Help! Let Me Out Of This Damned City

If only I could so live and so serve the world that after me there should never again be birds in cages.
- Isak Dinesen (pen name of Karen Blixen), author (1885-1962)

Is she really concerned about birds in cages or is this a metaphor for something much larger? Both could be true at once.

Birds are kept in cages because people want to be able to see birds daily. These are the only wild animals that are permitted in city residences.

If birds were no longer allowed to be caged and people still wanted to be able to see them, they would have to create natural environments in urban areas where birds other than pigeons and gulls could safely live and propagate.

That would mean planting many more trees than presently exist in many cities, building more parks that are larger than will hold a playground for small children and perhaps creating some bird-friendly locations for nesting.

Ironically, the kinds of wild animals that live in cities today tend to be those that we don't want, such as rats, raccoons and some skunks. Many large cities have more rats than people and about one raccoon for every four people. Most of the time these are out of sight, so city dwellers are not aware of their presence unless they become a problem.

Why would anyone care as much about birds as Karen Blixen does? Big city environments, especially those with a great number of living units above ground level, have created a disconnect between humans and nature. Children grow up believing that meat and produce must be manufactured in the back rooms at supermarkets. That there is never enough room for cars on the streets or in parking areas.

That people should naturally secure their doors with multiple locks because anyone could break in with only a couple of security measures. That many people will be mean to you, even bully you, no matter what you do unless you are as hard-hearted as they are. That no one cares about you or loves you except a precious few in your family, if you are lucky.

Many studies have shown that people who live most of their lives above ground--such as in apartment buildings and office towers--feel less connection with nature than those who have regular contact with the ground and who can see ground when they look out their windows.

Today in North America, though people live in all parts of the USA and Canada, 85 percent of the populations of those countries live in urban environments. Few people have regular contact with what those who live outside of the city would call nature. Those who live in cottage areas can testify how very little city people know about nature and the countryside and its inhabitants when they escape the city to their cottages. They abuse nature by trying to turn a natural environment into a suburban type property.

The Iraq war pits military personnel who have lived most of their lives in cities and who have been trained by superiors who dictate high tech and sophisticated ways to fighting the enemy against people who are mostly "of the land," even those who live in a big city like Baghdad. In a guerilla war where terrorism is the main weapon of one participant, the side that knows the land and its features will present a challenge that foreign city-soldiers can never overcome.

How can a city be made more countrified? For one thing, the need to conserve energy has resulted in many large city buildings with flat roofs turning these into gardens with flowers, trees and birds, and people who love every minute they spend in these rooftop Shangri-las.

We can develop more ideas about how people can engage in activities that are outdoors, such as devoting some parts of parks to garden plots where people can have permits to plant real flowers and real vegetables. These can also be built on the roofs of buildings with flat tops, resulting in a cooling effect in summer and a warming effect in the minds of those who use them. (They clean the air as an added benefit.)

Just like their ancestors did. Those ancestors didn't need birds in cages to feel a part of nature. They lived on the ground and felt part of it every day.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to bring us all down to earth, for real.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

At The End Of The Rat Race

"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know."
- Mark Twain (Samuel Clemons)

Funny. But odd once you think about it.

The western world has developed a culture where it's rare to hear anyone admit "I don't know."
"Never let them see you sweat" better fits the tactic advised when faced with a situation we can't handle. Never admit you don't know the answer. Never admit you don't know what to do. Never admit you don't have the situation under control, that you can't manage alone.

That's the rat race. In many situations people don't know the answers, don't know what to do, don't have any idea how to control the factors in play.

They go to war before they know whether their information is accurate. They manipulate financial reports to make their company look good on the stock market. They hire away the best employees the competition has, steal their knowledge and expertise, then express surprise when some steals their own best people away along with their insider knowledge and expertise.

They make mistakes rather than ask others for advice or find consensus. They go for the kill rather than the compromise because dead (or destroyed) enemies seldom cause much problem. When cornered, they lie by diverting attention to someone else to give them time to alter circumstances to make themselves look good (or at least not so bad as someone else).

With the amount of new information develping each day in the world being more than any genius with a photographic memory could take in, every one of us doesn't know enough about most subjects. We can only be the best at one or two things and we are bound to be wrong about them once in a while.

Entering a restroom at a major conference centre in Toronto a few years ago, I found a young man dressed in a dapper tan suit, holding his right leg up in the air under an air hand dryer. He was drying the outside of his pants, beside his fly. No doubt he was a good salesman, but there are some things you just can't hide. His pending heart attack faded away when I looked then turned away from him to do the job I went in for.

Sometimes there is no substitute for honesty.

Ignorance is much harder to disguise than most people think. Lies are much easier to uncover than the liars believe.

What has the winner of the rat race proven? Most lack the respect they desire, the recognition they feel they deserve once their glory days are past. Who wants an old rat?

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to keep it real and above the table so that we can all lead healthier lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Is It Safe To Be Unpopular?

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
- Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.

Is it safe to be unpopular in western society today?

The biggest announcement that President George W. Bush made during his term in office was "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists." That is, agree with me or you will be labelled a terrorist supporter and treated accordingly. Those who opposed war were treasonous enemies.

On a program on FOX-News following 9/11, the son of a victim of the World Trade Centers tragedy who opposed going to war over the event was told to "Shut up!" by host Bill O'Reilly on camera. When the network went to an O'Reilly-ordered break, he told the young man to get out of the studio or he would slit his throat, according to statements made by the young fellow later (and recorded on camera).

Conservative columnist Ann Coulter called Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards a "faggot" for not supporting all-out war in Iraq, at any cost. Issues can't be debated in an atmosphere where one participant could use vicious labels against the other at any time.

Within internet communities, even being popular can be dangerous. Many have stalkers who hound and berate those who receive attention, giving them low ratings where that option is possible so that the published work of the popular person will not be given further attention. In that environment, being unpopular gets you no attention.

People in most large cities feel unsafe walking after dark and won't drive in some neighbourhoods because whatever they represent may be unpopular, be it their religion, their skin colour or even their gender.

Conservatives in the US claim that it's no longer possible to have a free society in a world where terrorists want to blow you up any time they can because they envy you.

When you treat everyone who may disagree with you as an enemy thereafter, you will have many enemies. Having many enemies makes life unsafe.

The real enemies are those who see those who are not like themselves or who disagree with them as enemies, those who make enemies because they don't have the capacity to make friends.

They can't make friends because they don't know how. They are too afraid of the "others" to believe that it's possible to have a safe world. They make the world unsafe.

The people who are afraid make it their life's work to make others afraid. To them, it's better that we all be afraid than that they themselves endure an attitude correction.

And we let them.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make some of the ugly realities of life clearer so they can be corrected.
Learn more at http://billallin.com