Tangled Mess

By Adrian L P Robinson

What is humanity doing to itself and why are we doing it?

Why are we slowly destroying our habitat in the name of economic growth only to benefit the 1%?

The six friends ask questions about the intertwinned and connected relationshiips between power, politics, economics and the environment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adrian L P Robinson
• Release date: Mar 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201247355

Book preview

Tangled Mess

Our Intertwined & Connected World

By Adrian L P Robinson

About The Author

Adrian L P Robinson is a British national who lives and works in Bulgaria as a consultant on renewable energy and biotechnology in agriculture. He spent his early years living in the Far and Middle East returning to the UK as a teenager. Military service followed by public service as a policeman led to a career in sales and marketing across a spectrum of commercial and industrial activities. Taking his learned experience he worked with NGOs in the BAME community as a business development advisor and in tertiary education as an educator and tutor for the City of Bristol College and Open University business schools. He has a number of publications in Bulgarian.

Вашето бъдеще е във вашата стратегия Your future is in your strategy

Усъвършенстване на бизнес представянето 4Е Business performance improvement using the 4Es"

Недоволните клиенти показват слабите места във вашия бизнес Customer satisfaction

Печалба без вреда- новото мото на модерните мениджъри Profit without damage

Липсата на пристанища и правилно управление, пропуските в закондателството са основните негативи на нашето черноморие Mistakes in marina management on the Black Sea

Морският свят поглежда към България The sea world looks at Bulgaria

Добрият лидер Leadership for the future

Качество...Изпълнение...Сила Quality accomplishment and power

Днешните тинейджъри- утрешни мореплаватели Youth are the future of Bulgarian sea sport

More articles on Economics, Energy and Environment by

Adrian L P Robinson can be found on the web site:

www.tangledmess.org

Or contacted via: tangledmess.pm.me

Preface

For the children of tomorrow.

I hope that you are going to be wiser and kinder than the generations of today.

I hesitated for a number of years to bring children into this world but eventually I succumbed and they are now my life and joy, except when they are naughty, but that is part of their character for which I am eternally grateful. Why did I hesitate? The answer is because I was uncertain of what the future will hold for them.

Now I know I was right to be uncertain and hesitant. The future looks bleak and they will certainly have a tough life unless we change the future today.

I am certain that I am not the only person on this planet who has thought in this way and I am also certain that there are millions of potential parents who have forgone the pleasure of children because they can’t see a safe and happy future for their offspring. There is of course other reasons for example medical, and selfishness but the latter is directly linked to the current state of affairs in which we live and has a direct influence on the decision not to procreate.

This book is dedicated to the children of the future in the hope that their parents and guardians will take note and start the change necessary so as to prevent the purgatory that is looming if we don’t change course.

Humanity faces many dangers, none more so than those it created itself.

Anon.

Introduction

I keep six honest men (they taught me all i knew); Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.

Rudyard Kipling

The planet earth and the majority of its flora and fauna inhabitants are complex systems and exhibit complex relationships, communication and behaviour. It is well known that humans exhibit the same and we are learning more each day that the animal kingdom does as well with the interpretation of whale and dolphin communications being analysed and reported, why dogs bark and cats hiss. There are even reports of plants communicating and sensing pain.

Pain is mostly inflicted by an external force or action upon a body but it is not restricted to for example hitting a person or animal it is also an uncomfortable feeling that something might be wrong. We feel pain when we are ill and we sense that we are ill.

An open question is: if the planet could talk would it tells us that it is in pain? It is already communicating that something is very wrong through climate change and extreme weather events. But are we listening to the whispers and see the tell tale signs before we prescribe a cure or do we wait until the whispers become howls and it is too late to save the patient? Concerned scientists and environmental activists shout out loud that there is ‘No Planet B’ and they are right.

A great many writers have depicted a dystopian world: Kafka, Huxley, Orwell, Bradbury, H.G Wells, Burgess and more recently Atwood, countless films have been made: Mad Max, The Matrix, Automata, Equilibrium and The Hunger Games to name a few examples. Is this just the imagination of the screen and script writers or are we actually heading in that direction?

Perhaps the evidence can be found in everyday life in front of our eyes but also behind the scenes. Social media controls us more than we will admit to having an addiction and the mainstream media directs us in a chosen direction for the benefit of political power, corporate power and financial gain.

Are we being led by the nose and willingly following the pied piper without recourse, into a society controlled by an elite, being exploited for our labour and data and being left to fend for ourselves with no social support mechanisms, a form of Darwinian dystopian society?

A great many of us fail to ask questions and challenge why and what is being done and communicated to us. A fear of reprisal, a lack of understanding or just plain laziness in the hope that it will pass until the next distraction. We live in a world of transience and constant change and some find it difficult to cope and fall by the wayside as the flotsam and jetsam of society, whereas some find a way to cope through blind participation not realising what is actually going on, blindly believing the misinformation and disinformation perpetuated by the controllers, or craving a fix for the cat movie fetish.

We need to start asking questions and challenging the what and why, or we risk becoming willing Zombies. This book hopefully will start to open the door for you as to what is going on out there, what is happening and why we are being distracted to cover up the destruction of our planet and the suppression of society. We need to start questioning what is happening around us and to our planet, and why is this happening? We also need to ask if we can accept and live with it, if not what can we do about it?

This book is not intended to perpetrate or communicate conspiracy theories although some readers will contest some of the content and claim that it does. It is intended to ask honest questions and hopefully nudge its readers to ask questions and challenge what we read, hear and see. There are a lot of conflicting messages from politicians, economists, big business, scientists and environmentalists. What we need to do is ask what are they saying and doing and why are they saying and doing it. What is the difference between what they say and do and why is there a difference?

Although a mainly western hemisphere perspective is taken in what is being asserted, it applies across the globe. The children of the USA or Germany are no different to the children of the Philippines or Mexico. Each country also has its own set of unique problems based on culture and heritage but their parents and ‘elected’ leaders are the stewards and guardians of future generations to come. Perhaps in the hurly burly of everyday events this is forgotten in the pursuit of immediate gratification be it intrinsic or extrinsic. But it remains the responsibility of the stewards and guardians to ensure the future for children, is not bleak and steeped in purgatory.

There are numerous influences and reasons as to why we have arrived at this crucial point in time. History is littered with events that have shaped the world into what it is today. Corporate power plays, political leadership, economic and technological processes are the main intertwined influences affecting current day social and environmental conditions. Political events and ideologies have led to physical wars and the death of millions, both combatants and innocent civilians. Technological advances based on military research and application are morphing into civilian life uses and vice versa. Riding high above is Pluto the god of the underworld now transformed into money and wealth.

In this book I will try and give logical reason and  argument as to why we need to change the status quo, dealing with the deadly sins of politics, greed [money], inequality, technology and environmental damage. It is not just a moral imperative that we change, but a matter of survival for the children of tomorrow. When Darwin described his theory of evolution he saw raw nature at its best and on an equal footing. But today's world is not based on an equal footing, far from it. It is based on privilege and corruption where the elite change the rules for the betterment of themselves and loyal sycophants and to the detriment of all others.

A criticism could be that a too simplistic approach has been taken, however because we live in such a complex and forever changing society breaking down complexity into basic simplistic views, hopefully helps in understanding what a dilemma we are experiencing.

Professor Kaoru Ishikawa invented the ‘Fishbone’ diagram as a tool to break down complex problems in engineering and was mainly used in quality development. It also has other applications such as business management, business analysis and auditing.  However it can be used outside the business environment. A simple example of the Fishbone in application is when we dissect a car tyre. There are over 100 different components in a car tyre, depending on the manufacturer, usage or performance requirements and all the components have been processed in some way. If we take just a couple of the components[i]; natural rubber, synthetic rubber, steel, nylon, silica, polyester, carbon black (paracrystalline carbon or soot) and petroleum.

Starting with the car tyre at one end of the Fishbone we can trace backwards, each component, its source, the processes involved and the environmental impact. Rubber is mostly grown in Asia, Central and South America and in some parts of Africa. Because rubber is such a lucrative product it is a major cause of deforestation in the same way palm oil is. Rubber is the latex or sap of rubber tress and it is harvested by low wage workers or low paid farmers. It is processed by adding ammonia to prevent it from solidifying, then shipped off to rubber processing houses all over the globe, generating a carbon foot print, for use in an enormous number of commercial and domestic items, shoes, boots and in our case car tyres. The rubber is again processed by using heat and chemicals for each different type of intended end use application and each process has a carbon footprint.

Synthetic rubber is made from fossil fuels such as oil and coal. Extracting these fuels is a whole world of carbon footprints and environmental damage. To produce the synthetic rubber, oil or coal is refined using huge amounts of energy which is fossil fuel based, again a huge carbon footprint, to produce naphtha which is combined with natural gas, another fossil fuel, to produce monomers such as styrene and isoprene which again are processed using energy derived from fossil fuels.

Silica is basically sand so we dig big holes in the ground after clearing away any flora or fauna, disturbing the natural habitat and just leave a mess behind because mining companies are reluctant to clear up after themselves as it is additional costs. Polyesters are a synthetic fibre derived (processed using chemicals and energy originated from fossil fuels) from coal, air, water, and petroleum, more fossil fuels, nylons are a group of synthetic polymers composed of polyamides generally made from petroleum, a fossil fuel. Steel is made from iron ore which is dug up from the ground and processed in an energy intensive environment. Similarly copper which is also a component of a car tyre is a fossil fuel energy intensive process to make it usable. No wonder the extraction, oil and gas industries are against renewable energy and fossil fuel use reduction.

Using our Fishbone we can trace back and clearly establish that a car tyre is a fossil fuel product with a high carbon footprint. Every aspect of a car tyre has an environmental impact. Is there an alternative? Technological advancements are slowly making headway and an alternative to rubber plantations causing deforestation can be found in a common weed, Russian Dandelions or Kazakh Dandelion[ii]. These ‘weeds’ take months to grow to full maturity and readiness for harvesting is about one year, whereas a rubber tree takes around seven years before it can be harvested properly. Dandelion cultivation just needs to be scaled up and commercialised in a sustainable way.

Biobased polymers are being discovered and created to replace fossil fuel based polymers and much research is being funded to establish a more ‘Polymer’ sustainable world. Alternatives to synthetic materials and high water consuming plants such as cotton are available in Hemp, Flax and Bamboo. Processing these materials with renewable energy and recycled water is much more sustainable and has less of an impact on the environment. All three plants can be processed to fine and soft fabrics, even undergarments. When they no longer fit or are worn out, they can decompose naturally in a short period of time as opposed to fossil based synthetics which can be around for decades if not centuries. One of the beauties of this is that, whilst these plants are growing they are carbon dioxide sequesters and if processed in a sustainable way with renewables and recycled processes, then net zero emissions can be achieved.

The sustainability question has now moved on to food or consumable products, a further development of the food or fuel debate. The bottom line is that we are faced with over consumption, over extraction and exploitation, all driven by a wealth growth driven economic blasphemy against the environment.

There is no doubt that the industrialisation of production and agriculture as well as technological advances and inventions have made life more convenient and comfortable for many, at the same time creating a lot of wealth, which is not evenly distributed. However it all comes with a price to pay. For some it is land loss or desertification, for others it is flooding and the disappearance of low lying lands, for others it is the loss of  freedom and a life of exploitation, loss of natural habitats for millions of species of flora and fauna, some of which we don’t even know that they exist, as new discoveries of flora and fauna are made on a regular basis. Global warming and climate change is the price we are all going to pay and are going to continue to pay for the years of unbridled development and wealth creation. The consequences of our past actions are now coming to haunt us but unfortunately it is the innocent youth and children who are going to pay the biggest price for their parents and grandparents actions.

We can use the Fishbone and other analytical tools for our own purposes when reading this book. If you identify a problem or in this case a societal malaise, you can ask yourself what are the probable major causes of the problem and then ask why does this happen. Once you have identified what and why then add in a few how’s, who’s, where’s and when’s, you will have a much better understanding and you can take any appropriate action you choose.

The ‘Tangled Mess’ that humankind has created over centuries is observed and throughout this book different subjects are discussed. It is difficult to separate each subject area because our planet is very much intertwined and connected, just like the children’s song ‘Dry Bones’ also known as  ‘Dem Bones’.  (All religious connotations are ignored). The song depicts a linear path but the reality is that it is much more complex and complicated out there, and there are many different convoluted connections. No apologies are given for the meandering, intertwined, back and forth between the different subject areas discussed in this book, because that is the very nature of the complex world in which we live.

We live in a fast moving and dynamic world and the pace of change is increasing. Some of the information and data presented will have changed and become out of date by the time you read it. The time of writing was the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022.

I have offered suggestions and answers to the what, why and many other questions with which you may disagree. Therefore it is up to you to do your own analysis and come to your own conclusions. However the environmental damage and economic destruction genie is out of the lamp and is running amok. Just as you can’t put back the toothpaste into the tube, there is no way back unless we radically change the way we live. Do we just, have to live with it as best as we can, by tweaking current models, ideas, cognitive universalism and ideologies, or do we take unprecedented and unconventional actions and change the whole paradigm?

Intertwined & Connected Linkages

We live in an era of extremes. Extreme and abject poverty for masses, extreme and superficial wealth for the very few and extreme weather events which will affect everybody for a long time into the future. Extreme politics, either left or right and an increase in nationalism, or is it basic tribalism? A heady combination for anybody to comprehend and make sense of let alone lay the path for the children of tomorrow.

So called democracy is a given in a number of countries especially in the west, but that appears to be changing as what is one man’s democracy is another man’s authoritarianism which is now blended into a potent mixture of populist politics, authoritarianism and false reality media driven by the new god money, nationalism and nativism.

Democratic politics used to be about making decisions for the betterment of the community or group and the governance of an area or country through electing a representative. However we see that politics is actually more about improving status and power for individuals and close associates. The ex-president of the United States, Donald Trump is a clear example of an individual using politics for his and his family's betterment under the guise of governance of the country.

He achieved the position of what is commonly referred to as the most powerful person in the world, although there is a strong argument and debate as to whether Trump, Putin or Xi is actually the most powerful person in the world, through a mixture of ruthless politics and rhetoric, money and a personality cult derived from his reality television appearances and using a new bible of social media, Twitter, as a medium to connect to the masses.

Herein lies a couple of problems. Politicians used to put themselves forward to be elected to represent a community and fight their case in what could be called and assembly. Different levels of governance and different countries have different names; Councils, Parliaments, House of Representatives and Senates, Duma and Oireachtas as examples. Today politicians put themselves forward for election so as to feather their, their friends and financial sponsors nests at the same time milk the system for as much as they can in expenses, and lucrative lobbying or consultancy work. The plights and problems of their constituents comes second.

Politicians have to communicate with the electorate so as to convey or receive a message. The evolution from local gatherings around a fire in small remote villages, or over pots of strong tea in village church halls with retirees bustling around with a sense of self importance, through to instant global mass message transmission via social media, has been a very short space of time. This instant communication and the ferocity with which is conveyed is dangerous as it gives no time to question the validity of the assertion. In addition the main recipients or target audience of the social media message, tend not to be people who can or choose to question what is being transmitted.

Clear evidence of this is given in revelations of external interference with the US presidential election of 2016 and Brexit where the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. Deliberate attacks on the truth and the falsification or corruption of facts, created alternative truths and facts. The manipulation of the electorate through social media platforms was rampant and if you chose to question the message, the message was either reinforced, ignored or treated with mostly false or distorted facts and blatant denial.

An example of electorate manipulation through fake news and alternative truths was ‘Pizzagate’ where a North Carolina man believed, based on ‘fake news’ conveyed via social media, that Hillary Clinton was involved in or running a child sex ring out of a Pizzeria in Washington. So he went there armed with and fired off an AR-15 semi automatic assault rifle. Luckily nobody was injured but it goes to show the power of social media, conspiracy theories and alternative truths.

If our would be vigilante had just stopped for a minute and asked himself what was the likelihood of a presidential candidate with decades of public service and more money in the bank than he, his family and all his friends would ever earn in their combined lifetime would be doing with a child sex ring, then perhaps he would not be in prison as he is now. The danger of believing without questioning has consequences. Our vigilante got a couple of years in prison, but the American people are serving a sentence much longer and with more severe consequences in their relationships with other countries across the world. In the USA QAnon and other social media platforms have spread falsehoods and conspiracy theories without any checks, balances, questioning or regulation and now individuals and families are paying the price. Families have split and individuals are in prison because of what is being disseminated.

The invasion of Capitol Hill and the Trump inspired riot on 6th January 2021 was due to a heady mixture of lies, falsehoods, misinformation, disinformation, alternative reality and conspiracy theories spread online. Nobody in the crowd of Trump supporters questioned what was being said and why it was being said, they just believed the lies and falsehoods.

The big red bus sped across the United Kingdom with its sides emblazoned with the message ‘We send the EU £350 million a week let’s fund our NHS instead’. Vote Leave. The big red bus also was used to convey a number of other "Leave the EU Campaign’ messages. Obviously the bus attracted the attention of bystanders on the street, but more importantly it attracted the attention of both main stream and social media. So its impact was strong and it delivered its messages. However it has since been proven that the messages were alternative truths and misleading, but ‘Leave’ won the day even if it was based on lies.

Brexit has since shown itself to be a political ideology based on falsehoods and a misgiven dislike, almost hatred of Europe and ego. The populace of the United Kingdom are now paying the price with food and worker shortages and declining prosperity. The possible resurrection of the Northern Ireland troubles, businesses facing increased bureaucracy and finance companies and banking operations moving out of the country. It is reported and obviously needs fact checking due to the different metrics being used, that Brexit has cost the UK more than £200billion which is approximately what it