Hunger: The Global War on Poor

This is an excerpt from Julian Cribb's book (same title as below) that was published in the NYTimes.

On the same theme, Raj Patel's "Stuffed and Starved" and his latest "The Value of Nothing" (clip) are worth checking out.

‘The Coming Famine’

By JULIAN CRIBB

Lo que separa la civilización de la anarquía son solo siete comidas. (Civilization and anarchy are only seven meals apart.)
—Spanish proverb
 

Digging into a mountain of caviar, sea urchin roe, succulent Kyoto beef, rare conger eels, truffles, and fine champagne, the leaders of the world’s richest and most powerful countries shook their heads over soaring grocery prices in the developed world and spreading hunger in Africa, India, and Asia. Over an eighteen-course banquet prepared for them by sixty chefs, the eight global potentates declared, “We are deeply concerned that the steep rise in global food prices coupled with availability problems in a number of developing countries is threatening global food security. The negative impacts of this recent trend could push millions more back into poverty.”

This statement, which followed the July 2008 meeting of the G8 (Group of Eight) nations in Hokkaido, Japan, was revelatory in several ways. The leaders of France, the United States, Russia, Britain, Germany, Canada, Italy, and Japan seemed bemused by the sudden emergence of the specter of food scarcity after de cades of apparent abundance and cheap prices. This was a problem they clearly thought had been fixed.

Concealed within their response were embarrassing admissions. First, in urging major increases in global food aid, the leaders appeared to tacitly concede that wealthy countries had failed to fulfill their pledges to the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals of 2000 to fight poverty. Second, in calling on the world to reverse declining support for agricultural development and research, they were implicitly confessing that they had let these deteriorate. Third, in demanding food security early warning systems, the G8 leaders effectively admitted that they had been caught unawares by the emerging food crisis — and didn’t like it. There are few things a politician likes less than an unforeseen development, so for good measure they backhanded the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), demanding its “thorough reform,” presumably for the sin of having failed to get their attention with its previous warnings.

The “Blessings of the Earth and the Sea Social Dinner” for the G8 leaders, hosted by the government of Japan, had more than a touch of the fall of the Roman Empire about it. The eight most powerful men on Earth and their partners regaled themselves on cornbread stuffed with caviar, smoked salmon, and sea urchin roe; hot onion tart and winter lily bulbs followed by kelp-flavored cold Kyoto beef with asparagus dressed with sesame cream; diced fatty tuna flesh with avocado, shiso, and jellied soy sauce; boiled clam, tomato, and shiso in jellied clear soup; water shield and pink conger dressed with a vinegary soy sauce; boiled prawn with jellied tosazu vinegar; grilled eel rolled in burdock; sweet potato; and fried and seasoned goby with soy sauce and sugar. This beginning was followed by a bisque of hairy crab and salt-grilled bighand thornyhead with vinegar-pepper sauce. The main course was poele of milk-fed lamb flavored with aromatic herbs and mustard, as well as roasted lamb with black truffle and pine seed oil sauce. This was followed by a special cheese selection with lavender honey and caramelized nuts, and then a whimsical “G8 fantasy dessert” and coffee with candied fruits and vegetables. The food was accompanied by Le Rêve grand cru/La Seule Gloire champagne; a sake wine, Isojiman Junmai Daiginjo Nakadori; Corton-Charlemagne 2005 (France); Ridge California Monte Bello 1997; and Tokaji Esszencia 1999 (Hungary). The cost of holding the G8 summit (five hundred million dollars) could have fed for a week the additional one hundred million people left hungry by the emerging food crisis.

With eloquent symbolism, this Petronian banquet made clear that the well-off part of humanity has largely forgotten what it is to go hungry and is awakening to an unpleasant shock: starvation and the wars, refugee crises, and collapse of nation-states that often accompany hunger have not been permanently banished after all. Indeed, they are once more at our doorstep. Food insecurity and its deadly consequences are again a pressing concern for every nation and each individual.

Despite the global food crisis of 2007–8, the coming famine hasn’t happened yet. It is a looming planetary emergency whose interlocked causes and deeper ramifications the world has barely begun to absorb, let alone come to grips with. Experts predict that the crisis will peak by the middle of the twenty-first century; it is arriving even faster than climate change. Yet there is still time to forestall catastrophe.

From "The Coming Famine" by Julian Cribb, published by the University of California Press, 2010. Excerpt courtesy of the University of California Press.

See more at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/books/excerpt-the-coming-famine.html

How businesses coax shoppers into spending

A good summary of the tactics that businesses use to coax shoppers into spending. The article also illuminates how the ideology of 'choice' can be illusionary. I may think that I am buying this particular item out of my personal, independent choice, but in reality that choice or preference is conditioned by a number of stimuli, both within the store and from outside (ads, culture, media). A previous post also sheds light on the ideology of 'choice' being illusionary. A related clip from Raj Patel (in fact, the whole speech from the FORA.TV is worth watching).

Buyer beware — of how you're being coaxed into spending
Stores' music, lighting, 'deals' and pricing ranges can all influence what you buy. And if you want to spend less, pay in cash so you can see what you're losing.

By Karen Ravn, Los Angeles Times, November 22, 2010

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-shopping-psychology-20101122,0,1283284,full.story


Chances are, given the time of year and all, you're about to go shopping (and shopping and shopping and shopping and shopping).

But beware. It won't be just a walk in the mall. Shopping is a far more complex undertaking than you probably realize, according to researchers who delve into the intricacies of consumers' buying habits.

"We have a difficult time controlling our shopping behavior," says Alexander Chernev, associate professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. "It's influenced by lots of forces we usually don't take into account."

We take account of some of them below.

The five senses

"Everyone in the world of retail is trying to get you to spend in their location," says Paco Underhill, author of "Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping" and "What Women Want." "They try to engage you with all five senses."

What you see: Retailers work to present their merchandise in the best light — literally. "They use lighting to make something that looks good look even better," Underhill says. "Everything tends to look better in the store than it does when you get it home."

What you hear: If you like the music a store plays, chances are you'll like the products it sells — and vice versa. That, at least, is the message many stores hope to send with their soundtracks. For example, the strains of Justin Bieber crooning "Someday at Christmas" are pretty much a shout-out to young girls that this is the store for them. Middle-aged nerds? Not so much. "The music can tell you either you belong or you don't belong," Underhill says.

Just as music can attract people into a store, it can help to keep them there, or hurry them out the door. That's because customers respond to the tempo of a store's music, says Deborah MacInnis, professor of business administration and marketing at the USC Marshall School of Business. "Studies show that the slower the tempo, the slower people walk through the store, so the more they put in their baskets and the more they end up buying. If the tempo is faster, people walk faster too. They don't stop to look so much, and they don't buy as much."

What you smell and taste: The sweet aroma of roasting chestnuts. Free samples of Christmas cookies. Like music, those are effective ways of inviting customers into a store and making them feel welcome.

Well duh, you may say. But smell and taste can serve another subtle function too, Underhill notes. "They get your saliva glands going, and that makes you hungry. And when you're hungry, you're more apt to buy anything, not just food."

What you touch: Signs encouraging customers to touch the merchandise are far less common in stores than signs imploring them not to. But research shows that retailers may be missing a rather lucrative boat. "There are three ways that touching an object can make you willing to pay more for it," says Joann Peck, an associate professor of marketing at the Wisconsin School of Business in Madison who has conducted a number of studies analyzing the role of touch in shopping behaviors.

One way — the most obvious — is by giving shoppers information they can't get otherwise, such as how much the object weighs, how soft or hard it is, how rough or smooth it feels. A second way is also quite intuitive. You may be willing to pay more for a cashmere sweater or a small, sleek smart phone just because you like how it feels.

More surprisingly, Peck says, apart from any information or pleasure it gives you, simply touching an object can make you feel a certain sense of ownership. "And you'll pay more for anything you feel like you own."

(Sometimes a lot more. In an experiment at Duke University, researchers asked students who had won tickets for the Final Four basketball tournament how much they'd be willing to sell them for — the answer, on average, was $2,400. They also asked students who had entered the lottery but not won how much they'd be willing to pay for tickets — in that case, the average was a measly $170.)

There are big individual differences in how much people like to touch things, Peck says. But the rule of thumb should probably be, "If you don't want it, don't touch it."

Impulse buying

Suppose you go to a store to buy a new USB cable for your camera. That's all you need. That's all you want. But it may not be all you buy. For while you're standing in line at the cash register, all set to pay and go home, what to your wondering eyes should appear but "The Hair Traffic Controller — the world's greatest pet hair remover"? Now, it just so happens that you own the world's shedding-est sheepdog, and, well …

It's not merely random good fortune that you should find this fantabulous product — on sale, no less! — where you do. Retailers often identify potential "impulse buys" and stock them at the ends of aisles and close to the checkout stand. Shoppers may not plan to make these sorts of purchases, but stores do plan to make these sorts of sales.

"If shoppers suddenly ceased to buy on impulse," Underhill wrote in "Why We Buy," "believe me, our entire economy would collapse."

Buying on impulse is often seen as a personal budget-breaker. A survey of adult women conducted for ShopSmart Magazine last year found that the average price of the women's most recent impulse buy was more than $100. And 35% reported regretting at least one impulse buy they'd made in the previous year.

If shoppers want to cut down on impulse buys, most experts advise that they make a list before they go shopping, and then stick to it. A 2009 article in the Journal of Marketing Research offers a less obvious approach. The study found that by eating a typical Thanksgiving dinner, with plenty of turkey and mashed potatoes — and thus plenty of tryptophan and carbohydrates — shoppers could cut down on impulsive buying later. The posited explanation: The neurotransmitter serotonin is known to reduce impulsive behavior, and it's synthesized from tryptophan.

At first glance this result seems to have very fortuitous implications for shoppers on the day after Thanksgiving. But unfortunately, the effects of a Thanksgiving meal will wear off by then, says the study's co-author Arul Mishra, assistant professor of marketing at the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. "But it does have implications for online shopping."

Money, money, money

The best price in life is free. Or not. Customers are more likely to buy something if they think they're getting a good deal on it. And simply including something free with a sale often does the trick: Buy this $1,500 refrigerator and get a free six-pack of Coke. (Wee!) Buy three pairs of shoes, and get a fourth pair free. (Who cares if you don't need any new shoes at all?)

"The power of 'free' is really quite incredible," says Dan Ariely, professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and author of "Predictably Irrational." In a series of experiments described in his book, Ariely found that people consistently preferred to get something free over paying a little for something, even though they'd actually come out ahead in the latter case.

For instance, he offered mall-goers in Boston the following choice: a $10 Amazon gift certificate free or a $20 certificate for $7. Most opted for the freebie, even though they would have netted more money from the $20 certificate ($13 versus $10). In a second experiment, he offered a slightly different choice: People could buy a $10 gift certificate for $1 or a $20 certificate for $8. Again, the $20 certificate was $3 more profitable, but this time — with "free" off the table — people went for it.

Knowing that the free option isn't always best may make shoppers consider free offers more carefully. On the other hand, Ariely admits that he once bought an expensive new car at least partly because it came with three years of free oil changes.

The theory of relativity. (Not Einstein's.) Like everything else in the world, prices are relative. And shoppers rely on that relativity to judge value. In an experiment with 100 graduate business students that Ariely also reported in "Predictably Irrational," he listed three choices for subscriptions to the Economist (which he had found in an actual ad). For an Internet-only subscription, the price was $59; for print only, it was $125; and for both print and Internet it was also $125.

Happily for the reputation of the business school, none of the students chose the print-only option — obviously a bad deal because the print-and-Internet option was available for the same price. In fact, 16 students chose Internet only, and 84 chose print and Internet. But then Ariely downsized the options to two, eliminating the print-only option that everybody had wisely rejected before anyway. So the choices were Internet only for $59 and both print and Internet for $125. This time, 68 students chose Internet only, and 32 chose the print-and-Internet package.

The upshot in the experiment? Though the choices were essentially the same both times, just having the print-only option there the first time around seemed to confuse the issue. To most students, apparently, it made the print-and-Internet option look irresistibly good by comparison. Free of that distraction in the second experiment, many more of them opted to spend less money.

The upshot in real life? The value judgments shoppers make for any particular item can change depending on what they have to compare it with. So, for example, a computer store can probably sell more $100 printers if it also has a $300 printer for sale than it could if the $100 printer were the most expensive one they carried.

Although shoppers do make price comparisons, they're not always very good at it, as shown in a paper published last year in the Journal of Consumer Research. In that study, people were given a choice between two pens on which the authors had manipulated the prices. When the lower-priced pen cost $2 and the higher-priced pen cost $3.99, 44% chose the higher-priced one. But fewer than half as many — only 18% — chose the higher-priced pen when the prices were changed by just a penny — to $1.99 and $4.

Comparing only the first digits of prices may seem foolish. But it may be just one example of decision-making shortcuts that humans often take out of necessity. "We focus on what is easy to process," MacInnis says, "because we can't consider everything."

And sometimes it helps to compare apples to oranges, Ariely says. "If you're trying to decide whether to buy a coffee maker for $50, ask yourself what else you could do with $50. If there's something else you'd rather do, then don't get the coffee maker."

Giving cash some credit.

Paying with a credit or debit card can almost seem like not paying at all. No actual money changes hands. There's no real evidence that you're any poorer than you were before. But when you pay with cash, money does change hands, and not in a pleasant direction. You end up with less than you had before. You're demonstrably poorer. It hurts.

A number of studies have shown that shoppers are less prone to impulse buying if they leave the plastic at home and force themselves to endure the pain of paying with cash. Ideally, they should use bills of large denominations, according to a 2006 paper in the Journal of Consumer Research. "People are less likely to spend if they are carrying a $50 bill compared to when they have 10 $5 bills," says Mishra, a co-author of that article.

Part of the herd

Let's say you've been shopping for what seems like forever, and you're running out of ideas for gifts — but not out of friends to give them to. It may be time to join a herd — buy some books just because they're on the bestseller list, buy some wine just because it's on the "best wines under $20" list (these aren't really close friends!), wander around the mall and — trying your best not to look like a stalker — observe what other shoppers are buying, and buy it too.

As Ariely says, "Herding happens when we assume other people know something we don't." You may not end up with super-personalized gifts this way, but you'll save yourself some effort at a time when you're starting to flag.

The Big Mo

So. You've been really, really good — staying mindful of your budget, considering every option (if you get this for person A, then you'll get that for person B), not rushing into anything. In other words, your holiday shopping has yet to progress from looking to buying.

And then finally one day, you decide it's time. You'll buy this one surefire thing, a box of Aunt Erma's favorite chocolate truffles. So you do. And — poof! — your careful, cautious prudence evaporates, and you start buying left and right, smart and dumb.

So-called shopping momentum can be triggered, researchers reported in a 2007 article in the Journal of Marketing Research, when a shopper buys a single item, and in doing so shifts her mind-set from mulling things over to taking action now.

Hunters and gatherers

"There's a shopping center in Germany with a play area for men," says Daniel Kruger, a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "A woman can drop off her partner there, and while she shops he can drink, work with power tools or watch sports on TV."

The point being, both of them are happier that way. "Men just want to get what they want and get out," says Kruger, the lead author of a 2009 study published in the Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology that documented fundamental differences in the shopping behaviors of men and women. "Women have a much greater appreciation of detail, a much greater desire to actually experience what they're getting. They want to see several items and compare them."

The researchers linked these differences all the way back to when the man of the cave went out hunting while his mate stayed home gathering nuts and berries — "which is very similar," Kruger observes, "to going to a flea market today and sorting through everything to see what's good."

For the man, a hunting expedition, which might take him far afield, would only count as successful if he brought home the bacon, er, woolly mammoth meat. For the woman, food gathering was more of a social event, something she did with friends, enjoying their company. And if she didn't find much one day, it was no big deal since she could easily go again the next.

These days, the lesson for women may be: If your partner hates going shopping with you, maybe it's not because he's a jerk. Maybe it's just because he's a guy.

Engaging Raj Patel's "The Value of Nothing"

I have not read Raj Patel's latest book yet, except for parts of its first chapter. Just read John Gray's review. I thought Gray raises an important question which remains an issue for materialist ideologies/movements fighting against materialism/capitalism. I touched upon this in a previous post, here. Yet, based on my previous reading and listening to Raj's work, I have a feeling that Gray might have under-appreciated Raj's call for a substantial change in how we value things and live our life; Gray may have read Raj through the lens of socialist/labor-rights/progressive movements that Raj is closed to in his activism, instead of reading the book on its own merit. But I can be wrong too.

On a side note, do check out a promotional video of the book that Raj has published online.

Excerpts:

Review: The Value of Nothing by Raj Patel
By John Gray, The Observer, December 13, 2009
Source

"Part of the problem is the belief that price and value are for most purposes one and the same. This equation makes it possible for them to develop impressive-looking mathematical models of the economy, but it involves a huge oversimplification of reality. As Raj Patel explains in this penetrating and admirably concise guide to the follies of market fundamentalism, the notion that the value of a good is its price obscures the complexity of markets and of human beings. Theories of efficient markets take the shifting abstractions generated by the price mechanism as actually existing entities but, as Patel puts it, using one of many vivid metaphors that stud his argument, this is like being in the simulated world of The Matrix, surrounded by "a digital rain of symbols and signs".

The seeming precision of the computer screen suggests that something substantial is being measured and exchanged, when in fact what is being traded are virtual assets whose relations with actual resources are tangled and hidden..."
...

"Contrary to the claims of economists, the belief that price equals value is not science, an accurate representation of the world, but ideology – a way of obfuscating the world."
...

"Much of what passes as economics is ideology and ideology only works if those who produce it also believe in it. The difficulty of the present situation comes from the fact that while few any longer believe in the free market, no one has an alternative to it that is able to command widespread support. Predictably, the financial storm has jolted moribund Marxist theories back into a semblance of life..."
...

"A passionate activist, he believes problems of resource scarcity are man-made and can always be solved by fairer distribution. However, the growth-oriented lifestyle of rich countries is not unsustainable because it is unjust; it is unsustainable because the Earth's resources are unalterably finite. It may be true that the imbalance between human demands and the environment could be diminished if enough people rejected material affluence as their main goal in life. But this is an extremely nebulous possibility and one that highlights the deepest difficulty for Patel's analysis.

Oscar Wilde may have been right that people know the price of everything and the value of nothing, a remark Patel cites at the start of his book, and which gives him its title. But what is value if it is not price? It is telling that when trying to flesh out a non-market account, Patel turns to religion, in this case Buddhism. The Buddhist tradition gives him what he needs – an understanding of human wellbeing that does not centre round the satisfaction of wants. Like the ancient European Stoic and Epicurean philosophies, Buddhism proposes that happiness lies in shrinking the self – in giving up our wants, rather than forever chasing after them. It is a thought that occurs to many well-off people from time to time, but it is hard to imagine large numbers of people ever acting on it.

Theories of value that focus on curbing desire run up against the demand for self-realisation, which is one of the strongest impulses in modern life. To be sure, the pursuit of self-realisation does not often result in happiness. But is it happiness that most people are pursuing? Or is it stimulus and excitement? In the Himalayan Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, Patel informs the reader, the introduction of satellite television has been followed by a crime wave. He seems to think this fact somehow strengthens his argument. But what it tells us is that no culture can now resist the dangerous charms of a life spent in insatiable desire."

The Real Cost of the Olympics

This demands a genuine reconsideration of how we view the Olympics. Nothing wrong with sports and games per se, but we should demand higher moral and socially-conscious standards for how they are organized anywhere.

What is wrong with the Olympics?
http://olympicresistance.net/content/what-wrong-olympics-0

The Olympics are not about the human spirit and have little to do with athletic excellence. They are a multi-billion dollar industry backed by real estate, construction, hotel, tourism and media corporations, and powerful elites working hand in hand with government officials and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). While public pressure is unlikely to stop the 2010 Games from occupying Vancouver, critical resistance is needed to expose deceptions about the Games’ impact and purposes, voice our dissent to the world, and strengthen social movement solidarity.

Occupation of Stolen Native Land: The vast majority of B.C. is unceded Native land, unlawfully occupied by B.C. and Canada. By Canadian law, Native title exists unless yielded by treaty and little of B.C. is covered, even by flawed treaties. Neglect of First Nations’ social, environmental, and political rights by a state that benefits from Aboriginal resources is a serious political crisis ignored by Canada and the Games.

“Security” and Eroding Civil Liberties: Increasing political repression and security build-ups accompany modern Games. Estimates for Vancouver of at least 16,500 Canadian military, border guards, private security, VPD, RCMP, and CSIS agents (plus foreign security) are unrealistically low: the Sydney Games had 35,000 police and security (4 cops per athlete) with 4,000 troops and commando units and the Athens Games had 70,000 police, security, and military forces. There will be at least 40 km of crowd-control fencing, video surveillance, and airport-style security zones around the city, including on public property. The monitoring and intimidation of political opposition has already begun. Vancouver City Council has followed the IOC requests to create an environment free of protest by enhancing bylaws to restrict posters, signs, leaflets, marches, noise-makers, and any possible “disturbance” to Olympic entertainment. Many elements can become permanent (such as public video monitoring, new security bodies and policing rules, and the criminalization of protest) and security costs are up to $1 billion.

Environmental Destruction and Waste: The 2010 Games will be one of the most ecologically damaging in history, featuring clear cuts, mountain blasting, road construction (and expansion of traffic), gravel mining (damage to fish stocks), massive amounts of steel, plastics, cement, wood, etc., threats to animal populations, unnecessary luxury buildings, and expanded infrastructure (with accelerated approvals) for mining, logging, oil and gas exploration, ski resorts, and tourism. Approximately 100,000 trees have been cut down for Olympic development.

Corporatization: The Games are entirely commercialized, with pro athletes, exclusive corporate sponsors, and crony deals for development, construction, and media companies. Image control is crucial and all outdoor advertising in Vancouver has been sold to the Games and their sponsors for weeks around the Games. The anthem lyrics “with glowing hearts” and words like “friend” have become trademarks related to the Olympics. Games regularly benefit and are sponsored by companies with poor human rights and environmental records, like Nike, Shell, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Petro-Canada, Dow, Teck Cominco, TransCanada, and arms makers GE and GM.

Damage to Communities: Racial profiling and lock-downs of ethnic communities are common for the Games (black neighbourhoods in L.A. and Atlanta, Muslims in Athens, etc.). More tourists increase abuses in the sex trade. Host cities routinely criminalise the poor or homeless and socially cleanse their cities (Vancouver relocated the homeless out of sight for Expo 86 and Atlanta did the same for its Games). The Vancouver Police crackdown on visible poverty has led to hundreds of tickets for panhandling, jaywalking, second-hand sales on the streets, and sleeping in parks. The sacrifice of housing, social services, and environmental and labour laws also hurt the poor, homeless, women, minorities, Natives, and workers. Since the 1980s, Games and their construction have displaced over 2 million people.

Honouring Exploitation: Despite Olympic claims, Games occur in places that violate “international standards” (Nazi Germany in 1936, more than 300 students massacred in Mexico prior to the 1968 Games, political oppression in China during the 2008 Games, etc.). Games are used to rally for nationalist causes, impose social control, and attract corporate investment, more than to celebrate “pure sport.” Past presidents of the corrupt IOC (including colonialists, Nazi sympathisers, and officials of fascist states) have used the Games to suppress dissent and serve their political and economic interests. Like the WTO, FTAA, G8, and APEC, the Games will use public funds to honour leaders from repressive regimes.

Lack of Affordable Housing: During a housing crisis, single-room-occupancies (cheap hotels) and affordable rentals are torn-down or converted to high-priced housing while the City lends money to build Olympic condos. Promises of affordable and social housing and shelter spaces are rarely met by host cities and Vancouver has already admitted that commitments will not be met. In fact, since the bid in 2003, we have lost over 850 low-income housing units and homelessness has tripled. Salt Lake City Games planned for 2500 units of affordable housing and created only 150; prior to Sydney’s Games, tenant evictions increased 400%; and Calgary failed to build any of its pledged social housing.

Public Costs and Debt: The $6 billion cost of Vancouver’s Games keeps increasing with cost overruns and hidden transfers. Host cities take on huge debts: Montreal’s 1976 Games were only paid off in 2002; Calgary had a $910 million debt; Barcelona a $1.4 billion debt; Sydney a $2.3 billion debt; etc. Claims of long-term economic benefits have been proven false in previous Games. The Olympics are an expensive 17-day corporate circus (during an economic crisis) that will cost us all for years to come.

"The Secret" Exposed: Individualism, Materialism, and the Modern Age

Below see an insightful excerpt from Douglas Rushkoff's book, Life INC. (2009), which I am reading these days.

"The Self is the Source

We're trained in our society to give, but to feel uncomfortable taking or receiving. But if you don't take, you are denying another person from giving."

Three of the women smile and two others half-nod, glazed over. But the younger one in the corner still appears unconvinced by the life coach leading the session.

"What's that really mean, Eileen?" Amy asks. "Greed is good?"

"Well, sure," answers Eileen, a middle-aged and middleweight women in a chocolate-brown pantsuit. She doesn't appear to realize that Amy was quoting from the movie Wall Street. "That's not how they put it, but yes. We have to learn to accept the bounty that life offers. It's the key to seeing self as source. Remember, you make the world around you with your thoughts. If you aren't ready to accept, then how can the universe give you anything you want?"

Eileen's holding today's meeting in her apartment, a nondescript garden condominium outside Grand Rapids, Michigan. I found her while researching former Amway sales representatives for what I thought was going to be a chapter in this book on multilevel marketing networks. But Eileen's not interested in talking about her past failures as a Silver Producer level Amway distributor. She's dedicated to sharing her newest passion, free of charge, with the women who responded to her Internet notice for practitioners of The Secret-the latest and greatest "quantum-based" self-improvement system known to humankind, according to its practitioners and promoters-who are often the very same people.

Most simply, The Secret is a self-help DVD and companion book synthesizing the pitches of a few dozen of today's most prominent self-help gurus. Its creator, an Australian named Rhonda Byrne, claims there's a single truth underlying all the spiritual systems and get-rich-quick schemes of her many peers. It's more ancient than the Bible and has been intentionally hidden from human beings for just as long. The great secret? Positive thinking or, in The Secret's parlance, "The Law of Attraction." Like attracts like. Abundance is a state of mind: Think healthy, and you'll be healthy. Or-more to the point- think rich and you'll get rich.

The Secret is spiritually reconstituted for the "me" generation. As self-contained and utterly artificial as Birkdale Village, The Secret masquerades as a time-honored and diverse set of insights. And like the faux New Urbanist shopping mall, the underlying purpose of The Secret is to make money. Most of the spiritual teachers in The Secret are wealth-seminar leaders who display the book's logo on their ads and websites. The Secret has certainly worked wonders for its marketers: as of this writing, more than two million DVDs have been sold, and the book hit number one on the New York Times Best-Seller list of hardcover advice books.

While positive thinking no doubt has its benefits-from the placebo effect to good old self-confidence-The Secret tries to justify itself not only in the language of pop psychology but also in that of modern physics. According to the book, happy thoughts will do more than affect behavior. The Secret claims that interrelatedness of matter and energy-Einstein's E = mc2 [2= square]-allows people to change reality to their liking by changing the way they think about it. Thought is presumably the energy in this schema, and reality is the matter. For most, however, this potential for quantum transmutation is limited to attracting more marriage prospects into their bedrooms, or money into their personal bank accounts.

Eileen puts the law of attraction into practice on pretty much every physical surface of her home. Handwritten signs and Post-its proclaim affirmations such as "THE UNIVERSE ADORES YOU" and "YOUR MAN IS ON HIS WAY." A $10 million check from Eileen's bank account, written to Eileen, is stuck to her refrigerator under a green "S" magnet-most likely the closest one could find to a dollar sign. Over her gas fireplace hangs a collage of images she has clipped from catalogs and magazines representing the things she is in the process of attracting to herself. Female models smile as they drive expensive cars, frolic in the wavers with muscular male models pretending to be surfers, or sit with baby models under trees. The classic cultic goals: wealth, sex, fertility. In what might easily be a coincidence of simply the ethnographic bias of Eileen's favorite magazines, none of the pictures contains any black people, even though Eileen herself is African-American.

"Vision walls really work," Eileen assures her group. "There was once a man who wanted a multimillion-dollar mansion. He made a vision board, and kept it even after he made his million. One day, he was looking at it hanging in this bedroom, and he realized he was living in the exact house he had clipped!"

"Then there was the woman who really wanted to get married," chimes in Sharon, thirty-something unemployed former sales rep (she never told me of what) and recent convert to The Secret. "She started buying wedding magazines and clipping pictures of rings, flowers, dresses. She started acting like she was married already. And not only did she get married, the ring her fiancé proposed to her with was the exact same as the one she'd clipped for her board."

Think it, clip it, get it. In a process that's one step more pathetic than working to get the things they see in advertisements, practitioners of The Secret put the ads up on their walls and then wish really hard for what's in them. They turn the pictures in ads into idols to be worshipped [sic]. And to prove to themselves that they believe in the system enough to get it to really work for them, they must enlist others in The Secret as well. When not enlisting newcomers, they must meet regularly with other believers to keep the buzz of the belief alive. To stay psyched, so The Secret can work its positive magic.

That's the real reason for meetings like Eileen's: to proselytize The Secret-spreading the new word while supporting one another in buying more of the featured teachers' books and courses. It's a win-win for all concerned that mirrors the relationship of a corporation to its chartering monarch. Top-shelf self-help gurus-Men Are from Mars, Women are from Venus author John Gray, Chicken Soup founder Jack Canfield, Conversations with God creator Neale Donald Walsch-get new life pumped into their waning careers, while the new self-help brand gains instant credibility from their participation. As if in full disclosure, they are all willing to teaching the fine arts of logrolling and bootstrapping to anyone who will listen and pay. Secret is as Secret does.

While The Secret isn't itself a multilevel marketing scheme (or MLM), it has become the sales pitch and rationale for many others. Three of The Secret's best-known officially sanctioned self-help gurus, Canfield, Bob Proctor, and Michael Beckwith, teamed up on a Secret-inspired get-rich MLM called the Science of Getting Rich. For $1,995, anyone can join. The only prerequisite to getting rich this way is that you have to really want it enough to get all your friends to want it, too.

"Kids, when they want something, harp on it, focus on it, and obsess over it until they get it," Eileen explains. "A child whines, 'But you promised!' " The women laugh. "Kids have the freedom to want what they want. And that's what the vision board reminds you. To really want means to be able to fully visualize and then through that, to really live."

"What if you don't get what you want?" The quiet one in the corner-the one in her twenties who, at least by outward appearances, would have the least trouble attracting a mate or landing a job-has finally spoken up. "If you don't get what you want, is that because you didn't attract it?"

"Right, Amy," says Eileen, nodding. "At least not yet." Eileen claims to be a graduate of the University of Michigan Business School's "Life Coach" program. No such program exists, but she does have an undergraduate diploma hanging in her bedroom office. If she really had attended a Life Coaching program, this is probably the kind of moment she would have trained for.

"So, if you're a mom in Iraq with a starving baby," Amy goes on, pursuing her line of questioning, "and you just can't get out, does that mean you're not wishing hard enough?"

"We get what we want," Eileen says. "So let's all think good thoughts."

"But what about the Holocaust?" Sooner or let it had to get there.

"I can't really answer that," Eileen says. "But I know there were people in the Holocaust who did want to survive and they lived."

"Just like there are people with cancer who lived because they really wanted to," adds Sharon.

"How? By putting pictures on the wall of people who are healthy?" Amy asks.

"That's part of it." Eileen is fumbling with her papers now, trying to move to her next planned part of the meeting. "They took responsibility for their disease, and visualized a way beyond it."

"And the ones who didn't live? They didn't want to survive badly enough?"

"Look, it's not all those other people you should be worrying about right now. You're here to make your life better. Start with yourself. The rest will follow. We attract what we are. The self is the source."

Amy's concern for others may be quaint, even well intentioned-but in the logic of The Secret, it's just an obstacle to manifesting her true self and attracting the partner, health, and wealth she deserves. Updating the rationale of the American Calvinists, who believed that wealth was an indication of God's approval, The Secret's practitioners equate persona success with having achieved scientific and spiritual harmony with the greater universe. All it takes is being enthusiastic and clear enough to manifest it-to attract all this good stuff to one's self.

The Secret isn't a fringe cult, but a mainstream global phenomenon. Its teachers show up regularly on Oprah's schedule right between Barack Obama and Michael Moore. That's because the philosophy is not an aberration at all, but the culmination of several centuries' dedication to promoting the self over pretty much everyone and everything else. The Secret simply gives people permission to be as selfish as they can tolerate, and to internalize the language and symbols of advertising into one's life as core guiding principles.

The self-absorption and self-interest dominating our values today is not mere happenstance, but the result of a century of public-relations campaigns, advertising, and social engineering waged against collective action, altruism, and even good government. Just as we were disconnected from place and reconnected instead to a map biased toward corporate interests, we have been disconnected from one another and led to behave instead as individuals and though corporatist ideals.

The rise of the self went hand in hand with the rise of the chartered corporation and the central authorities it anchored. Only a world steeped in this false notion of a wholly sovereign individual could have generated the bourgeois merchant class of self-made men threatening the static power of the aristocracy. Likewise, the subsequent elevation of chartered corporations was depended on highly individualized laborers and, eventually, customers who competed with one another for wages and riches. The more disconnected people became from one another, the more easily they could be manipulated. Unions of workers and functioning communities of citizens threaten the power of corporations, while individuals out for their own interests behave more like corporations themselves. The social concerns that make collective human behavior multifaceted and complex get smoothed out as people take actions directed by the much simpler calculus of the market. This makes people entirely more predictable, better targets for advertising, increasingly more isolated from one another, as well as more dependent on central authorities to create both value and meaning.

It's not as if a king conspired with the head of a chartered corporation to concoct the notion of individuality. (It wasn't until the heyday of public relations in the 1920s that anyone consciously tried to promote individual freedom as a cynical means of social control.) But the elevation of individual personhood to a literary and social ideal took place as part of the same wave of rationalism that brought to us chartered corporations, colonialism, and the Industrial Age. This was a new framework for how society could work and grow, funded and promoted by those who were growing rich and powerful by using it. We have to understand at least the very basics of how this notion, individuality, was invented in order to dismantle its inappropriate and automatic application today." (Life INC. (2009) by Douglas Rushkoff, pg. 84-89)

Oh, What Games They Play

An interesting comparison of Orwell and Huxley. Thanks to RecombinantRecords.net

The Story of Stuff

Watch the video here: Story of Stuff or here (full version). The website is here.

For related videos, see The Corporation, Affluenza (see also its PBS website), and Consuming Kids (also their feature: 'what parents can do').

A Cautionary Video About America’s ‘Stuff’
By Leslie Kaufman, NYTimes, May 11, 2009

Excerpt:

The video was created by Annie Leonard, a former Greenpeace employee and an independent lecturer who paints a picture of how American habits result in forests being felled, mountaintops being destroyed, water being polluted and people and animals being poisoned. Ms. Leonard, who describes herself as an “unapologetic activist,” is also critical of corporations and the federal government, which she says spends too much on the military.

Ms. Leonard put the video on the Internet in December 2007. Word quickly spread among teachers, who recommended it to one another as a brief, provocative way of drawing students into a dialogue about how buying a cellphone or jeans could contribute to environmental devastation.

So far, six million people have viewed the film at its site, storyofstuff.com, and millions more have seen it on YouTube. More than 7,000 schools, churches and others have ordered a DVD version, and hundreds of teachers have written Ms. Leonard to say they have assigned students to view it on the Web.

It has also won support from independent groups that advise teachers on curriculum choices. Facing the Future, a curriculum developer for schools in all 50 states, is drafting lesson plans based on the video. And Ms. Leonard has a contract with Simon & Schuster to write a book based on the video.

The enthusiasm is not universal. In January, a school board in Missoula County, Mont., decided that screening the video treaded on academic freedom after a parent complained that its message was anticapitalist.

But many educators say the video is a boon to teachers as they struggle to address the gap in what textbooks say about the environment and what science has revealed in recent years.

“Frankly, a lot of the textbooks are awful on the subject of the environment,” said Bill Bigelow, the curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools, a quarterly magazine that has promoted “The Story of Stuff” to its subscribers and on its Web site, which reaches about 600,000 educators a month. “The one used out here in Oregon for global studies — it’s required — has only three paragraphs on climate change. So, yes, teachers are looking for alternative resources.”

Environmental education is still a young and variable field, according to Frank Niepold, the climate education coordinator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. There are few state or local school mandates on how to teach the subject.

The agency is seeking to change that, but in the interim many teachers are developing their own lesson plans on climate change, taking some elements from established sources like the National Wildlife Federation and others from less conventional ones like “The Story of Stuff.”

Ms. Leonard is self-educated on where waste goes and worked for Greenpeace to prevent richer nations from dumping their trash in poorer ones. She produced the video, with the Free Range Studios company, and with money from numerous nonprofit groups; the largest single giver was the Tides Foundation. She did so, she said, after tiring of traveling often to present her views at philanthropic and environmental conferences. She attributes the response to the video’s simplicity.

“A lot of what’s in the film was already out there,” Ms. Leonard said, “but the style of the animation makes it easy to watch. It is a nice counterbalance to the starkness of the facts.”

Meri Mehboob Kahin Aur Mila Kar Mujh Se

Sahir's poem on Taj Mahal reminds one of Ali Shariati's On the Plight of the Oppressed People. Like Ali Shariati, Sahir seeks to set standards for beauty and love.

A question that comes to mind: Beauty and Truth, are they two separate things? Could a magnificent monument - be it Taj Mahal, Egyptian Pyramids, large Cathedrals, or extensive Mosques - built on the involuntary sweat and blood of innocent people be ever considered beautiful?

I copy two different translations of the poem below.




Taj Mahal by Sahir Ludhianvi

For you, the Taj may be a monument of love;
you may adore this lovely spot
but, darling,
let's meet somewhere else!

In such royal places,
we-- the poor?
Regal opulence seen every which way,
two poor lovers-- here?
Really out-of-place!

Sweetheart, under this so-called symbol of love,
if only you'd seen the vulgar splurge of opulence.
Charmed you may be by royal mausoleums,
if only you'd thought
of our own dismal homes!

Countless millions are in love;
who can say their emotions aren’t real
just because they, like us, have no means
to put up an advertisement?

These mausoleums, these arrogant forts,
these pillars of royal eminence, these lush gardens:
In these very flowers and vines
runs the blood of our own ancestors, my love.

Don't you think they must also have been in love,
the people whose art and skill
made this monument so beautiful?
They and their loved ones now lie nameless,
in unmarked graves,without a single candle
yet lit for them.

These gardens, by the Jamuna [River],
this palace, the embroidered doors, walls and niches--
that's just how an emperor,
using his wealth and power,
mocks the love between us destitutes.

Could we meet somewhere else, darling ?

Translated by: Riz Rahim

Taj Mahal by Sahir Ludhianvi

The Taj, mayhap, to you may seem, a mark of love supreme
You may hold this beauteous vale in great esteem;
Yet, my love, meet me hence at some other place!

How odd for the poor folk to frequent royal resorts;
‘Tis strange that the amorous souls should tread the regal paths
Trodden once by mighty kings and their proud consorts.
Behind the facade of love my dear, you had better seen,
The marks of imperial might that herein lie screen’d
You who take delight in tombs of kings deceased,
Should have seen the hutments dark where you and I did wean.
Countless men in this world must have loved and gone,
Who would say their loves weren’t truthful or strong?
But in the name of their loves, no memorial is raised
For they too, like you and me, belonged to the common throng.

These structures and sepulchres, these ramparts and forts,
These relics of the mighty dead are, in fact, no more
Than the cancerous tumours on the face of earth,
Fattened on our ancestor’s very blood and bones.
They too must have loved, my love, whose hands had made,
This marble monument, nicely chiselled and shaped
But their dear ones lived and died, unhonoured, unknown,
None burnt even a taper on their lowly graves.

This bank of Jamuna, this edifice, these groves and lawns,
These carved walls and doors, arches and alcoves,
An emperor on the strength of wealth,
Has played with us a cruel joke.
Meet me hence, my love, at some other place.

Translation by: K.C. Kanda

Life's Little Instructions

Found this in my inbox today. Presents some useful points. Especially bcz of the last point, I felt that this advice was more than just think-good-feel-good self-centered absorption.

The 11 Rules To Change Our World

1. You be the change you dream of seeing (Thanks Mahatma Gandhi). "If everyone of us would sweep their own doorstep, the whole world would be clean," observed Mother Teresa. She was right.

2. Make time every day to reconnect to your highest ideals and boldest dreams. Without hope, people perish.

3. Leave every person you meet better than you found them. Life's too short to withhold encouragement and kindness.

4. See every setback as a stepping stone and every problem as a blessing in disguise. Contrary to what critics might say, these are NOT corny aphorisms. They are timeless truths of humanity. (And critics are just people too scared to grow their dreams anyway - pay no attention to them. The world needs more people lifting people up rather than putting people down).

5. Go the extra mile in everything you do - you don't need a title to be a leader. And on your deathbed, you'll never regret expressing the best within you.

6. Do what's right rather than what's easy. Being a great person isn't a popularity contest. Many of the greatest leaders were disliked because they refused to bend to the winds of public opinion. That's called Strength of Character.

7. Care for your health. You elevate the world by elevating yourself and your health really matters. Why be the richest person in the graveyard?

8. Tell your kids they are geniuses - and how much you adore them. Each of us are born geniuses but lose that gift within the first 6 years of our lives as we adopt the fears and limiting beliefs of those around us. Your kids are the leaders of the future. Grow their potential. Now.

9. Learn something new every day. As you grow, you begin to see possibilities you didn't have the eyes to see before. Read from an inspiring book, listen to an audio program, visit a good blog, go to a powerful workshop or have a conversation with an elder. One idea is all it takes to transform your life.

10. Keep your life simple. Please. The secret to success and happiness is building your life around a few important things. The person who tries to do everything accomplishes nothing.

11. Remember that life is a mirror and we receive what we give out. To get more joy, give more joy. To have more respect, give more respect. To realize your dreams, help others realize theirs.

By Robin Sharma, author of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

Also see a previous SM post related to this topic, Living in the Moment

A Poignant Contrast

Saw the following report on BBC today:

"A host of international stars including actor Chris Tucker, pop diva Kylie Minogue and Hollywood legend Robert de Niro have joined celebrations marking the opening of a new resort in Dubai.

A spectacular light show was put on at the unveiling of the new $1.5bn marine-themed facility built off the Gulf coast on an artificial island in the shape of a palm tree.

Organisers claimed that the fireworks display for the $20m party could be seen from space."

See the video here.

This is money speaking. I would have been more impressed if this was all organized (technically and logistically) by the locals, which I highly doubt they did.

This is the same Dubai from where a few days ago The Guardian reported the plight of poor migrant workers who are living in slave-like conditions.



Deep jis ka mahallaat hi mein jale
Chand logon ki khushiyon ko le kar chale
Voh jo saaye mein har maslehat ke pale
Aise dastoor ko, subh-e benoor ko
Main nahin manta! Main nahin jaanta!

- Jalib

A lamp that sheds light only on palaces
that caters to the whims of a chosen few
that flourishes in the shadow of compromise
this system, this light-starved morning
I refuse to acknowledge, I refuse to accept!

Guardian: Corporation's Green Swindle

The great green swindle
By Fred Pearce, The Guardian, October 22, 2008
Source

As consumers become more eco-conscious, companies will go to ever greater lengths to present themselves as environmentally friendly. Some make exaggerated or absurd claims, others resort to downright lies. Fred Pearce, whose new weekly Greenwash column launches on the Guardian website today, reports on a sinister trend - and appeals to readers to help stamp it out.

Back in the days of no-holds-barred advertising by Madison Avenue's finest, anything went. Drinking alcohol made you sexy, smoking cigarettes was good for your lungs and every washing powder contained a magic ingredient that made your whites super-white.

And guess what? Those days are back, at least for green advertising. As more and more customers demand environmental responsibility from companies, few large corporations with any sort of public profile now dare to enter the marketplace without a blizzard of sustainability audits and low-carbon-emissions targets. But that being so, the risk of being conned by slick corporate "greenwash" has never been greater, as the volume of complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) testifies.

The green claims coming from corporations can be absurdly general. Nearly everything we buy these days seems to be "sustainably sourced" or "environmentally friendly". Sometimes, though, they are crazily specific. Virgin Trains declares: "Our Pendolino trains emit 76% less CO2 than cars or domestic flights." But which cars, which flights, and how full are the trains?

Or plain bonkers. One brand of bottled water says its product contains "300% more oxygen".

In August, the ad industry's watchdog, the ASA, rapped oil company Shell's knuckles for trying to claim, in an advertisement in the Financial Times, that its $10bn investment in sucking tar sands out of the Canadian midwest was a contribution to a sustainable energy future. Tar sands contain bitumen. It takes a great deal of energy to turn them into something you can put in a fuel tank. Overall, the emissions from mining, refining and burning tar sands are between three and 10 times greater than for conventional oil. Shell's sleight of hand was to use the much-abused word "sustainability" to imply a green agenda when what it was really on about was keeping a sustainable flow of fuel out of its forecourt pumps. The ASA cried foul.

Earlier in the year, the agency also upheld complaints against Renault for branding its Twingo an "eco" car and picturing it with leaves blowing out of its tailpipe, even though its emissions are among the worst for a car of its size.

Advertising, says the ASA, "should always avoid the vague use of terms such as sustainable, green, non-polluting and so on".

In the real world, we have to admit, things can be nuanced. Lots of corporate claims - about carbon neutrality, for instance - hang on exactly what activities are being audited. Take Manchester airport, which was outed in a recent report from the sustainable development organisation, Forum for the Future. Last year the airport's owners pledged to make the airport carbon-neutral, with one small caveat: the target does not include the 200,000-plus flights into and out of the airport each year. As Forum for the Future observed, "this jars somewhat".

And what are we to make of Fiji Water's claims to be cutting the carbon footprint of its water by 25% and offsetting the rest? "Every drop is green," it says. But isn't the whole idea of bottling water on a remote South Pacific island and shipping it to your dinner table just a tiny bit barmy?

Equally questionable are the claims of financial institutions. Back in the days (oh, only a few weeks ago) when the City of London was concerned with something other than day-to-day corporate survival, the City of London Corporation launched a City Climate Pledge, under which finance houses would pledge to "measure and monitor" their carbon footprint. Good for them. Perhaps a few will follow the lead of HSBC, which has developed close links with the environment group WWF and has claimed since 2005 to be the world's first carbon-neutral bank.

But the pledge looks suspiciously like greenwash. Companies simply have to fill out a form detailing their CO2 plans and they can use the pledge logo. "Companies using the logo will be recognised as exemplar sustainable businesses [able to] attract consumers who are becoming more discerning about the credentials of businesses they deal with," says the flyer. Not bad for just filling out a form. Especially as there doesn't seem to be any follow-up or auditing process involved.

But as with the efforts of Manchester airport and Fiji Water, there remains a rather large elephant in the living room. The carbon footprint of finance houses is not about whether they offset executive flights or put double glazing in the boardroom; it is about their investment decisions. The press release put out by the City of London said the pledge would "encourage City organisations to use their global influence to affect the behaviour of companies around the UK and the world". Could the City be about to impose a freeze on cash for tar sands or coal-fired power stations? Not so fast. The pledge itself makes no mention of this.

I would have expected City institutions to be falling over themselves to sign up to the pledge. But 11 months after companies were first asked to sign the pledge, and three months after its public launch, the pledge's website is still promising that a list of signatories "will be available shortly", and further inquiries revealed that just one company - Deutsche Bank - had so far completed registration. Right now the pledge looks like a one-day PR wonder to green the City's image, with no substance at all. Or maybe they are all just a little busy right now.

To try to keep up with the welter of environmental claims, test the green spin and spot the green frauds, the Guardian is launching today a regular online column, Greenwash, and calls on readers to submit their examples of the fraudulent, mendacious, confusing, ignorant or just daft claims jostling for our attention.

Along the way, we may get to the heart of a dilemma that faces us all. Can we shop our way to sustainability? Are some products so green it is better to buy two of them rather than one? Or are our own consumer lifestyles, suffused in greenwash, the problem? Is there really no alternative to putting away our credit cards, pulling on our thickest jumper and heading for the hills?

We won't be limiting our investigations to corporations - we'll have politicians in our sights, too. Scraping away at the green patina on the new-look, Zac Goldsmith-inspired Conservative environmental policies, puncturing Brown's grumpy greenery and unpicking the carbon contortions of the coal-loving Celts. And now that both Barack Obama and John McCain claim environmental credentials, we'll be looking for greenwash at the White House too.

And we won't forget that, even in the corporate world, greenwash is not just a defensive mantra to help maintain business as usual. Some people are out there pushing the environmental agenda with sinister intent. Take, for example, the green rebranding of Steptoe and Son.

Last year the EU introduced the charmingly named WEEE directive, which stands for Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment. The aim is to prevent millions of tonnes of toxic TVs, personal computers, toasters and other electronic goods being dumped into landfill each year. Instead, they have to be recycled. You may not have noticed this because there are no laws stopping you putting that laptop into your dustbin. But corporations and retailers are charged with making sure most of our electronic waste gets recycled. The question is how.

Some of this stuff is making its way to a handful of hi-tech metals recycling plants in Europe. But most is going to the developing world. Often it has paperwork claiming it will be refurbished and re-used, but nobody has the resources to police the system, so in practice much of it ends up in primitive workshops in India and west Africa and China, where it is stripped out, boiled up, dunked in acid or smashed to smithereens by unskilled, low-paid and frequently child labour. I have seen this "recycling" industry at work in Delhi, where barefooted children as young as eight dunk circuit boards in barrels of acid to remove traces of copper.

Last month, a charity called Computer Aid tried to blow the whistle on this. Computer Aid is one of the few organisations that is genuinely and safely refurbishing and reusing old computers, many of them going to schools in Kenya. It fears this "good" and socially responsible recycling will be undermined by the bad guys. Why is this happening? Partly because factories in India badly want the metals in your old computer. And partly because too many European companies have a no-questions-asked policy towards every broker and cowboy willing to take troublesome waste off their hands. As one industrial supplier told me last year, "A lot of these guys don't even have addresses, just mobile phone numbers."

Recycling may be a new term, but the trade is not new. Until the 60s, recyclers plied the streets of Britain with a horse and cart collecting old stuff that could be sold on. The characters in the television show Steptoe and Son were the archetypes. They have been succeeded by a generation of car-crushers and cable-burners. Nobody called it green then: now they do. But the same wide boys are in charge, so if anybody has their mobile numbers, do please get in touch.

We are too ready to suspend our critical faculties with anybody claiming to be green. But a great deal of recycling is not quite what it seems. What happens to recycled glass bottles, for instance? As we post them in the recycling bin, we presume they go to make new bottles and cut out the energy cost of making new glass from sand. My local supermarket bin in south London proudly proclaims that recycling one glass bottle "saves enough energy to power a TV for 20 minutes".

Well, it would if they turned the glass back into new bottles. But it turns out that often they don't. Much of London's recycled glass is actually crushed and sold to construction firms as a substitute for sand, or an ingredient in a substitute for asphalt such as Glasphalt - "specially treated so it won't puncture tyres," as one recycling website puts it. That's a relief, but how many assiduous recyclers trying to do their bit for the environment realise they are actually helping build new roads?

How many more green scams, cons and generous slices of wishful thinking are out there? We want to name and shame them before the whole green movement gets a bad reputation. "Green" has another meaning after all - naive. And we cannot afford that.

Greenwash: Fred Pearce on the con of green electricity

How to spot a fake

It's greenwash if it's ...

• Ludicrously general
All claims for products being environmentally friendly or pollution-free should have evidence that clearly supports them.

• Overspecific
Be on guard against numbers or other "facts" that can only be true in specific circumstances, such as Virgin Trains' claims to have 76% fewer emissions than planes or cars (see main feature). Often these come with a discreet asterisk referencing an obscure study - look the study up, or ask the Guardian's new Greenwash column to do so on your behalf.

• Reliant on nature pictures
Most pernicious, perhaps, are attempts to green products by association, such as cars driving through verdant meadows.

• Backed up by a tame boffin
Companies like to spotlight their researchers working on renewable energy, even if it makes up less than 1% of their business. Anybody can keep a tame boffin: to mean something, such research must be a significiant part of the company's business. (Incidentally, has anyone met a researcher? We would like to hear.)

• Simply absurd
If a claim sounds absurd, it probably is. Inside knowledge can help you blow the whistle, but a nose for the absurd is just as good.

How to spot the real thing

It might just be true if ...

• What the company says matches what they do
Rob Harrison of Ethical Consumer thinks the most important question is: "Is their position consistent right across the group?" Some car manufacturers advertise their green cars but continue to lobby for lower carbon-reduction targets. Look for companies who match what they say and do, such as Peugeot, one of the only car manufacturers likely to come in under the European emissions targets in 2010.

• The company is in partnership with an independent ethical organisation
Forming a partnership with an independent organisation is voluntary and doesn't have to mean much: groups such as the Ethical Trade Initiative or the Carbon Disclosure Project have little power. All the same, it's an indicator of willingness. Some NGOs are more picky: their validation is, therefore, worth more.

• They take that extra, obsessive step
Evangelistically green companies such as Lush, Co-operative Food or Sawdays can never resist the chance to talk about the environment, and they've all taken radical steps within their own organisations. Lush uses minimal amounts of packaging and gives money to anti-road groups, Co-operative Food has clad its entire HQ in solar panels, and Sawdays publishers operates from zero-carbon offices.

• They are green innovators
DIY Kyoto came up with the Wattson, a device for measuring how much electricity your house is using. BSkyB, headed by James Murdoch, has brought in the auto-standby device, which senses if the box hasn't been used in the two hours after 11pm, and automatically goes to standby.

• They set themselves targets
Quantifiable targets set for some specific time in the future - "we will reduce our water use by such and such by 2010" - are an indicator of seriousness: they are handing you and the press a stick to beat them with if they miss the target. In January, Tesco, for example, pledged to reduce its carbon footprint by 50% by 2020.

• They take action even if it may harm business
Marks & Spencer's decision to charge for plastic bags, British Gas's encouragement of reduced use: these are not immediately obvious comfort zones for money-making enterprises. You can be cynical, or you can clap.

• They have been audited
Some companies get a third party in to check they're doing it right: Eurostar called in Environmental Resources Management (ERM) to go over their plans with a toothcomb before they kicked off their big Tread Lightly initiative. Some companies - the Guardian, for example - are so obsessive they will even audit their social report. This could be seen as just showing off.

• They make it easy for you to find all this out
If you can't easily find the information, be suspicious and ring up the company. Other possible sources of info: Ethical Consumer, FTSE4Good Index, the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, and the ASA (which may be considering cases against the company you're looking into).

Bibi van der Zee

• Please send your examples of greenwash to greenwash@guardian.co.uk

An Intimate Encounter

A selection from “An Intimate History of Humanity” by Theodore Zeldin. Some good food for thought!

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“I see humanity as a family that has hardly met. I see the meeting of people, bodies, thoughts, emotions or actions as the start of most change. Each link created by a meeting is like a filament, which, if they were all visible, would make the world look as though it is covered with gossamer. Every individual is connected to others, loosely or closely, by a unique combination of filaments, which stretch across the frontiers of space and time. Every individual assembles past loyalties, present needs and visions of the future in a web of different contours, with the help of heterogeneous elements borrowed from other individuals; and this constant give-and-take has been the main stimulus of humanity’s energy. Once people see themselves as influencing one another, they cannot be merely victims: anyone, however modest, then becomes a person capable of making a difference, minute though it might be, to the shape of reality. New attitudes are not promulgated by law, but spread, almost like an infection, from one person to another.

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“Justice – humanity’s oldest dream – has remained elusive because the art of doing this is only gradually being learned. In ancient times, justice was blind, unable to recognize the humanity that is in everybody. In modern times it has been one-eyed, narrowly focused on the principles of impersonality, imposing the same rules on everybody so as to avoid nepotism and favouritism, but unable to notice what people feel when they are treated impersonally and coldly, however justly or efficiently. The impersonal monetary compensations of the welfare state have not been able to heal the wounds of unfairness, because nothing can compensate adequately for a wasted life, least of all when even in the USA, which has studied efficiency to its limits, it takes seven tax dollars to get one additional dollar of income into the hands of a poor person. Only with both eyes open is it possible to see that humans have always needed not just food and shelter, health and education, but also work that is not soul-destroying and relationships that do more than keep loneliness out; humans need to be recognised as persons. This book is history of persons.

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“ ‘My life is a failure.’ Those were the worlds with which I began this book, and I finish it with the story of a murderer who repeated that phrase many times, until one day . . .

Half a minute is enough to transform an apparently ordinary person into an object of hatred, an enemy of humanity. He committed a murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Then in his desolate jail, half a minute was enough to transform him again, into a hero. He saved a man’s life and was pardoned. But when he got home he found his wife living with someone else and his daughter knew nothing of him. He was unwanted, so he decided that he might as well be dead.

His attempt at suicide was also a failure. A monk summoned to his bedside said to him, ‘Your story is terrifying, but I can do nothing for you. My own family is wealthy, but I gave up my inheritance and I have nothing but debts. I spend everything I have finding homes for the homeless. I can give you nothing. You want to die, and there is nothing to stop you. But before you kill yourself, come and give me a hand. Afterwards, you can do what you like.’

Those words changed the murderer’s world. Somebody needed him: at last he was no longer superfluous and disposable. He agreed to help. And the world was never the same again for the monk, who had been feeling overwhelmed by the amount of suffering around him, to which all his efforts were making only a minute difference. The chance encounter with the murdered gave him the idea which was to shape his whole future: faced by a person in distress, he had given him nothing, but asked something from his instead. The murdered later said to the monk: ‘If you had given me money, or a room, or a job, I would have restarted my life of crime and killed someone else. But you needed me.’ That was how Abbe Pierre’s Emmaus movement for the very poor was born, from an encounter of two totally different individuals who lit up a light in each other’s heart. These two men were not soul-mates in the ordinary, romantic meaning of that word, but each owes the other the sense of direction which guides their life today.

It is in the power of everybody, with a little courage, to hold out a hand to someone different, to listen, and to attempt to increase, even by a tiny amount, the quantity of kindness and humanity in the world. But it is careless to do so without remembering how previous efforts have failed, and how it has never been possible to predict for certain how a human being will behave. History, with its endless procession of passers-by, most of whose encounters have been missed opportunities, has so far been largely a chronicle of ability gone to waste. But next time two people meet, the result could be different. That is the origin of anxiety, but also of hope, and hope is the origin of humanity.”

(pg. 465-72)