregation to engage deeply with the theological significance of Christmas. The emphasis at Christmas services is often on welcoming occasional attenders, and some of the most thoughtful of the regulars are away spending the holiday with Granny.
A midnight mass enlivened by the presence of post-party revellers, a Christmas morning service — complete with excited children clutching presents, and parents anxious about roasting turkeys and visiting relatives — does not offer the most propitious setting for demanding theological thought. It would be good to have done that earlier."

I do think that this is probably a really fruitful way to go. And it needn't 'throw' currently successful Advent occasions: "Those churches that have the resources to offer an Advent carol service or procession could still hold it on the Fourth Sunday before Christmas, but as marking a heightened stage in this time of preparation rather than its beginning. Advent wreaths and calendars could similarly be used to produce a crescendo towards the climax of the feast itself." which seems fair enough and workable. Though I would say that it may be worth reworking things like Advent crowns to work with the revised approach; all sorts of creative possibilities suggest themselves. Advent 'crowns' with 7 or 8 lights (picking up some Hanukkah resonances, perhaps), perhaps the last three being red, green and white (pulled from the predominant colours of secular celebration). It'd be interesting to play with liturgical colours for this too. Perhaps deep blue for the start of November, shading into a traditional purple and then a week or so into December picking up a variety of 'Christmas colours especially white and red and green in combination ... ?

I'm actually pretty sold on this approach broadly ... but I'm wondering what other people might think too.
And I wonder what sense it makes in the antipodes too.
Church Times - Find a new space for the incarnation

Vowel Sounds Affect Our Perceptions Of Products

As someone who has been interested in language since a young age, I had already 'intuited' the thing about the meaning of vowel sounds in names, particularly the connotations in product names. It appears that some real research has been done on this.

Numerous prior studies have shown that the two types of vowel sounds tend to be associated with different concepts that are strikingly uniform, even across cultures. Front vowel sounds convey small, fast, or sharp characteristics, while back vowel sounds convey large, slow, or dull characteristics.

Exactly so; this confirms my intuition. So ...

participants preferred words with front vowel sounds when the product category was a convertible or a knife (by about a 2:1 margin), but preferred words with back vowel sounds when the product category was an SUV or hammer (again, by about a 2:1 margin).

Now I have to ask; how does this affect our perceptions of people, categories of people, and doctrines? The difference between predestination (with all those higher front vowels) and foreknowlege (with a two back vowels in stressed posititons) may be more than philosophical...
ScienceDaily: Oohs And Aahs: Vowel Sounds Affect Our Perceptions Of Products:

Time to give up distressed blue denim?

"Mariano Barag�n looked down at the blue-grey crust peeling off the field he irrigates from a canal. Nearby factories were the problem - dozens of them, which are dedicated to doing to jeans in hours what used to take years of wear. 'As well as being blue, it burns the seedlings and sterilises the earth,' the 67-year-old subsistence farmer said. And the cause? A wry smile hovered on his lips. 'It's the fashion.'"
Distressed denim trend costs Mexican farmers the earth | Environment | The Guardian:

Freeganomics

If you are up for a challenging indictment of our throwaway society read this article.

'You could feed a village with this,' said Dave, who's spent time in southern Africa working as a volunteer in primary schools. It is wicked, we all agreed, a vision of consumerism gone wrong. But we couldn't think of a way round it. Clearly the supermarkets cannot sell everything they stock, but throwing out £3,000 worth of good food (when I totted it up, our haul came to £340) every night seems outrageous. Could they do more and throw away less? M&S doesn't have a reduced bin for food that's about to go out-of-date, said Cuthbert: 'They probably don't like the idea of tatty grannies rooting around in their stores.'

And a bit later, this comment helps frame it nicely:

Don't you know that 40 per cent of the food we buy is thrown away? That's the real story

Shopping? They just don't buy it

Interesting idea; this articcle explores an anti-conusumerist action in the USA "six months into a one-year pledge not to buy anything new - underwear and a few other essentials aside. Kesel and 10 of her friends bought no new items in 2006, and many have renewed the 'compact', as their pledge is called, this year."Apparently, it's growing and people are finding it easier than they thought they might.
One of the founding figures responding with disgust to the "show 'em you're not afraid: shop" response to the fall of the Twin Towers;

She decided to try 'an experiment' not to shop. 'One of the long-term effects was that it showed me that I could happily live on a lot less, and that has made me better able to save and to plan my financial future without thinking "to hell with it, I'll never retire".' She also cleared her $8,000 Visa bill.

Here's the basics info.

The rule
· Don't buy new products - borrow or buy used. The exceptions are food, drink, medicine (no elective treatments like Viagra or Botox), necessary cleaning products but not equipment (a new Dyson, for example, is not allowed), socks and underwear (utilitarian only) and pyjamas for the children.
To find out more about the compact http://sfcompact.blogspot.com/

Shopping? They just don't buy it | Cash | The Observer:

McLibel: now inStrasbourg

McLibel: story: "May 2004, five years after the McLibel 2 last appeared in Court for their appeal, Helen and Dave were notified that the European Court had declared admissable their claim that the McLibel trial breached their Article 6 right to a fair trial and Article 10 right to freedom of expression."

Basically they are asserting that the disparity of funding capability between themselves as private and poor citizens and a coprporation like McDonald's means that British libel laws are in effect a violation of their rights ... many of us know that laws on defamation in Britain are a bit creaky, perhaps this will begin to srot things out. Certainly the disparity between the parties in the 'McLibel' case was marked and a disincentive to the financially weaker parties pursuing their case for justice. The story of the case is referenced, should you need a refresher.

Consuming Faith

Consuming Faith: I wonder whether some of my readers wonder where my concern about economic things like the last post comes from. Is this just political activism or is it really something to do with faith? Well, my perspective is fairly close to that in the referenced article written by Tom Beaudoin. So this is my pause for thought by way of comment on what I posted only a few minutes ago.

"when I turned back to scripture to see how Jesus of Nazareth dealt with economics, I was shocked at what I found. Jesus very seldom talks about God's final judgment, about 'heaven' and 'hell,' but when he does, as his way of talking about what is most important in a life of spiritual maturity before God, he does something interesting. He almost always talks about intimacy with God in the next life as bound up with one's economic relationships in this life. He speaks of a wealthy man who ignores a poor man at his gate finding himself later in hell, crying out to the poor man for help. He talks about those who use their resources of time and money to visit prisoners and clothe the naked as going on to a final happiness with God, and those who do not as having failed to love God and live a truly human life. Jesus was not focused on whom one is sleeping with, whether one has properly obeyed religious authorities, or how religious institutions can preserve themselves. He saw economic relationships as ultimate expressions of one's true faith"