by Hideo Shingu* and Barbara Sundberg Baudot**
Abstract
While environmental degradation quietly accelerates, part of human society prospers in the deceiving splendor of great wealth in things, other parts aspire to this affluent life style and the rest of humanity remain in various levels of poverty—be it relative or absolute, living either lightly on the land as their ancestors before them or in the squalor and filth of new urban and rural slums.
Yet, all human beings regardless of their condition are bound to be concerned about the planet's future, for themselves, their children, and successive generations. It would not be pleasant to live in a milieu bereft of the resources it once offered and enveloped in poisonous gases and contaminated waters. There is need to worry now as millions of people scratch barren earth to grow food, swelter in endless days of heat waves, and when cloned animals and genetically modified seeds are beginning to replace or contaminate the rich varieties of hardy plants and animals nature had placed on earth. Worry is even more pressing when, in the not so distant future, millions more people may freeze in climates heretofore warmed by gulf streams. And finally, in addition to the physical discomforts and inconveniences brought by a sick planet, everyone must be most concerned about the damage to the character and soul of humanity that comes with vanishing nature.
In the middle of the 19th century, John Stuart Mills prophetically described the negative impact socio-economic progress and development would have on the natural environment and how this would affect the life and more importantly the character and soul of humanity:
A world from which solitude is extirpated, is a very poor ideal. Solitude (・・・) is essential to any depth of meditation or of character; and solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur is the cradle of thoughts and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society could ill do without. There is not much satisfaction in contemplating a world with nothing left to the spontaneous activity of nature; with every rood of land brought into cultivation, which is capable of growing food for human beings, every flowery waste or natural pasture ploughed up, all quadrupeds or birds which are not domesticated for man's use rooted out, and scarcely a place left where a wild shrub or flower could grow without being eradicated as a weed in the name of improved agriculture.(1)
Given the profound effects of environmental change on the whole human condition, a holistic approach must be taken to design and implement policies to discourage and put an end to further degradation of the planet. Unlike other major areas of public policy such as industrial development, social welfare, economic growth or poverty reduction, the protection of the environment involves all aspects of life in society and all dimensions of the human experience including the spiritual.
Environmental protection must thus be seen through the prisms of religion and philosophy, as well as that of science. It is only with a sense of purpose informed by these fundamental sources of knowledge that legislators, entrepreneurs, scientists, representatives of non governmental organizations and ordinary citizens can meaningfully cooperate in the task of preserving the environment with a profound sense of meaning and a shared feeling of urgency. To take any lesser route to environmental policy making is to rely upon limited solutions, for example using plugs to slow down leaks in a dam, while one is aware that the pressure of water continues to mount and will eventually force the barrier to collapse. Given the magnitude of the environment problems facing the world, partial and parochial solutions cannot reasonably be expected to stave off catastrophe. Yet, this is the way policies are drawn up today.
There are great obstacles to designing and implementing measures that would serve the long term interests of humankind. Private and public decision makers are too often inclined to abide by the wishes of constituents who uncommonly see beyond their short term interests, narrow prejudices, and material values. To adopt major policies that will stave off further destruction of the environment is the most serious responsibility facing humanity. The destiny of human life may depend on it.
This paper offers, in Part I through Part IV, a holistic approach in arguing for ideas that are intended to move constituents as well as policy makers to take a broader and more caring look at the issues at stake:
In Part I, the importance of knowledge and feelings about Nature to be gained from religion, philosophy and science is emphasized. Philosophy and religion rarely companion with knowledge gained from scientific thinking in public and private policy making, but in designing the wide ranging and long term measures to protect the environment, these sources of human knowing and action offer dimensions essential to this task.
In Part II, reflections on human nature are presented for the purpose of having the clear image of the best way to direct the effort of policy making which will be discussed in Part III.
In Part III, the policy making by different actors, including national governments, local governments, and civil society is taken up. In outlining the problems, responsibilities and activities carried out by these actors, the underlying roles of religion, philosophy and science are again evoked.
Finally in Part IV a model showing the engineering of a large scale solar-energy project is presented.
Part I
The roles of religion, philosophy, and science as foundations for human action to protect the environment.
The role religion plays in influencing social behavior is critical for believers and non-believers in relation to preserving the environment. Any seeming proof of the existence of God for believers is indirect; the existence of God cannot be proved or disproved. Like poetic inspiration, knowledge gained from religion derives from intuitive or mystical experience, revelation as the gift of grace, and spiritual insight. This form of knowing is beyond, or rather outside the philosophical and the scientific. For believers and non believers receptivity to this way of knowing inspires wonder, empathy, and an ethic of caring in relation to Nature. These thoughts and sentiments are crucial to the development of holistic policies.
Philosophy is an essential way of approaching the type of thinking that should guide policy making to protect the environment. As described by leading 20th century Thomist and Aristotelian thinker, Jacques Maritain, the instruments of thought philosophy employs include intelligible perception, abstractive intuition and judgment. Animated by the human intellect, these instruments provide legitimate sources of knowledge of a meta-physical nature. Philosophical thinking questions the primary principles of being, including identity, unity, finality and causality. It distills the intelligible contents from sense experience.(2) Because it seeks the essence or ‘being' which exists in things but is not perceptible to the senses, philosophy so understood is essential to environmental decision making. Many phenomena of Nature are imperceptible to the senses. By applying its tools and methods of thinking, philosophy can shed light on them. Such illuminations are essential to guide decisions aimed at preserving the environment.
Natural science is the third foundation of knowledge. It focuses on what the senses see as "what is." This must be measurable and observable. It formulates laws that are demonstrable concerning the characteristics and observed behaviors of the object under study. Since the advent of modernity, positivism practically monopolizes what humanity considers knowledge. It is commonly believed that whatever has no meaning for scientists is invalid. Thus, only methods of experimental and mathematical analyses produce authentic knowledge.
Fortunately for society, all scientists do not share this view. Many of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century, rejecting both the mechanistic view of the world and the limitations of their discipline joined philosophers and religious thinkers in their insatiable quests for understanding the origins and essences of "things" in the universe. These scientists include Jeans, Eddington, Einstein, Weyl, and Lecompte de Nouy, to mention a few. Science offers the physical laws and measures that can address the immediate and observable problems of the environment. The wisdom of the scientists, whose mental horizons extend beyond their narrow fields, substantiates the necessity for a more holistic approach to the destruction of the environment.
1 The Role of Religion
From time immemorial, religion provided answers to the questions, hopes and fears of humankind. In the East as in the West, in all known civilizations and so-called primitive societies, it met human longings for a sense of purpose, it provided a basis for social organization and morality, and it defined the relation between Man and Nature. Bewildered by natural phenomena, from the thunder to the eclipses of the sun, the distant ancestors of modern men and women wrapped Nature in sacred garments. They prayed to their divinities and consulted their oracles for protection and guidance in a terrifying and yet wonderful world.
Everything changed with the advent of modernity and the reign of instrumental rationality. People learned to use reason and experimentation to understand the world and its natural phenomena. In many respects, this was remarkable progress. It meant liberation from the shadows of ignorance and superstition and from the often abusive power of institutionalized religions. But, in the past two centuries, the progress of reason was accompanied by a gradual rejection of the spiritual realm and by the development of a vulgar form of human arrogance. Despite the messages to humanity from profoundly philosophical and religious scientists, including Newton, Darwin and Einstein, technology has become a new religion. The mysteries of life and nature have ceased to inspire awe and are seemingly amenable to explanation and manipulation.
A majority of people especially in the technologically developed regions, rather than hold to and reflect on the strengths that sincere beliefs in a transcendent power had given them, have left institutional religion and its constraints on their freedom. They also appear to have abandoned a sense of the inexplicable sacredness and spiritual dimension of life. What followed is the emergence of a vacuous uniculture of materialism and consumerism. Post-modernism is seemingly spiritually empty. To satisfy some unconscious longing for meaning, many people have resorted to new forms of sectarianism and religiosity. This is observed in the reactive resurgence in different parts of the world of various types of religious fundamentalism and false spiritualism. The current mix of arrogance, rejection of the spiritual, and resurgence of fundamentalism evokes the lesson of an old Chinese saying: "懲於羹而吹韲兮:One blows salad to cool it after one has been hurt hastily tasting hot soup."(3)
Today it seems wise to reaffirm the place of time honored religious thinking in modern life and to consider what faith in a higher Consciousness gives to humankind and what it does not provide. It is doubtful that the ethos of modernity has the power to provide a moral and spiritual basis for the radical changes that are necessary for serious protection of the environment and ecological integrity of the planet. Therefore high value has to be placed again in the mystery and sacredness of Nature.
There need not be a divide between believers and non-believers in a Higher Consciousness when it comes to nature. To think otherwise is misplaced faith as the following sections suggest.
1.1 Nothing in this world can be "explained" as truth.
If you see an ice cube floating in a glass of water and ask your friend, the scientist:
"Why does ice float on water?"
Your friend might answer:
"The specific gravity of ice is less than that of water."
Does this answer mean anything? Your friend did not say anything new. So, you may ask again:
"Why is the specific gravity of ice smaller than that of water?"
Your friend might answer:
"In ice, the bonding between the hydrogen atoms is arranged in such a way that the ice become bulkier than water for equivalent amounts of water molecules."
Then you may again ask:
"Why is the bond between hydrogen atoms of such a nature?
The answer to this question may include an explanation of the orbits of electrons surrounding hydrogen nuclei. Questions and answers may continue to follow in succession, seemingly endlessly. The ultimate question must be:
"Why does the world exist?"
We see here the impossibility that any living person can give the ultimate answer to the infinite "why?." But, we do know that if ice were composed in such a way that it should sink in water, all the ice floating on the sea would have sunk to the bottom of the ocean and consequently, earth would have been too cold to support human life as we know it.
Similar things can be said about the position of the earth in the solar system. Why the earth orbits around the sun in a position so fortuitous to favor life, no one can answer. It seems it just happens to be so.
1.2 God is not responsible.
If you seek what is common to all religions in relation to understanding God's power, it is likely you will see that believers tend to attribute their fortunes and misfortunes to God. Profound thinking on the nature of God, however, reveals that God cannot be "responsible" for what occurs in human life. Plato understood this when he wrote the famous words theos anaitios, which means "God is not responsible."(4)
Unless people understand that whatever happens to them in daily life is not attributable to Providence and that they alone are responsible for fortune and misfortune, the relationship between God and humankind is socially unsettling. For example, the failure of individuals and society to accept responsibility for what occurs on earth leads to a morbid or passive sense of fatalism. In ancient China, emperors found that such thinking resulted in little motivation to work. These believers understood, unlike Plato, that no matter what they did, the outcome of any effort was predetermined by fate governed by Heaven (God).
This problem is recurrent and ubiquitous in the world and has existed throughout history. An amusing example is offered by the French philosopher, Denis Diderot, in his famous novel: Jacques the Fatalist and his Master. In the narrative, Jacques recounts the belief that fortune is "written on high." Yet he continues to pursue his own interests and cleverly makes his own decisions according to the particular set of ethics his philosophy generates. He is oblivious to imminent danger in all of his pursuits. In Japan, people used to think that if they disturbed Nature too much, they would be punished by God. In general, the notion of God was synonymous with Nature.
Today religion -- monotheistic or pantheistic, based on revelation or on the teachings of wise philosophers – can instill in human minds capacities for understanding the sacred and for humility towards the beauty and the richness of the universe. Such humility is a prerequisite for accepting responsibility for treating one's environment with respect.
1.3 I believe because it is absurd
In summarizing the role of religion in society, one is lead to conclude that human beings should not be so swept away by apparent advances in science and technology as to believe they are the masters of Nature. The more human beings think they know about Nature and Life, the more they must recognize how little they know. Nature is to be respected, but masters rarely respect their servants.
The notion that God knows and performs all things, yet is not responsible for anything is quite illogical. It cannot be scientifically explained. That is why one cannot know God but can only have faith and seek to understand God indirectly. Such an idea was expressed by the early Christian father Tertullian who is quoted having said: credo quia absurdum, translated as "I believe because it is absurd."(5)
All contradicting propositions are logically absurd. When a proposition is logical, it is established and tested according to axioms of human reason. If logic is applied to the relationship between the human being and God, it will evaporate at some level in incongruity. Human thinking cannot prove metaphysics or explain knowledge that comes connaturally through revelation and inspiration. This idea is concretized in Saint Anselm's proposition: "God can in no way be disproved so therefore His existence is certain".(6) To be in "no way disproved" is a double negation. What we can affirm about God, however, is that His existence transcends human vision. Any one who reports seeing God has not seen God. The double negation is not disprovable. It cannot mean affirmation.
Therefore, God can never be said either to exist or not to exist. In this case, there are only two possibilities to choose from in making one's decision to believe or not to believe in God. One is to believe like Tertullian, who accepts the illogical knowledge of God, and the other, not to believe, yet to respect believers because there is no way to disprove the existence of the God—whose nature transcends the capacities of perception in the logical world circumscribed by the limits of human intelligence. Such considerations render religion meaningful both to believers and non-believers. Thus all humanity can live with a sense of wonder and awe before the great mystery that enshrouds Nature.
2 The role of philosophy
The ancient Chinese philosophy elaborated in Lao-Zi's writings starts with the sentence: "道可道非常道:The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao(7)". The meaning of this statement is difficult to grasp, but if one interprets it to imply that Tao or the "way" is not definable, this phrase brings to light the essence of philosophy. Although the book of Lao-Zi became the central text of Taoism, the writings in Lao-Zi are not sermons or exhortations to believe in Tao. Rather the book describes the essence of the metaphysics of nature. An even older Chinese text interpreting I-Ching, that is Ji Ci Sheng Zhuan, (繋辞上伝), believed to be written by Confucius, suggests this idea as well. It contains the following sentence: "Metaphysics means the Tao and Physics means the container of things."(8) So it may be understood that Tao is the core of philosophy which is unfathomable to the human intellect.
Aristotle suggests in Metaphysics "that this science (philosophy) is the study that speculates about first principles and causes" and philosophy is "divine science because God is the sole or chief possessor of this sort of knowledge. Accordingly, although all other sciences are more necessary than this one (philosophy), none is more excellent"(9) . He further explains that "it is the function of the philosopher, the student of the whole reality in its essential nature, to investigate also the principles of syllogistic reasoning(10)". He explains that the syllogism, the logic, is based on axioms as the foundation of the proof of any propositions and the "starting point" of all the axioms is the axiom that denies that the same thing can be and not be (the law of contradiction). However, when the argument questions the validity of this axiom itself, there is no way of demonstrating the proof of the answer because there is no foundation for reference.
Jacques Maritain substantiates the writings of the ancient philosophers. He reaffirms that while there is nothing in the intellect which is not originally derived from sensory experience, it is the intellect which extricates from "sense experiences and raises to the white heat of immaterial visibility, objects which the senses cannot uncover in things which the intellect sees, --that is the mystery of abstractive intuition." (11)And, in those objects that it sees, the intellect approaches, although it cannot demonstrate, the transcendent objects which are not contained in the world of sensory experience. It is a way of thinking and knowing but not of empirically demonstrating. It provides markers, not truths. But these instruments and markers are essential to give meaning to life.
‘Organon' is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "an instrument of thought or knowledge, a means of reasoning, discovery, etc.; especially a system of rules or principles of demonstration or investigation." The "organon" is also the collective title of Aristotle's treatises on logic. These tools for thinking and acquiring knowledge are the basic instruments used by other disciplines in their quest for knowledge and understanding. Aside from providing the necessary instruments for getting and organizing knowledge philosophy has no direct utility in modern life, while the other disciplines are useful in the sense that they are building stores of scientific knowledge.
In the modern world, everything that has utility has value and in this sense money is probably the most useful object. Making increasing amounts of it can be gained by studying business and economics. Aristotle's organon facilitates these intellectual pursuits the end of which is to enrich the entrepreneur.
In order to come to their essence, philosophical analysis of the instruments of thought or knowledge involves what seems to be illogical. This enquiry leads to the question whether or not there are contradictions in Nature. Aristotle found that this quest for truth drew close to the realm of God. In philosophy, there is no final truth or answer to the question, each question leads to another in infinite regression. What philosophy does may be stated as Cogito ad Infinitum, I think without an end, unless the philosopher decides to stop the questioning at some chosen point before attaining what is unattainable and indemonstrable given the limitations of the human intellect. Although the process is infinite, it is not futile. On every stage of infinite regress some knowledge is gained and partial answers are suggested. For Aristotle the process stops as it approaches the realm of God.
If one should think he or she has found and understood the essential premise of derivative premises, the solution cannot be valid: it is only illusion. For those whose goal it is to pursue objects that have utility, philosophy may be a waste of time. However, if one seeks the essence of life, other knowledge with use value can never totally satisfy the curious and contemplative soul.
3 The Role of Science
Science is the art of using systems of rules or principles of demonstration, i.e. the organon to derive concepts and build theories that are useful to human life. Examples include words that describe technologies used in building computers, deriving medicines, conceiving vehicles, and so forth. The disciplines of mathematics, physics, chemistry, economics, and law are shaped by ideas built with the organon.
The essence of logic is to prove the validity of a proposition in reference to certain axioms or premises. The validity of a proposition depends on the ability to demonstrate what is scientifically known and the premises of the demonstration must be scientifically known.(12) A proposition is proved false if there is a contradiction in the basic premise, in other words if reductio ad absurdum is shown. Anything found to be false is not permitted in the world of science where everything must be logical. In everyday life what concerns people can be limited to what comes from clever use of the science and technology.
People for the sake of the environment need to awaken to recognize as sheer nonsense, the idea that everything can be explained by science and subjected to the power of new techniques. Humankind can ill afford to lose sense of the intrinsic value, beauty and sacredness of Nature. To be remembered is the fact that Nature was not created by human technology or instrumental rationality.
Science, however, has major contributions to make. It teaches knowledge that is indispensable to ascertain how people should live and prosper. . Knowledge of energy is one of the most important insights derived from science. All living organisms must use energy to function. Having adequate supplies of energy is the key issue for human survival. The science of energy also reveals that the use of energy is always accompanied by an irreversible degradation of the state of nature, according to the law of entropy. This scientific knowledge informs humanity that sustaining life in balance with Nature requires using energy with utmost care and frugality.
Summary of Part I
The above considerations on the role of religion, philosophy and science may well be understood in reference to the Medieval Islamic Philosophical texts. Take for example the following verse by the Toledan poet, Al-Waqqashi which is sited in the famous narrative "Hayy Ibn Yaqzan: Alive, Son of Awake," by the 12th century philosopher Ibn Tufayl:(13)
Afflicted I am, because all that mortals know
Are two things and no more;
A truth whose acquisition is impossible,
And a falsehood whose acquisition is of no use.
Every day social behaviors are carried out and assessed by reference to some essential basis or value. When seeking the reason for a particular behavior, inevitably this quest leads to an endless pursuit for the reason of the reason in infinite regression. In short we seek the "absolute" upon which our judgments are based. The human intellect is incapable of demonstrating the ultimate answer since it cannot escape its earthbound nature.
There are three ways to confront this situation, or aporia as it is called in Greek.
1. Religion seeks the absolute answer in God. One simply has faith and no further question is pursued. Faith need not be demonstrated but reality shows that responsibility for all social behaviors exists in humanity itself.
2. Philosophy searches the place of the absolute by thinking without a premise. Philosophers know that thinking without a premise itself is a premise, so that philosophy must delve into a world of paradox. This situation is inevitable if one seeks an answer to the aporia without resort to God. It shows that "utility" is not the telos (purpose) of life nor does it provide us with a sense of meaning in life.
3. Science abandons seeking an answer to the aporia. It is based on the premise that allows no contradiction in its proof of any scientific evidence or theory. It demonstrates rules of nature of particular relevance to the subject of this article, that modest use of energy is imperative for sustainable life of humankind.
Part II
Human nature
In order to find out the most effective direction toward which the actions needed to be taken by political actors and institutions, it is indispensable to have a clear image of the nature of humankind who plays the drama within the arena shown in Part I. For this purpose, let us see what one can discover from history, the kind of motivations that drove people to change norms of social behavior.
In ancient China (BC4-3), there were two opposing schools of opinion on human nature. One is represented by 孟子:Meng-Zi who taught that humankind is born good natured and any misconduct was due to poor training and education in the formative years(14). He claimed that education can protect the person's inherent good nature. His equivalent among leading Western Enlightenment political thinkers was Jean Jacques Rousseau.
The other school was led by 荀子:Xun-Zi. In a section of his book, entitled Xun-Zi, he offers in specific terms that human beings are born bad natured. By the words "bad natured," he means that people are selfish and greedy. He states that "People give private profit first priority because altruism and all non-profit behavior is false or hypocritical.(15)" Western enlightenment thinkers including Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Adam Smith would tend to agree with him.
Meng-Zi's theory that people are by nature good is more popular than Xun-Zi's theory. While this may be simply explained as wishful thinking, it is probably generally true, judging from ratios of people who conform to social norms to those who do not. Moreover there is ample evidence that people are often willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of others.
There is a third school both in the East and West who saw the human being, as neither good nor bad. Gao-Zi who was contemporary with Meng-Zi and Xun-Zi, is known by the saying "Human nature is neither good nor evil, just as water can flow in either direction".(16) His Western counterpart is Maritain who saw the human nature is torn between two poles: the material pole which he calls the "individual" and the spiritual pole which he calls the "person." The Individual is rooted in the material being, or the ego. According to Maritain, they are fragments of species caught in a web of cosmic and social forces and bound by their laws. In the modern market society, the virtuous individual is paradoxically aggressive, selfish, greedy and competitive.(17) These attributes make the world economy flourish, while nature groans.
From the perspective of the environment, the individual and the person vie for influence on social attitudes and economic behavior. Since everyone is both an individual and a person and is pulled between the poles of selfishness and selflessness, it may be understandable how a few people, comfortable in their selfish individualism, can draw many more people into behaviors which are environmentally destructive.
Take for example factories which emit polluting wastes. If the owner of one factory starts freely bilging pollutants into the atmosphere and into a river and makes a profit from this careless behavior, the owners of other factories, even naturally responsible ones, will follow suit. Not to do so can mean loss of their market shares as well as profits. In this way, the good will of the person is overcome by the intentions and actions of a few insensitive and ignorant individuals.
Extrapolating from the teachings of Meng-Zi, the degradation of environment that comes with economic growth and affluent living can be eliminated by good social education. If one shares the view of Xun-Zi, the protection of the environment would be straight forward. Xun-Zi observing that human kind gives priority to making profits, would advise the Government to advocate policies which guarantee that actions for environmental protection are profitable.
Such a way of regulating human behavior addresses the deficiencies of Adam Smith's theory of laissez faire. This theory assumes that the public good is always maximized by individuals seeking profit. Smith claims that such private vices automatically result in the common good through the functioning of the "invisible hand" in the market place(18). Where environmental protection is concerned, this invisible hand cannot act in the interest of the common good. This is because the environmentally destructive by-products of the production processes are public goods and as such are not captured in supply curves of producers. Thus, despite the apparent success of the invisible hand in the free market society, the destruction of nature through over consumption of resources and pollution has always persisted.
Summary of Part II
Total free run of activities of profit seeking human nature, the laissez faire principle, guided by the "invisible hand" will lead to the temporal prosperity of humankind, as long as the exploitation of nature is possible. However, for the purpose of the protection of environment, setting the limit to the allowance of energy usage, national and international, is imperative. The laissez faire under the guidance of the "visible hand" is necessary.
Part III
Role of the political system
This part examines approaches to the protection of the environment for the sake of human survival. It considers aspects of the social structure, including central governments, local governments and civil societies, to determine what these can contribute to arresting continued environmental degradation and it considers how the sources of knowledge visited above can inform this work.
Political systems are analogous to machines whose function is to take in resources and transform them into goods for the market. The political system, like the desalination plant described at the end of this paper, is complex. It includes interdependent parts and a framework in which it operates. The framework can be the territoriality of a sovereign state or as broad as the planet if we are considering universal international organizations.
The interdependent parts are the institutions and the actors, interrelating through their multiple functions. Key functions of the system relevant to environmental policy making include socialization of the citizens. This task includes education and transmission of social values. Other key functions are the communication of ideas, interest articulation, policy formation and implementation, and assessment of the outcomes of the policies adopted. The actors involved in environment policy making discussed below are the national government, the local government, and civil society.
At the national level, environmental policies compete with other objectives of state policies. To get on the national agenda requires the ability to compete effectively against sectoral interests for national attention. In order to affect policies changes in favor of the environment, proponents of policy change must convince prevailing powers of the urgency of the issues to be addressed.
Macro policies are adopted at the national level. Their adoption is the end of a long process that often begins at the local level. And it is at the local level that they are implanted. In this part, the example of the importance of local politics is offered by the role of the prefecture in Japan.
Civil society is a composite of non governmental institutions including well organized and not so well organized interest groups and citizen movements. Civil society articulates the concerns and interests which are to be pursued by the government. It is the activism and convictions of civil society that will have a decided impact on the policy outcomes of the political process. In this paper the importance of the media in the formation of public opinion is considered as an example of problems that must be addressed on this level.
1 Actions expected from the central government
In free market democracies a major obstacle to the adoption of effective policies to protect the environment is that elected leaders are all too apt to pander to the demands of sectoral interests. These concerns are often uninformed and short sighted. The powerful modern media also tends to pander to sectoral or special interests to enrich themselves. The long term well being of society based on a "macroscopic view," is therefore sacrificed for the sake of short term "microscopic interests." It will take a great deal of social consciousness raising by civil society to motivate modern governments to adopt a different vision of the good life—one driven not by the market and accumulation of wealth and power but the desire to see humanity flourish sustainably in harmony with the preservation of the environment.
Arthur Cecil Pigou, a pioneer in welfare economics and the creator of the concept of economic externalities, wrote that it is the duty of government to think not only of the welfare of present citizens but also that of their unborn descendants.(19) This consciousness was necessary to correct the market, and he proposed to do by imposing taxes to offset the negative social effects of economic activities.
Politicians in Japan, when elected to office, commonly make the following pledge: "I will do my best to fulfill the ‘One Hundred Year's Plan of the Country'." They realize that this long term plan for the well being of the nation does not necessarily respond to the immediate demands of the public. They also consider that they risk popularity and future votes by adopting long term policies to prevent environmental catastrophe that conflict with short term economic interests. This situation presents a difficult choice for politicians in all democratic societies. Aristotle would advice them to risk their careers for the sake of good governance and human survival.
Pollution taxes and other "Pigovian" taxes to protect the environment are currently discussed among economists. They, however, often serve two masters, the needs to prevent pollution and to maintain economic growth. This divided servitude is futile and suggests a lack of serious determination to protect the environment. It often results in solution which favors the politician's proclivities to protect their political careers by pandering to the uninformed and short term concerns of sectoral interests. If the government official is committed to the "plan for one hundred years," taxes to correct the negative externalities of economic and social activities must be set at levels that arrest wasteful consumption of energy and its concomitant emissions of pollutants. Just what these levels should be is difficult to estimate.
This difficulty is such that many law-makers find it politically expedient to impose direct controls on obvious polluters, and be done with it. However, well-known environmental economist William Baumol, proposes that taxation is still the best option, and that to find the appropriate level requires careful observation of the effects achieved at each level and to make modifications necessary until desired results are achieved.(20) To reach environmentally sustainable levels of energy utilization, for example, undoubtedly the prices of any form of energy must be raised many times their present levels.(21)
If taxes were to be raised dramatically to achieve desired environmental results, extraordinary structural adjustments will have to be made to the market economy. The consequence of such dramatic tax increases may or may not mean a spectacular slow down of the market based economy. But it could mean an increase in employment as it may encourage more environmentally friendly small businesses to emerge.
Small businesses are responsible for more employment today than large scale corporations with their economies of scale. Small businesses tend to be more labor intensive since they cannot afford the large capital investments in machinery.
But presently, economic growth patterns depend on extravagant consumption of fossil fuels. The grounds on which large corporations and the global economy seems to flourish is not "sound." It is in a state of precariousness, as if it were built on sand that would soon blow away. Combined, the crises of growing and competitive demand for fossil fuels, their foreseeable exhaustion, and global climate change should awaken society to realize that perhaps for their own survival and certainly for the survival of their descendents great adjustments are necessary.
In a state of total war, a whole country is engaged in the struggle for victory. Under such conditions people willingly sacrifice private gain for the sake of the nation. Today, scientists warn that society is in imminent danger of environmental calamity. This is equivalent to a call to arms. Every one in society is called on to engage in the immense effort to prevent this catastrophe. Perhaps part of this effort is to give priority to the philosophy of Aristotle on the "good society" and on what constitutes good government. In so doing they should consider John Stuart Mills prescription for the steady state. Lives devoted to what Aristotle and similarly, Mills call "contemplation" instead of to material well being is life built on the rock that underpins happiness.(22)
Rulers are also advised to keep in mind the following warning offered in the Chinese Classic text Great Learning: 小人閒居爲不善、無所不至. It states: "The common person, when left free with nothing to do, begins to do evil things and may end up doing every wrong thing imaginable(23)". The same idea was written by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations : "a single week's thoughtlessness and dissipation is often sufficient to undo a poor workman for ever, and to drive him through despair to committing the most enormous crimes"(24) Given the present environmental crisis, a responsible government would not encourage citizens to have more free time and more amenities for frivolity, but would set goals for its citizens that encouraged hard work and the opportunity for satisfaction in fulfilling their duties to society. The "war" against environmental degradation is a noble cause around which to mobilize society, certainly more honorable than wars fought over access to oil wells.
2 Action Expected from the local government
Nature and the environment is best understood by the residents in their localities. The policies of national government can often be indiscriminate and may contradict more effective measures taken at the local level. For example, apparently barren sand dunes to the eyes of outsiders, may be paradises for numerous small animals and insects known only to the local residents. How to protect these dunes is a matter of local interest and national plans to protect the sea coast might not be as effective and even work against the interests of this local ecosystem.
The role and responsibilities of local governments should be similar to that of the lords or Daimyos of Japan in the 17th-19th centuries Edo era. The Daimyos had absolute power over their prefectures but they were all bound by customary ethics to hand over to the next generation of Daimyos the local environment, its woods, rivers, and cultivated lands, in the same preserved condition it had been handed down to them by their predecessors. This imperative evolved from realization that violations of nature jeopardized the harvesting of crops and timber in adequate supply to meet the needs of the populations of each prefecture.
Nowadays, people living in local prefectures are under the mesmeric influence of the ‘way of living' in mega-cities. Maintaining the mega-cities' ways of life at local levels causes considerable wasteful use of energy. Keeping utilities functioning for small populations is only possible if the cost of energy can be kept at its present low level. However, this waste is accompanied by serious deterioration in the environment. Substantial increases in the cost of energy will oblige local governments to return to more traditional ways of living that will ensure protection of their local environments.
3 Action expected from the private society (NGO).
Driving everyday activities are the microscopic purposes of individuals seeking personal benefits in their lives. Quite often personal decisions are based on information obtained from the news media. These media, driven by profit making, need a popular following, and thus do not complicate simplistic communications to the public by digging deeply into the serious issues that underlie the news. If, for instance, the price of gas goes up, the media will certainly offer some analysis of the reasons why this has happened and may accuse the government of lacking the foresight that could have forestalled the problem. It is natural for everyone in society to want to see low prices for everything they need. If, however, the price of energy should be deliberately increased to very high levels by the government in the long term interest of society, this price level should also be explained in the media. This kind of explanation is rarely offered. It is one of the functions of citizen's interest groups or NGO's to make society aware of this danger and to pressure the media to be fully honest in their reporting.
Civil society must be wary not to get carried away by the opinions given by broadcasters in the popular news media. Significant problems are conveyed by the words development, profit, and efficiency, which are frequently used by the media as templates for the kind of success people like to hear about. Such success signals rising affluence. Few if any people working for the media examine the social and natural environmental costs of rising indicators representing development, profit, and efficiency. It is the role of civil society to take away the veil that conceals the total effects on society development, profit, and efficiency are bringing about. They should point to the following considerations:
Development: In the northern end of Kyoto there was once a marsh that was called by the local children the "Muddy Paddy." Every spring children and sometimes adults gathered in that place to fish. Children believed that the marsh was "bottomless" and they had to cross it with utmost care not to step off the path that was shown them by their elders. Staying on the path, they would not fall into the muddy depths of the marsh before they could get to the place where they should fish.
That marshy land has now been drained and in its place are soccer fields, tennis courts, and an automobile driving school. These developments were intended to yield "happiness" for citizens. Similarly, in Goethe's Faust, Faust had to get rid of the old couple who lived in the cottage in the area where Faust wanted to "develop" property for the happiness of the general public by asking the devil to burn down the cottage from which the couple did not want to move.(25)
These examples illustrate that it is not possible to develop something without destroying something else. But praise for any development should be accompanied by some assurance that the new development is of greater overall benefit to people in the short and long term than would have been the case had the property not been destroyed to make way for progress.
According to conventional wisdom, filling in the marsh and burning the cottage was development of a positive nature. But, the modern tendency is to underestimate the intrinsic value of nature such as the marsh and overvalue the development of the soccer field. By using the word development one conveys the idea of progressing to something better than what existed before. In the future, someone might try to reverse the process by turning the soccer field back into the muddy marsh. Unfortunately, nature, once destroyed, is practically impossible to restore to its original state. This is what the second law of thermodynamics (the increase of entropy) tells humanity. According to this law any change is irreversible, so we have to take extreme care when tampering with nature for the sake of utility.
Profit: It is perhaps unnecessary to refer the well known book by Lester C. Thurow entitled The Zero-Sum Society, because common sense knows that the profit gained by some will bring loss to others in one form or another. One should be wary of those who affirm that with economic growth every one gains, as the liberal school of economics holds.
It is not possible for economic growth to continue endlessly. Moreover, increasing economic activity is not possible without greater consumption of energy, which necessarily means deterioration of the environment. So, from the holistic point of view, profit can never exist without serious consequential opportunity costs for society.
Efficiency: Engineers are always talking about improving efficiency as if it were the whole purpose of engineering. Becoming somewhat philosophical, one observes that meaningful consideration of efficiency requires clarity about the purpose of the system to be rendered more efficient. Adam Smith wrote that through division of labor, iron pins could be produced more efficiently than if one person were to do it alone. With division of labor, costs would be reduced and the demand for pins would be met(26). In this case what happens to the iron smith who was trained in the craft of producing the pins themselves? There is an opportunity cost to be reckoned with here.
Today, in Japan, beer production is dominated by a few companies and mass produced beer can be purchased fairly cheaply in every small cranny of the country. In Germany, by contrast, almost every small town has its local brewery and tastes of the beer tend to vary for each brewery. The prices of the beer are set high enough to permit local brewers to keep their factories running and be able to pass them down to the next generation. Both systems are efficient but the meaning of efficiency for each country in regard to beer production is quite different.
Summary of Part III
The duty of first priority for national governments:
All governments should adopt policies aimed to serve the long term well being of their citizens even if these policies go against the more popular demands for policies that promote short term gains in wealth and more goods and services. To reach environmentally sustainable levels of energy utilization, undoubtedly the prices of any form of energy must be raised many times their present levels, the "visible hand" that limit the range of social activities must be introduced.
The duty of first priority for local governments:
Local governments must strive to preserve their natural environments in order to hand them down to ensuing generations in the good state they have been inherited from the previous generation. Local governments are admonished not to undertake projects based on the premise that the supply of low cost energy will continue to be plentiful in years to come.
The duty of first priority for civil society:
Everyone should be vigilant and take time to consider the greater good of society, currently as well as in the future. One should not be swept up by the "spirit of the times" that dictates a utilitarian ideology of materialism prioritizing consumption, competition, and immediate satisfaction. In the interest of one's own well being and ultimately the survival of the human species, everyone should support leaders who promote environmentally responsible macroscopic policies even if these are presently unpopular and work against the current of majority thinking.
Part IV
An example of technological effort
The German physicist Clausius(27) who coined the term "entropy" wrote:"Since it is not possible to create energy regardless of how much progress is made in science, human beings are directed to live within limits drawn by the amount of energy coming from the sun". Clausius's statement is based on the first law of thermodynamics relating to conservation of energy. Hence if one takes environmental protection seriously, measures for large scale energy production using solar-cells must be promoted at all costs. Large scale here refers to the amount of energy production comparable to that produced by all the fossil fuel burning power plants and the nuclear reactors presently in operation in the world. The following paragraphs describe how this amount might be reasonably determined according to present economic evaluation methodology.
In simple terms, energy which comes from the sun during daylight hours roughly amounts to one kilowatt per square meter. This means that one million kilowatts of energy, equivalent to the capacity of one large scale power plant using either fossil fuel or atomic energy, is coming from the sun for every one square kilometer wide area on earth, which is roughly the area equal to one golf course.
If a solar-cell with 13% efficiency is used for 8 daylight hours each day of sunlight; and assuming that on cloudy days, no solar energy is produced and that for every sunny day there is a cloudy day, [50% of the total day time], the effective amount of the sun's energy collectable by solar-cells and converted into electricity amounts to roughly 2% of the total sun's radiation. Then, to obtain the equivalent of the amount of electricity produced by one full scale conventional oil or nuclear power plant, one would need 50 solar-cell power systems each covering a square kilometer, or the area equivalent of 50 golf courses.
According to statistics provided on the Japan Golf Course Association's website, there are now 2400 golf courses in Japan. Assuming the above estimates, if solar-cell facilities were to blanket the area of these 2400 golf courses, the electricity they would generate would be equivalent to 50 full size conventional power plants. The amount to be produced is approximately equal to that produced by the total number of operating nuclear reactors in Japan. Since these nuclear plants produce more than 30% of the total electricity supplied in Japan, these estimates demonstrate that solar energy can produce most of the electricity consumed in Japan if a large scale effort to provide solar-cells is made, i.e. this would mean that the present capacity would have to be increased more than one thousand fold. There are no technological obstacles that would thwart such an undertaking.
One of the reasons energy production through solar power has not been seriously pursued is that solar-cells do not provide as steady and stable an electricity flow as compared with that produced by atomic or fossil fuel powered plants. However, once a sufficient amount of energy is produced by solar power, technological innovation will provide ways to modify and store excess solar produced electricity.
An example of a plan for a large scale solar-cell facility is given in Figure 1. This facility is used for fresh water production by desalinating sea water. It is roughly estimated that a plant with a capacity to produce 100,000 tons of fresh water per day can be powered by a square kilometer wide solar-cell system. It should be noted that the cost for this solar-cell power plant is estimated to be recovered in ten years at the energy equivalent of oil priced at 50 dollars per barrel.
Figure 1: Design of a fresh water supply system for desalination of sea water using solar-energy, showing how solar cells covering an area of a square kilometer can supply the energy needed to produce 100 thousand tons per day of fresh water from the sea, fuel free. (Illustration is due to Tatsuo Shigeta of Wkasa Wan Energy Resarch Center).
Concluding remarks:
We have to wash our ears with the sounds of a stream
Here is a legendary Chinese story. When a hermit sage 許由:Xu-You heard the Emperor 堯:Yao uttering in mocking pretense: "I will resign and let Xu to come to the throne." Xu went to the stream to wash his ears. These words sullied by fallacious use had to be flushed from his ears by the pleasant sounds of running water. Another sage 巣父:Chao Fu came to that stream to let his cow drink and went home without permitting her to lap up the water because he thought the stream was contaminated by the polluted words cleansed from Xu's ears. This story has inspired many artists in China and Japan.
As a parable the story offers a moral for this article. Development, profit, and efficiency are words expressing principal values against which government success is measured. As criteria they are used irresponsibly and misleadingly to justify activities which bring private economic gain at the cost of environmental degradation. Thus these words are as bogus as those uttered by the Emperor Yao which offended the ears of Xu. One must carefully consider under what conditions these objectives are worth entertaining and pursuing, while weighing their long-term environmental consequences and the intrinsic net value they bring to society. One must determine what benefits they will bring to humankind in one hundred years.
Purging one's ears of the sounds of the words development, profit, and efficiency, falsely, irresponsibly, and superficially used, is a prerequisite for safeguarding nature and the environment and for discovering the true meaning of life. This discovery offers humankind the possibilities for a truly happy and satisfying existence, a life approaching harmony with Ataraxia, Tao, or Nirvana.
Manuscript for Development Engineering vol.12, 2006
"Peoples' natural abilities are their rightful possessions, and even gods are powerless to change this. Therefore, I feel neither surprise nor sadness at the abilities of others. Because what we have cannot become another's." The story of a man who exchanged all that he owned for a book containing just this one short passage appears in the Panchatantra, an ancient Indian collection of fables. The story relates that although the man was nicknamed "Rightful Possessions" for his habit of repeating the passage no matter whom he met or what he was asked, in the end he succeeded in winning the hand of a princess named Chandravati: "as beautiful as the moon."
“Las virtudes o habilidades naturales de la gente son sus posesiones más legítimas, y aún los Dioses carecen de poder para cambiar esto. Por tanto, no siento sorpresa ni tristeza por las habilidades de otros. Porque que las virtudes que tenemos no pueden llegar a ser de los demás.” La historia de un hombre quien intercambió todo lo que el poseía por un libro que contenía solamente este pasaje corto aparece en el Panchatantra, una anciana colección Hindú de fábulas. La historia establece que a pesar de que el hombre era apodado “El posesiones legítimas” por su hábito de repetir el pasaje sin importar con quien se encontrara o lo que le fuera pedido, al final él logró ganar la mano de una princesa llamada Chandravati: “tan hermosa como la luna.”
In English, there are words such as "priceless" and "invaluable," but to say that something does not have a price means that it is so precious that it cannot be bought with any amount of money. The man "Rightful Possessions" saw in the book that contained these words a value which money could not buy. It then occurs to one that it is easier to read a book (no matter how lengthy) when one reads while seeking the key phrase which that book is seeking to express. It is also apparent that in order to succinctly grasp a person (regardless of their field) it is expedient to learn their "expression." The expression of Chen Sheng, whose overthrow of the Qin Dynasty was what may be considered history's first revolution, was "the swallow knows not the will of the swan," meaning that greatness cannot be understood by the insignificant. Socrates propagated the expression "know thyself," and was not Adam Smith's expression "the invisible hand" and Kant's "the Copernican Revolution"?
En el idioma inglés, existen palabras tales como “priceless ~ que no tiene precio” e “invaluable ~ invaluable,” solo para decir que algo no tiene precio, significando que aquello es tan precioso que no puede ser comprado con cualquier cantidad de dinero. El hombre apodado “El posesiones legítimas” vio que el libro contenía esas palabras con un valor tal que el dinero no podía comprar. A uno mismo le ocurre que es más fácil leer un libro (sin importar su longitud) cuando se lee buscando encontrar la frase clave que ese libro busca expresar. También es aparente que para entender sucintamente a una persona (sin importar su especialidad) es oportuno aprender sus “expresiones.” La expresión de Chen Sheng, cuya derrota de la Dinastía Qin fue lo que pudiera ser considerado como la primera revolución de la historia, fue "the swallow knows not the will of the swan, ~ la golondrina no conoce la voluntad del cisne" significando que la grandeza no puede ser comprendida por el insignificante e ignorante. Sócrates propagaba la expresión "know thyself, ~ conocerce a sí mismo" y acaso ¿No estaban ya plasmadas las expresiones de Adam Smith "the invisible hand ~ la mano invisible" y las de Kant en "the Copernican Revolution ~ la Revolución Copernica"?.
These are the patterns of peoples' thoughts and thus metaphysical, but in the physical realm, if we take for example historical figures of natural science, is there not Clausius' "entropy," Kelvin's "0K," Newton's "apple" or "law of universal gravitation," and Einstein's "E=mC2"? Each of these is "invaluable," a "priceless" achievement concisely expressed.
Aquellos son patrones de los pensamientos de personas y por tanto metafísicos, pero en el reino físico, si tomamos por ejemplo figuras históricas de la ciencia natural, ¿No esta la “entropía” de Clausius, El “cero K” de Kelvin, la “manzana” de Newton, la “ley de la gravitación universal,” y la fórmula “E=mC2” de Einstein?. Cada una de esas expresiones son “invaluables”, “sin precio” logros concisamente expresados.
The French economist J. B. Say (1767-1832) was apparently criticized by Marx as a "vulgar economist," but Say's law is contained in his expression "production creates markets for goods," or "supply creates its own demand." If you look in an economics book, this expression is critiqued on such narrow grounds as being unable to explain the occurrence of oversupply, yet it seems to be a maxim that nicely express in economic terms the human psychology (or nature) to "use what is there."
El economista francés J. B. Say (1767-1832) aparentemente fue criticado por Marx como un “economista vulgar,” pero la ley de Say esta contenida en su expresión “la producción crea el mercado de los bienes materiales,” o “el suministro crea su propia demanda.” Si Usted busca en un libro de economía, esta expresión es criticada en tan estrecho campo hasta ser incapaz de explicar la ocurrencia del excedente o sobre-suministro, y aún así parece ser una máxima que expresa elegantemente en términos económicos la psicología (o naturaleza) humana para “usar lo que allí esta.”
Let's think about Say's principle concerning energy and the environment. The fundamental cause of environmental problems is, unarguably, the massive consumption of energy; it should also be clear that this consumption is for the purpose of living lives of excessive luxury. However, if energy is cheaply and abundantly supplied, we are unable to avoid using it just as freely and casually. So while the newspapers and television hail Kobe City's Luminarie and the nocturnal illumination of Kyoto's temples as beautiful and enjoyable, isn't concentrating upon ways to waste precious energy a fine example of how humans respond to supply by thinking up new needs? At any rate, nobody is looking at the lights on the temples and thinking of how the electricity was created in some nuclear reactor or thermal power station.
Pensemos a cerca del principio de Say referente a la energía y el medio ambiente. Indiscutiblemente que la causa fundamental de los problemas del medio ambiente es el consumo masivo de la energía; también deberá quedar claro que este consumo es con el propósito de satisfacer principalmente las especies viviendo en un lujo excesivo. Sin embargo, si la energía es barata y suministrada abundantemente, seguiremos siendo incapaces en dejar de usarla libre y casualmente. Así que mientras los periódicos y la televisión llamen a la belleza y al regocijo de la Luminaria de la Ciudad de Kobe y a la iluminación nocturna de los templos de Kioto, no se estará concentrando en las maneras para evitar el desperdicio de energía preciosa, como un ejemplo fino de ¿cómo los humanos responden mediante el pensamiento para suministrar y satisfacer nuevas necesidades? De tal forma, nadie esta mirando la luz en los templos y pensando cómo pudo ser generada la electricidad en algún reactor nuclear o estación de potencia térmica.
Excessive energy consumption's progressive destruction of the environment is clearly spelled out in the U.N.-commissioned third IPPC report concerning climate change that was prepared this year. There is even talk of the possibility that Russia will (for a sum) provide space for the disposal and storage of radioactive waste from nuclear reactors. If we take these circumstances seriously, we ought to begin limiting the supply of energy now, right away. Instead, ways are being examined to supply the energy to meet a projected demand that is seen as rising until 2030 or 2050.
La destrucción progresiva del medio ambiente por el consumo excesivo de la energía esta claramente presagiada en el tercer reporte IPPC comisionado por la Naciones Unidas U.N. referente los cambios climatológicos que fuera preparado este año. Se dice que incluso Rusia proveerá espacio para el desecho y almacenamiento de desperdicios radioactivos de reactores nucleares. Si tomamos esas circunstancias seriamente, deberemos comenzar por limitar el suministro de energía inmediatamente ahora. En lugar de ello, se están examinando las maneras para lograr el suministro de energía para satisfacer la creciente demanda hasta el 2030 o 2050.
Why, in spite of the fact that carbon dioxide and radioactive waste are judged poisonous to humans, do we drive around casually belching gas from our cars and enjoying the lit up temples? Everyone condemns unbelievable outrages like putting arsenic in curry or releasing sarin gas in a subway. But when we drive our cars and watch the lit up temples we are spreading far greater amounts of poison. You could say that what we are doing differs not at all from the words of the Chinese philosopher Mozi: "saying a little black is black, a lot of black is white." In other words, a person sees a little black and calls it black, but seeing a lot of black calls it white.
¿Por qué, a pesar del hecho de que el dióxido de carbono y los desperdicios radioactivos son considerados venenosos para los humanos, conducimos nuestros automóviles casualmente arrojando gas y disfrutando la iluminación de los templos? Cualquiera condena atrocidades increíbles tales como el poner arsénico en el arroz curry o el hecho de liberar gas “sarin” en una estación del metro. Pero cuando conducimos automóviles y observamos la iluminación de los templos estamos liberando grandes cantidades de veneno. Podrá Usted decir que lo que estamos haciendo no difiere del todo de las palabras del filosofo Chino Mozi: “se dice que un poco de negro es negro, y mucho de negro es blanco.” Es decir, una persona podrá ver un poco de negro y lo llamará negro, pero el ver mucho negro lo llamará blanco.
When we invert Say's phrase we get the law that "if supply is not reduced, demand will not decrease." How, then, will supply decrease? At this juncture the words of the Confucian scholar Sunzi offer us a hint: "People are born with a desire for profit, and they follow it." The reason why at present supply is increasingly refined and expanded in the anticipation of demand is because the economic structure works to reward more supply with greater profits. Unless they can concoct a way to profit in times of limited supply, it is the nature of profit seeking people to think of new means of supply, even under the rationale of being more friendly to the environment.
Cuando invertimos la frase de Say obtenemos la ley que dice “si no se reduce el suministro, la demanda no disminuirá.” Entonces, ¿cómo disminuirá el suministro?. En esta encrucijada las palabras de la escuela del Confusionismo Sunzi nos ofrece una pista: “La gente nace con el deseo de la ganancia, y lo siguen.” La razón por la cual actualmente el suministro esta siendo constantemente refinado y expandido anticipadamente a la demanda se debe a que la estructura económica opera para recompensar más suministro con mayores ganancias. A menos de que a quien compete puedan elaborar una manera de obtener ganancias en tiempos de suministro limitado, la naturaleza de la búsqueda por la ganancia de las personas hará a la gente pensar en nuevas maneras de suministro, aún bajo el raciocinio de ser más amigable al medio ambiente.
Raising the price of energy by imposing an environmental tax may be just this sort of mechanism, but it is impossible to imagine how notions of advancing environmental measures with the revenue from a tiny percentage tax can meet the crisis of pressing environmental change one sees in the IPCC report. If the price of energy were to increase threefold or fivefold, we would all compete to conserve energy without being told to do so. Immediately following the war's end and during the high growth period, the prices of gas and electricity were in real terms more than ten times higher than they are today. We need to prepare ourselves to attempt drastic measures.
Un mecanismo posible para frenar el deterioro del medio ambiente puede ser mediante el incremento en el precio de la energía, por la imposición de un impuesto ambiental. Sin embargo analizando el reporte IPCC es imposible imaginar como las medidas tomadas del progreso ambiental puedan enfrentar la crisis prevaleciente mediante la imposición de un diminuto porcentaje en el impuesto establecido. Si el precio de la energía fuese incrementado tres o cuatro veces el actual, podríamos entonces competir para conservar la energía sin que se nos tuviera que decir que la cuidáramos. Inmediato al final de la guerra y durante el periodo rápido de crecimiento, los precios del gas y electricidad fueron en términos reales más de diez veces mayores de lo que son ahora. Tendremos que prepararnos nosotros mismos para atender medidas más drásticas.
It is precisely when we strive to live using energy sparingly that we ought to feel happy. With this in mind, we must escape the cursed paralysis of repetition, the vicious circle of energy waste wherein supply drives demand and demand is given as the reason for enhanced supply. Specifically, without the Buddhist expression "emancipation," there will probably be no descendants to read this word a thousand years from now. In that case, perhaps we would be happier if we died right now, saying that "we have seen the things we were meant to see."
Es precisamente cuando luchamos por vivir usando la energía con moderación en que debemos sentirnos felices. Con esto en mente, debemos escapar de la nefasta parálisis de la repetición, del círculo vicioso del despilfarro de la energía en el que el suministro conduce a la constante demanda, y esta demanda dada como la razón para el incremento en el suministro. Específicamente, sin la expresión Budista “emancipación,” probablemente no habría descendientes para leer estas palabras en los próximos mil años. En tal caso, tal vez pudiéramos ser más felices si muriéramos justo ahora, diciendo que “hemos visto las cosas que sabíamos veríamos.”
Quiz: Whose words are those of the final expression? Quiz: ¿De quién son las palabras de la expresión final?
Quiz answer: Contained in the Japanese classic The Tale of the Heike. Spoken by the commander-in chief of Heike army Taira-no Tomomori (son of Taira-no Kiyomori) who, having watched the Heike go down in defeat at the decisive battle of Dan-no-ura, jumped armor-clad into the ocean."
Respuesta del Quiz: Contenida en el clásico Japonés El Cuento del Heike. Hablado por el comandante en jefe de la armada Heike Taira-no Tomomori (hijo de Taira-no Kiyomori) quien, habiendo observado al Heike pierde al defender en la batalla decisiva de Dan-no-ura, saltando al océano vestido con su armadura.
1.Chomei's Hojoki
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Kamo no Chomei (1155-1216) wrote Hojoki in the early 13th century, the era of The Tale of Heike. He had hoped to become a Shinto priest at Shimo-Gamo shrine, but his way was blocked by the head priest who wanted a much younger person,his own son,to occupy the position. Chomei was a brilliant string musician and waka poet, and for this reason the Sur-emperor Gotoba who wished to keep him around the imperial court offered a position at a less famed shrine. Chomei refused, and chose rather to lead a life of relative seclusion and meditation. Later, he wrote down his reflections on the life and times in the short volume called Hojoki.
In the time after the Hanshin earthquake in 1995, I recalled that Hojoki contained observations by Chomei on a similarly devastating earthquake and its effect on the Kyoto of his times. In reading his volume anew, I gained a deep respect for his perception and insight, and for the beauty and economy of his expression. He describes his life and times, extending over forty years, the ups and downs of society, the devastation of fire, typhoon, and famine, and the relocation of the capital to Fukuhara. In these and other events he saw the vanity of existence and behavior, like bubbles that form, are carried along, and disappear in a stream. He asked where we had come from, and where we were going. In his long seclusion, his perspective on time lengthened. He viewed events along an axis of time that was far longer than that of most others, and saw the vanity in human society and behavior.
To understand and deal with the problems of our times, we too must extend our axis of time, like Chome's, to forty years and beyond.
2. Underlying Cause of the Energy and Environment Problem
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Today's main sources of energy can be broadly classified into three types-natural, including hydroelectric, solar, and biomass; fossil-fuel; and nuclear. Of these, only natural energy offers any practical prospect for long-term sustainability. Even here, however, grave problems exist. Hydroelectricity requires the construction of dams that disrupt or destroy rivers, mountains, and downstream lands. Petroleum and coal are forms of carbon in which solar energy has been fixed and concentrated over many millions of years. Thermonuclear power is based on an even older energy form, as the uranium it uses was created in solar systems billions of years ago. Any attempt to burn large proportions of these fuels over the course of a few years or decades will inevitably upset and may well destroy the balance of nature. Many of us know this, and yet we continue to increase our use of them. We must find a way out of this situation, and it cannot be done by moving backward. We cannot revert to a dependence on firewood. Appeals for saving energy, on the other hand, generally fall on deaf ears. Too few heed the call. The same is true with environmental pollution, and attempts to regulate liquid and gas emissions have involved heavy costs and difficulty in monitoring and enforcement.
It is, unfortunately, a part of human nature for people to keep doing something even when they know they should stop. Ultimately, this is the root cause of the energy and environmental problems. It is not everyone that can find a release from the attachment to material things, as Chomei did . The problem is not simply a shortage of petroleum or dangers of atomic power. The problem, and its solution, lie within the human being.
3.The Economics of Adam Smith
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The essential principle in the economics of Adam Smith (1723-1790) is "laissez-faire". Economic efficiency can be maximized and the wealth of nations best increased when free from imposed regulations. This principle has been widely accepted and proven during the past two centuries. The principle has its origins in human nature. In "The Wealth of Nations" (1776), it is written that the human is lazy by nature, and does not work effectively in the absence of self interest and some prospect of its satisfaction. Conversely, the prospect of satisfying self-interest leads the exertion of maximum ability. Smith also stated that such an application of ability will ultimately contribute greatly to the public good, even where that is not by any measure the intended purpose of the individual. Smith noted, with some irony, that he had never seen a person do any real good for the public by actions intended not for his own interest but rather for the general benefit of people and society.
In short, Smith's proposal of the principle of laissez-faire is based on his perception of human behavior. If this perception actually applies to human nature, then it would be wise to search for a solution based on a clear perception of human nature and behavior. Unless we find a solution which permits each person to act from self-interested motives, we cannot solve the energy and environmental problem, nor any other social problem. Before considering a specific approach, however, I would like to consider the observations of others in this regard.
4.The Shingaku Ethics of Baigan Ishida
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Kyoto was the cradle of "Shingaku", a code of practical ethics that in direct translation means"the school (or science) of the heart". It was originally formulated as a theory of moral education by Baigan Ishida (1685-1744) and further developed by his disciple Toan Teshima (1718-1786), around the same time that Adam Smith developed and published his treatise on "The Wealth of Nations". The name Shingaku was a happy choice, as it carries the connotation of a respect for learning and a strong resonance with the feeling and thought of the people. Shingaku became a pillar of public education throughout Edo era (1600?`1867). Young people nowadays would quickly tire of reading the strictures of Shingaku, in every text, urging them to be thrifty and thoughtful to everyone.
Shingaku was originally and essentially a philosophy for merchants. It told merchants to make profits, with the understanding this will work to the benefit of the people and society. It told the merchants that they should think not only about their own gain; rather, the transaction must benefit both parties. Both must gain. The important premise is that continuation in business is essential for any accumulation of substantial profit. If a business is to continue to make profits, then its transactions must lead to profit for its customers as well as itself.
Shingaku is simple and practical in concept. It does not attempt to impose ethical behavior by spiritual or moral strictures, but rather by the strictures of reality. In this way, Shingaku coincides closely with the observation of Adam Smith, to the effect that one's own self-interested actions can and do benefit others, and ultimately work to the benefit of society.
5.Prospects for a Technological Solution
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Before progressing further, it is necessary to pause and consider whether the problems of energy and environment can be solved by technological advances, thus avoiding the need for a deeper solution based on the nature of human behavior.
As stated above, the forms of energy that least burden the environment are generally considered to be hydroelectric, solar, and biomass. Ultimately, all three derive from solar energy. The energy potential for generating hydroelectricity is created by the evaporation of water by solar energy, and that of biomass is the result of tree and plant growth, again powered by solar energy.
The rate of total energy consumption by mankind today is still much less than one ten-thousandth that of the solar energy received by the earth. It may therefore be concluded that using this proportion or even a slightly higher proportion of the solar energy reaching us will not cause any significant global warming. From a technological viewpoint, the question then becomes whether we can develop new technology, for the direct or indirect utilization of this solar energy, in sufficient quantity to replace all of the present consumption of fossil fuels and atomic power. The answer is yes, but certainly not within the next five to ten years. The most likely timeframe for the development and broad adoption of such technology is sometime around 2050, as estimated from currently known and prospective paths to more efficient photovoltaic cells, low-cost batteries, and other technologies. For the present, therefore, the realistic objective of technological development will be reducing and moderating emissions created in the consumption of fossil fuels, such as carbon dioxide and radioactive substances such as radon from coal, and the radioactive waste products of nuclear energy plants and facilities.
It is estimated that one-third of available petroleum has already been consumed. For many decades, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air has been increasing by several percent a year. Current and prospective storage sites for radioactive waste will soon be full. If we continue to use fossil fuels and atomic power as we do now, the global ecology will be irrevocably damaged before we ever reach the 22nd century. It may well appear that, in these circumstances, reducing energy consumption would only be a useless exercise in staving off the inevitable. Why bother? The answer is that it can and must be established as a holding operation, until it becomes possible to achieve the technology and conversion to clean forms of natural energy. The situation may be compared to that of a patient of some serious disease. If he is told there is no hope of any cure, then maintaining his health will become the least of his least concerns; enjoying the little time left will take preceden t, even if it means shortening that time. If he knows, however, that a cure will soon be found, he will strive to maintain his strength, and hold on, until it becomes available.
The problem, for us, is conserving energy and moderating ecological damage for the next fifty years or so, until a technological solution finally becomes possible.
6.Observations from Lao-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu, and from the Bible.
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According to Smith and Baigan, the solution to problems should be based on the self-interest of the individual. Other sources express the same idea. The essential concept of both Lao-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu, the ancient Chinese philosophers, is that we should live a life that is not contrary to our own nature. Their central maxim is that "the Tao (the "way" which is the basic principle of the universe) does nothing and yet there is nothing undone." In its practical sense, it points to the ideal society of both Smith and Baigan, in which the abilities of the individual are fully utilized. It means, quite simply, that the true basis for the solution of any problem, of whatever form, lies in the determination of its fundamental cause; that it is at best wasteful to seek solutions without first identifying the core problem. I find the same teaching in Psalm 127-1 of the Bible, which states "Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain." It may be presumptuous of me to interpret the Bible, as I am not a Christian, but I believe this passage means that the protection of the Lord is a natural and essential part of existence, and that any human effort must be in accord with this if it is to be effective, and will otherwise be in vain
7.The View of Keynes on Taxation
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We recognize the problem before us, and we know that technological development, on its own, will not provide any substantial solution until it is too late. We have identified the underlying cause of the problem, in human behavior. The question now becomes, what is the right means of modifying this behavior. As a matter of survival in the next fifty years, our behavior must become one of thrift and moderation.
How can modern mankind be induced to practice this thrift and moderation? In the view of Adam Smith, the key is to make thrift and moderation a course that is in the direct interest of each and every individual. If it is, and the individual is aware of it, then it will rapidly come to characterize society as a whole.
To a certain degree, thrift always means profit to the individual and to the corporation. The question is, more specifically, whether or not the extent of the profit justifies the cost to that person or company. Unfortunately, in relation to environmental degradation, it usually does not. For the individual or the company, in the absence of other incentives,it is generally simpler and less costly, in terms of its own direct interest, to simply dispose of waste and emissions into the air and water, rather than to take the time and effort to reduce their quantity and dispose of them properly. Smith's principle of laissez-faire and Baigan's ethics of Shingaku then become counterproductive, in terms of the effect on society. One way to right the balance is to impose legal regulations. Legal regulations and penalties, however, inherently sets up a conflict between interests, in which the profit of one party is the loss of another. The advantage, in too many cases, will go to those who are most successful at finding loopholes or other means of evasion.
There is another way, requiring a minimum of effort, to lead everyone to practice thrift and moderation, in accordance with the observations of Lao-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu. It is through some type of income control. Income control takes various forms. J. M. Keynes showed that the reduction of interest rates would be the only effective way to overcome the increasing gap between rich and poor caused by a completely laissez-faire policy and the economic stagnation which resulted from this gap. When interest rates were lowered, the result was a rapid increase in reinvestment rates, followed by a rapid rise in both employment and wages. In "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" (1936), Keynes writes that the gap between rich and poor should be accepted in a certain degree as a natural social phenomenon, but not in an excessive degree. He notes that a society in which people are born poor and never have any real chance during their lives will lose vitality and stagnate, and that an appropriate tax system can prevent such a situation. The essential need is to control the money flow at its crucial points.
The population activation ratio, or PAR, is sometimes used as an index of the percentage of the people in a nation who can use their abilities to their full potential. The PAR of countries like Japan and Germany is more than 90%. This, ultimately, is the determining factor of the status and development of a country in the world economy. In his discussion of taxes, Keynes shows that a rise in PAR can be accomplished in conjunction with an appropriate control by taxation.
The individual must be able to see the profit to be gained by thrift and moderation, as related in the Shingaku ethic. The role of the government must be to achieve an appropriate tax system for control of the proper balance in profits that will lead to this realization. Legal regulations and penalties should be only an auxiliary tool for this purpose, functioning best when they do not need to be invoked.
8.Conclusion
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The phrase "Shunju no Hippou", which may be directly translated as "the logic of all seasons", is widely known and understood among the older generations in Japan, but 99% of today's college students have no idea what it means, even in the unlikely event that they have heard of it. One interpretation is that the right course of action can best be found by probing deeply into the reasons for the present position, to its true point of origin. It means, for example, that the misconduct or negligence of an employee can be traced to the daily attitude and behavior of his manager, and that it is in this way the responsibility of the manager to recognize and correct his shortcomings if the problem is to be really solved. This is the "Hippou", or logic, which is "Shunju", or constant and unchanging. As applied to the problem of energy and the environment, it means that it is a mistake to view the problem primarily as a result of insufficient petroleum reserves, limited sources of hydraulic power, excessive emissions and effluents, and other such factors. It is, rather, the human that must be viewed as the cause. It is, in other words, humankind that must perceive and correct its own behavior.
But spiritual and moral exhortations to the requisite modesty, no matter how pervasive, will ultimately be futile if as little as one percent of the population, chooses to ignore them and profits as a result. Marxism might have worked, if 100% of the people had really strived for the public interest and been satisfied with an equal sharing of the profits. The fact is, not surprisingly, that too many people wanted to take the profits for themselves.
If we can only solve the energy and environment problem through effective utilization of our human resources, which must inevitably involve the satisfaction of strong and innate human desires, how can it be done? On the one hand, we should concentrate our effort on development of new technologies that will permit the clean utilization of natural energy, to accelerate this development so that it can begin to provide an effective solution thirty years from now, rather than fifty or sixty. On the other, on a more basic and urgent level, we must develop and establish a system of taxation, in accord with the insights of Keynes, that will permit both parties or sides in transactions and other economic activities to profit by a moderation and self-control that will be conducive to energy conservation and ecology.
This conclusion may seem not to have warranted the initial reference to Chomei's "Hojoki" or to the other thinkers named in the course of the discussion. And yet, as Chomei stated at the end of his own his work, we ordinary people find it impossible to simply cast off our attachment to the present. In knowledge and intelligence, Shuri Handoku was the least of all of Buddha's disciples, and yet he attained enlightenment and grace through perseverance. We cannot hope to approach that level of perseverance and wisdom, but yet we must try, for the problems of energy and the environment, and their solution, will decide our future survival.
Bibliography
Kamo no Chomei. Hohjohki. Rev. Sadajiro Ichiko. 14th ed. Tokyo: Iwanami- bunko, 1994.
Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations. Trans. Kazuo Ohkouchi. Tokyo: Chuohkohron-sha, 1976.
Philosophy of Ishida Baigan. Ed. Tsuguyoshi Furuta and Jun Imai. (Sekimon-shingaku kai) Tokyo: Pelican. 1979
Morita, Yoshio. Ishida Baigan and Adam Smith: save 10 cents for the society. Tokyo: Kawade-Shobo. 1994.
Ogawa, Tamaki. Lao-Tzu, Chuang-Tzu. Great books in the world, vol.4. Tokyo: Chuokoron-sha. 1988, pp.120.
The Old Testament. the Psalms 127-1. Tokyo: Japan Bible Association. 1989, pp.971.
J.M.Keynes. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Trans. Yuichiro Shionoya. Vol.7 of The Collected Works of Keynes. Tokyo: Tokyo Keizai Shinpo-sha.
Takeuchi, Teruo. Shisho Gokyo (the Nine Chinese Classics). Tokyo: Toyo-Bunko vol.44. 1994.
The objective of this course is to offer a comprehensive view of “happiness” as the ultimate purpose of life. The scientific, philosophical and religious backgrounds of happiness will be presented in relation to perceptions about human nature. This series of lectures is intended to provide students of every discipline an opportunity to think about the meaning of life. It is hoped that students may reflect upon what they learned in this course when they will be engaged in serious decision making.
Course Overview
Like an elephant, happiness has such varied aspects so that your limited experience may misguide you to have a holistic notion of what it really is.
Ukiyoe depicting the examination of an elephant. By Hokusai
It is quite good to enjoy and be satisfied with things around you. But if you want to generalize your experience and to have communication with others, you must be careful if your experience can be generalized or not. There can be many different sides of an object, which you cannot understand by your limited experiences.
What we have examined in this class:
1. Four stages of happiness: 1. Increase of utility. 2. Its continuation. 3. Recovery from hardship or sorrow. 4. To see happiness even in hardship and sorrow itself.
2. Marginality of happiness: Weber-Fechner’s experiment on the logarithmic nature of our perception of the intensity of utility. To increase good feeling 2 times, stimuli must increase 4 times. St. Petersburg problem by D.Bernoulli.
3. Utilitarian happiness: The greatest happiness (utility) for the greatest number of people. Counting only contemporary population does not mean the greatest number.
4. Deborah Number: DN Everything has its relaxation time, τ. The ratio of relaxation time vs. time of observation, t is DN (= τ/ t). τof human life is ca.50years. τfor human species is 1,000,000 years? We should worry about our happiness in the time range DN<1. Note that 50 years can be forever and an instant. It is true for a million years.
5. Universe in which we live: Space, Time and Material (energy). Space-Time composes a four dimensional world. What are contained in such world are ourselves and things around us.
6. Pascal’s Wager: The choice one should take when there is an alternative possibility. Pascal said, to bet on the non-existence of God is too risky. This wager may be better applied to the choice between a life without discretion seeking money and a happy proud life without money.
7. Nothing is absolute: Joy cannot exist alone. If there is no sorrow there is no joy. Happiness exists because there is unhappiness? Can you hear the sound of one handed clap (Zen Buddhist Hakuin’s riddle)?
8. Imaginable happiness and unimaginable happiness:
Joy and pleasure are easy to image. Sorrow and hardship are often beyond imagination. [All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.] Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (Russian novelist, 1828-1906). Do you prefer to be equal with majority or to be different from others? Do you understand the phrase: [Sorrow is better than laughter (Old Testament: Qohelet)]? The following phrase is: [for by the sadness of face the heart is made good].
9. Stories of satisfied persons do not move the hearts of listeners:
What do you do when you have become happy? Elimination of purpose may bring misery?.
10. Happiness is : Both individualistic and universal. Both nominal and real.
11. Evil has its role for the achievement of happiness? :
Evil exists in the world not to create despair, but activity. It is not only the interest but the duty of every individual to use his utmost efforts to remove evil from himself and from as large a circle as he can influence (by doing so) he will probably improve and exalt his own mind. (Malthus 1798).
12. Primum vivere deinde philosophari:We have to live before being happy. Importance of natural environment preservation.
HIGHLIGHTS
(1)Feel the great power of Solar-Energy. One square meter of sunshine can immediately boil a bottle of water!
(2)High efficiency of heating. Novel device enclose sun light in a tube to allow little heat to escape by reflection!
(3)Easy handling. Special device of step-less position adjuster permits one-handed manipulation for sun chasing!
(4)Cooking pan can be set at hand. Sunlight is collected through the Fresnel lens in front of yourself!
(5)Easy to carry and ship. Strong and sturdy. Inexpensive. Immediate supply on order!
(6)Large-scale version can be manufactured. 3.3meter square wide one has already been tested!
Number of Pantakas must exceed that of automobiles of the world to save the environment!
“We are apt to go out from the darkness to go into the darkness again, I pray the moon over the mountain ranges shine the way as we progress.”
The size of the paper is about that of a post card. The picture well reproduces the actual brightness of the letters as the eyes observed these.
]]>Please enjoy the power of the sun that melts a piece of iron almost instantly. The area of the Fresnel Lens used is 1.4 square meters.
56.1MB mpg
right click ,download and play
Piano keys are arranged symmetrically with a D key at the center. Hence by rewriting the normal music notes by exchanging the notes as,
D→D, E→C, F→B, G→A , A→G, B→F, C→E, D→D、
a mirror music score can be obtained. (♯must be played as♭and vice versa).
Click below to enjoy the mirror and normal music.
Mirror music score : Bach-Gounod Ave Maria
Mirror and normal music : Bach-Gounod Ave Maria
Mirror music score : Bach Invention 1
Mirror and normal music : Bach Invention 1
Mirror music score :Japanese children song: Hato Pot・Pot
Mirror and normal music :Japanese children song Hato-Pot・Pot
By asking musicians and by surveying on internet, it appeared that this kind of mirror music is not new. However, actual performance of mirror music is not popular at all or in fact not possible to listen to it played.
Mirrored music sounds somewhat odd when one listen to it for the first time but many people who listened to it several times gradually get used to it and start to love the mirrored sound. When the normal and mirrored music are played in succession, the impression of normal music which we know well becomes quite new and fresh. It is amusing to imagine that the songs and music that Alice heard in mirror world must have been ones of this kind.
There is a well-known music piece called Spiegel Musik composed by Mozart.
However, this music piece is composed so as to be playable from the top and from the end of the score to be listened as harmonious music. So this it is not the mirror music presented here.
The explanations of principle of present mirror music can be seen on URL given below.
http://math152.wordpress.com/2008/10/20/symmetry-in-music-pianos-and-keyboards/
We know by seeing through a mirror, figures are quite similar but not exactly the same as real one. Similarly, in mathematics, what are called "inverse functions" are functions which are symmetrical each other with the center of symmetry on the line y = x. For example, y = 1/x vs. x = 1/y (below right) and x = eu vs. u =lnx (below left) are inverse functions. Inverse functions are the same but not the same one another.
The latter example shows basic principle of many physical and sociological phenomena such as the relation of temperature and entropy, the money owned and its utility and etc. Thus looking through a mirror can let us notice the new meaning of what we have in hand. Listening to mirror music seems to expand our way of appreciating the wonderful world of music in similar manner.
Happiness 1-4
1 Who is Homo-Sapience? The 4-Storied House of Happiness.
2 Stress is indispensable for Happiness.
3 Equality does not bring about Happiness, Inequality neither.
4 Less is More, More is Less! The Law of-Just Noticeable Difference, Utility, Entropy, Happiness...
Happiness 5-6
5 Happiness and Time. Everything flows. When is When?
6 Simplicity and Happiness. Image of Happiness-Gestalt. E Pluribus Unum: Out of many one.
Happiness 7
7 Utopia and Dystopia. When you live in Utopia, Dystopia may look like Utopia?
Happiness 8
8 Dualism, Symmetry and Happiness. Absolute event is like the sound of one-handed clap.
Happiness 9
9 Philosophy and Happiness. Logical pursuit of Truth (philosophy) can never attain the goal.
Happiness 10-11
10 Religion and Happiness. Credo quia Absurdum. At the bottom of logic lies impossible.
11 Summing up illustration. Happiness is ...to think what is what...ad infinitum.
Happiness12 Summary
12 Satisfaction is backward, Surprisal is forward!
There are more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in our philosophy.
Heat pipe is immersed into a hot water in a cup at about 50℃,
liquid (80% ethanol) sealed in the glass pipe starts to circulate in
the pipe carrying along color beads and gold flakes put in as markers.
Click here for the operating principles and details
This necklace is a linear model of the "Quasi Crystal", the discoverer of which received this year's Nobel Award in Chemistry. This model is a ringed arrangement of the Fibonacci sequence. Instead of the original demonstration of this sequence by Fibonacci (in1202) for which Fibonacci used female and male rabbits, in this necklace model blue and white beads are used...
The beads are strung according to the following pattern:
1. Begin the arrangement with three beads, blue, white and blue. These colors are denoted by the letters as BWB.
2. To generate the next generation of the sequence, follow the rule, B→BW, W→B.
For example the above initial sequence changes into the next sequence of BWBBW.
3. The third sequence develops as BWBBWBWB and so on and on.
If you count the total numbers of B plus W and also the each sum of B and W, in above example, you find a same sequence of numbers 3, 5, 8. The Fibonacci sequence in mathematics is given as (0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34, 55,89...). Notice the fact that the addition of successive two numbers produces the next number.
The above necklace is made simply by connecting 21 white beads and 34 blue beads (total 55 beads) arranged according to the rules explained above. Only 53 beads are seen in the necklace because one white and one blue bead are represented by one large red bead. The purpose of doing so is to make it look more colorful and also to make the necklace symmetrical.
The crux of the appeal of this necklace exists in the ratio of the numbers of B and W beads. This ratio in the above ring is 34/21 = 1.6190. As the total number of the beads increases the ratio approaches infinitely close to the so called "golden ratio" (= 1.61803398...) which is known as the most beautifully balanced ratio or proportion frequently used in architecture and in other objects. The golden ratio is an irrational number hence the balance of the numbers of B and W in the above necklace may give you a little bit of irrational feeling so that it may always create new stimulus to let you feel happy in this world!?
Kyoto Energy-Environmental Research Association Hideo Shingu (2011/11/15)
]]>This article is from the United Nations " Harmony with Nature" program pages.
1. What would the practice of your selected discipline look like from an Earth Jurisprudence perspective? How is that different from the way that your discipline is generally practiced now? And, what are the benefits of practicing the selected discipline from an Earth Jurisprudence perspective?
Of crucial importance is the role of energy, which is the sine qua non for the survival of life on the planet. Let us note the fact that in "advanced societies" human beings are now consuming energy amounting to 40 times their basal metabolic rate (bmr). The worldwide average per capita consumption of energy exceeds 15 times the average human bmr. We should always be conscious of the limited availability of energy supplies, but more importantly we must be aware of the inevitability of the degradation in the environment that accompanies the use of energy.
A simple example of how much energy humanity is consuming can be visualized by imagining the situation in which the world’s elephant population reaches 7 billion (7,000,000,000). Per capita, elephants consume nearly the same amount of energy as the per capita average for the world human population. Can the earth accommodate 7 billion elephants? While the Earth centered worldview informs us of the impossibility for the planet to accommodate such a great elephant population, the prevailing anthropomorphic model instructs political and economic powers to continue increasing per capita consumption of energy in order to attain more affluent living conditions.
It is important to remember that only human beings use energy in excess of their basal metabolic rate. In summary, reducing energy consumption is imperative in order to achieve Harmony- With-Nature, or in other words, a world governed under the regime of Earth Jurisprudence. Time is of essence, there is no longer the luxury to debate endlessly the "benefits" and “costs” of consuming more or less energy, because if humanity fails to reduce worldwide energy consumption the consequence will be the extinction of human life as we know it.
In his book The True Natural Way of Life: Shizen-Shin-Eido, Ando Shoeki (1703-1762) described what he called "the animal court.” In this court he imagined all non-human creatures including insects, birds, fishes and animals, gathered to accuse human beings of greed and gluttony and to point out that each creature on earth had an equal right to enjoy nature's affluence. According to the court, only human beings were living extravagant lives, consuming so much more energy than it needed to survive thereby depriving the chance of other creatures to enjoy even as much as their natural portions..
In short, humanity has to cease from building over-consuming societies and to seek to enjoy living in more frugal, less energy imbibing societies. We do not have much time to postpone changing the prevailing belief that attaches affluence to happiness, to a belief that relates frugality to happiness. Many people are now actually discovering that less means more and even more happiness. 2
2. What promising approaches do you recommend for achieving the implementation of an Earth- centered worldview for the discipline selected? (Note: depending on the discipline, approaches could also be theoretical, although practical approaches should be prioritized).
In the first instance it is necessary to accept: that there is no "clever" way to get the benefits of energy use without affecting the earth's environment. To believe that there is such a clever way, means that people are putting too much weight on the advancement of technology based on natural science. The fact remains that the "use" of energy is always accompanied by an increase in entropy, which is synonymous with the degradation of the environment. There is no way to escape this fact, no matter how much technological advancement is achieved. Hence the Earth centered view is again concomitant with energy saving. The first step in implementing an earth- centered worldview is to educate people.
The "efficiency" of energy usage depends on the magnitude of the temperature differential between the energy source and where and how energy is being expended. The term energy "consumption" simply means the equalization of temperatures at the source and consumption state(expressed as the entropy increase). At the equalized temperature energy becomes inert, and thus a source of environmental degradation.
Knowledge of the nature of energy and entropy is indispensable to convey the conviction that there is need for an the Earth-centered world view. It is the choice between the infinite benefits of a sustainable human existence or joining the rapidly growing ranks of extinct species. .
Human nature is apt however, to seek short term benefits that derive from with high energy consumption because long term benefits are difficult to foresee. Therefore the most effective way to encourage people to experience an energy-frugal way of life is to adjust the pricing system of energy so that energy saving would bring tangible short term benefits. The simplest way is to prompt energy prices to increase to the point where excess energy consumption becomes a burden on the purse. There must be various ways to avoid the accompanying side effects of this policy, in particular the extra burden on poor people. This may be achieved by a rationing system to ensure that everyone gets a fair share of lower priced energy.
In conclusion, it is indispensable for the majority of the world’s population to agree to reduce their energy consumption. The role of government is essential to guide people in that direction by a clever and equitable use of their taxing systems. To guide people to extinction or to a sustainable future is equivalent to the choice between zero and infinity.
3. What key problems or obstacles do you see impeding the implementation of an Earth-centered worldview in the discipline selected?
In this context:
Underlying the prevailing anthropocentric worldview is human arrogance and the false confidence that human beings can manage the degradation of environment by the use of present and future "advanced" technologies. We are all dazzled by the recent development of technology3
represented by the computer, medical advances that prolong life, space science and so on. However we have to remind ourselves from time to time that we actually know nothing.
The simplest question "why are we here?" no one can answer. The roles of philosophy and religion are increasingly important if humanity is to live well in the better way of rational humble life-styles. Yet there was no era other than today where the taste for such simple life styles has disappeared in accordance with the disappearing respect for the humanities including philosophy and religion. For example, in Japan for over 250 years from around 1600 to the end of 19thcentury, people lived under a feudal system. The rate of economic progress was quite slow and there was not much liberty to discuss politics. But note that, during this time nature was rigorously guarded. The reason for this was that people realized that their lives were totally dependent on nature and realized that they were part of that nature. The Earth-centered worldview was without discussion, a matter of fact then.
At this time, the arts flourished in the fields of literature, design and visual arts (Ukiyoe for example), dance and theater performance (Kabuki), music, and so on. I have to add that over this long feudal period there were no wars fought with other countries and not one inside Japan either. Peace was as common as the air then.
In sum, it is not so worthwhile a matter to discuss what benefit humanity can get from technological development. It should be increasingly realized that it is only nature on which humankind can depend. We cannot be too careful as we seek to preserve nature. A harmony with nature way of life is, without discussion, the only reasonable choice for humanity.
4. What are the top recommendations for priority, near-term action to move your selected discipline toward an Earth Jurisprudence approach? What are the specific, longer-term priorities for action? (Note: give 3 to 10 priorities for action).
Priority for the action:
1. Let people realize that there is no method for consuming energy which does not degrade the environment. In this context, education on the facts of energy is important.
2. Learning about the history of the degradation of nature is very important. The extinction of passenger pigeon in North America, the extinction of mujina raccoon in Japan, and the tragedy of Easter Islands are all historic examples of the over exploitation of nature.
3. Taxation as the management tool for the over-usage of energy: We have to support an energy price increase to give space to people to voluntarily save energy without teaching them to do so. What governments should do is to contrive the way to guarantee the lives of poor people under high energy price.
Distribution of the right of low price electrical energy usage up to say, 30kwh/month per person may be employed for example. If one live by 20kwh/month that person can trade the remaining right to use under low price, 10kwh/month to other person who wants to use more energy under much higher fee. 4
4. We have to remind ourselves from time to time that we do not know everything. About the most important essence of life, we are as ignorant as the ancient people who worshipped the sun as god.
5. We must not be enticed to believe in the opinions of experts who say that the present degradation of earth's environment (average temperature rise, increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere) is not due to the human activities.
Perhaps they might be right in the long run. But if they are, in fact wrong, and if we adhere to their views and an unlimited energy spending policy is continued, the outcome is a catastrophe for human life.
6. What we can do is to think: To think about what is good for the future. If we hope for the better future, we have to put our weight on the conviction that energy saving is the only assurance of human survival.
Introduction
Both RQ(rapid-quenching) and MA(mechanical-alloying) are useful methods to explore various meta-stable and unstable phases of materials. A brief over view of these technologies from the thermodynamic and mechanical points will be given here to help understanding what we are doing using such methods.
1 RQ is to create under-cooling
Ever since the ancient technology of making sharp and hard swords, rapid quenching has been a useful method to create meta-stable steel crystalline structure "martensite" which are otherwise temperature-wise hidden under the equilibrium "α" phase. In general, it must be remembered that there can be many meta-stable phases while the equilibrium phase (the most stable phase) is one.
The basic physical meaning of RQ (rapid quenching) is the creation of large under-cooling of materials avoiding the formation of the most stable phase at equilibrium temperature. The faster the quenching rate the less the time available for the nucleation of new phases so that the larger the under-cooling attainable. It also has to be remembered that under-cooled state also is one of the meta-stable phases(1,2).
Depending on what is the initial state of the material at high temperature from which RQ method is applied, RQ is called, solid-quenching, liquid-quenching and vapor-quenching.
Figure 1 shows the energetic view of the relation between the stable phase and meta-stable phases for the case of liquid-quenching. A schematic explanation of the energetic relation among stable, unstable and meta-stable states of a material is shown in Fig.2.
Figure 1
Schematic view of the energetic relations among the stable and meta-stable phases for the case of liquid under-cooling. The melting temperature of the stable solid phase is the highest and it is lower the less stable the meta-stable phase. In this figure, δ phase is not attainable by under-cooling.
2 The Ostwald's step rule favors the formation of meta-stable phase to the stable phase
Experimentally, emergence of meta-stable phases from under-cooled liquid is quite common. The Ostwald's step rule states that in general, the formation of meta-stable phase is favored rather than the most stable phase from the same initial phase when both phases are in the temperature range in which phase change is possible(3).
The "freezing rain" is one of the examples of Ostwald's step rule observable in nature. The under-cooled water vapor produces under-cooled water (rain drops) rather than the most stable snow flake(solid water) below freezing temperature (0℃) when there are not enough dust (nucleation sites) in the atmosphere for solid water formation.
The reason for this phenomenon is explained as due to the smaller interfacial energy between the meta-stable phase and the initial phase compared to that between the initial and stable phase. The structural difference between meta-stable phase and initial phase is smaller than the difference between the stable and initial phase. The values of interfacial energy generally are proportional to the structure difference of phases.
Figure 2
A schematic illustration explaining the energetic relationships among the stable, unstable and meta-stable phases. Free energy states of phases and potential energy relations of an object in gravitational field are compared.
3 MA may produce both meta-stable and non-stable state of materials
MA, mechanical alloying, is a general term meaning extensive pulverization of solid component or mixtures of components by mechanical repeated hammering or kneading.
In contrast to RQ, in the case of MA the processing temperature is usually around room temperature or below. At temperature range where kinetic motion of atoms are slow, the repeated kneading of powder mixture of two pure components may result in the formation of nano-order proximity of different elements. Such state is quite similar to the elemental mixtures in liquid or in vapor. So that without any rapid processing, one may obtain many meta-stable and/or unstable states of materials like these obtainable by RQ by MA as explained in Fig.3.
Figure 3
A schematic binary phase diagram in which the physical meaning of RQ and MA are shown by the arrows(2).
4 Energetic comparisons of various techniques of meta-stable phase exploration.
RQ and MA are two handy techniques to realize non-equilibrium structures but there are many other methods known to attain such states of materials. Each of such method has its own advantages and disadvantages technologically, but the most crucial point of the ability of the technique depends on the energetic measure how much free energy excess each processing methods can attain.
David Turnbull first showed the table of energetic potential of various rapid quenching methods in relation to the rapid quenching rate(4). Table1 shows an extension of such table arranged in terms of realizable free energy excess for wide range of applicable techniques(5).
Table 1
Comparison of excess energy which may be put into the solid material by various methods
From Table1, one may notice the advantages of RQ and MA in realizing fairly large free energy excess in mass production bases.
5 Examples of nano-structure formation by MA
Regulated repetition of kneading is in principle the same technique as the making crusts of apple pies in bakery. This process is known as the fundamental way of creation of "chaos" states in various field of study. A schematic drawing of repeated kneading for metallic materials is shown in Fig.4.(6).
Figure 4
A schematic illustration of kneading applicable to metallic materials. In this case depending on whether the starting shape of materials are thin plates or mixture of powders, the sample obtained may be regular nano-layers or randomly mixed nano-grained sheets.
Fig. 5 shows a regular nano-layered structure formed in a Ag-Fe alloy using the procedure shown in Fig.4. (6). Ag and Fe are mutually strongly repulsive elements so that even in almost atomistic mixture of these elements, fairly regular layers can be formed by repeated kneading. One of the advantages of nano-layer formation by MA, in comparison with the alternative vapor deposition, is the number of layers can be as many as over millions of layers. As a result, the directional anisotropy of physical properties can be examined in both parallel and perpendicular direction to the layers as shown in Fig.6.
Figure 5
A nano-scale multi-layers of Ag and Fe formed by the repeated "Baker's Transformation"
Figure 6
An example of magneto-resistivity anisotropy observed in a sample shown in Fig.5. It is to be noted that the magneto-resistivity change is much greater when the electrical current is perpendicular to the layers.
6 MA and Mechano-Chemistry
6.1 Low temperature iron smelting
Repeated mechanical crashing or mechanical grinding, the technique sometimes called as "Mechanical Milling" also produces nano-scaled fine powers for brittle materials. The enhancement of chemical reactions due to mechanical treatments are sometimes referred to as "Mechano-Chemistry". Close proximity of different elements in nano -scale may greatly enhance the chemical reaction rate of these elements.
As an example, the reduction of iron oxides by carbon which is a basis of iron smelting today can be enhanced greatly when the iron ore is mixed with carbon by mechanical grinding to the size of microns in diameter. The reduction temperature may become as low as around 1000℃which is close to the thermodynamically possible low temperature limit of the reduction reaction as shown in Fig.7..
Figure 7
A part of the Ellingham Diagram related to the thermodynamic stabilities of iron oxides relative to carbon mono-oxide gas and to water vapor. It is readily understandable that iron oxide FeO (and hence Fe2O3) can be reduced by solid carbon in the temperature above around 750℃.
Fig.7 indicates that technologically iron-smelting can readily be possible at temperatures around 1000℃. However, due to the mass-scale industrial advantage, production of iron is usually performed by "blast furnace" in which the maximum heating temperature is around 1700℃.
In order to run a blast furnace, as the name suggests, large amount of air (or sometimes oxygen) is blown into the furnace partly for heating by burning carbon and partly to produce carbon mono-oxide for reduction of iron oxides. This technique is quite useful but when the whole process is reviewed in sober eyes, it may seem curious to provide oxygen for the purpose of reduction of iron-oxides.
When both iron ore and carbon are ground into the size of several microns to several tens of microns, the surface area of both reacting materials can be increased by tens of thousands times greater than the case when compared with the initial sizes which may be in centimeters. When mixed powders are packed closely, the reduction reaction may take place at temperature range as low as around or below 1000℃ and within very short reaction time. When the initial powder size can be reduced down to sub-micron size, almost instantaneous reduction may be possible at 1000℃。
Fig.8 shows an example of the iron smelting experiment from mechanically milled and compacted powder mixture of Fe2O3 and wood charcoal in stoichiometric composition(7).
It is to be noticed that pure iron in the form of micron-sized fibrous structure (called the sponge iron) are formed at 950℃in one hour. The iron thus made is pure iron due to the solid state reaction in which solid solubility of carbon into iron is low.
Figure 8
Experimental result showing the iron smelting at 950℃ by MA process applied to the raw materials (iron oxide and carbon).
6.2 Hydrogen generation from "water and iron" by MA
Referring to Fig.7 again, one may notice that the free energy of formation of H2O and FeO are quite close but iron oxide is slightly more stable than water throughout the wide temperature range including room temperature.
This fact means that pure iron can reduce water to produce hydrogen. We use iron and steel materials everyday without worrying much about the hydrogen generation due to water. This is because the interfacial area between iron materials and water is so small that the reactivity of iron and water can be thought negligible.
However, when the size of solid iron becomes very small as in the case of sponge iron we have seen in the previous experiment, the condition is entirely different. The sponge iron which are composed from micro-meter sized thin wires has specific surface area much larger than the iron rods of centimeter size.
Thus the sponge iron has the ideal form to be used as the hydrogen generation agent. The added advantage of iron to be used for this purpose is there are little heat generation in this reduction reaction because of the close oxidation potentials of iron and hydrogen as we confirmed in Fig.7
In reality, experiment proves that by simply immersing sponge iron into water produces no hydrogen gas(7). This is because of the existence of oxide layers which protect sponge iron to be attacked by water. The removal of such surface oxide layers by MA (mechanical grinding) has been proved to be quite effective as shown in Fig.9.
Figure 9
Experimental results of Hydrogen generation by MA of sponge iron and water
The result shown in Fig.9 is for the case of ball-milling of sponge iron with water, but additional experiments showed that once sponge iron is mechanically ground in dry inert atmosphere, the activity of hydrogen generation is maintained when the sample is sealed and stored in a bag filled with inert gas. By simply opening the bag and put the activated sponge iron into water, hydrogen comes out to the stoichiometric reaction limit (8,9).
Summary
Thus we have examined the potential of RQ, MA and related techniques in the production of meta-stable and unstable state of materials from both fundamental thermodynamic point of view and by experimental instances. These technologies when first found by experiments always looked somewhat unusual and strange but when examined and proved useful in years these become to be one of the conventional technologies.
When we look back such histories over RQ and MA, we realize that many seemingly "odd" behaviors of experimentalists and theorists may at times not odd at all ( Fig. 10 may be referred).
Figure 10
The Netherlandish Proverbs.
by Peter Beugel the Elder (1559).
Seemingly out of mind behaviors may sometimes not out of mind at all.
References
(1) J.W.Cahn: Proceedings of Second International Conference on Rapid Solidification Processing,
(1980) 24.
(2) P.H.Shingu and K.N.Ishihara: J. Alloys and Compounds, 194 (1993) 339.
(3) K.N.Ishihara, M.Maeda and P.H.Shingu: Acta.Met. Vol.33, No.12 (1985) 2113.
(4) D.Turnbull: Met. Trans. 12A (1981) 695.
(5) P.H.Shingu: "Kinzoku" vol. 71, No.1 (2001) 43.
(6) K.Yasuna, M.Terauchi, A.Otsuki, K.N.Ishihara and P.H.Shingu: J. Appl. Phys. 82(5), 1 Sept. (1997) 2435.
(7) P.H.Shingu: Bulletin of the Ceramic Society of Japan,44 (11), (2009) 838.
"Activation of iron by the mechanical alloying method: production of hydrogen from water and iron".
(8) P.H.Shingu: Japanese patent. Registration number, 5311334 (2013).
"Hydrogen production from sponge iron and water by MA".
(9) P.H.Shingu: Japanese patent. Registration number, 5413821 (2013).
"Low-temperature iron smelting utilizing MA".
On the grave of Ludwig Boltzmann in Vienna Central Cemetery one can see the famous inscription of an equation as shown below which reads,
To understand the meaning of this expression, we must remind ourselves the meaning of logarithm of a number. A short reminder of logarithmic counting method is given below.
]]>Kane san looks equally very charming at 20years old and 116 years old in wiki pictures. Wiki reports that one of her hobbies is to pass time thinking about mathematics although she sepent her young days as common merchant .
Here is a tryal of entropic (mathematical) examination of the happiest time of life in general and the comparison of the result with Kane’s answer “Now!”