Let me say something in favour as well.

While we, musicicians and musicians gear builders, tweakers users etc are in a way victim of these regulations becuase we build stuff that will often last for decades we're a minority. These laws are targetted at the majority of electronics equipment builders who make stuff that will last a few years or even less. Think DVD players, computers, MP3 players buit also shiteloads of funny electronic gadgets that will last a few weeks or are used for even hours only. All so cheap you can only wonder how they make it and make profit as well. All this junk, containing hazardous stuff ends up in third world countries as e-waste or in your trashcan causing serious pollution. Especially since laws on the methods of recycling in those countries are usually very poor.  We're talking immense loads of electronic junk here.

And therefore, while we may be affected by banning stuff like this in our hobbies I personally do subscribe to this banning for the greater good that it can do.

I invite everyone who has read this thread to spend half an hour on googling the subject of e-waste and think about it for a while.

To give a suggestion:






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What kind of parents do those children have that allow them to rummage in waste?

  What is 'normal'?
 We could have eliminated the production, decoration and ''disposal'' of rubbish [and a lions share of the energy consumption involved for various rubbish activities], very simply...insist on re-usable containers for everything.
 We could have stopped wasting amazing amounts of kinetic energy [and gasoline..if you want to start moving again], by simple [and super-low-cost] design alterations of the electronics at intersections, and changing driving habits...ok...a bit of a stretch there.
 ''There are infinite kinds of normal'...but which frequency is normal?"
  (is it just for the votes? - well this is getting too political).
  Politics prevails, even when eyes or threads are closed.
  What kind of parents do those children have that allow them to rummage in waste?
  I assume we're adding humor to the picture...the kind of parents that buy the latest, newest, and fastest computers...those are just their old computers there, the centerpiece of an 'introduction to computers' learning center.
 

 How long till the only things we're allowed to amuse ourselves with are soft and fuzzy things that squeak when ya squeeze em? When it comes time to excavate and mine the landfills for the plastics to make our safe and harmless squeeze toys, will there even be machinery to dig it up, or will that also have been banned, forcing us to dig with pick and shovel and creating more photo ops for lovely scenarios like those above...?  Oh, wait, plastics themselves are part of the problem... oops...

The cave beckons... will we all fit back into the caves we came from? I think not... Considering it's currently IMPOSSIBLE to feed the world's population without technology, obviously we simply can't just abandon it all Mayan style and fade back into the jungle no matter how romantic current media trends might make that seem. Besides, those noble 'ideals' usually seem to be advocated by those who would never personally leave their mansions willingly. I wonder why?

Has anybody given any thought into rendering these toxins non-toxic rather than simply banning every single thing you can think of that can be dangerous if carelessly disposed? While in the device and being used, nothing is poisoned. Recycling also keeps it/them in use, for a while. Then what? Those chemicals(at least in elemental form) existed naturally long before we evil capitalistic humans came along to utilize them. We just rearranged them to suit our needs... hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen... we ARE that stuff. Seems to me there could be some sort of incineration(probably not the best way) or other disposal process that could put the chemicals back into something like the form we found them? Lead, mercury, etc included..., unless we launch those elements into the sun we can't get rid of them at all, but we should be able to find ways to make them harmless if we just think about it a little.

I'm not sure how you'd render plutonium harmless, but that's another story...

Meh. Easier to just ban(and accept banning) everything than actually think. Besides, I doubt the environment has much to do with it to begin with. Gotta agree with R.G.

I spent a couple of days last week pulling apart two organs, electronic, ones I got hold of a year or two ago. One I brought for two dollars and the the other I found on the side of the road.

It was a really humbling experience, after all the building of my own stuff I've been doing over the past decade, to pull apart these monsters and realise how much planning and design work, as well as the actual putting together, went into building these now virtually discarded musical instruments.

I could be mining them for usable bits, what I kept, for at least a few years and there would still be a whole heap of stuff I couldn't possible use. It really has made me aware of how much stuff is rendered useless by fashions and technology changing, progress as it were, and how the prices for things has dropped so much as to make the repair of old things so expensive that it's that much cheaper to throw away the 95% that still works with the 5% thats broken.

But, at the same time, I've kinda become aware of the value we attribute to our work as we make something in opposition to how it could come to viewed, that which we make, after time spent in life. Therefore I've come to the point where I'm reviewing my own value system of things somewhat distanced by their value attributed to the market.

I think the markets and the laissez faire consumerism that denotes it has lasted as long as it has because our ability to make things last hasn't always been as good as we'ed like it to be and this has kind of grown in step with our ability to appreciate what these tools can do for us. The trouble is that now we have reached a kind of plateau where the materials have become very resiliant and long lasting but our ability to have these tools last a long time in their usefullness to us is blighted by the system in which they are made available to us.

Gratification of ego seems to be the biggest priority when marketing any object or service and this seems to be totally out of whack with the progress we've made as an industrial civilisation. It has been an interesting way to create advances by always pushing ahead to fullfill the needs of an ever decresing attention span.

This all adds up to a civilisation that is leaving adolescence and approaching adulthood and we may not reach it because we have become spoilt brats always used to getting our way and the demands of adulthood and the responsibilities that ensue may mean that unless we grow up as a civilisation and realise that quietness and contemplation and living more willing to ensure our young are healthy and fit, both pysically and phschologically, then its going to be a rough ride for all of us.

Thank God, in many ways, for the crash that still resounds around us. Its giving us all time to think.

Camium is red to yellow and Cobalt is blue, both very dangerous but pretty they are too!

it seems that rather than concentration on the production, we should put our efforts on the end of the chain: 1st have a good use of the products so that they last longer (this probably has something to do with culture - there's always that shiny thing that just came out yesterday...), 2nd reuse things that no longer have use for the us but that someone else may find it useful, and lastly work on how to dispose safely of our products.
This probably helps more the economy/environment.

What the world needs to do is stop treating everything like it is disposable and quit filling landfills with toxic crap. This rohs nonsense is just a bandaid and it will not solve the real problem, which is people not wanting to repair things anymore, or take the time & money to recycle things rather than throw them away and just toss them out like it's trash. The solution is not to send this stuff to China where they use poor farmers to get tiny amounts of precious metals out of this stuff using methods that just creates more toxins that get dumped into the environment. One day the landfills won't hold all of our garbage anymore, and then we will have some very serious problems on our hands.

It really disgusts me how the whole world now has an everything is disposable consumer mentality. This kind of thinking will be our undoing as the human race. And it also disgusts me how all of this is basically driven by greed. None of these people who profit from this sort of activity are thinking about the future, all they care about is getting richer. And they also don't care about these poor farmers in China that are doing this sort of work have the highest per capita cancer rate in world.

This is something that I feel pretty strongly about and while the efforts being taken are a postive thing, I don't think it's near enough to stem the tide of the damage that has already been done and will be done in the future.

Quote from: Paul Marossy on September 13, 2009, 10:18:57 PM
What the world needs to do is stop treating everything like it is disposable and quit filling landfills with toxic crap. This rohs nonsense is just a bandaid and it will not solve the real problem, which is people not wanting to repair things anymore, or take the time & money to recycle things rather than throw them away and just toss them out like it's trash. The solution is not to send this stuff to China where they use poor farmers to get tiny amounts of precious metals out of this stuff using methods that just creates more toxins that get dumped into the environment. One day the landfills won't hold all of our garbage anymore, and then we will have some very serious problems on our hands.

It really disgusts me how the whole world now has an everything is disposable consumer mentality. This kind of thinking will be our undoing as the human race. And it also disgusts me how all of this is basically driven by greed. None of these people who profit from this sort of activity are thinking about the future, all they care about is getting richer. And they also don't care about these poor farmers in China that are doing this sort of work have the highest per capita cancer rate in world.

This is something that I feel pretty strongly about and while the efforts being taken are a postive thing, I don't think it's near enough to stem the tide of the damage that has already been done and will be done in the future.

So true... i've gotten to the point where I stop voicing my views anymore just out of disgust and the fact no one will listen... i'm only just entering my 2nd decade on this planet and it's awful... I recycle a huge amount, I re use what can be used down to using the cut off legs of resistors as jumpers (let alone actively buying old electronics to re use)

I also repair everything... which is also a great resource for money and parts... I repaired an Old Nintendo NES the other day... best console ever lol now in my possession.

I also never gave into the microwave, eat, discard, and actually grow and cook that thing once known as food rather than coloured shaped food that tastes of nothing with 20 layers of packing.

Quote from: Paul Marossy on September 13, 2009, 10:18:57 PM
What the world needs to do is stop treating everything like it is disposable and quit filling landfills with toxic crap. This rohs nonsense is just a bandaid and it will not solve the real problem, which is people not wanting to repair things anymore, or take the time & money to recycle things rather than throw them away and just toss them out like it's trash. The solution is not to send this stuff to China where they use poor farmers to get tiny amounts of precious metals out of this stuff using methods that just creates more toxins that get dumped into the environment. One day the landfills won't hold all of our garbage anymore, and then we will have some very serious problems on our hands.

It really disgusts me how the whole world now has an everything is disposable consumer mentality. This kind of thinking will be our undoing as the human race. And it also disgusts me how all of this is basically driven by greed. None of these people who profit from this sort of activity are thinking about the future, all they care about is getting richer. And they also don't care about these poor farmers in China that are doing this sort of work have the highest per capita cancer rate in world.

This is something that I feel pretty strongly about and while the efforts being taken are a postive thing, I don't think it's near enough to stem the tide of the damage that has already been done and will be done in the future.

So true indeed. Unfortunately one of the first steps that needs to be taken in order to get to a less disposable consumer mentality is that people are again more willing to pay a decent price for the product they buy. Right now people are so much used to lower and even lower prices the only way to go is if all stuff goes up in price, no exceptions... try to get that done.

The hardest part (certainly for those of us living in "free-market" driven economies) is likely to be the mental shift of what is valuable.  Increased third-quarter profits, or the ability to breathe without a special mask?  Bonuses, or viable offspring? 

I think we need more female CEOs.

Humans are, on average, both individualistic and self centered. This is the reason people like Ghandi and Mother Teresa are even thought of as different. On average, a human does what the human considers best for them and theirs within the limited range of first the next few minutes, then the foreseeable future, then the long run. Humans are really, really good at the observation that if you don't survive the next few minutes, then the long run (years, decades, and centuries) doesn't matter much to them. And we care a whole lot about ours, not so much theirs. We have a strong family and "tribe" feeling for survival. A human will lay down his life in a violent situation for, in decreasing order, his immediate family, his extended family, his tribe or hunting party, his "people", and his species.

The arguments which say that humans should limit the short-time prosperity for them and their immediate family are doomed to failure, on average, unless you can either force them to do that, or convince them to make that fundamental change in human nature.

Those children picking through e-trash are doing it because they or their families perceive it as more immediately profitable than hunting, gathering, or farming. It's not (well, OK, usually) because some evil person is holding a gun on them to do it. They (or their parents, which are much the same in all humans) think it's better for them *at the moment* than other things they could be doing which are less eco-horrible and less of a grabby horror picture for the well-to-do to look at. ( Ever listen to Don Henley's "Dirty Laundry"?) If you were to tell the pictured folks to stop that, they would be angry with you for preventing them from doing something that is profitable for them. The rich part of the world thinks it's horrible because we have other options which are more immediately profitable to us and less perceptibly dangerous to us and ours. The idea of forcing the salvagers in the pictures to simply stop that by removing their raw materials is very, very close to Marie Antoinette's suggestion that the poor people eat cake because they had no bread. Sadly, the e-waste is probably improving their lot. I do not say that because I think it's a good thing, or that in a perfect world they should continue that action, only because I think that's what's going on.

Ultimately, denying the self-centered and individualistic nature of humans is not something a government can do successfully. If you don't leave enough room in the system for people to be individualistic and self centered, you will likely wind up with either a dying society or a dead government after a while. The force you have to apply to humans to make them give up their individualism and self-centered-ness destroys either the human, their initiative, or the society. Or all three.

So there's an impasse. The solutions to the impasse cannot be "just say no", as our political heros are trying. **Their** immediate and self centered progress is dependent on being seen to "do something", not on what they do being any good at all. This process ends up with floods of legislation that have effects which consist almost entirely of side effects.

IMHO, solving the issues of pollution and eco-damage by denying freedom and dignity ends up being self-defeating, either because it cannot succeed, or because it succeeds by destroying something that is very important to the internal nature of humans. If you destroy something that's part of human's essential humanity, have you really done something worthwhile?

Worse yet, humans who make a living running governments would answer that last question "yes" because they think that *they* will get to do the destruction the way that benefits *them*.

It's going to take some really, really smart solutions. And "just say no" is not one of those. Even if "just say no" takes baby steps.

I hear what you are saying RG, and I know that people aren't holding a gun to these people's heads and forcing them to do this kind of work, but they are still being taken advantage of by those who aren't poor farmers. And the fact remains that if people don't get their heads screwed on straight, someday we are going to be one of those planets where other beings might visit someday and wonder if there was ever life on that planet.

The common denominator here is greed. For these same reasons people are burning down what rain forests are left on the earth, why certain animals have been hunted to extinction, why others speicies were nearly hunted to extinction, etc., etc. You can look at the medical industry in the U.S. and see it riddled with it, too. The lust for more and more profits is what drives corporations, and is why this whole country is in a big mess because of the mortgage feeding frenzy driven by greed. My wife is a dental assistant and has to work with a staff dentist who whines because he only makes $900 a day. Give me a break. Capitalism is great if you are on the right side of it. Not so great if you are one the suckers born every minute.

People can call it whatever they want, and try to justify their actions until they are blue in the face, but the end result will still be the same. Industrialization will eventually destroy the earth because that's what it does - it exploits the earth and also destroys it. The more people there are on earth, the faster is will self disintegrate because everyone wants to live high on the hog. I'm not suggesting that we need to go back to the dark ages, but we as a race sure as heck need to be a LOT more responsible with the planet that we live on.

Thanks for that excellent post, R.G.

I particularly liked this part:

QuoteSo there's an impasse. The solutions to the impasse cannot be "just say no", as our political heros are trying. **Their** immediate and self centered progress is dependent on being seen to "do something", not on what they do being any good at all. This process ends up with floods of legislation that have effects which consist almost entirely of side effects.

...which to me, captures the essence of this thread and the frustration felt by those affected.

And this part:

QuoteIMHO, solving the issues of pollution and eco-damage by denying freedom and dignity ends up being self-defeating, either because it cannot succeed, or because it succeeds by destroying something that is very important to the internal nature of humans. If you destroy something that's part of human's essential humanity, have you really done something worthwhile?

...to which I would add:  I believe an essential first step (rather than a last resort) to solving the problem is taking a hard look at our own nature and seeing if it's possible for us to change.

Quote from: Paul Marossy on September 14, 2009, 10:43:16 AM
The common denominator here is greed.

It is.
However, my point is that greed is fundamentally human. You cannot eliminate greed from humans without making them non-human, at least as far as we know. You cannot wish it away, or teach it out, at least not out of all humans. The trials of running greed-free societies have universally left most of the subjects with little or nothing, and the boss strata of the societies satisfying their own greed at the expense of the subjects. Or simply fallen apart; or all of the above.

Calling self-interest by semantically ugly terms like "greed" don't eliminate it or shame people out of it. It only drives greed underground. If greed is made illegal, it only makes the cleverest or luckiest criminals the winners. We can't eliminate it or legislate it out of existence any more than we can enforce a law making gravity disappear.

To successfully deal with the self-serving-ness of human nature, you simply must concoct a way where that self-interest helps everyone, not where it only helps a few. The best scheme we humans have come up with so far to do that is the model where we tell the subjects to go and do the best they can for themselves, short of injuring one another. This lets them figure it out for themselves, and works better than the forced alternatives in almost all cases.

Unless we come up with a way to allow humans to be human while "saving the planet", we're not going to be successful. Worse yet, we'll institute "reforms" which make the majority of humans miserable and servants of the "saviors". Hive hierarchies are great for ants and bees, but we ain't ants or bees.

I have no clue what the perfect way is. But I'm pretty darned sure it's not outlawing light bulbs in favor of a differently-polluting alternative. 

I think we're staring down a broad highway paved with good intentions.

I agree RG. I know that I am somewhat idealistic, but I also am very aware of what reality is. I do have grave concerns for what sort of planet my children will live their lives in, if they get to live life at all.

You would think that after thousands of years of repeating the same old patterns and mistakes in all of the societies, empires and kingdoms that have come and gone in the past that people would have learned something from all of that by now. The things that killed empires 2000 years ago are the same exact things that are killing the ones in place today. I see the gap between rich and poor getting much larger in America, and historically when that happens a lot of trouble begins.

Anyhow, so if no one wants to safely recycle this stuff, maybe they should take all this junk and ship it towards the sun so it can be safely incinerated when it arrives. Someone would profit from that monetarily and the rest of the planet would benefit environmentally. Then we can focus on stuff like trying to save the earth from the tipping point from which they say is the point of no return.

All I know is that here where I live, the weather patterns have changed radically. The summers are longer and hotter and it rains less and less and less. They are saying that within 5-6 years our source of water could literally dry up. We ultimately get our water from the Rockies in Colorado, and they have been getting 50% or less of the snow they used to get 10-15 years ago. I have concerns for my own life at this point since only 1% of the water on planet earth is fresh water. In the days to come I think we are going to see a lot of bad stuff happen on an unprecedented scale, and a lot of it will be the direct result of human activities, in the quest of living a "better life".

Guys, I have to again suggest that you read "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn. Based on what you guys have been talking about, I think you will find it very interesting. 

Quote from: R.G. on September 14, 2009, 11:48:49 AM

Quote from: Paul Marossy on September 14, 2009, 10:43:16 AM
The common denominator here is greed.

It is.
However, my point is that greed is fundamentally human. You cannot eliminate greed from humans without making them non-human, at least as far as we know. You cannot wish it away, or teach it out, at least not out of all humans. The trials of running greed-free societies have universally left most of the subjects with little or nothing, and the boss strata of the societies satisfying their own greed at the expense of the subjects. Or simply fallen apart; or all of the above.

Calling self-interest by semantically ugly terms like "greed" don't eliminate it or shame people out of it. It only drives greed underground. If greed is made illegal, it only makes the cleverest or luckiest criminals the winners. We can't eliminate it or legislate it out of existence any more than we can enforce a law making gravity disappear.

To successfully deal with the self-serving-ness of human nature, you simply must concoct a way where that self-interest helps everyone, not where it only helps a few. The best scheme we humans have come up with so far to do that is the model where we tell the subjects to go and do the best they can for themselves, short of injuring one another. This lets them figure it out for themselves, and works better than the forced alternatives in almost all cases.

Unless we come up with a way to allow humans to be human while "saving the planet", we're not going to be successful. Worse yet, we'll institute "reforms" which make the majority of humans miserable and servants of the "saviors". Hive hierarchies are great for ants and bees, but we ain't ants or bees.

I have no clue what the perfect way is. But I'm pretty darned sure it's not outlawing light bulbs in favor of a differently-polluting alternative. 

I think we're staring down a broad highway paved with good intentions.

Our current system encourages and rewards greed but I don't think we will be able to avoid that until human control and population start to contract. One reason why human greed is so prevalent today is the fact that we live in huge communities and can outsource the consequences of our actions to people we don't care about or, under some circumstances, even know about. There is also a feeling of a huge social ladder that stretches out way above us. This gives people of all social classes huge aspirations that, unfortunately, often become greed. Our system encourages competition, but it does so to the point of competition at the expense of others. I am not saying that our society has chosen the worst possible system, or that other systems are necessarily better. Given how bloated modern society has become, I think it will eventually collapse and give way to a society that gives up our speed in technological and corporate progress in favour of one that has less of a social ladder. I think such a system will be created out of necessity, not out of human goodness.

Bugger the pontification, the EU is basically a pain in the neck.

Quote from: Paul Marossy on September 14, 2009, 01:04:52 PM
I agree RG. I know that I am somewhat idealistic, but I also am very aware of what reality is. I do have grave concerns for what sort of planet my children will live their lives in, if they get to live life at all.

Not at all. That's not idealistic. That's **human**; worrying about your progeny. Very reasonable.

However, that very concern makes you vulnerable to doing what you're told will make it better.

QuoteAnyhow, so if no one wants to safely recycle this stuff, maybe they should take all this junk and ship it towards the sun so it can be safely incinerated when it arrives. Someone would profit from that monetarily and the rest of the planet would benefit environmentally.

Since every single atom of that stuff was already ON the planet already, why do we need to ship it to the sun? This is not an ecological disaster, it's a class-participation project in economics. Right now, both the original producers of e-waste *and* the salvagers are profiting, if not equally, from the process. The entire trick is setting up a system where you make money from recycling the wastes, somehow, on an industrial scale, not on a humans-in-the-junkyard scale. Case in point: steel. Right now, steel is the single most-recycled material. The economics favor recycling over reducing new ores.

Figure out how to make lead a precious metal and it will suddenly vanish from the waste stream. Case in point: copper. Copper is well on its way to being a precious metal. Copper and to some extent aluminum recycling is so profitable that you now have to present a picture ID and a thumbprint to sell scrap copper or aluminum, in Texas at least, because people are stealing unguarded metal objects to sell for scrap. Case in point: paper recycling. My local city government did a properly feel-good recycling program, and everybody pitched in. They raised our property taxes soon after to pay for the recycling program because the expenses were so high to store and dispose of (!!) the recycled paper. The worth of recycled paper was negative - it cost money to move it to a paper mill for recycling into new paper. There has been no solution to this,  and the city still taxes people to pay for recycling their paper.

QuoteThen we can focus on stuff like trying to save the earth from the tipping point from which they say is the point of no return.
...
All I know is that here where I live, the weather patterns have changed radically. The summers are longer and hotter and it rains less and less and less. They are saying that within 5-6 years our source of water could literally dry up. We ultimately get our water from the Rockies in Colorado, and they have been getting 50% or less of the snow they used to get 10-15 years ago. I have concerns for my own life at this point since only 1% of the water on planet earth is fresh water. In the days to come I think we are going to see a lot of bad stuff happen on an unprecedented scale, and a lot of it will be the direct result of human activities, in the quest of living a "better life".

And that brings up the point of perspective.

That tipping point of no return - "they" do say that, don't "they".  It was only about two-three decades ago that all the serious climatologists were pointing out that were were near the end of another of the recent and numerous ice age glaciations. The expectation was that at some point in the near future (few thousand years, that is) the glaciers would start advancing to cover, for instance, North America down to well below the Great Lakes with ice hundreds of meters thick. The crust of the earth is still rebounding from the removal of the weight of the glaciers in many places. If you google "ice age" you can come up with some interesting speculations on how and why the recent cycle of glaciation and interglacials has happened and might happen again. The causes speculated to be there are *yes!* CO2, orbital fluctuations of the earth, positions of the continents, and other things. So what, exactly, is *the* tipping point?

As to fresh water: did you ever hear of the Sand Hills in Nebraska? Right now they're covered in vegetation, suitable for grazing cattle. Back during the Medieval Warm Period, the sand hills were actually sand dunes, and the wind moved the dunes around. Presumably human activities had little to do with that shift. Actually, there was a Medieval warm period that allowed the Vikings to colonize Greenland and Vinland, which we now call Newfoundland; it was followed by the Little Ice Age.

Given those and how little they're understood, how *exactly* are we affecting climate, and how do we know that what we do to stop changing it is going to be in the right direction?

Quote from: CynicalMan on September 14, 2009, 04:13:33 PM
Our current system encourages and rewards greed but I don't think we will be able to avoid that until human control and population start to contract. One reason why human greed is so prevalent today is the fact that we live in huge communities and can outsource the consequences of our actions to people we don't care about or, under some circumstances, even know about. There is also a feeling of a huge social ladder that stretches out way above us. This gives people of all social classes huge aspirations that, unfortunately, often become greed. Our system encourages competition, but it does so to the point of competition at the expense of others. I am not saying that our society has chosen the worst possible system, or that other systems are necessarily better. Given how bloated modern society has become, I think it will eventually collapse and give way to a society that gives up our speed in technological and corporate progress in favour of one that has less of a social ladder. I think such a system will be created out of necessity, not out of human goodness.

You miss my point. Greed does not exist because society makes it exist. Greed exists because it's a part of human nature. Societies which fail to take that into account or at least allow enough room for it to operate are inherently suicidal in the short term.

It is true that we may currently be suicidal in the long term, but as a pragmatic person, I'd choose that option so I have some room (i.e. time) to work on the end result.

I am entirely gladdened by the length and depth of this thread and how passionate we all are about the state of the planet and also the pragmatic nature of our understanding of the human condition.

I think that what we do here, building electronic FX boxes, is in no small way accountable for that. We have decided to think outside the square and make our own decisions about what we want and are here seeking knowledge to do so. No matter the reasons we came to be here, we are here, and as time passes we realise that sharing what knowledge we have attained helps us get more knowledge.

I suppose it could be called enlightened self-interest. It's still self interest and even a form of greed, but it's coloured by understandings of how knowledge and skills are attained. We have fought with our own frustrations and levels of patience, stretched out our attention spans and expanded our quotas of enquiry.

I ask myself why this is. It's certainly not profitable in a normal sense. To become impassioned with something that at best can only provide a modest living is not the modern way at all so what it gives us must be beyond this need that drives most people.

I recently, well about a year ago, got into an experimental music performance "thing", and this group follows almost exactly the above reasonings. In and of itself the setting has no relevance to normal life. It's not profitable, it has almost no chance of expanding into something profitable and only sustains itself by the people involved being willing to be involved.

Hobbies!

Hobbiests will save our planet! Hobbiests are the reciprocal of mass consumption. Hobbies usually have a system of rewards inbuilt that have time taken in the pursuit of a far greater quotient than the expense to become involved. The higher minded the pursuit, as it were, the greater in favour of time is this quotient.

Hobbiests require tools and manuals and use them and read them... again and again and again!

Hobbies are the beginnings of art... but sadly as soon as it becomes art it kinda loses it. Art is merely a hobby that others, not hobbiests, have recognised as being worthy of their attention, limited though it is.

The real art of the hobbiest therefore is to stay underground, and raise the hobby to high art, and spread the need to hobby without spreading the need to be watched!