Please read the post “The Perfection & Deception of Perception” before you read this post for maximum impact and benefit.

When we watch a film at the cinema, no matter where we look on the screen, the image is detailed, crisp and clear. It is uniform in quality and even at the corners and edges the details are sharp and in focus. It doesn’t matter where we choose to look the picture is good.

The implications of the large cinema screen are that when we look away from one area of the screen to view part of the picture on another part of the screen, the detail is still there on the area of the screen we are no longer looking at. The detail doesn’t stop being there just because we aren’t looking at it anymore.

When we look out onto the world it appears like we are looking out on a large cinema screen. What we see is a seamless, uninterrupted image that is clear and in focus just like the cinema screen. When we move our eye from one area of the image to another, we see a beautiful panning action worthy of the best cinematographer with no jumping juddering or blurring and with absolutely consistent detail and focus across the image. Unlike the large cinema screen though, this is an illusion, the very clever end result of a number of different complex biological systems interacting with one another to create this impression.

To visualize what our eye actually sees when we look at a scene, imagine the cinema screen again but instead of a uniformly clear and focused image, imagine the whole screen is out of focus and blurry with all the colour washed out except for a small circular area on the cinema screen about the size of a basketball. This small circle is crisp, clear and in focus with well-defined colours.

To understand why our eye sees an image like this requires a basic understanding of the structure and function of the eye.

Light passes through our pupil and is focused by the lens on our retina. The light sensitive cells on the retina then send data via the optic nerve to our visual cortex in the brain to be processed to produce an image we can understand.

The retina is not uniform in structure. There is a tiny pitted area on the retina called the fovea on which the lens centres the focused image. The fovea though tiny accounts for 50% of the data sent from the eye to the visual cortex. The other 50% of the data comes from the rest of the retina. So 50% of the data used to create the image in our brain comes from an area that is approximately 1/10,000^th of our total visual field. The other 50% comes from the other 99.9999% of the retina.

The fovea differs from the rest of the retina in other ways too. It is densely packed with light sensitive cells called cones which see colour. We have three different types of cone, each of which contains a pigment that responds to a different wavelength of light - green, red or blue and release differing amounts of different neurotransmitters depending on the wavelength and intensity of that light. Depending on the intensity of each wavelength, each receptor will release varying levels of neurotransmittor on through the optic nerve, and in the case of some colors, no neurotransmitter. Just like mixing paints, we see different colours by combining the information from the primary colours detected by 3 different cones. Due to the fact that we need input from 3 cones to see a colour, their response time is comparatively slow so they aren’t good at detecting very quick changes or movement. They are also very poor at seeing in low levels of light.

The part of an image we see with our fovea is called foveal vision. What we see with the rest of our retina is called peripheral vision.

The rest of the retina has a high density of light sensitive cells called rods. Rods are the simpler of the two cell types, as they really only interprets “dim light”. Since Rods are light intensity specific cells, they respond very fast, and to this day rival the quickest response time of the fastest computer. Rods control the amount of neurotransmitter released, which is basically the amount of light that is stimulating the rod at that precise moment. One simple experiment is to go out at night and look at the stars (preferably the Orion constellation) using peripheral vision (side view). Pick out a faint star from the periphery of your eye and then look at it directly. The star should disappear, turn and look at it from the periphery again, it will pop back into view.

In summary and roughly speaking, foveal vision is a very small area at the centre of our visual field that sees things in sharp crisp colourful detail but is bad at spotting movement or change where as peripheral vision, the majority of our visual field sees very low detail, is poorly focused and the colour is very washed out but is excellent at noticing movement and change.

Here is an example of what a line of text looks like to our eye when reading which demonstrates the effect of foveal vision.

If 99.9999% of our visual field is actually a black and white blur, how then does it appear to be a clear focused colourful image?

This is where evolution and survival have played a large part in the design and function of our visual system. Being able to focus 50% of our attention on 0.0001% of an image allows us to concentrate intensely on a specific object when we need to. In primitive cultures, this may have been prey we were hunting or a tool we were making. If we received an equal amount of information from the whole of our retina, our brain would have to perform a massive amount of processing to filter out all the stuff we didn’t want to be distracted by whilest attempting to perform the focused task, most of which would be out of focus anyway because of the nature and function of lenses.

So the eye naturally performs the filtering for us. While we focus our attention on what we are interested in everything in the periphery is seen in much lower detail to prevent our visual cortex from being overwhelmed with data. However, the peripheral vision is one of the fastest reacting light sensitive systems known to man and is fantastic at spotting sudden movement.  If while we are intensely focused on our prey or our tool making, a predator should start to hunt us, our peripheral vision is the perfect tool to spot its stealthy movement towards us out of the corner of our eye and alert us to the danger. Our basic survival program would make us then look directly at the source of movement and register the detail of the movement using foveal vision.

So this explains why we have 2 types of vision and the different types of information they are providing to our visual cortex but does not explain why it appears to us that we can see everything clearly. The reason is that our visual cortex holds an image of what is within our visual field in our ‘minds eye’. It creates this image by taking a series of ‘still’ pictures by moving our focus of attention (fovea) around the image to collect the details of the image. The static image is then retained in the brain in apparent detail and focus. The brain again through evolution has developed a program that tells it what is most important or most likely to change in an image and automatically instructs our eyes to keep looking back to those areas with the fovea to check for change in detail.

Here is an animated example showing how a human subjects foveal vision scanned a still photograph of a house, gathering the detail of the image for the mental snapshot. You will need to press the “Next” button on the webpage sveral times until you see the picture of the house, then press the “start” button.

One possible explanation as to why the brain maintains an out of date image in our minds eye is that when we move our eye to a different area of an image, the eye moves so fast that our visual system cannot refresh fast enough to see the detail and the image should just be a blur. To prevent us seeing blurred vision when our eye moves, the visual cortex ignores the blurred data and the static image in the mind is used to hold the image steady.

Millions of years of testing have shown that the system works perfectly as designed but it does introduce the anomalies demonstrated in the previous post. Most people report being aware of something moving at the edge of their visual field but are amazed when it turns out to be a gorilla that they didn’t see. The reason the gorilla is not seen by the majority of people is because I set you a focused task that required you to override your urge to investigate the movement of the gorilla detected by your peripheral vision. For the gorilla to be recognised as anything other than a movement you needed to move the image of the gorilla onto your fovea, which in turn would have made you lose count of the passes made by the white team. Fail a task - no never - I’d rather ignore a gorilla

So simply put, we only see what we look at directly and what we look at directly depends on what our brain thinks is most likely to change or be of importance to us. If we don’t look directly, we can’t see! On a more philosophical note, our beliefs affect what we expect to see or not see, so they affect what we look for in life. If we look for something we will see it, (search and you shall find) if we don’t there is a chance we may not see it even if it’s right in front of our noses just like the gorilla. In modern life we are just so busy, we barely ever have time to stop, sit back and look around and see what’s really out there. In this fully occupied state it becomes easy for others to manipulate this design flaw in our visual system to their own advantage and influence our behaviour in ways we cannot even begin to imagine.

There is a famous story of the Conquistadors arrival in South America in their ships. It is said that the native South Americans brains having never seen a man made structure like a European battle ship before, simply ignored the ships on the horizon. Their brains weren’t programmed to look for hazards like that and so like the Gorilla, they simply didn’t see the arrival of the vehice of their own demise.

So I invite you to listen to Madonna’s famous track Frozen with new eyes and ponder on what you might not be able to see because you haven’t taken time to look yet or simply because you think it’s not worth looking because you don’t believe it’s there. When you have done that you might like to watch some other fun experiments which demonstrate the brains innability to see what it doesn’t expect to happen here and here.

Human beings, whilst spiritual in nature require physical form to manifest in a material universe. The physical form imposes limitations on our abilities to interact with the universe. EG we don’t have wings so we cant fly, we have lungs not gills so we live on land not in water etc. Our physical forms were designed to promote survival in a once hostile environment. Our abilities and limitations have been shaped by the conditions in which we evolved. Perception is no exception.

Whilst the process of perception is perfectly designed for survival, the way it works causes some very surprising side effects. Ignorance of the side effects can cause us to become trapped inside a perceptual box. Since the trap is a creation of the process of perception, we can only break out if we are aware of the pitfalls of the process.

Before we go any further, for fun and to test your powers of observation lets do a little test. For this experiment to work, you need to follow the instructions as accurately as possible.

I am going to show you a short video clip of a bunch of college kids passing a couple of basketballs between themselves. The group is made up of 2 teams. One team is wearing white T-shirts and the other team is in black T-shirts. Each team is passing one of the basket balls to other memebers in their team. You must count as precisely as possible how many times the white team passes the ball. You need too concentrate very hard as they pass the balls quite quickly and dodge around a lot to try to confuse the count. Do  not count any of the passes made by the black T-shirt team.

IMPORTANT - please only watch the video once and make sure you will not be interrupted while watching or it may spoil the effect of the experiment.

The link below will take you to a web page that contains a Java Applet. The applet will download the video, which is 6mb in size so it may take some time to download depending on your bandwidth and how busy the website is. Please let it download fully and then press the green play button to watch the video. After you have watched the video and counted the number of passes please return here for further instructions.

Please click here to watch the video clip now.

So here’s the question you’ve been waiting for, how many times did the white team pass their basket ball?

In actual fact this question was a red herring. What I’m really interested in is, did you notice anything unusual while watching the video? If so you are one of a very small minority and you may well struggle to believe what your about to read. If your one of the large majority who didn’t notice anything unusual prepare to be amazed.

To find out what I’m talking about click here and read on, then come back for more…

If you didn’t see something unusual but think this is a trick and don’t believe what you have just read, by all means, go back and watch the video again. If you’re very suspicious and don’t believe it’s the same video, then try it on someone else and watch the video over their shoulder with them. When they don’t see it either while your watching, you will know it’s genuine.

For the benefit of those who did see something unusual who may not believe that people could miss it, could everyone please answer the poll below truthfully. It’s anonymous and there’s no judgement attached to seeing or not seeing the anomaly. The sole purpose of this expeiment is to demonstrate the mechanics of the perceptual process.

While what you have just experienced may seem impossible, there is a very good reason for it and it is precisely because of the way our visual system is designed to work for our survival that causes strange side effects like this.

Here’s some more amazing examples of the tricks that our perceptual processes can play on us. I especially like the silhoutte illusion and the checkerboard shadow illusion.

When you’ve finished playing and if you still have time read here to discover why you didnt see the Gorilla and the implications this has for us as a species.

Love V

If you have time, please read the story and then answer the survey question at the bottom of the post. Feel free to comment in the usual way too of course.

Once upon a time there was a good and wise king who ruled from a beautiful castle on a hill overlooking all his lands. The king was loved by his people and often praised for his wise and fair judgments. The people were content and happy and the king pleased that he was appreciated for his dedication to his people.

Then one-day tragedy struck! The well in the village at the bottom of the hill became poisoned. How it happened is a mystery to this day but the effect of it was this. Within 24 hours, each and every person who drank from the well was driven quite completely mad. By the evening the whole town had drunk from the well. The castle however, had it’s own spring so the king living at the top of the hill did not drink from the well in the village.

Within a week there were dark rumblings of discontent. The villagers began to mutter and curse. No one could quite understand what had happened but over night the good kings wisdom seemed to have fled him. His judgements were seen as the ravings of a lunatic and the people derided him for the injustices he had started to perpetrate upon his loyal and faithful people.

The king soon noticed the difference in his people and was saddened by what he saw. He simply could not understand why his people had started to hate him; after all he was doing the same as he had always done for them. He was a good man though and he determined to get to the bottom of the problem. So one day, he dressed as a villager and went among his people in the village as one of them to hear what they had to say. Perhaps if he could understand why they were unhappy with him he could do something about it.

It was a very hot day and so before the day was out the king found himself at the poisoned well in the village satisfying his thirst with plenty of cold fresh water.

The next day there was joy in the kingdom. No one knew what had happened or why it had occurred but the most important thing, everyone agreed, was that the good king had regained his sanity and was once more making wise judgements that made his people happy. That night there were huge celebrations in the kingdom to give thanks for the return of the wise king to his loving people.

When I first heard this story, it had a very big impact on me and I saw it’s potential for helping people to get things into perspective. Over the years I have shared this story with people who I think may benefit from the moral of the tale. To my surprise there were 2 quite distinct interpretations of this tale. Out of interest and for the sake of discussion, I would appreciate your feedback to see what you think?

There have been a few core values that have dictated every choice in my life. 

1. Self honesty
2. A belief that I can do what ever I choose to do
3. To do the best I can at what ever I choose to do
4. Respect for others
5. To reject outside authority unless it meets all the above criteria

As far back as I can remember, I have walked into the wind. I have questioned everything I have ever been told I must do or accept. If it hasn’t met the standards I set myself, I have refused to accept it even if it has meant personal loss. I’ve had more than my fair share of sandy ice-cream and so have the poor souls who have chosen to stand by me. At times, I know this has made me a difficult person to live with and I can only wonder at my wife’s enduring patience and faithfulness. Especially in view of the fact that I have also refused to be constrained by convention with regards to relationships.

There seemed to be plenty of costs and rarely any benefits and I found myself questioning many times if I wasn’t just an egocentric buffoon who insisted on having  things my own way.

Something inside has always held me firm on my path though. It started from a conversation I had with my parents when I was about 15. My sense of the universe had started to mature a few years earlier, after a defining moment of realisation that not I, my family, my country nor even our planet were at the centre of the universe. This new point of view profoundly changed the nature of my relationship to everything. I attempted to comprehend my place in relation an infinite universe but could only shrink back dwarfed by the unimaginable vastness of it. Troubled by the countless questions I didn’t know the answer to, I found that every question lead to more questions. Eventually I realised that my unanswered questions were insignificant in comparison to the infinite number of answers I hadn’t even imagined the questions to yet.

Uncertainty didn’t seem to trouble any one else though, everyone around me seemed self assured and confident. My friends, my parents, my teachers, politicians and everyone in authority seemed calm and untroubled by the pinprick of knowledge that we have available to us to base all our decisions on. No one even seemed troubled by the contradictions and incongruencies in much of what we are taught. The only thing I could conclude was that there was something I didn’t know yet that everyone else did.

After years of struggling to discover what it was, I eventually had to admit defeat, and I fell into despair. My parents asked me what was troubling me so I admitted everything to them. Then I waited eagerly for them to tell me the elusive secret of certainty. How to be a grown up so I too could know how to make all the right decisions. Of course they couldn’t and that conversation taught me something that set the course of my life from that day to this. I realised that no one knows the answer to anything nor can we ever know. The sense of certainty I saw in people around me was an illusion. They simply weren’t aware of the fact that they didn’t know. Not even my parents. Once I realised this I felt compelled to find my own answers to life’s questions and never accept someone else’s again.

At the time of writing the Zen of Lego, I didn’t realise I was explaining why I have lived the way that I have all my life. Each refusal to accept conventional wisdom at face value has allowed me to investigate one of the building blocks on which societies pre-conceptions are founded. As a result, I have taken foundation concepts back to their simplest possible form to understand them and question is this way of seeing things helping us or hindering us? If hindering, how can it be restructured to support us.

Sitting down to write this, I have just realised that a lot of my wisdom seems to have come from interaction with my children. I knew that having and raising kids had changed me and I had learned a huge amount from being a parent. Its only  just occurred to me though just how much I’ve learned from getting down to their level of understanding mentally in order to be able to answer their questions in a way that they can understand.

Eight seems to have been a formative year for my daughter philosophically speaking. One day whilst I was sitting on the toilet, my 8 year old daughter came to speak to me. It doesn’t matter where I hide - there’s no respect for privacy in our house

“Daddy, I’ve heard people talking about a the glass being half full or half empty. Which do you think it is?”

Once I managed to get over the shock of being asked this question by an eight year old, I prepared to launch into my pre-formulated response. After all this is one of those Lego structures I finished years ago and I was pretty sure I knew the right answer.

I don’t know why, but before I spoke, I decided to revisit the question and try to see it from my daughters perspective. I’m glad I took the time because this time I came up with a completely different answer. It was probably 20 years since I had last thought about it but I was sure my answer wouldn’t have changed. Not only had it changed, it had changed to something I hadn’t even considered as as possibility last time.

Rather than just tell you what answer I came up with, I’d like to hear other peoples response to this question. SF you think you know what I’m going to say, well lets find out if your right. Please consider your responses and write your reply before reading other peoples comments. I want to run this like a small survey to see what the split of opinions is.

How do you see it? Is the glass half full or half empty? 

Who’s going to go first?

This inspirational music thing really isn’t my style, but I’m going to take a chance and run with the heard on this one. See, you guys are changing me already.

Unfortunately, the video doesn’t do the song justice and poor old Sonique doesn’t seem to be able to dance for toffee. So better to listen with your eyes closed or just read the lyrics

A post on Looking in the Mirror made me think of this song and it sends shivers down my spine. So just for a moment - Follow me….

Sonique - Sky

Oh yeah
Oh yeah, oh yeah

Look at me, it really was not easy, but I can breath
And I’m so grateful ‘cause I can see
I am free, to do exactly what I please
So come with me, to a place where we can be

Oh I wanna touch the sky, I wanna fly so high
Oh I wanna hold you, I wanna love you tonight
Oh I wanna touch the sky, I wanna fly so high
Oh I wanna satisfy, I wanna make you cry

Follow me
To a place where we can be absolutely free
To be exactly what you wanna be completely
Lose control that’s why I need you more
Give me the key to set your heart and spirits free, oh yeah

Oh I wanna touch the sky, I wanna fly so high
Oh I wanna hold you, I wanna love you tonight
Oh I wanna touch the sky, I wanna fly so high
Oh I wanna satisfy, I wanna make you cry

I know what I want and I know that I need it right now
Gonna take you on a journey to a far away place now
Gonna take you on a journey to a far away place now, uh

Oh I wanna touch the sky, I wanna fly so high
Oh I wanna hold you, I wanna love you tonight
Oh I wanna touch the sky, I wanna fly so high
Oh I wanna satisfy, I wanna make you cry

Ohhhh like a bird in the sky just a you and I
I’m gonna fly like a bird in the sky just a you and I
We’re gonna fly like a bird in the sky just you and I

I wanna love you now
I wanna take you high
I wanna give you everything that you desire

I wanna love you now
I wanna take you high
I wanna give you everything that you desire

I wanna love you now
I wanna take you high
I wanna give you everything that you desire

I wanna love you now

For Christmas my 8-year-old son asked for every conceivable piece of Lego Star Wars he could find in the catalogue. He didn’t get everything he asked for but he didn’t do badly.

We were pleased to see that when he got his Lego kits for Christmas, his enthusiasm and excitement dwarfed his fear of failure and he was eager to plunge in to his first project the AT-ST. You will see from the picture that this is a complicated construction with hundreds of pieces and a complex instruction manual aimed at children 14+. After a brief session showing him how to follow the instruction manual and explaining the importance of getting every single step exactly right before proceeding to the next, off he went.

He did brilliantly but inevitably he hit a problem. Someway into the instructions he found that he had 2 structures that he had constructed previously, which he needed to fit together. For some reason he couldn’t get them to join up as shown. He came to me and asked me to help him figure out what was wrong.

After comparing the picture of the structures in the manual with the ones my son had built I finally realised there was a tiny difference. He had made a mistake earlier in the instructions, which was causing him a problem now. I showed him how the structure in the picture was subtly different from his. He saw it too and asked if it mattered. “Can’t I just carry on; it’s only a tiny bit different?”. I explained that he could take that chance and try if he chose to but that there was no way of knowing if it would be possible to complete the final structure unless we corrected the mistake.

When he realised that all the work yet to do might be wasted if he didn’t go back and fix the problem it didn’t take him long to decide what to do. First of all he tried to just change the structure to make it look the same as in the manual. It soon became apparent that the piece that needed to be moved was fully integrated into the structure and it would be necessary to deconstruct the whole thing in order to build it properly.

Now this really didn’t appeal to him and we started to see signs of resistance. After about 30 minutes of frustration and anger he accepted there was no other way and got on with what he had to do. Once he started, it only took him 15 minutes to take the thing apart and rebuild it properly. His sense of pride and achievement afterwards, when he was able to connect the 2 structures as they were meant to be was obvious.

It occurred to me today whilst reading a post by SanityFound that my sons predicament is just like us in our daily lives except we don’t have the benefit of an instruction manual to check our progress against or find out what the next step should be. We basically inherit a load of stuff from our ancestors, which we have to try to piece together in different ways to make sense of what is happening in our lives today. This stuff is handed down to us as assumptions, beliefs, customs, values our genetic code, structures, history and relationships.

What if like my sons Lego, there’s an inherent mistake in some of the structures that we have been given to work with. How do we know our predecessors got it all right? Maybe to get modern life to fit together properly we might have to revisit some of the work they did and check all the structures we base our assumption on are sound? I saw how reluctant my son was to go back to something he thought he had already completed. But I also saw how quickly he recovered once he decided what needed to be done. I also know how much time it saved him in the long run and how good he felt when it worked.

Then I had on of those exciting flashes – no not one of those silly, put your clothes back on! The Koan by Zen Master Nan-in about the Tea Cup came to mind and I realised - I finally get it!

As a child we live in blissful ignorance of the vast number of beliefs available on every single issue and blithely assume that everyone sees things the same way we do. That’s why as a child, every kid we meet can be our friend within minutes of meeting regardless of his race, colour creed or background.

Once we start to realise that not everyone believes the same things we do, it comes as a bit of an unsettling shock and throws up a dilemma - which belief is the right belief? Like a child at the sweetie counter overwhelmed by choice we stand in awe of the vast number of conflicting beliefs and wonder how we can ever choose.

One of the largest belief issues any of us will ever have to face is, which religion is the true religion. After all there’s a lot riding on getting it right. According to the vendors – our eternal souls no less. Millions of people have died to make their point so it must be important to get it right, mustn’t it?

Eventually after searching the world and our soul for a time and maybe trying a few different flavours we may eventually choose one that suits us and stop asking the irritating question anymore. It’s not that we get an answer; it’s just that we get tired of asking the question.

If you’re stubborn and you refuse to choose one that fits. If you don’t give up asking the question you will eventually arrive at the same conclusion that all searchers must eventually arrive at. The conclusion that there is no way of ever knowing which is the corect belief or true religion and no matter how long you search you will never find the answer.

If thats so, could we resolve all the conflicting beliefs in the world peacefully. If you can’t know which one is right why kill someone over it? Could we just choose the best beliefs even if we don’t know if they are the right ones? Unfortunately, everyone does seem rather attached to their beliefs and this question has already been answered for us through centuries of war and religious persecutions so no need to go there again. ….

To be frank, at this point I was stuck for quite a few years. I tried not believing in belief”. But that’s a paradox, not believing requires belief - doh.  Like a koan, meditating on this question eventually stopped my mind dead in it’s circular tracks.

In frustration I asked myself “If belief is so important to us and yet it is impossible to tell which is the right belief – what the hell is belief anyway”? Asking the right question is always a good start to finding an answer. My criteria were that the answer must be simple because the truth is, it must be self evident and it must accommodate every belief without invalidating any other.

Eventually I came up with a definition of belief I was happy with. It fits every belief scenario I can think of and conforms to the criteria I set for my answer. This doesn’t make it the right answer, just a good answer.

A belief is …
Something we hold to be true which cannot be proven to be so.
If it can be proven, it does not require belief
If it can’t be proven, then it isn’t real

How it might change the world if we could get everyone to accept this definition of the word?

Let’s open up this debate with some moral and philosophical questions about the nature of value, property and ownership just to get people all revved up.

• Does wealth confer the right to squander?
• Because someone can afford to waste things, should they be allowed to?
• If people don’t need things should they be allowed to keep them?

Politicians don’t like to talk about individual cases because they stir passions in people and passionate people worry politicians. They much prefer to live in an abstract world where passion and common sense are stifled in favour of reason and procedure. 

Me, I live for passion and I find moral dilemmas are much more fun with a real life example to spice them up, so here’s one I made earlier.

My next-door neighbour is a GP. We can safely assume that he is earning the average GP’s salary in excess of £100,000. He drives a BMW 4-wheel drive and a BMW estate car, lives in a five bedroom house, holidays in the Maldives and has a hobby that takes him to the North Pole for a couple of months every two to three years.

He and his wife like to shop and there is a constant stream of mail order goods being delivered to their home. Now, there’s only so much stuff you can fit in a house, even a big five bedroom house. So to make room for their new stuff, they have to get rid of their old stuff. Due to the sheer volume of new stuff arriving on a daily basis, the lifecycle of stuff is fairly short and it never lasts long in their house. So the stuff they have to get rid of is good stuff that cost a lot of money and is still in good condition.

They have a set ‘exit procedure’ for getting rid of their stuff, which they follow every time and it goes like this: -

• 1. Dump old stuff outside
• 2. Wait till stuff outside has been rained on for a few weeks and is useless to anyone
• 3. Arrange waste collection for stuff to be dropped into a landfill site

Several times when they have put good stuff out in the garden to be subjected to the ’stuff exit procedure’, I have asked if they would mind selling or giving me the stuff, if it is no longer required. They politely decline on the basis that “we might still need that stuff ”. 

Duly, 3 to 4 weeks later the stuff is in a skip or refuse lorry on its way to fill a hole somewhere in our local landscape. I have seen electric ovens, fridges, 3 lots of baby stuff, furniture and much much more subjected to the stuff exit procedure.

So here’s the moral dilemma, a Rabbitt Eglu has just commenced the ’stuff exit procedure’ and is piled up in the corner of their garden in preparation for stage two. Sadly for all the children reading, bunny has left home for good, so for him this stuff has served its purpose and we all know where it’s headed for now. This stuff is made from plastic which will take centuries to bio-degrade and metal which could be re-used not to mention the man hours, energy and resources that went into creating the thing in the first place.

Now my chum next door like most Western people measures the value of stuff by the size of his wad and lets face it the £360 he paid for this stuff is small potatoes in the drop of his £100+k per annum ocean. For an discussion of this ‘value’ calculation see my post Does cost = value?

To the majority of world citizens however, £360 is not a drop in their ocean so the value of this stuff is proportionally much higher to them. Someone somewhere could make good use of this stuff and it could still serve a long and useful purpose if it could put in the hands of someone with different values. (Which isn’t hard to do if you can be bothered - see here for details)

So here’s the big moral question - Should they be allowed to bin it because they don’t want it any more and can afford to?

It’s their stuff after all and they paid for it. He worked hard for the money to buy it, why shouldn’t he be allowed to do what he pleases with it? Even if that means filling a hole in the ground with it?

Legally they commit no wrong by sending it to the landfill but morally we all know that this kind of attitude is unsustainable and is what is destroying our environment. The system says yes - our panel says????

Ok next moral dilemma - if I can’t stand to see the waste of resources, time and energy. If I care too much about the fate of our environment and my children’s future on a planet devoid of resources to stand by and watch this easy come easy go attitude in action. If do a Robin Hood and liberate this stuff from its landfill fate and put it to good use, legally I have committed a crime and should go to jail - but have I committed a moral crime?

Let the debate commence….

If something has no monetary value, society today regards it as being without inherent value, so the value of something is considered to be proportional to its monetary value. Since the distribution of money is far from even, the value of an item to an individual will be proportional to their personal wealth. If we adopt this value system, which sadly most of us have without being aware of it, the calculation of something’s value to an individual can be summarised like this

1 / (Value to individual = Individual Wealth - Monetary Value)

Or simply stated, the poorer you are and the more something costs, the more you will value it. Conversely, the richer you are and the less something costs, the less you will value it. The effect of this is that the wealthy live in a world where everything has less value and poorer people live in a world where the simplest things can have immense value. Each outlook will shape your existence accordingly. This wisdom was once summarised as,

It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God

Money has become the yardstick by which we measure the value of everything. An arm, a leg or an eye, even a life has a monetary value according to compensation law and injury lawyers. Buying a new one with your compensation may still prove tricky though. That said, progress never stands still and I’ve heard that kidneys and corneas can now be purchased very affordably as the commodity price of poor people has plummeted due to a world surplus.

Even language is changing to encourage us in this way thinking. For example a child killed by sanctioned military action is now termed  ‘collateral damage’. Using words in this way gently massages our minds into accepting that a life has a monetary value. Once this concept has been slipped into our value system its a small step to claim that if the monetary savings made by ‘accidentally’ killing a few children in pursuit of a bone-fide military target are greater than the assigned monetary value of the lives, the deaths are justified and therefore acceptable.

Interestingly, not all lives are of equal value. Like everything in life today there’s a formula. The monetary value of a life is based on how much a person could be expected to earn in their projected life span. So the life of a child in a western country is considered to be worth much more than children in say Africa or Asia. Sending a cruise missile into a highly populated area to kill 1 person would never even be sanctioned in a western city due to the prohibitively high cost of the ‘collateral damage’. It is however, deemed ‘reasonable’ in an Arab country because, lets face it, Arabs are ten-a-penny and we can afford the bill for the ‘collateral damage’.

If you think I’m joking go and take a quick peek at these links here & here

He, who lives by the sword dies by the sword

If you’re tempted to say who cares, beware. There’s a price to pay for this way of thinking. If we have consciously or subconsciously accepted that the value of life can be calculated based on monetary value, our own self worth will also be influenced by how much we have.

I wonder how God would feel about this if he were watching? 

How do you feel about it?