blog.ohern.net
The problem with leisure
I spent the whole day on Sunday sailing around Lake Union. It was a beautiful day and I got a great sunburn. I was grateful to find that I had a whole day I could go take for my self. When I came in to work this morning KUOW’s Weekday program was doing a show on
The Upside of Downtime. I wasn’t able to call in to the show and give my opinion but here are my thoughts.
We, as a society, have huge amounts of leisure time compared to our ancestors. Due to specialization (remember that word from World History in high school?), we are able to be a lot more productive than they were. Back in the days of subsistence living, one would work everyday, all day, their entire lives. Taking a weekend, let alone a vacation, was rare. It could be said that living that lifestyle would be less stressful than our modern day system where every year we have to do better than before. If we don’t, some one else will and then we’ll be unable to catch up unless we work double time the next year.
But still, we are lucky that we have weekends, lunch breaks, vacations (for some paid vacations), and mandatory overtime pay. Those are all luxuries that our grandparents and great grandparents established as standard and now we take for granted. People are now thinking that they need more. More than that, they think that they deserve more leisure time. I disagree.
Americans have a lot of money. More than their share of money. Whether we know it or not, we ride on the backs of people who struggle to survive every day. We make an un-proportionate amount of profit compared to what they make and we don’t care because we don’t have to see them. We are not better, smarter or more deserving of this wealth. We are just lucky; lucky to have a good education, lucky to have good jobs available, lucky to have parents who didn’t sell us into slavery.
So I will continue to enjoy my weekends. No I will be grateful for my weekends. As much as I would love to go sailing every day, I know that no one should have that much leisure time. No one deserves that much leisure time. But until we are all faced with the truth of what our society costs the rest of the world, we will continue to want more for less and believe that we are somehow more deserving of our lifestyles.
Scootn' Along
Two weeks ago I purchased a
Honda Aero 50cc Scooter. There were a number of reasons for my purchase. One was gas prices. Two was my environmental impact.
In my last car, a Pontiac Grand Prix, I was getting about 20 MPG. Another way of looking at it was that at $2.50/gallon it cost me 0.12 cents per mile I drove. With my scooter I get 85 MPG, or just under 0.03 cents per mile. In the last two weeks I’ve driven about 480 miles on my scooter. That means I’ve saved $46 so far in gas. At this rate it will take me about 35 weeks to pay for the cost of my scooter ($800). This doesn’t even take into account the cost of annual repairs and insurance. After everything, I expect to save about $3500 in one year.
The second reason I gave up my car is that I decided I needed to live what I preach. Cars are
killing our environment and we have had to declare
war on an entire region because of our dependence on oil. Guess how many people I’ve seen commuting alone in their Hummers this week? Seven! Countless others are alone in their Dodge Rams, Explorers, and Suburbans.
I do have to acknowledge that my scooter has a 2 stroke engine. For those who haven’t played with 2 strokes before, they are not the most
environmentally friendly devices out there. They have the unfortunate problem of expelling uncompensated hydrocarbons out the exhaust. In fact they are so bad that starting in 2006 the EPA is going to make them illegal to import to the US (
PDF). So while the Suburbans are using 9 times as much gasoline as I am on my scoot, I’m putting oil down the storm drains. From my point of view I’m still the better environmentalist (and in the future I’ll upgrade to either a four stroke scooter or a fuel cell vehicle).
I am actually not quite ready to give up a car completely yet. But with my extra cash I’m going to put my self on my girlfriends insurance for her car and help out with the gas a bit (her car gets 35 MPG). I don’t think I’ll need to use it just for my self much but when we go places together and/or with our dog the car will be good to have. I’m going to start working the bus more often too. Someday maybe I’ll sign up for
flexcar. Until then, keep an eye out for me on the streets, happily car free.
I don't care what it costs. Build the damn
monorail. We have spent too many years not doing anything to fix traffic. Now it’s going to cost a lot more than it would have if we had done something 10 years ago and spent the following years making upgrades.
I’m sorry to hear that so many people who supported the monorail
are now backing out. What do they want to do instead? Not many people are offering new solutions. And any solution that they would offer would cost as much if not more so why don’t we just build it already!
So there may still be hope. New bidders are trying to come and
save the day. I hope that this will convince people that the monorail will work and be cost effective. All you people who think that it is a big waste of money; do more than bitch about it! Put together a plan, solve the problem and make a difference!
When will our governments accept that what
they are doing is making things worse. I understand what they are trying to do. It’s the same things the bullies in grade school did. If we can scare everyone into thinking that we'll kick their ass if the put a toe out of line, then they will listen to us, respect us and fear us. It works for a while, but it is a childish way of thinking. Eventually people grow up.
Now we are dealing with a group of people (we will refer to them as "crazed terrorists" from now on) who know no fear. They feel as though they have nothing to loose and everything to gain. We, on the other hand, feel the opposite. We are reacting out of fear and are completely afraid of loosing the posh life styles we have grown to enjoy.
This is the reason it needs to stop. We need to rethink our role in the world community and learn not to
create these quagmires of hate. Refusing to accept any responsibility as the cause of the crazed terrorists means we have not learned any thing. And as with all empires that do not learn and adapt,
we will fall.
