Infrastructure

I

 spoke to a man at the weekend who had worked for many years in the food industry. He had helped to develop and market starch as an ingredient. Whilst this sounds rather plain, it was fascinating to learn how a lot of our food is created in labs, with the colour, consistency and flavour being controlled by adding various ingredients and additives. Food manufacture is not simply a scaled up version of what I do in the kitchen. It is food alchemy. So, the crisps, yoghurt, chocolate bar, or custard that I eat has been heavily processed to reach that end product. Tinned custard does not even have milk in it! The milk ingredient is swapped out for water, milk powder (which was once milk, I admit), and protein. This is done so that the end flavour, consistency and colour can be controlled exactly. That tin of Ambrosia Custard is the same as the one you bought last week and that one that you'll buy in a month! In listening to this gentleman, I felt that I was listening to a lesson in food chemistry: this type of starch is a good substitute for gelatine in sweets, as it is able to hold its starch molecule together, like a jacket around a person. Whereas this other starch molecule has a lower thickening point, and so only needs to be heated to 43 degrees, as opposed to others which need 60+ degrees to thicken. This is good for instant soups. There are well over 200 different types of starch which are used by the food industry. So, these foods which appear 'normal' are actually highly processed. It feels fake.

Why has this happened? Customers, apparently, want to know that the ready meal that they bought last week, will taste exactly the same when they buy it next week. It is also more labour intensive, and hence more expensive, to manufacture real custard, or Creme Anglais, as opposed to the custard that is mass produced today. The gentleman also spoke of life after the Second World War where it was expensive to buy bananas, raspberries, and mangos, and so chemists came up with a way of manufacturing flavours and introducing them to foods, such as yoghurt.

Any yet when we shop in the supermarket do we ever give a thought to the complex set of processes which bring those products to the shelves? I put a new screen in an iPhone last bank-holiday Monday as the previous one was cracked. I thought it would take 15 minutes. It took over two hours! In doing this I saw the incredible complexity of the phone (speakers, motherboard, camera, battery, a multitude of connectors, the screen itself and digitizer), and it made me think of how much we rely on complex, unknown processes to live the lives we currently do.

A disassembled iPhone 4S

In the same way, if I eat tinned custard, do I ever think how much has gone into making that product? We are heavily so reliant on a complex and evolved infrastructure, and I think that much of the time we take it for granted. That infrastructure exists in the circuit boards of my iPhone, the ingredients and additives which make up the baked beans I had for lunch, and people who are involved in making the jeans that I have on. We criticise countries which use immigrant labour almost as slaves to build their buildings and maintain their cities. We criticise sweat shops which employ people in a way which we would not do in the UK. Yet, where was the jumper that you're wearing now made? Who made it? How much rainforest was destroyed in order to grow palm oil so that you could eat that Cadbury's Creme Egg? What chemicals are you ingesting when you eat that packeted sandwich from Tescos?

I don't know the answers to these questions, but we seem to have become so disassociated with the world around us that we simply take our current lifestyles for granted. If I want X, Y or Z, I'll simply buy it regardless of what it takes. Whether it takes the financial exploitation of people in less wealthy countries, the deforestation of brazil, or leads to obesity. Have we become spoilt? We take for granted things which can only exist at the detriment to someone or something else. How can we change this?

In writing this article I found this website: http://www.ethicalconsumer.org  However, I don't know if their ethical values are the same as mine, so I'm not sure how useful it is!

Is there a purpose to our lives?

I

 have been reading (or rather, trying to read) The Myth of Sisyphus, by Albert Camus (2005). It is not easy reading, and I feel that I am in a cloud, and just about able to make out some shapes in the fog. Though the more I read, the more the cloud dissipates.

Camus states that the world which we inhabit is irrational (i.e. there is no reason for it), and yet we, as humans, have "...a wild longing for clarity..." (p.20), and a drive to understand the world. This 'confrontation', or conflict, between the unreasonable world (meaning that it cannot be figured out through reason, as it has no reason) and the need for humans to understand life, gives the concept of the absurd. And that, therefore, life is itself absurd (Camus states that the absurd is a truth; a non-divisible element). He argues that there is no greater (transcendental) life, god, afterlife, spirituality. He writes that these are simply 'leaps' from realising that the world has no meaning, no deeper purpose, yet wanting there to be something greater. Hence, we create 'truths' based on an afterlife or god, which gives us meaning in this life. For example, a medieval christian might say that this life is simply preparation for being with God in heaven. In other words, he might think: "I don't understand what my purpose is on this Earth. But believing in God and there being an afterlife gives me purpose, and hence leading a christian life gives me that purpose. In fact that is the purpose of our lives on this Earth." Camus might understand why this fellow decided to go down that route, but he would argue that this fellow has used spirituality in order to give his life purpose, when in fact there is no purpose to life.

I am unsure of my feelings on Camus's proposition. It has crossed my mind that when I look at the world, there appears to be a lack of reason. There is no reason as to why I should step on this ant and kill it accidentally, or that I should be be hit by a car and die, or live until I am 105. There appear to be no reasons for these things, they simply are. Camus writes "...the attributes of the absurd: unjust, incoherent and incomprehensible." (p.37). Sometimes this is how I feel nature is. It is not fair that a child is born in central Africa with the HIV virus, whilst I am born in the UK free of life-threatening disease. Thus, Camus could be right that the world is absurd, and that therefore, it is unjust.

However, I also feel that one purpose of being here, and alive, is to love and be loved. But, Camus's view would lead to love simply being demoted to an evolutionary necessity. So, we humans need to be in relationship with people to survive, and so we have evolved an emotional tie called love so that man and woman pair together in order to successfully produce offspring. This feels like a very harsh explanation of love. I wonder, though, that Camus might say that I am trying to explain life, rather than simply describe it. I am, again, trying to find meaning in a meaningless world.

I wonder if Camus is specifically saying that there is no external purpose in life. There is no purpose that we are given by some higher being, nature, spiritual forces, etc. But, this does lead to the idea that we can find our own internal meaning for our lives. Why does this not feel like enough though? Why have we, over the course of our existence of millennia, always turned to external forces, such as gods, to give our lives purpose?

References:

Camus, A (2005): The Myth of Sisyphus; translated by Justin O'Brien. Penguin Group.

The life around us

A

 bit of an odd post, but it came to me this week that we probably see a lot more non-human creatures than we think that we do. So, I decided to simply list what I have seen this week. For me, this ties in with my first post about Edward Wilson's Biophilia hypothesis: that humans have an instinctive bond, and hence curiosity, with other living organisms. We are drawn to them, and to each other, due to the very basic fact that they are alive like us.

These animals have been seen in West Yorkshire, North Yorkshire, Central Wales, and Manchester. Granted, I live in a rural setting, but many non-human creatures can still be seen in urban areas as well, as long as you opens your eyes. In fact, it is easier to see some species in the city, such as foxes.

Rabbits (both brown and golden)

Jackdaws

Magpies

Ducks

Crows (Or rooks - I never know which is which!)

Swallows (A sign of spring!)

House Martins

Pheasants (Both hen and cock pheasants)

Sheep with their new lambs

Roe Deer

Cows

Chickens

Geese

Buzzards

Kestrel

Curlews

Blackbirds

Tits (I'm not sure exactly which specific species)

Red Grouse

Horse

Donkeys

Ants

Spiders (many varieties, none of which I could name!)

Flies (again many varieties, 2 of which I recognise)

Midges (A not very welcome sign of spring!)

Bumble Bees

Honey Bees

Tawny owl

Bat

Dogs

Cats

Humans

Badger Tracks, West Yorkshire

Alongside actually seeing animals, there are many signs, tracks, and paths that can be seen that hint that there are animals out there, even if we do not see them. Badgers is a classic example for me: I've never seen a live one, but I see multiple signs of them including paw prints, well travelled paths, and latrines. There is also a woodpecker that I hear most days, but even if I know which tree it is on, I am never able to see it. There are also many animals that I probably look straight at, but never see as I'm not actively looking for them. Or animals that are within metres of me, but I am not aware of.

I often go out looking for animals when walking the dog, or maybe I have just become more aware of all the animals that are around me, and so I try to keep myself open to them. Are you open to seeing other animals arounds you?