Atheism 2.0

Alain De Botton offers new, updated version of atheism. First of all he might describe the main characteristics of atheism, in order to provide more evidence about the topic.  The main descriptive word to it may be a refutation. And what is the purpose of the article? To provide no believing people a religion?

The principal of this is to go through religion and pick up the best sides of it and use them in this new version of atheism.  It is an old and proved strategy to observe and find uncontested strengths of the opponent and use them in own purposes, no matter if you refute opposite point of view or not. The question is to believe or not? If we judge by strengths of these two alternatives, religion has passed over these decades and its system is worth respect. The question is: “what do these two alternatives give us, and what do they take from us?” In my opinion it is a better question to compare them.  Religion system eats lot of money from tax payers and do not pay taxes, but gives spiritual consolation, some description of our reality, something to believe in. Religion presents some kind of “monopoly” by itself. The opponent to religion in our reality is presented by the form of science, but it does not provide us with any spiritual consolation, just explanations of the surrounding environment. Here arises a question! What do or did do the majority of us in the worst, most scary and hopeless moments of their lives? What do we need in that moment, scientific explanation or ability of refutation of any supernatural appearance (atheism)? We need something real strong to believe in, and religion comes up with this opportunity. What does the atheism give us - opportunity to deny? It takes away the ability to believe, hope and maybe gives opportunity to think that there is nothing higher than us. Maybe the value we pay for religion is high, but we get some valuable things from it: hope, believe in some power (Lord), right advices to life style (Bible) and lot of things that may make us find consolation.  

The author brings an example of education, as a sector of secular world. Without any breadth consideration of other points of view, he states that higher education makes us better human beings. I strongly disagree, as he does not consider complexities of this issue. It is known that “The coin has two faces.” Higher education has its advantages and also lot of disadvantages as well. Higher education created nuclear weapons. Higher economic education opened eyes of some people about how to reside, get reach on war. Higher education brought to financial crisis, as only highly educated authorities of Wall Street could crank such kind of affair (insider, 2010). If these people are considered better human beings – I refuse to higher education. These were just a few examples of affects of higher education. The question is how we will use products of this higher education. The rules for right use of education may be consistent with several points provided by religion (bible), which is presenting the “true lifestyle”, in order not to harm the environment. But from the other hand religion uses products of this “higher education” in its own interests (psychological influence, throughout which is created gathering and governing system of religion etc.). But the consequences of this use of education by the religion are much harmless than from other prior mentioned sectors. The author states also, that the disadvantage of religion is that it circles the “Great True” all time, rather than to come up with new ideas. A. De Botton is stating that “the new is always better than old”.  Again he does not consider the complexities of this question, as the new is not always better than old and there are many examples of that. One is the economic example concerning Armenia. After USSR collapse its agriculture and economy at whole had been seriously damaged, if to compare related time series statistical data (National Statistical Service of RA, 2011). One other example related to Iraq. There were lot of claims during the government of Sadam Hussein, either from abroad (USA) or within the country. But how is the current situation in Iraq, after the dead of Sadam – worst, if to compare with his governance time. These were just two well known examples, to give refutation of the statement “new is always better than old”.

Alain De Botton claims religion to make people repeat that same things all the times (pray). But he misses the fact, that religion proposes some point of view, which has passed trough decades, which describes the strength of religion system. It must not come up with new ideas in that point of view, as it may put a shadow on lot of basics of its system. If it is coming with some explanation starting from formation of world and human being up to the “true lifestyle” of men, how is it going to come up with new ideas? To “update a version”, like “sorry we were wrong in our assumptions about Creator and his provided directions to lifestyle, here are new ideas about God?” I think after that few people would be willing to believe in strength of the religion.

Author comes up with opportunity to find the values provided by religion (morality, guidance, consolation etc.) in the culture. Culture will give us answers to all to all prior mentioned. But in my opinion, late or soon there will raise reasonable questions:  Why are we considering all these values provided by culture as true ones? Why must we act in this way and not another?  Where do these values come from - from our ancestors, who are human beings like us! Consequently there may raise a new idea, refuting the idea related to culture. It may be some future form of current “atheism against religion”. From my point of view, and as shows the history, every action has its re-action, and also reasons and consequences. So according to this assumption it will become a circle proposing and refuting.

One of the weaknesses of the article is the lack of precision in presenting to implications and consequences of this proposal. Auther offers to take the strengths or religion system and use them in Atheism 2.0, but gives no details about the real ways of implications.

Another weakness is the absence of reliable data. Article and corresponding proposals are mainly based self/general experience. And correspondingly lack of accuracy in presenting, as there is no way we can check if this is truly applicable or not.

And as a final weakness I will mention the final phrase of A. De Botton “It is a weak project”. Why to present the project in general, If you don’t believe in strength of it? And after that phrase, this article seemed like a promotion of the religion system. Why not to leave the religion with us, If such many things are good with, and if there are no any strong and equally beneficial refuting systems proposed?     

How economic inequality harms societies

RichardWilkinson raises a question “what does Economic Inequality to societies?”, by presenting  the comparison of economically more or less unequal societies and countries. Economic inequality is divisive and social corrosive: In article there is some paradoxical Figure 1.1, showing life expectancy against gross national income, where USA and Norway are in richest position and Israel, Greece and Portugal in poor position, but it make no significant difference between their life expectancy. Then he illustrates Figure1.2 with same contest, but within the societies, considering some parts (cities) in England and Wales. And there is a big difference in people life expectancy between richest and poorest parts. This shows that income makes big difference in life expectancy within the societies, but nothing between them. That for richest people is higher and for poorest too low. According to Richard Wilkinson, the main explanation of such paradox is that within the societies researches are taking into account the relative incomes, social differences between people within the society, where they are in relation to each other, and sizes of such differences. But if we will consider countries as people with their income GNI (Gross National Income), what R. Wilkinson does, there can be more significant factors in this case, that influence life expectancy, rather then GNI, like geographic location and related things. And as soon as people understand this explanation given by R. Wilkinson, there must be an interest, what will happen if we wide those differences, make them larger, or compress them, make smaller. And this is what he shows using not just hypothetical data, but data from UN which is the same as World Bank, on the scale of income differences in its reach developed market democracies. Data in Figure 2 show social economic differences between the richest 20% and poorest 20% in the countries. According to data in more equal countries like Japan, Finland, Norway and Sweden, the richest 20% of population is almost 3.5-4 times richer than the poorest 20%. But in more unequal countries the difference is twice bigger than in equal ones. Then the article shows its consequences of such inequality on societies. They collected internationally comfortable data on most common problems that societies are facing, with social ranking. Data on such issues like life expectancy, math and literacy scores, infant mortality, homicides, imprisonment (proportion of population in prisons), teenage birth rate, levels of trust, obesity, mental illness (including drug and alcohol addiction) and social mobility. Then they put this all in one index, all weighted equally, and the Figure 3.1 shows the position of countries according to their average scores on these things against income inequality level within societies, and here also more unequal countries do worse on that index. But when he presents a Figure 3.2, showing the relation of that index against GNP, there is no correlation. But what is interesting in this figure, in best positions are two different countries Japan and Sweden, and the more important difference is how did they make it? Sweden had big gaps between earnings within the society, but it compressed them trough taxation, generous welfare states, generous benefits and so on. And Japan started with smaller differences between earnings before taxation. It has lower taxes, smaller welfare state. Being concerned by the issue that people might misunderstand the purpose of this presentation, the evidence, that they are taking into account few district factors, they also have obtained data from UNICEF showing index of child wellbeing  (containing forty different components, such as whether the kids can talk to their parents, whether they have books at home, are they bullying at school etc. and put these all to one index)  in dependence from social economic position, mainly from measure of income inequality. And in this case also children in economically more unequal societies are doing worse then in less unequal societies. And again all this in national level shows no correlation. What all this data show, is that average wellbeing is not any longer dependent on national income and economic growth. It is important in poorer countries, but not in rich developed ones. Same observations are done with different indexes, for example trust level, rate of social mobility, rate of dropping out the high school, mental illness, rate of prisoners, homicides levels and the results are same, more unequal countries are doing worse. Levels of homicides are higher, as they are mostly leaded by large income inequality reasons, and accordingly rates of prisoners are getting higher. For the same reason more people are dropping out schools, and as a result, the rate of qualified experts decrease.

            There was also conducted social psychological test to review what kind of stresses rise the level of cortisol most. And there were lot of volunteers in observation, and used more than 208 laboratory studies containing stressful tasks. And the worst effect showed the tasks with social evaluative threat (Figure 4) 

( Dickens SS, Kemeny ME, 2004). 

            Test is done twice, once in rich developed countries, and secondarily in USA 50 states, asking the same question, do more unequal states do worse in all these measures? And it contains data on trust levels from general social survey from federal government on equality, shows the same picture as in previous cases. More unequal states do worse. They found that everything that is related to trust internationally is related to the trust among these fifty states. But trough observations they found out that there are similar things between more equal states and Japan and Sweden case mentioned before. Some of these states reached to this level of equality by redistribution, narrowing gaps by tax system, others by starting with low differences between income levels.          

            I was surprised, almost in the end of this presentation I saw the questions that I was going to rise. R. Wilkinson raises those most reasonable questions and answers to those questions clearly and unbiased.

Is this just picking and choosing data? – When people are criticizing with this issue, the answer is that researchers are not fitting data, they have absolute rule for that, if the data source has any data about the country they are going to observe, it goes to analyses. And the data source decides whether it is a reliable data or not, not they, otherwise, it would introduce a bias.

What about other countries? – There are 200 observations about life expectancy as a result of income inequality in academic journals. This is not confine to the presented countries, giving simple demonstration of the same countries, the same measure of inequality, one problem after another.

Why not control for other factors? - Observations already showed that GNP per capita does not make any difference. And off course others, using more difficult and sophisticated methods and literature have controlled for poverty, education and so on…

What about causality? – The correlation by it self does not prove causality. And he says that they have spent a lot of time on it, and indeed people know the causes of such outcomes, to big change in understanding of the drivers of chronic health problems in developed world. It is very important how this inequality affects our immune system, becoming reason of chronic stress.

And as a conclusion, R. Wilkinson thinks that we mast deal with post tax and pre tax thing, constrain incomes of the bottom of society. For example, in pre tax situation to increase company democracy, present directors from within the company. And in post tax situation, to make taxes again progressive, end tax haven, stop tax avoidance. But in this case, does he consider complexities of the question? How such treatment to rich taxpayers will effect? Will there be dramatic decrease of charity, philanthropy etc? And from other hand, it may have a bad effect on development of strong and healthy competition, as by putting such strong income constraints on rich businessmen (it is considered by R. Wilkinson, in order to achieve this purpose by tax system) the willingness to win in the challenge may decrease, accordingly it will weaken competition. And as it is known in economics, the strong competition generates real good quality. In the article there is no approach to these issues, or, maybe it will be better to say logical consequences. R. Wilkinson presents suggestions, solutions coming from the issue, but he does not consider other consequences, resulted from these solutions, rather than increasing life expectancy or sustainability by narrowing income gaps within the society. It is reasonable to do that, as by applying these solutions there may arise other much stronger factors, influencing on life expectancy, than income inequality, and one of them was mentioned above. As it was already mentioned, weak competition, or even absence of competition will result on decrease of quality of products and services, which in its turn may seriously result in life expectancy of consumers. 

Sustainability needs greater equality.

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Less stuff, more happiness

 

Founder of "TreeHugger.com" and owner of sustainable prototypes producing company "ExceptionLab"

Graham Hill (2011) presents an idea of "more is equal less", according to which less stuff leads to more happiness.

   So what is the point? In topic he considers cases regarding the joy of less: college room, hotel rooms during the traveling, also camping, when we basically have nothing besides bag and few means needed. But here arises a question, are we getting happy in these cases directly because of having less stuff? We could fell the same or maybe more happiness in those cases by having more things. He does not consider this point of view, and does not face the complexities of the question. He says that now in America people use 3 times more space than 50 years ago, because they need more space for keeping their stuff, but perhaps gives no data, source for checking. Also he presents some 2,2 billion square foot industry of personal storage, again with no additional information about it. And he raises a question regarding the above mentioned data, "where does this lead?", and brings consequences - more credit card dept, huge environmental damage, and less and less happiness. In my opinion sense of happiness in this assumption is relative, as lot of people are getting pretty happy by buying this or that stuff, otherwise they would not. What I will say about credit card dept? It is logical consequence that I can not disagree with. The same is environmental damage, but I would require to give more details about it, as the audience he is targeting is humanity all the people, with different professions, intellectual and educational levels etc. and according to this some part of us might not understand the issue, how does all this stuff generate CO2, accordingly environmental damage. Graham Hill suggests solution of these issues in form of outwork called "Life edited", which states that less stuff we have, less space we will be needing for it, accordingly less CO2 will be generated, more money saved, and more happy we will be. But does this solution answer complexities of issue? What about the economy? If less will be demanded, accordingly less will be produced, or in such low demand producers may even stop production, and what will happen to the world economy? It will get service industry based?
    One thing that I really liked in this presentation, is architectural and interior solutions for apartments, with help of which we can keep the stuff, presenting primary and secondary necessity, having much less space, than needed in standard way of keeping them. And solutions look pretty nice and user-friendly. 
     So what is the purpose of this presentation? To make people more happy or to save the environment, not paying much attention to people happiness? Because lot of things that really make us happy do damage environment, like driving good, fast car (which needs to be produced, which in it's turn damages environment), entertainments connected with it, lot of new dresses, technologies etc. requiring more space and generating CO2. 

   The topic is also presented in unfair way. Bases of such assumption are first of all points of view, arrangements and field of activity of  Graham Hill (2011), he is more disturbed by environmental issue, than to make people happy, accordingly he pays more attention to first one trough people happiness. Also there is no opponent  information or points of view considered in order to compare advantages and disadvantages relative to data, supporting this presentation. And connected to this issue he says that he does not force us to us this "Editing", but asks to consider this concept before buying or obtaining something, to move from large to small quantities.

Selling condoms in Congo

Amy Lockwood is reformed marketer working in international development. She spent some time in October in Democratic Republic of Congo, the largest country in Africa, and collected some data, information concerning the marketing of condoms there. Before touching the main point, there is also some information she presents about Congo: during the past 10 years almost 5 million people were died due to war in east, but unfortunately that is not the only reason of difficult life in DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo). One of those is the HIV, a problem which is faced by almost 1.3% adults in DRC, which states that 930,000 people from 76,000,000 are suffering of that, and according to report infrastructures, only 25% of them are receiving drugs for saving their lives. That became a reason for donor agencies to provide low or no cost condoms to DRC. She surveyed some people, who run hotel, pharmacy, etc. related to condom marketing there, and came to conclusion, that there is almost no demand for condoms, as people in DRC generally do not use condoms (only 3% of population does). Related marketers said that those 3% prefer generic condoms to branded ones, provided by donor agencies, despite of fact that they are low or no cost. And being interested by the fact, she started to observe the reasons of such behavior. After figured out that it is because of wrong massages they give trough the advertisement, like naming condoms, and writing massages on them in such way, that has no relation with thoughts of consumer, before going to get condom.Messages like fear, financing and fidelity...etc. When local, private companies, producing condoms, do their marketing in significantly different way, by placing in condoms pictures and names, that are provocative for consumers, in order to sell. And Amy Lockwood raises a issue, that donor agencies have forgot the key approach, that by producing something they must understand who is the costumer, and what massages they must use in order to change costumer behavior, and in this case to save people from HIV.
     




To be honest, I did not figure out the main purpose of Amy Lockwood's presentation. What is the real issue? To find ways for saving more people from HIV in Congo, or to make branded condoms competitive with local ones? As in the topic she mentions that only 3% of 76,000,000 population uses condoms (by the way there were no sources mentioned, were we could check the data), taking in to account the fact the local ones are more attractive for them than branded ones. Here arises a question, if donor agencies make their condom as much attractive, would it increase the demand for them? I guess no, because with the same condition only 3% uses condoms according to her data. According to all above mentioned, we have got gaps, lot of them, in sense of accuracy, precision, relevance, as the issue in my opinion is to save them from HIV, not to make competitive condoms. She also settles a question about the approach of the agencies, that must understand their consumers. Right! But, how her answer to that question, or even raised question is facing the complexities of the issue. I would say weekly, as she considers all this stuff from the point of view of marketer. What about the political or social-cultural points of view, mentality, these are very strong factors influencing the consumer behavior. She clearly identifies her assumptions, from marketing point of view. According to this, can her approach to the issue be fair? No, as she looks to it only from marketing point of view. By analyzing the data given, and the results, presented by Amy Lockwood, we can assume, that those agencies do not really care about the wellbeing of Congo people, it is just a charity that can reduce taxes payed by the agencies, otherwise they would pay a little attention to such simple marketing and advertising factors, which is also not considered in the presentation.

Hidden lights of Afghanistan

Monika Bulaj is telling about her travel to Afghanistan, which began many years ago, and started from eastern borders of her homeland, Poland. She is telling about all painful impressions she had during the travel. She’s presenting all the awful conditions, in which afghan people have to live 10 years after the war. She was walking through the land full of hidden graves, were millions of people were deported or killed in 20^th century. Monika also tells about dozen of humble people she met during her travel to east for 20 years from Eastern Europe to Central Asia, trough Caucasus Mountain, Middle East, North Africa and Russia, about how she shared prayer and  bread with them. And on that way she found the “hidden lights” of Afghanistan – the prayer of “Sufi”, hated by Taliban, the Masque, were foreigner is welcomed with high respect, and met like a gift. She raises a question concerning the awareness of people, who pretend to protect this country, about the people living there, about their living conditions, about the underground girls’ school, full of scorpions, were study nearly 13,000 young girls, about villages, where the only way for people to stop their pain and hunger is the opium. Her purpose is to make this silent people to be heard by the world and mass media, which ignore all small wars and awful things happening there. Her aim is to show the world the “Hidden lights of Afghanistan”, reality, that is ignored by profits of global conflict.

Lets first consider advantages of presentation of the article. Concerning the clarity of the article, Monika presents the life conditions of Afghan people clearly, as she became some part of it, traveling and analyzing them along 20 years of her life. The article is strongly connected, relevant to the question she arises "What we know about...?”. She clearly stated the purpose of the article, which is to make people aware about all this stuff. She settles the above mentioned question and presents conditions as an answer to it. There's logic in article, as it really makes sense. But, there are some gaps in this presentation, as scarce of more detailed and precise information. She mentions about the opium in Afghanistan, but she tells nothing about the fact that according to statistical data in 2007, 92% of opium on the World market is originated in  Afghanistan, which export gives approximately $4 billion. Accordingly arises a question "Why, even having such condition, Afghan people still have life standards, presented to us?". And here we have a gap of depth and breadth, as she's not taking into account the other complex problems in the question, and considering other points of view. As we see, disadvantages here are much more then advantages.

Advertising Smarter to Hybrid Car Buyers (Podcast)

Summary

According to potential growth of level of interested people in hybrid cars, there's a forecast, that by 2016 at least 10% of  car sales will be from "green-car" market. The consumers are basically male between the age of 24-34 (56.1%).  Among the purchasing incentives of hybrid car consumers, the most considerable one is the need for better gas mileage (44.4%). The other ones say, that they are "technology lovers", modern people etc. Other consumers are moved by the personal goal of being "greener" (42%). More than 50% of these buyers spend 3 hours daily on-line, and more than 80% consider dealer websites more important source for making decision. In that matter dealership developed a mobile advertisement, as car buyers incentively use their mobiles in that purpose.  

Some Hybrid Cars Presented By German and Japan Famous Car Producers 

Audi A9_concept

Audi rr1

BMW efficiency design 

Toyota FT