Socialist worlds

Interesting column by Tina Rosenberg in the Times today called "It's Not Just Nice to Share, It's the Future." It's stimulated by discussions around the bikeshare which has finally arrived in New York, and discusses what people are calling "collaborative consumption" - a step up from, or beyond, an older category known as collective consumption.

This is not exactly a fresh idea. In some fields, it’s been around for millenniums — in the hospitality industry, for example. You can’t own a house in all the places you need to travel to, so you rent a bed. Before World War II, the shared economy was most of the economy. “It’s only the last 75 years or so in the United States where the industrial revolution, modern mechanization and access to credit have allowed us to buy things for ourselves instead of checking with our neighbors, friends and family first,” wrote Adam Werbach, the co-founder of the sharing platform Yerdle.

Rosenberg mentions a bunch of reasons why people might embrace collaborative consumption over private ownership.

Why is collaborative consumption exploding now?

— The green zeitgeist. For some people, it’s still desirable to own a lot of stuff that sits idle 95 percent of the time. But more and more people are coming to define this as waste....

— Recession. Sharing saves money....

— Increased longing for community. The same desire that is luring people out of traditional suburbs into walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods drives collaborative consumption....

— The march of technology. Every business benefits from better information technology, but sharing businesses benefit more than others....

— Mobile technology and social networking.

This is persuasive as far as it goes, but it doesn't name my main reason for being an instinctive collaborative consumer: our participation in the lives of objects. I think objects get lonely, bored and frustrated under exclusive ownership. Think of a novel, unlikely to be reread by a single owner. But this goes for other things, too, synchronically and diachronically as well. Things don't want to sit idle in a safe, a never-used music room, garage, etc. They want to move, circulate, interact! Indeed, these movements, circulations and interactions are one of the ways human sociability is stitched together. If I wanted to grind one of my axes I'd say that misunderstanding property as in principle or by default private and exclusive makes us misunderstand not only the social needs of objects, but also of human beings....

(This might be worth folding into my thoughts on "resources," huh!)

(Or is it just a cosmology for my "commitment issues"?!)

The Job proofs are here!

TPSR

 

 

 

 

California Shangri-La

The Shangri-La legend is based on belief in Himalayan beyul, hidden valleys of eternal bliss. One doesn't have to go so far. Yosemite - here in the breathtaking view from Inspiration Point - is a beyul if ever there was one. I've got lots of pics, of critters, flora, vistas and, perhaps most magical of all, waters of this magical place.

Yosemite waterscapes

Some critters of Yosemite

Airsoles

Did I mention that I was walking on air in Yosemite? I was - literally!

The foam soles of the old hiking boots I got in Europe a decade ago and have hardly used crumbled away the first day in the park (they were fine at the start of the day!), leaving this. Getting a new pair and breaking them in are top of the agenda on our return to Del Mar!

Yosemite vistas

 

 

(Make sure to click especially the panorama images for detail...)

All the time

My student Michael volunteered in tornado-ravaged Moore, OK recently, and sent me this picture. "Reminds me of the Book of Job," he writes.

[Interesting debate in response to neo-Calvinist theologian John Piper's tweeting from Job at news of Moore: “Your sons and daughters were eating and a great wind struck the house, and it fell upon them, and they are dead.” Job 1:19 . “Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped.” Job 1:20. Some people condemned this as abusive theology of "deserved tragedy" but Piper evidently intended to be consoling. A subsequent tweet explained: My hope and prayer for Oklahoma is that the raw realism of Job’s losses will point us all to his God ‘compassionate and merciful.’ Can one not sound like one of Job's friends, even if one is trying to short-circuit the kind of explaining they were condemned for?

[Philip Yancey said: God endorses the confusion and even outrage that we feel when mysterious things happen. When suffering happens, it forces us to confront life in a different way than we normally do.

[Rick Warren tweeted: In deep pain, people don’t need logic, advice, encouragement, or even Scripture. They just need you to show up and shut up.#Love.]