Environment Issues – Whose problem is it really?

We are concerned about our environment because we had just recently figured out how important it is to our survival. Before science progressed, we didn’t know that the air that kept us alive was oxygen, and that green plants were a source of oxygen-churner. In the past, what man did to ecology was for his self-interest of survival. For example, they burned trees to make space for their home, without knowing that they were ‘killing’ the Earth.

 

It was only after the Industrial Revolution, when industries mass polluted the air, land, and sea, did they see the consequences of their actions. Acid rain, polluted lakes and poisoned aquatic life affected the ecology system, but are ultimately problems because it also affects the human lifestyle in the negative way. Also, with the rapid population growth, food supply is depleting fast. Food is the basic factor for human survival. In the past, no one saw it as a problem because there was abundance of food. It is only now, when globalisation and modernity takes place, consumption increases greatly. We then see that the shortage of resources is a danger to the continual survival of the human race.

 

The question is, who are we to blame? Are we to blame China, the second largest greenhouse gas emitter, for polluting the air we breathe? Should we blame Indonesia, for burning down their forests and causing haze to their regional countries? They are the developing countries, and they need to use energy sources to run their economy, which is mostly manufacturing industries and needs oil and energy to function. On the other hand, the Americans are the largest greenhouse gas emitters, despite being a developed country. In fact, they are so dependent on energy consumption that they do not support the Kyoto Protocol, in fear of affecting their economy.

 

We can then see that environmental resources and their consequences are an important part of globalisation – they are a necessity and there is a high demand for them. The problem is, resources like oil are limited and it will not be long before they are drained dry from the Earth. So the developed countries say that we should cut down on our usage of oil and find more efficient ways to produce energy. The developing countries argue and say that since the developed countries too had once gone through the same process of development – burning coal and using oil to feed their manufacturing industries. They also do not have the capital to buy these advanced technologies to create ‘efficient energy’. Why should the developed countries restrict their economic development at their whims? In fact, it might be because of the high income in the West that they are over-consuming environmental resources since the demand is high. Should they not also restrict their own consumption?

 

The debate goes on. Honestly, no one, or rather, everyone is to be blamed. All of us is in this environmental problem together. If something occurs at one area, it does not only create problems for that country, the problem will also spread and affect the other countries around it. Look at what the forest fires in Indonesia did to us regional countries. Haze brought along the problem of hazardous air and infected lungs. We must always remember that all of us share the same air and ocean. Environmental issues are global issues. And by addressing this global issue, we create a global identity as an individual, promoting the idea that we have to face these environmental problems together (Steven Yearly 1996). A small action can have big consequences. Everyone has a role to play in keeping our Earth a sustainable place for the human race to survive in.

 

Technology and Information, the double-edged sword

 

Technology is a powerful social tool that has made vast advancements in our society today. It has also led to rapid social change. Modernity has taken us to the next level of humanity, where science is the basis for all reasoning. Compare this to the 1800s, when religion was the dominating factor that people used as a reasoning tool. In fact, it is what people use to divide the ‘traditional’ to the ‘modern’.

 

One of the technologies that was invented was the media. And with media, information was transferred with amazing speed. First, there was the radio, which transmitted news and entertainment. Then, there was the television, which gave further enhancement to the meaning of entertainment by moving pictures. Now, we have the internet, which allows us to virtually connect to the world, through email, games and the abundance of information. Is this good or bad? For the traditional, it is bad, because your beliefs are being threatened. Science explains what could not be explained before, and many believed it was God who controlled it. For the modernist, namely the capitalist, it is good, because they will be able to handle production more efficiently and effectively.

 

Has technology actually solved our social problems? I would say that it might have not fully solved social problems but led to a progress and social development can be seen throughout the world. With globalisation, poverty is slowly being eradicated, and educational levels are increasing. Standards of living are increasing and people are beginning to prosper. But with globalisation, social stratification is getting wider. Those who could not keep up with the fast pace of globalisation is getting poorer. When technology becomes the basis for globalisation, people become stratified by their ‘worth’, if they are able to use advanced machines or not. The poor, having less education and unable to use IT with their more ‘traditional’ mindset, will fall into the lower class, doing more of the manual jobs that are more hands on and earns little income. On the other hand, most of the middle-class and the rich, who are able to afford some standard of proper education, will learn scientific ‘modern’ knowledge and the ability to use IT. They will have the advantage to earn a more decent income. However, why the rich are able to dominate the higher-ranking classes is probably because they are able to afford prestigious schools and universities, which the normal working-class citizen are most likely not able to. By having a prestigious school in your resume, you have a higher status in your education level as well, which firms would readily employ with good pay.

 

Technology is important because it is intricately associated with globalisation. With globalisation arise the need for economic growth, and the skill to be economically active. In the globalised world, to be skilled will somehow be linked to you proficiency with IT. But if the theory of the poverty cycle persists in society, instead of bringing people out of poverty, it will only make the poor worse off. They might earn more then what they earned before, but with the rising living standards, their salary is still not enough to sustain them in the modern economy. We must remember that when we see statistics, it is the average income per person. If the rich and middle-class become richer but the poor remains stagnant in their income, the overall average still rises, and it does not show the real poverty situation. Like what Marx says, it is to serve the capitalists and the elites self-interests. If there was no outlet, like social institutions, the poor ultimately suffer a worse fate than what they face today, in the modern capitalist economy.

 

We cannot deny the fact that information technology is important to us. Our lives revolve around information, and our actions are socially controlled by information. That is probably why people who are surrounded with information technology have different values and insights from the people who do not have information readily around them. Information influences our actions. And at the pace of technology now, social change is far more rapid than it was before.

How institutions affect our lives and how diseases separate us from society. Are health institutions really all that powerful and mighty?

One of the most famous health organisations known in the world is the World Health Organisation (WHO), who mission is “to provide leadership on global health matters, shape the health research agenda, set norms and standards, articulate evidence-based policy options, provide technical support to countries and monitoring and assess health trends”. It is the leader of all health institutions, and it operates under the United Nations.

 

One of the examples of their work was when there Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003. When the doctor in Vietnam saw that his patient that a disease he had never seen before, he immediately contacted the WHO. It is the WHO’s job to then let the world know about the dangerous disease, try to destroy or contain it, and to eventually find a cure for it. It sounds glamorous, the job that they do. It is for the better good for all nations, and it should benefit everyone. However, with the increasing inequality and stratification, the things that WHO do to contain or destroy these diseases will create social problems and effects that are not shown to public.

 

I do not only wish to refer to only the WHO as the institution, but all health institutions around the world. Even in Singapore, we have the Ministry of Health (MOH), which is ‘part’ of the WHO (but they are not a major role player in it. Notice that only majority of the whites are the ones running the WHO), and controls the health system and security in Singapore. In almost every part of the world, sick people are sent to the hospital. While most of them do recover, some people die, and there is a stigma that is carried along with the term ‘hospital’. Something ‘bad’ has happened to you.

 

People with communicable diseases are isolated so as to ensure the safety of other people and the population. With this isolation, comes stratification. Just like acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), we are taught that we should try to keep away from these people as they are ‘dangerous’ and transmitting the disease to you. It could be said that it is the WHO which is the one who tells the world about the disease, but the social stigma is created by society. Because people value their lives, we are often taught not to mix around with people who are sick because we would endanger our own.

 

It is the institutions which influence our thinking and our way of life. They are the ones which tell us what we should do and how we should act. We all think of it as rational movements which will improve our lives. Yet we fail to see that many other individuals’ freedom to live have been sacrificed in order to create a socially acceptable healthy environment to the WHO’s ‘norms and standards’. We should not be isolating them, but rather the institutions should create some awareness of the state of these people, and how to give these people some hope to live in the future. Or do they think that because of our already present stratification, creating awareness would cause more discrimination amongst them? There might be many reasons to this argument, but certainly, I foresee that by keeping the public in the dark, it will create more social problems in the future. When the problem is not addressed, it will get worse as time goes on. Our stigmatisation will just grow deeper unless we are given awareness that these people exist, and that these people does have a right to live as well as any other normal individual. It is the United Nations who created the Human Rights Declaration, yet they believe in total isolation of the diseased. Rather ironic, don’t you think?

Urbanisation

Urbanisation in a country means that there is growing economic activity in the country, where people are moving from a rural, self-sufficient society to an economically active one. As Marc Weiss claims, “Cities are the fundamental building blocks of prosperity”.

A country’s modernity will be judged by the rate of its globalisation and urbanisation. I feel that both will occur simultaneously. For it is when globalisation occurs, urbanisation becomes part of the process as well. And the state or place that has the most rapid globalisation and urbanisation will be deemed as the capital of the country.

 

Urbanisation has changed many lives, for the good and the bad. It also has different impact on different kinds of people. But ultimately, some things remain certain. Urbanisation has changed the way we interact with people. Like what German social analyst Ferdinand Toennies (1988 [1887]) wrote, there is a shift in social relations from Gemeinschaft, the face-to-face world of community, to Gesellschaft, the more impersonal and institution-mediated world of society (Global Problems, Scott Sernau, 240).

 

Not only that, but due to the rapid globalisation, many of us have become materialistic since we are more well-to-do than before, being able to afford more luxuries. To support this materialism, work has been one of the important components of our lives. When the men goes to work, whether from rural to city or commuting by train everyday, the time spent with his family is much less than before. Women now are an important figure in the workplace as well. As a result, there is rarely anyone in the house. Children are welcomed back to an empty house and minimum time is spent with parents.

 

Of course, I am generalising the situation. Some parents do make an effort to spend time with their children. But this has created a sort of individualism amongst individuals. Parents know that spending time with their children is important, but work is also equally as important for it means financial survival. Children realise that their parents have to work, and they have to learn to be more independent. This independence is the limitation in social upbringing, where the family institution plays a less role in moulding the child’s behaviour, but rather his friends or people he spends more time with.

 

Also, there is the advancement in technology, which further deepens the theory of Gesellschaft. People are more involved in computers and technologies like the handphone, which makes things convenient and efficient. However, it breaks down the social contact between individuals, and people now are more active online then in reality. Emails and instant messages are now the way of communication.

 

We can take example of the urbanisation that took place in Singapore in the 1960s. Because of new policies that were aimed to increase economic growth, the government tried to break up the communistic families into nuclear families by moving them into HBD flats. While we have been living in our urbanised country and have gotten used to it, we must also realise the individuality that has taken place. While we might know our neighbours, we are not as concerned as for their welfare compared to when the older generation was staying in the kampong. Back then, the kampong community were a close-nit community were they looked after their own welfare. Now, with our over dependence on the government, we are only concerned for our welfare. It is especially ironic since more people are squeezed into a small piece of land, but we have grown to be more individualistic than more communistic.

 

With urbanisation taking place so rapidly, one might lament on going back to the days where there was less pollution, more greenery and less stress in work. However, we would also have to give up the luxuries of the modern world. Are we really willing to give up the convenience that we have gotten used to?

Identity Crisis?

 

As individuals, we are influenced by social factors around us. What influences us then creates our character and also our identity. Not only having an identity as a person, but also to let others see who we are and to a certain extent, of what is our worth to the society.

 

I would say that creating an identity is a deliberate process and is unconsciously moulded into us. From young, every minute detail is important – our social status, our parents, our family, our friends, our religion, our society, our government… there are so many countless more and they all played a part in creating our identity. Your name alone is a form of identity!

 

One of the most influential components of what moulded our identity would be our family and friends. With family comes religion and social status. With religion comes morals, values, beliefs and ritual practices. With social status comes power, wealth, and respectability. All these would sub-consciously tell or expect you to behave in a certain manner. And these would create you as an individual and your identity. From these expectations, we will then create our ‘norms’ for these groups of certain individuals. The rich will be more refined and more respected in the society because to be able to be rich, you had to be hardworking and smart to earn the money. However, overtime, the hardworking-and-smart component lies at the back of our mind. Instead, we will just feel and focus on the social power that the rich people have. Compare it to the poor, who are deemed lazy, useless and a social problem. They will become the misfits, and it is an irony that they might be working harder than a rich man but earn much less.

 

Religion, for most people, is introduced to a person at birth. Muslims, for example, are born into the religion. You can convert into a Muslim, but you cannot convert from a Muslim into another. For Christianity, you are baptised at birth but you can choose to follow God or not when you finish Sunday School. However, we rarely see these people converting to another religion. For one, it might because it runs in the family. Beliefs and values of religions differ, and at times, they contradict. Seldom (or never) do we see Christians marrying Muslims, or vice versa, at their own free will. I say this because in the past we do see the Malay Muslims marrying Chinese Christians, which in turn created the Babas, who mostly are Christians but follow much of their Muslim culture like cooking. But in modern Muslim context, when a non-Muslim marries a Muslim, he or she must first convert into a Muslim as well. Marriage is a union where, if you want it to work, both parties must have the same ideals and beliefs. Where religion playing a major role in shaping an individuals identity, behaviour and beliefs, we would want to marry someone who shares the same ideals as us. If we have children, we would also expect our child to follow our ideals and beliefs.

 

Our government would also have played a role in influencing one’s identity. Firstly, they mandated the law, which would be the guidelines to the countrymen of what was right and wrong in the society. One of the most important things the government tries to do to its people is to make the citizens feel that their country is their ‘home’ country, where they must always be loyal to. Singapore is one of them, and so we have our National Day, our Shared Values, our National Anthem, and our National Pledge. All these will in some ways remind us that we are Singaporeans, whether or not we like our government. Even if we migrate to another country or such, if we are asked who we are, our first answer will be “Singaporean”. It is a label, and it is our identity. By saying a word “Singaporean” alone, it holds the meaning of our culture, our society, and of our Singaporean beliefs like racial harmony. Of course, we must take note that religion also probably played a part in creating the legislation of the laws as well. People convicted of honour-killings in Egypt have a smaller prison sentence compared to if it was carried our in Singapore, where our laws order him to be either sentenced to life imprisonment or death penalty. It is because Egypt is a Muslim country, and generally, family honour is deemed important in their society.

 

As we grow, we absorb all these factors and they become our markers to what is right or wrong. This will then mould our character, our behaviour, and in which will create our identity. We have different identities in a sense that we have to play different roles – a sister, a daughter, a friend – but these identities are because of our social interaction with other people. Without social interaction, our identities cannot be formed. And with an identity, almost everything will be explained to the other person about who we are – what kind of beliefs we have, what kind of culture we have… and to the other person, it will create some sort of expectation of behaviour of us. Identity is complicated, but it is necessary, for it is what makes us social beings.