May 2003

persist. Here are some examples (notice the abruptness of the ques- tions—evidence of a lazy spirit):

The Honest Approach

Beggar: Got any change? You: Yes. But if I gave it to you, no.

Beggar: Got any spare change?

You: Since change is a non-count- able noun, I can have only one collec- tive amount of change, so there is no

way to have SPARE change. (Not

exactly true, but they won't notice.)

Beggar: Got any money to spare?

You: Yes. (And continue walking. This really confuses them. Be careful though; you might invite violence.

Your pockets had better not jingle.) The Malicious Approach

Beggar: Can you help me out?

You: Ah, I just gave my last $50 to that person. (Point to the last pan- handler who bothered you.)

Beggar: Hey, I need some money! You: Sorry, I am a_ Social Darwinist.

The “I’m Stupid” Approach

Beggar: Hey Buddy... You: Non-hablo Englishio.

The second tactic is to take advan- tage of their desperation. You may

have heard of the Bumfights videos,

Opinions

but there are plenty of legal and non- violent alternative for exploiting—I mean, employing—the poor. This is not as bad as it sounds. You just need to make them work for their money. After all, you did. Here are some examples:

$1 to recite the alphabet backwards without making a mistake.

$2 if they pose for a portrait. Alternatively, if they draw yours. Nothing says art like a bloodstream full of heroin.

$3 to follow you around town asking for your autograph. Trust me, this will impress everyone a great deal.

Third, just giving away cash can be entertaining—if it is done right. In fact, carrying around a couple rolls of

e the other press ©

pennies just in case someone asks for change may be worth the hassle. Try one of the following:

When someone asks for change, say yes and proceed to drop money... not in their empty McDonald’s cup, but a few feet away, then another few feet away, until they're following you like little dogs. Supersized desperation!

Have a blast by going to an area dense with beggars, and start hurling pen- nies all over the place. The beggars will go HOG WILD.

Follow all these tips and you will real- ize what a good time you can have for

next to nothing. Have fun!

Science Matters

by David Suzuki

disconnects | us from

nature

Recently, I took us on an imaginary trip fotir fotir years back in time. The exercise was to show how utterly dependent we all-ate on ature for,our sut- , vival. Today, even withvall,of our f

It al this é wash ways thi uman history, people’ of the paturl world -t

been shattered, and I think the greatest challenge we face will be putting the pieces back together. To do that, we have to examine the factors that have fragmented the world in the first place.

One is the way we live. In 1900, the global pop- ulation was 1.5 billion people with only 16 cities having more than a million people, the largest being London with 6.5 million. The vast majority of us lived in rural villages. We were an agrarian species. Today, there are more than 400 cities with more than a million and the ten largest each has more than 11 million.

We have become a large-city dweller and in this environment, it is no longer obvious that we still depend on nature. Processed food bears little resem- blance to its biological origins and seasons no longer restrict our food, which comes from all parts of Earth. Few reflect on the source of our energy or water, the final destiny of garbage or sewage, or the ecological consequences of our lifestyles. We simply pay for those services with money, as if that were the end of the story.

The way we receive information has also become fragmented. Newspapers, magazines, television, and computers all fight to attract and hold our atten- tion. Armed with remote controls, television view- ers zip through dozens of channels at a few seconds each. To hold a potential viewer, programs must be louder, more sensational, sexier or more violent. News reports come at us in brief snippets devoid of history or context that explain what they mean.

Modern science also contributes to fragmentation by the very methodology of focusing on a part of

nature, isolating it, controlling all outside forces

and measuring the result. In the process, we acquire powerful insights into the properties of that fragment, but this is gained at the expense of the rhythms, cycles and patterns that are crucial to our understanding of it.

Zoologists, for example, once believed that study- ing chimpanzees in a cage would reveal everything about the animal. But when Jane Goodall watched chimps in their natural habitat, she discovered com- pletely different creatures—intelligent, creative, social, co-operative, competitive. Context is every- thing—separate and isolate a part from the whole and what we see is an artifact, an aberration. Over and over, biologists find that nature is not a mechanical entity like a clock. It is possible to iso- late and study the components of an ant colony, for example—the queen, workers, soldiers, and so on. But in a nest, patterns of behaviour emerge that cannot be predicted by simply adding together the characteristics of the individual groups. Ants are not little robots or automatons, they are not prepro- grammed to behave in completely predictable ways.

Despite these insights and the growth of systems analysis, which attempts to examine the whole rather than parts, we still largely focus on pieces and lose sight of the complete picture. It is a flawed and ultimately destructive way of examining the world around us. It fragments our worldview, and to live sustainably within the limits of the ecosystems that support us, we have to put the pieces back together.

To discuss this topic with others, visit the discus- sion forum at <www.davidsuzuki.org>.

http://otherpress.douglas.be.ca «© Page 11