It’s the end of the world as we know it December 7, 2006
Posted by Andreas in Environment, Society.add a comment
… and I feel fine!
Most of the people I know agree that the world is a pretty fucked up place in a whole number of ways. The violence, the exploitation and the wars. Against poor people, women, children, the environment, workers, animals. The racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia…
Baring the odd psychopath,I think everyone to the left of Hitler would agree that these things are entirely undesirable for individuals as well as society and the planet as a whole. So what do we do in the face of this outrage?
We spend US$5 billion on Christmas presents for our pets!
Yesterday I was sitting in a traffic jam thinking about resources (you’re thinking “Nerd Alert”, I know, but bear with me). It wasn’t a big traffic jam at all, just some sluggish traffic going over Kloof Nek, but suddenly the scale of our society’s oil addiction became so very obvious.
I probably put about a hundred bucks’ worth of petrol into my car every week. I think I’m a fairly ordinary car users, so that’s probably very similar for all of the other cars that were creeping up the hill with me, and for all the other ones in all the other towns and cities around the world – all 400-600 million cars on this planet today, constantly guzzling away the go-juice.
That is one shit-load of petrol and therefore oil! And I’m not even thinking about all the other things we use oil for in huge quantities, like plastics, fertilisers and all sorts of other stuff – we, as a civilisation, are completely dependent on it.
The thing is, we’re running out of oil and life will never be the same again. Most experts think that worldwide oil production has already peaked or will do so in the next few years.
Global oil production will start to drop, while consumption keeps on accelerating. The looming end result is obvious.
“No problem,” you say, “our scientists and engineers and politicians are aware of all this and they’re working on solutions: hybrid cars, hydrogen fuel cells, carbon trading and more”.
The spanner in the works is that none of these alternatives are truly sustainable in the long run either. OK, my thinking here may be somewhat tainted by the fact that I’m reading Derrick Jensen’s new book Endgame (Volume I – The Problem of Civilization) at the moment.
Great book. Well written and totally challenging on all sorts of levels! One of his basic premises is that “it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that any social system based on the use of non-renewable resources is by definition unsustainable: in fact it probably takes anyone but a rocket scientist to figure this one out.”
I’m no anarcho-primitivist (yet – hahaha), but I can’t but agree with a lot of his points. So what am I doing about all of this and my own role in it? Honestly: I’m not sure yet, but I’m working on it!
I’m an Anarchist! December 4, 2006
Posted by Andreas in Politics, anarchism.4 comments
…most people are at least a little taken aback when I tell them that. I guess I don’t really fit their mental image of an anarchist, but then anarchism has to be one of the most public-maligned, misrepresented and misunderstood concepts out there, so I don’t blame them.
For me, anarchism, in its most distilled form, is the absence of hierarchy – a world where there is no domination or exploitation of one human being by another based on power, privilege, money, status, race, class, sex, ability, sexual orientation, age, ethnicity or any other signifier.
Anarchism provides a framework that accommodates both individual freedom and community solidarity. Anarchists believe that each human being has the inalienable right to manage their own life as they see fit (while never interfering with that same right of all others). Anarchists, also understand, however, that we are social animals and will not be able to survive without a mutually supportive society of equals living sustainably in the natural world of which we are an integral part.
Rather than being a dogmatic political philosophy, anarchism is a long tradition of how to conduct one’s own life and how humanity can coexist with all of nature on this planet.
It is surprisingly inclusive and accommodating – Noam Chomsky quotes a French writer as saying that “anarchism has a broad back”. At its best, it presents both a critical analysis of history and the state of our current society, as well as a revolutionary vision for a better world!
I think the first time I really got in contact with anarchism was on a train somewhere in Europe when I was an undergrad student. I came across Bakunin’s famed statement about how the impulse for destruction can be creative (the actual quote is: “the passion for destruction is a creative passion, too!”). I remember thinking “Wow, that’s a different way of looking at things”.
Quite soon after that I read Peter Marshall’s book Demanding the Impossible – A History of Anarchism (sadly out of print now) – all 778 pages of it – and was hooked.
The Silly Season – UCT Salary Negotiations December 1, 2006
Posted by Andreas in Cape Town, South Africa, University of Cape Town, Work.add a comment
With less than a month to go before the Christmas break, annual salary negotiations at the University of Cape Town, where I work, have begun in earnest.
Workforce unity in this proudly liberal, no, better make that neoliberal, institution has been systematically dismantled over the past few years: most of the cleaning and gardening staff have been ruthlessly outsourced to amongst others, Fidelity Supercare (an outfit that consistently stumbles over its own feet in the race to the bottom), the lower non-academic payclasses are represented by NEHAWU, the UCT Employees Union negotiates for all remaining non-academic (aka PASS) staff, while the academics are organised in the UCT Academics’ Association.
You get the picture: Divide and Conquer has been the watchword in hallways of Bremner (UCT’s admin building) for some time.
In the era of Grand Apartheid* local cynics used to refer to this place as “Moscow on the hill” – the irony! These days Washington by the Liesbeek would be equally appropriate.
NEHAWU and the Academics’ Association have already settled for a 5.5% increase (across the board and performance-related, respectively).
Yesterday, the UCT Employees Union (including yours truly, of course) rejected a similar offer from management!
When it wants to, the EU can be a feisty little union. Sure, it’s got nothing on the Wobblies, few if any of its members have ever pondered the virtues of anarcho-syndicalism and replacing capitalism with something better is certainly not on the agenda. But it’s independent, bolshy and its volunteer exec can only function through strong mandates from the membership.
It warms my heart to hear fellow PASS staff members – librarians, administrative assistants, technical and scientific officers – voice their dissatisfaction with management’s miserly offer, telling them to stick it!
We came away from the meeting with a clear consensus that:
- we do not want to pay the unreasonable, discriminatory and punitive increases in staff parking fees before we see any improvements in the system
- the performance appraisal system is not functioning satisfactorily at all
- we want an increase comprised of an across the board portion that will provide financial stability for all, as well as an additional performance-related portion for high achievers.
Now all we need is to support the negotiating team in our numbers, document specific grievances and put facts on the ground. Aluta Continua and all that!
(* it just occurred to me that that term rolls of the tongue a bit like Grand Theft Auto and I guess it’s sort of the non-automotive equivalent on an infinitely larger scale!) .
