Unspoken Pressure

There you are, away from home.  Perhaps you are on a walk.  Perhaps you are on public transportation.  perhaps you are shopping.  Whatever you are, there is a pressure growing, a pressure you cannot talk about, a secret terror growing within.

You start making contingency plans, what you might do if the worst truly happens.  There isn't a good answer, but there are some truly horrifying possibilities.  You look around for surcease, but there is nothing out there.  You are alone with the pressure.

The pressure builds.  You try to ignore it.  You try to deny that this is really happening.  You just need to fight it, keep it secret, no-one must know. 

You start to wonder if you are the only one who ever feels this pressure?  After all, it is never mentioned.  Is there something wrong with you?  It builds and builds, roiling away in your innards.  You can feel it in your gut and nothing else matters.

Finally it reaches the point where the question is unavoidable.  This is your only hope.  The only possibility of avoiding the worst case scenario.  The question. 

"Is that a fart?"

So much rides on the question.  For a start, there's a very good chance that you will ride on the answer.  If the answer is "no" there can be no greater public humiliation.  There is no greater social faux pas then to carry around with you a stench.  The odor of the outcast, the misfit, the irredeemable social failure.

But what if the answer is "yes"?  How do you find out?  Perhaps the answer is both "yes" and "no".  How do you go about finding the answer?

You will find out soon enough.  Even with the heroic struggle you are undergoing, time is running out.  Something must be done, and quickly.  It is almost time to put those contingency plans into effect.  Either the answer is "yes", or you need to find an alley, a dark corner of a parking garage, a place thick with foliage.  it is time for the experiment.

This will take an act of supreme muscle control.  The mind is keenly focused.  You become unaware of the world around you.  There is just you and the task at hand.

With all the precision you can manage, the valve is released just a tiny fraction.  The evaluation is immediate and intense.  Ah!  What glory!  All the gods and angels have taken mercy!

But the roiling pressure continues.  You are not out of the woods yet, and the woods may yet beckon.  The experiment is repeated, with just a tiny quantum leap of increased relaxation.  This is working.  Everything is going to be all right.  Just be careful.  Don't reach for the stars and you won't fall like a shooting star.

Wait!  Holy  .....!  OK, calm down.  Got that just in time.  OK, OK.  Just calm down now.  Things are better.  Just keep that back straight and make sure that gait is as stiff as a guardsman at Buckingham Palace.

The porcelain altar awaits with an open heart, ready to take you into its warm, loving embrace.

What Will The Future Look Like?

As in all of my predictions, the basic assumptions that I am making is that trends that are presently happening will continue.  I don't assume any paradigm shifting innovations beyond the success of current research projects.  I also am not brave enough to predict beyond a few decades.  These are changes that I expect to see in my lifetime.

The first thing I want to say about the future is that things will look very much more the same over the planet than they do now.  The wealth of the poor is increasing much more rapidly than the wealth of the rich on a global scale.  By this I don't mean to suggest that there won't be multi-billionaires and the relatively poor.  I am suggesting that the wealth of Botswana will be similar to the wealth of Spain within a couple of generations, forty or fifty years.  This may seem remarkably unlikely, but those who have read this blog will hopefully be familiar with the statistics of the world through the presentations of Hans Rosling.  My prediction may well be conservative.

The second thing I want to say about the future is that there will be a lot more people in the world, but a lot less than you probably think.  UN predictions suggest that the world population will level out at around 9 billion people somewhere between 2050 and 2075, with the present population at around 7 billion people.  So there will be something like 130% of the present population in the world, and most of this increase will happen in the poorest places in the world, so mostly sub-Saharan Africa.  This means that in the USA and Europe the density of people will be about the same.  The continent mostly densely populated is Europe, and so at a maximum there will be no area more densely populated than Europe, which is often very beautiful and has wilderness, parks, fields etc..  The future will not be a mega-city.  However, I fully expect the current trend of movement from rural areas to cities to continue.  People like a dense amount of opportunity to do things, and cities are really the only place to physically do those things.  It may be that technology makes physical location less important in the future, but I don't know if and when this will happen.

The third thing is about age demographics.  Family sizes are shrinking and life expectancy is rising.  Basically the average woman will have something like two children in her lifetime, but will live at least ninety years.  Even with the increase in time that children stay in the home it is very unlikely that parents will spend more than thirty years raising their children.  The default position of people in the future will not be the family unit, it will be couples and single people in good health.  My parents and parents-in-law are both around seventy.  When I was born that was the life expectancy of a white person in the USA, when my parents were born life expectancy was in the low sixties.  I am glad to report that none of my parents and parents-in-law look in any way likely to die soon, and can all walk, talk, think, and travel.  Life expectancy estimates have been consistently low (actual average age of death now is about eighty in the USA).  Not only are people living longer but they are able to be active for a longer proportion of the time.

I have previously said that people will continue to be more wealthy, both in absolute terms and in the quality and efficiency of their belongings, although with a slower rate of increase than was true in the last fifty years.  People will also be working fewer hours as technology becomes more efficient than people in more and more areas.  People are also increasingly migrating to different countries, and this will happen increasingly in different directions.  Not everyone will be coming to America, Americans will also be going to Thailand.  While culture will become more and more the same wherever you go, that monoculture will be worldwide in the diversity of its elements.  A Buddhist temple by an Argentinian restaurant in an Italian Piazza populated by people wearing jeans listening to a live band playing Moroccan music.

So, people around the world will live in more similar conditions.  The norm will be single people or couples living in cities, working in what would now be considered part-time service jobs, who are healthy and active.  What does this look like?  Imagine the sitcom Friends, but for most age groups. Circles of friends and acquaintances living in nice apartments in the city with money to spend and time in which to spend it.  The lives of people in their twenties, and increasingly, their sixties.

What will those cities look like?  What has happened in the last fifty plus years is sprawl.  Cities have spread out along the ground after an initial period of spreading upwards as transportation moved from walking to cars.

 What will happen with more people in cities?  Let us look at the trends that are going on now.  If you are unfamiliar with urban renewal, gentrification, then you are missing out on the major trend in the architecture of cities.  Relatively poor areas are being reconstructed as multi-use areas, with offices, retail, community spaces (parks, squares, art centers etc.).  These are very dense, with the ability to walk to everything you need being considered vitally important.  They are essentially urban villages, and a major attraction of such places is having public transportation (particularly light rail) close by.  Suburbia will be changing from a uniform concrete sprawl to a web of interconnected "villages."  Here's an expert on the subject, of course from a TED talk.  Each of these villages will have a localized theme or feel.  People don't want cookie-cutter, they want a neighborhood, and a neighborhood requires character.

With similar populations and areas of increased density inevitably there will be areas with reduced population densities.  What will these areas look like?  Well, they will be areas that provide services that people want.  What do people want when their basic needs are met in an urban environment?  They want parks, fields, wildlife; ecologically friendly areas that are accessible.  So, mini-city environments surrounded by rings of green spaces.

Finally, as technology increases and the pressure of climate changes increases, these city areas will become more and more sustainable.  They will also be designed to be increasingly people friendly.  If you have a choice between living in a Manhattan block or around an Italian town square, which would you choose?  Walking friendly community areas (squares, pedestrian streets, parks) surrounded by cafes, shops, restaurants and bars, decorated with flowers, bushes, trees etc..  Here is an excellent talk by a Danish architect about future projects that really demonstrate this process.

This process will be incremental, piece by piece.  You will probably not even really notice that it is happening.  This sort of thing is the environment in which "hipsters", the cool people of the present, want to live, and are constructing.  The hipster meme is spreading throughout the USA like spores from a fungus.  Even in Houston, Texas, there is an old area being retro-fitted to be a modern urban environment, with the opportunity to walk and bike to places, with parks and squares integrated into the neighborhood.  It's called Montrose, and even the politics and values are those of a West Coast city, it's where you can be gay and unafraid.  It is also one of the more expensive neighborhoods in which to buy a house or apartment in the area.  These sorts of environments are among the most desirable available.

I know this may seem utopian.  A world of modern European villages, full of parks, squares, trees, cafes etc. surrounded by farms and parks, where wealthy, healthy people, with plenty of free time live.  However, this just requires present trends to continue.  This really is what will probably happen.  This is really what the future will probably look like.

Dream House(s)

My darling wife and I make plans.  Part of how we do this is by thinking about what we would really like if the circumstances enabled us to choose it.  A substantial portion of this thinking involves where we would like to live, a dream house.  I have three sorts of dream house, in a range from temporary and cheap to permanent and expensive, and I believe my wife has similar if not identical ideas. I highly recommend the multiple dream approach.  There are many different ways for each person to be happy and the more ways you look for happiness, the greater the chance you will find it.

I'll start with the things that the three houses have in common.  They all are in, or around a university town.  We would like to live in a place where a substantial proportion of the inhabitants are younger, smarter, and more educated than the average.  We would also like to live in a place where a substantial proportion of the older people are well educated.  It also helps that college towns tend to be liberal places, and it is unfortunately easier (but less challenging) and more rewarding (but less educational) to be around people who share your values.  I like the energy of college students, and the opportunities to do interesting things that come with a university.  It's alright to have fun, and young people have fun.  I still don't understand why many people stop having fun.  A college town has an atmosphere of significance, of the possibility of change, of creativity.  We want that.

The second thing that the houses have in common is the climate.  We wish to live in a place that has all four seasons to which we are accustomed.  However, the winter cannot be very cold, prolonged or dark because that sucks.  Snow a couple of times a year, those clear winter skies, and frost overnight is perfect.  We also don't want the unbearable heat of a Texas summer.  We don't mind some hot days or weeks, but month after month of pounding heat is awful.  I don't want to have to hide from the outside in summer or winter.  Let's face it, we want to live in the same climate that most people want, a Mediterranean/Californian climate.  However, we do want enough rain for there to be trees and greenness year round.  In the USA this either means mid-California (the Bay), or strips on the north and south borders of the Appalachian mountains, from North Carolina to Kentucky.  The second area is much larger, cheaper, and more realistic.  This area is our target for the future.

The third thing that the houses have in common is in ease of maintenance.  This involves two separate qualities, the functionality of structure and appliances the furnace will work forever and the roof will stay on), and not having to care about resale value.  In my dream house I never have to think about what the consequences of my actions will be for anyone but myself and my wife.  There is no housing association with my dream house.  Ideally it is made of stone blocks, the windows are bullet proof, and the garden is full of large, flowering perennials that you just hack back with a machete as the whim takes you.

So, to the actual houses.  The most temporary (possibly) and straight forward is the Craftsman bungalow in a college town.  I'm sure the English readers will be initially panicked by the concept of my dream house being a bungalow, but in the USA they look like this:

These houses are a staple of towns that grew up in the first half of the 20th century, are made of the cheaply available lumber of the time, have therefore stayed up for more than fifty years, and are just the essence of homely comfort.  Hardwood floors, a nice porch, a rational layout.  You have a porch to look out upon the sidewalk so you can wave to those walking by, and a private back garden for hiding.  For a temporary situation I would like to rent one of these that has been used by students.  So, walking distance to the college, beaten to the point where I can't do more damage.  The sort of place in which you can hang Jimi Hendrix posters and Tibetan prayer flags.  The kitchen is entirely linoleum.  There's a fence around the place so The Face of Evil can terrify the locals.  A more permanent situation would be a house very much like the one in the picture, near a large park or multi-use trail.  Basically one of our dream houses is a nice Portland, OR. house in a Mediterranean climate within biking distance of a college.

The second house is where the English should actually start panicking.  This is what the Americans call a ranch house, and the English call a big bungalow.

That looks horrible, doesn't it?  Well, this is the starting point.  This would lie about five-ten miles from the edge of a college town, just in the next county, a rural county. So we could ride bicycles to town and back in a day, and the property taxes would be very low indeed (for the USA).  We could also probably purchase the house outright with our present equity, and so living there would be astonishingly cheap (less than $400/month).  This is part of our long term financial strategy, low costs are the same as good investment.  It would be on a piece of property of at least two acres.  This is just a starting point.  With just two of us and a dog we only need two bedrooms and general living space.  However, what we do love are porches, decks, patios, etc..  So, over time what you see in this photograph would become invisible, surrounded by decks, fences, porches, climbing wisteria, roses, hops.  We would have a little private enclosure for our hot tub.  We would have an enclosed porch to hide from mosquitoes and to look outside in the winter.  A deck for barbecue, perhaps with a wood stove.  Another porch with a swing and Adirondack chairs to while away the evening.  A sophisticated sound system would be strung through the house, inside and out.  A trestled walkway.  The garden would have a pond, bushes, trees, bamboo, a small ruined Greek temple in bleached concrete.  The house is simply a core in which to retreat to sleep, eat and vegetate in front of the television.  Think of the above picture surrounded by these:

The final dream house is the one that costs money.  It is essentially the same thing as the last house, except for being closer to the town, with more property, and being built from scratch.  The front of the house, that which faces the road would be in the guise of a hobbit hole.  Constructed by interlocking geodesic domes and covered with sod that reached the ground around it, the house would look as though it was part of the landscape itself.  A native grass and wildflower meadow would stretch out in front of it.  However, in the back, hidden from view by the grass, would be a sunken, roman courtyard, overlooked by a balcony.  The entire house would be constructed in order to minimize the environmental impact (insulation, solar/wind powered, reclaimed water, climatic appropriate plants, recycling).  A discreet distance from the house would be the cottage/folly of our gaffer, our Samwise Gamgee, the guy who would make his living mowing the lawn, fixing things, puttering and hacking back the plants.  We already have someone who has agreed to fill this role should we somehow become very wealthy.

What Happened to the Occupy Movement?

It is just about six months since the Occupy Wall Street group started getting national attention.  The movement swelled rapidly over several months, even going worldwide.  While the goals of the movement were unclear over time the story coalesced among the general public into essentially that the rich were getting richer while not paying a proportionately greater sum in taxes, and in order to do this they controlled government with money.  There was sympathy for this story among the majority of Americans, although not necessarily sympathy for the methods involved in telling the story.

In mid-November the encampments in a number of cities were cleared by police at the instruction of their mayors.  While there were a number of incidents I would characterize this process as remarkably peaceful considering the circumstances.  At that point there were a lot of people asking "What next?" and I don't really remember there being much of an answer.  Since then the movement has largely vanished from America's consciousness.  There are still activists, but these are generally very small in number, other than in the city of Oakland, CA where there have been clashes with the police.  There it seems that essentially anarchists have decided to go to war with the police, largely subverting the original intention of the movement.  I experienced this during the Iraq War protests in Portland in which marches for peace were used by groups of young people dressed in black and wearing masks to break things and fight with the police.

I wanted to be fair when writing this blog and so not only did I go to the mainstream media but also to OccupyNews.ORG. Even at this extremely pro-occupy site the news consists largely of blog posts about the media not reporting or understanding the movement, and I thought it consequently ironic that the news site has nothing about the Oakland clashes. 

What has happened to the Occupy Movement?  Essentially the movement has disappeared.  Once the police moved in the vast majority of people simply went home.  The movement failed to generate any organized structure, any coherent political movement, any sustained presence.  So, this seems like a failure, doesn't it?  I'm not so sure that is true.  I blogged that the only way the Occupy movement would have any impact was if it became a political movement affecting the election of politicians and the passing of laws.  The Occupy movement never managed to get to the point of presenting candidates, forming a party, or anything else one might usually associate with a political process, and I had stated that such an effort was necessary for there to be meaningful change.  However, the message of the Occupy movement has got into the consciousness of the electorate, and politicians are noticing.

Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed a constitutional amendment to remove the ability of corporations to affect political campaigns.  He has also co-sponsored a bill to require millionaires to pay at least 30% in taxes.  Barack Obama talked about income inequality in his State of the Union speech.  Even the Republican nomination race has had the issue raised to the detriment of the front-runner, with Mitt Romney's taxes and method of income being questioned and resulting in a negative reaction from the more conservative of the conservatives (Republican primary voters).  People are now talking about income inequality, tax regulations, corporate subsidies, and the influence of money in politics.  This is going to be a campaign issue.

The real question is whether this is a campaign issue only, and not actually a law-writing issue.  The senate bill about millionaires has almost zero chance of being passed with the present make-up of congress.  the constitutional amendment has a smaller chance of happening.  Conservatives are going to vote for Mitt Romney over Barack Obama.  However, Republicans voting against the bill, or campaigning against the amendment, or supporting the rights of corporations, or protecting the tax laws for the rich, or condemning the presidents statements are all going to be negative positions in the election.  That these issues are in the election is not only a driver of left-wing voter turnout (there are more liberals than conservatives, they just vote less), but also a damaging situation for conservatives and a win for the Occupy movement.  The message of the Occupy movement is now a factor in mainstream politics.  This is quite impressive.

However, it still all boils down to what is done politically.  The Tea Party formed a political unit that got people elected who actually followed through.  With the economy turning around just in time for the Democrats, and the obstructionist policy of the Republicans being thoroughly despised by the electorate, Democrats could make moves in the House of Representatives (although are unlikely to get a majority) and may be able to hang on to enough Senate seats in an uneven election (23 of 33 senate seats are held by Democrats, in 2014 it is 20 of 33, in 2016 there are 24 Republicans and 10 Democrats so 2016 will be the most important election in many years as Democrats have a chance for a super-majority, all three legislative branches at the same time).  By far the most likely outcome is Obama as president, and an evenly split House and Senate.

It is therefore unlikely that any substantial change will happen, but Democrats may use the ideas raised by the movement as a stick to beat Republicans with over the next five years.  They won't be able to really do anything about it, and may not even wish to.  In the short term the consequences of the Occupy movement will probably be a somewhat better outcome for mainstream Democrats in the 2012 election, and perhaps the 2014 election as Democrats propose multiple campaign financing and tax bills that they know the Republicans will kill.  The real test will be whether the message of the Occupy movement can be sustained all the way until 2016, when something could be done.  With the inevitable rise in the US economy over the next four years I think that unlikely.  As with almost everything (sadly) "it's the economy, stupid."