So I just came back from lunch at a little cafe near my house here in Buenos Aires, and an op-ed I read in La Nacion just won't get out of my head. In all earnestness, the columnist said that the time for rejecting "excessive consumerism" is over. Now we're in crisis. We can't afford to be "ascetic" now and "reject that shiny new car".

No. We have a moral obligation to buy.

Because THAT, producing stuff we might not necessarily need but can buy, is what gets people employed. And he goes on to conclude that, save "all of us getting a plot of land and returning to subsistence agriculture", which would imply "giving up all technical advance, modern medicine, etc", the production-consumption cycle is the only way.

Wow.

What ever happened to the idea of less work, more live/art/love/leisure? Why do we need to be organized in a way that only the 10-hour-a-day production of useless goods will provide us with enough share of the world's resources to live a dignified life? What if we all took a step backwards, looked at the big picture, and started to re-organize the way we do things?

If it won't happen in THIS crisis, with the impending doom of global havoc wrought by climate change and a global slowdown of "stuff-making" - when WILL it happen?

Sometimes I despair.

I realize that I am blogging patetically infrequent. Worse, there isn't all that much new in Ingo-world (or rather, nothing I'd be eager to blog about) but I did write up a rant regarding the new "green revolution" and thought I'd share it. If you are still reading this blog at all, I'd be happy to briefly hear from you!

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Making a buck on the green revolution – why we need to re-think, not re-buy

A few weeks back I attended one of San Francisco’s green networking events. I had expected it to be yet another “preaching to the choir” exercise, a hand-holding circle of tree-hugging hippies and tote-bag wielding bicyclists cheering each other on to save the planet, flush the toilet only when really justified, and shun Safeway for the local farmers market.

Alas, it was nothing like that. While there were a few honestly green souls there, what I mostly found was a motley crew of (ex)management consultants “trying to get a foot in the door” for the next big thing, newly minted “sustainability consultants” advertising their services, and a headline presentation happily proclaiming that even in these new “sustainable times” one can still make a good buck, even with “business as usual”, as long as one could impress on one’s customers enough green credentials to keep them buying. It was a heavy dose of green opportunism. I “networked on” but I could not quite shake the feeling that I was sort of in the wrong movie.

Days later, I stood flabbergasted in the giant main hall of SF’s Green Festival, overwhelmed by the massive scale of green consumerism washing over me. Most of the festivals stands were, you guessed it, about buying stuff. Green stuff, for sure, and organic stuff, and trash was politely recycled, but in the essence, there were again hundreds of green entrepreneurs trying to sell me the next green thing. It was off-putting to say the least.

I understand that people need to make a living. But climate change is different. It’s not just another technical challenge to be overcome by the innovative muscle of technology, not just a question of buying the same, just green. It is a challenge to the assumptions that underlie our current way of living. Climate change is the bill presented to us by the planet for the way we organize our society, a way that has not only become unsustainable but, perhaps more importantly, has failed to make us happy.

We have wasted millions of years’ worth of saved-up, irreplaceable easy energy, in a quixotic quest for making more stuff, driven by our definition of success as owning more stuff and building a fence around it, thank you very much. We only now are beginning to recognize that we are also unhappy living that way because it neglects our nature as communal beings and is built on excessive competition and isolation.
Maybe we’ll get lucky and soon a fundamental breakthrough in green technology will save us. Perhaps some unexpected twist to something exotic like, say, cold fusion will suddenly provide us with all the energy we’ll ever need, and do so safely and without emitting greenhouse gases. That would of course be marvelous, and considering the current glacial pace of progress on the conventional path (international climate negotiation) it might well be our only chance to assure our survival as a species.

But, as paradoxical as that sounds, such a breakthrough might also be a missed chance. Right now, impending catastrophe is forcing us to re-think. It is forcing us to consider new ways of organizing our society, to define benchmarks for success other than ownership of things. It is forcing us to cooperate on levels never seen before. It might finally break down the north-south divide and make us one global people, fighting together to keep our planet livable for everyone.

A sustained global effort, over several generations, to turn around Titanic Mankind and create the more sustainable human structures, both economic and social, that we will need to survive, could mark humanity’s finest hour. In the process, we might not just find purpose; we might even find happiness.

It's quite a shock but there you go! Mi girlfriend was just "virtually kidnapped". Some crook called her dad and after pretending that he was calling from a hospital where she supposedly was after an accident (to tickle some of her personal details out of him) he switched tunes and told him that they had his daughter kidnapped and that he's better pay or else. Told him to "not hang up or they'll hurt her". They wanted him to come to a remote place, right now with the cash, and pay them, or else.

Fortunately and despite the shock he kept his wits and called the police (while having the dude on the other line) and they told him to hang up, anyway, which he did. They then told him it was a new scheme (express virtual kidnapping) and that most likely his daughter was just fine.

Turns out she was just fine, giving an English class just a few stories above him in the same building at her cousin's place. So he checked up on her, calmed down, and that was that.

But seriously, how fucked up is this scheme? Argentine gangsters are a creative bunch, indeed.

Another one of those long breaks. I think blogging is defined somewhere as "regular" but well… For once, there is already so much noise in the world and on the Internet in particular, that I sometimes feel I have not much to add. So philosophic musings hardly seem worth the while shouting out to the world - everyone else is already shouting loud enough, and all has been said anyway.

So it’s pretty much down to letting you know what’s up in my life (is there actually anybody out there reading this at all?) and I only rarely summon the motivation to put together a summary. In any case, since I have recently become a budding flickr pro user, you can always have a look at my flickr page at www.flickr.com/photos/seluron and check out what’s new there – more frequent updates I’d say then here. Just needs dumping the contents of my camera there and have you guessing the story. J

So, where did we leave off… Right, the world last remaining superpower, los Estados Unidos of America.

Well, you’ve seen the pretty pictures of Washington, DC and my early ravings about its quiet and green. Now that I am back in Buenos Aires (more on that later) I appreciate them even more – I am yet again immersed in ear-splitting noise on all sides, and that in my residential neighborhood. No sub-prime mortgage crisis here, our lovely porteño property developers are tearing down antique colonial houses to make space for faceless apartment towers with the same, if not increased, enthusiasm than when I left. There are 5 constructions sites around me all within a block. Quaint. Looks like everyone wants to get rich “before the next crisis” (The “Church of the Next Crisis” has more believers than the Brazilian Evangelicals, and that does say something!) and selling cheaply nailed together apartments is the way to get there. The city gets flooded ever more severely every year during thunderstorms because there simply is no uncemented surface left for the water to go, and the drainage is mostly from the 1920s, and of course all these developers simply plunk their towers on top of it all. Make money now, and after me the flood. Indeed. Give me an “Amen!”

Yet, being back here in Buenos Aires I also appreciate that here I can simple call someone up and go have a coffee with them. That same day!! In “DC” if you DO get a physical hold of somebody, and you manage to separate them for a precious moment from the two cell phone conversations they are having simultaneously, they’ll pull out their blackberry, scroll down their agenda with a frown indicating a very busy schedule, and ask something like “Next week Thursday between 6 and 7 sounds good?” Right. Next week. Let’s talk. I’ll send you a poke on facebook.

Facebook, right. Another plague of modern civilization. For the busy DC professionals on their way up, facebook is actually a valid replacement of human interaction. I’m not sure whose is the “face” in facebook, but it’s certainly not yours or mine, since face-to-face meetings can now be efficiently replaced with facebook-to-facebook meetings. I’m not kidding. Some of my new acquaintances sent me “birthday nudges” on facebook. Instead of coming over 5 blocks to try my cake and say hi in person. It’s a busy world.

Anyway, you will remember that I went to DC to run the brand spanking new Maldives Foundation. I was going to join the fight to save civilization from the effects of global warming (or at least feel good about myself when I’d tell my children on our lifeboat that I really tried to keep sea levels from rising and the people floating next to us kept driving their two SUV’s next to their Prius and that’s why we’re here anyway). I was also going to help the Maldives Government get their democratic reform process appreciated in the US, and perhaps some qualified help from academia with some issues of importance (new legal system etc.).

Well, shortly before my departure two of the four progressive ministers in the Maldives’ government decided to resign; the good news being that the progressive foreign minister (on whom the Foundation depended) stayed. The bad news is that he resigned the day I set foot in US soil. Months of confusion ensued with everything in limbo, and in the end the foundation was bagged unceremoniously by the man’s successor. It was fun while it lasted. And I was pretty burned out when it was over.

So I went on a holiday to Vancouver/Seattle and Toronto to meet people in person whom I had only met online before (facetime, offline, yeah!!) and a few old friends. A nice trip (check out my flickr for too many images of it) and very enjoyable. I also visited my parents in Dresden and my friends in Berlin, wallowing in memories of old times. Made me realize just how long I have been here in Argentina already. 4 years. I turned 30 here and now I’m 34. Scary stuff.

Luckily, before returning to Argentina, I picked up a technical consulting contract with the OAS, more eVoting and electoral technology stuff, so I’ve been keeping in my salsa and paying the bills.

Then I returned to BsAs, only to leave for a week of electoral work to Paraguay (one week, suit-clad in 40+ degrees Celsius, running from one meeting to the other with people in light shirts, arrgh!!) and then straight to Bariloche to the house of Elisa’s mother.

There I fell into a coma. For two months.

I remember lying in the grass. Looking up the trees. Drifting in and out of sleep. Have gentle wind ripple over my skin.

When bursts of energy would hit me, I’d read. Just a little. And fall asleep again from the effort.

Seriously, I’ve never felt as exhausted in my life. I stayed as long as I could, towards the end occasionally working a little, from a garden chair and wireless laptop, the rule being “never more than a fully charged battery of work at any one time” – a brilliant concept if there ever was one!

And now I’m back in my home/construction site. Since the city keeps me awake and stimulated with its noises and smells, I spend quite a bit of time conscious. And since I quit my CTO job with HelpArgentina for coming to the US, I have no “office job” to go to. And Elisa is still in the south, working for some millionaire. I’m alone in the house and doing “too much thinking” which is never good. But you get a blog post. So I guess something positive has come off it.

Sunset over Alexandria

yes, they DO exist. Check the stickers...Argggg

Patriotic parking meters///

Everything is always a little bigger in the USA...

Private paradise - read the subtitles on those chair...

I know I know, enough of birds. But it really is like Bicho y Bichita, jejeje!

We got along great

Chatting up some hot birds in Alexandria, Virginia

In the days before JFK's simplicity rules, the family could "upgrade" from the simple standard issue tombstone to something a little more... extravagant. I was told by a ranger that obelisks were all the rage for a while, and celtic crosses...
Are you thinking what I'm thinking? There must have been 10-15 of these around, up on the older sections!

The "War Office" coat of arms at Arlington. Bellico...
View from the cemetery hill. Note the obelisco...arhm...Washington Monument.
The Arlington Dead. Since JFK declared it a rule that all stones have to be the same, things got much more symmetrical. It's spooky since there always newly slain soldiers coming in - from Kuwait, Afghanistan, now Iraq... Always growing.
Awe-inspiring memorials.

Super Stretch Limo. Mmm.

The society for animal welfare. If that doesn't convince you... In the back, Whole Foods, the local super-hip All Organic and Bio Supermarket! They also call it "whole wallet" - go figure.
Even gas stations in Washington, DC have greek style columns. They LOVE their columns. ;-)
Firefighters. Besides being heroes and all, they have such PRETTY looking trucks!
At Arlington Cemetery. Not even to visit the dead do you have to walk.

Ed and me, saving the world from Global Warming. Literally.
My current abode from the outside.
My street. Leafy. Pretty quiet.
Nice, and colonial.

Georgetown street view. This is the fashionable part of DC. One of them, anyway. Nice flowers, huh?
Mini - a "ZipCar". We just rented it for a few hours, at some US$10 per hour all included. Funniest thing, you don't talk to anybody renting it. They just stand there in a parkinglot - before you go, you select your car on their website, and then when you are there, you just hold your ZipCard to the window, and it opens. You use it, return it, close it again with the ZipCard, and that's it. They bill your Credit card for the hours you used it. Cool, no?
My AirBed where I snore. Good thing I'm by myself. :-)
The library of my current abode....

So I have finally returned to the USA. Who would have thought. Although I visited in 2002 for the last time, it was only a short stint and with all the post 9/11 craze going on hardly typical. Other than that, it's really been pretty much 12 years. That's a lot of time...

After having been here for two weeks, I still feel a bit in a haze. It's really weird. In many ways, one fits right back into US style of living. There are more Starbucks cafes now, but they still smell the same inside. There are still 24hr supermarkets, only the bio-food section is bigger now, and I actually live right across a Whole Foods 100% bio super. Etc etc

So in many ways, the US seems similar to what it was in 1994. Problem is that I am different. When I came to Boston back then I had just been 4 years that Eastern Germany had abandoned communism. I was hungry for the new, enthusiastic. Pretty oblivious to social issues. And ready to consume. I dived headlong into the American Dream and was sold heart and soul.

And now? I notice that it is much more difficult here to be a non-consumer. Businesses are incredibly good at selling things, they make it so easy and convenient to part with my money in style, I feel constantly tempted to buy things. And then I'm stopping and saying to myself - yes, but my old iPod still works. Looks tasty - but I am not really hungry. Great features, but do I need that in a cellphone? Etc. Sometimes it stops me, sometimes it doesn't. In Argentina it was easy to reject consumption - it was simply not much fun. Here it IS fun to consume, in fact, it's a very central pillar of life's philosophy - work hard, and then buy all those things you deserve. If you have to, on your credit card. I'm still waiting for mine, so I'm safe from the evils of credit for now. :-)

Washington, DC has many green spaces within short distance, and is really quite relaxed, especially when compared to the manic frenzy of Buenos Aires. I am walking a lot and am liking it, I've gone skating, both in the city (and survived!) and on a gorgeous bike trail through leafy neighborhoods (of which there are quite a few). I have also gorged on comparatively cheap ethnic food (there goes the weight reduction!). So in many ways, the city has been well living up to expectations.

I still find it a bit hard to fit in, people wise, though. For once, DC seems a strange mixture between multi-ethnicity and separation. It's more more "colorful" than BsAs, but it really quite seems like every group (latinos, blacks, asians, and whites) are pretty much sticking to their communities. There seems to be little mingling, I've yet to see a second mixed race couple (yep, did see one). Most mixing still seems to happen in the gay community (I live in Dupont Circle and am getting hit on pretty much every other day - hehe, that says something about my flirt value, doesn't it? :-)).

So far, I am enjoying bucket-sized (and excellent) coffee at Starbucks and Co, seeing the daily stretch limo (saw one yesterday that must have spanned a block, photo will come), and taking pleasure that, in comparison to the general population, I finally seem a lot less "gordo" :-)

Finally Holidays. A few well earned weeks with Elisa in the mountains in Bariloche! I really needed this! Was outright spectacular, great weather, lots of climbing, fresh air, lake views...

We started out with a 3 day hike in Bolson, staying in 2 mountain huts. Three times 7 hours hiking, steeply up and just as steeply down, down streams that run between your feet... You get the picture. And Elisa hopping up and down hurrying up my poor little self. Mind you, I hadn't done ANY exercise since straining my back in June, so I was well and properly dead when we got back down. But from then on, things became easier, and the Bariloche treks seems child's play.

And some family time with Rana "Ranita" - loudmouth little frog with a lot of personality, who we have adopted and who goes traveling with us. :-) She might call you a bastard at any time, but we love her even so, and maybe because of it !