A lesson in how to justify selling more lap band devices

(What follows is an email I sent a good friend of mine. I then forwarded it to another friend who suggested I post it. Never one to be pointlessly disagreeable, I have posted it here as well.)

Last night I saw a news story that, if you haven’t picked up on it, will be something that interests you. The criteria for who is a candidate for lap band surgery is now up for revision as follows. The example given in the story was for a person 5’ 6”, which got my attention because that is my height. The current beginning of the range for being eligible for the surgery at this height is a weight of 220 pounds. The new eligibility being considered is a weight of 186 pounds and a body mass index of 30.

This is outrageous. I might have been eligible for surgery for my extra pounds? Really? I was 181 pounds with a BMI of 29. Yes, I was carrying more on my bones than was healthy, but to suggest I needed surgery to deal with it is anything but a healthy reaction. The folks at TSFL* should seriously pick up on this and call it for what it is. 

A friend of mine once weighed 400 pounds. Yes, she was an ideal candidate and lost half that amount post-surgery. However, it is not easy to maintain her new life because the mechanism controls her and not her own mind. She will have to live with this mechanical device inside her for the rest of her life because she was not on a program of behavior management, much less nutrition management.

It just so happens that the stock valuation for the company that makes this device shot up on the day this was announced. How sick is that? If you’ve got more than, say 25 pounds to lose, you can now consider surgery instead of simply taking the effort to learn better habits. The governing bodies that make recommendations for these devices and all kinds of medical and health-related issues are obviously happy to help the manufacturers boost sales. After all we have an obesity ‘epidemic’ thanks to our food policies and subsidies. Why not give people an easy fix for the problems we unwittingly foist on them in the first place?

I feel like I’m having a Susan Powter moment! (Remember her?) Stop the insanity!!!!

*TSFL = Take Shape For Life is the program I used to lose 25 pounds last summer. It was easy to follow and it worked for me.

The symbolic violence of making it too hard just to live

(happened on 10/29/10)

Last Friday on my usual trek up the hill after leaving the ferry, I was waiting for the light at 2nd & Marion. An ancient, red Chevy Cavalier struggled to crest the hill. Its cringe-inducing gears grinding noisily made me notice that the make and model seemed at least 30 years old, a car museum piece. Just as it managed to turn the corner in front of me, the driver leaned over and yelled out the open passenger-side window.

"I'm so sorry!"

Did he see the expression on my face, or was that meant for everyone else waiting at the corner? I shook my head and said, "I don't care." to no one in particular. As he continued down 2nd Avenue less noisily than before, I couldn't avoid seeing the pile of stuff in his back seat. Stacked to the top of the rear window were liquor store boxes and a beige keyboard. I imagined him a Turk, a Greek, or a Bosnian—but who knows? Perhaps I don't think of downtrodden Americans so readily apologizing for their car needing a new transmission. It's all just part of the noise.

As soon as he disappeared down the street his embarrassment, his pleading apology echoed in my brain and I felt sorry for him. Who knows how he acquired the car he was driving and why it was packed to the ceiling with junk? Clearly, this was a man trying desperately to retain some pride independent of his circumstances. And what were those circumstances? Did he live out of his car? I didn't want him to feel ashamed. His pained expression seemed atypical of so many who would have only cursed and driven on.

This scene made me think about a book I recently read: The Spirit Level: Why greater equality makes societies stronger by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. The authors provide well-documented research on the consequences of social inequality. Hierarchy and class distinctions, as they are maintained, affect people almost as profoundly as inequalities in income.

"Bourdieu calls the actions by which the elite maintain their distinction symbolic violence; we might just as easily call them discrimination and snobbery. Although racial prejudice is widely condemned, class prejudice is, despite the similarities, rarely mentioned."

Calling inequities of income and status merely symbolic violence is too mild a description for what really happens to people. I'm sure this man has hopes and dreams. Must those dreams be only to maintain basic living standards that so many others take for granted? People often resent having to witness the misfortune of others, but I fear cyncism forces us to lose touch with compassion. All the green energy and improved food production in the world will make very little difference if we don't find a way  fundamentally to facilitate how people get their basic needs met within the types of labor available to them to procure, housing and health care, for example, not to mention safer transportation.

The first annual 21st Century Citizen Award!!

When you are lucky enough to find the inspiration you're looking for from a kindred spirit, you've got to pass it on. In fact, the work of Thomas J. Elpel is just such a phenomenon that I've decided to name him my 21st Century Citizen of 2010. Here is a guy who has used most of his life figuring out how to be not only a responsible user of his own energy and resources, but also to help people understand how they can do the same in our economic ecosystem. I really admire the approach he took to writing his book: Direct pointing to real wealth. It is sort of an odd title, but the founding message of his thesis is unmistakably sound and appealing. Here is the basic premise:

"The first key to effective resource use is to creatively mimic nature in it's efficiency and synergism to close the loop on all kinds of waste at home and in business, from wasted materials and energy to wasted time, money and labor."

Early on his goal was to build his own energy efficient home and avoid having a mortgage so that he could achieve the greater goal of not having to work for someone else to have the life he wanted.

"...money is representative of calories, and the fewer we expended the fewer we would need to earn."

and:

"... we made our house energy efficient so that we would not have to work all our lives to pay high energy bills."

He repeatedly uses the analogy of calorie intake and consumption as the model for deciding where best to place your own resources for maximum return. This is but a taste of all the wisdom one can glean from this book, and no doubt his others. His writing alone might have earned him my citizen award, but that he also wants to teach others sustainable home building practices is the real winning element.
So what you might ask is the prize for this award? Uh, good question. I'll have to expend a few calories to create a suitable token of appreciation. As always, stay tuned for the next installment......

Search and bookmark!

I'm reading George Carlin's autobiography. It has been very interesting to learn about the evolution of his comedy routines. The beginning of chapter sixteen struck me as poignant observation.

"The reason I prefer the sledgehammer to the rapier and the reason I believe in blunt, violent, confrontational forms for the presentation of my ideas is because I see that what's happening to the lives of people is not rapierlike, it is not gentle, it is not subtle. It is direct, hard and violent. The slow violence of poverty, the slow violence of untreated disease. Of unemployment, hunger, discrimination....The real violence that goes on every day, unheard, unreported, over and over, multiplied a millionfold."

The core of this idea is not new, but rarely expressed so well. Not everyone has the grace to see what happens and understand that the consequences slip from awareness or hardly register. For all the power and magic of the internet, it sadly seems just to add to the noise of everyday life without also giving badly needed clarity. If you want to find it you really have to be willing to search and bookmark!

Shareholder capitalism to stakeholder capitalism

I couldn't miss the opportunity to pass this on. Apparently, the good citizens of Vermont are finding the courage to tap into the zeitgeist and test out a new law. The Vermont Benefit Corporations Act will now allow companies to stipulate public benefits with a standard of conduct laid out for their board of directors to follow. Please read more about this at Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility.

Many authors who write about the current state of the economy have been calling for this kind of directive for a long time. Writers like David Korten and Juliet Schor insist that in order to save ourselves from environmental cannibalism, one of our greatest imperatives is to hold businesses accountable for ALL their effects on society, not just the monetary ones to shareholders.

Schor's book Plenitude lays it out very well in chapter three, Economics confronts the earth.

"The canonical models used by the mainstream are addressed to what happens within markets, rather than to economic dynamics more broadly. Because air, water, and many natural resources are neither owned nor priced, the effects of economic activity on their health and functioning do not fall within the purview of the standard treatments."

And speaking of reading more, there are many inspirational gems of wisdom to be had from her research. In future posts, I'll be coming back again and again to references from this book.

Support your local farmer

Now that summer is here it is time to visit a CSA! Here's a hint of where I'll be going this weekend!

Local economies cooperate

The most prevalent messages about lifestyle choices currently come with advice to 'act locally'. So while nearly any sizable corporation is global in scale, we're admonished to support local producers.  I'd love to indulge a fantasy where I know my butcher, baker and candlestick maker all by their first names. But how can we go back to a lifestyle that in fact none of us has ever lived? What really does it mean to 're-localize' an economy?

Those who write about needed changes in social organization often mention cooperatives as a means for this reformation. One of the core ideas is that the members work to help each other instead of being in direct competition. The basis for many cooperatives involves pooling resources, making purchases in common and thus allowing resources to be shared across a larger-than-normal set of individuals. This is just one of the ways in which a cooperative is intended to operate and benefit its members. It takes a strong, sustained effort by extraordinarily committed individuals to form and operate one successfully.

My experience with a cooperative endeavor came from establishing a cohousing development with an originating group of only six people. For four years we built up a membership, created legal documents, worked with architects and consultants, and tracked income and expenses. Each member was required to hit an equity target so that we would qualify for a construction loan. Our ribbon cutting ceremony took place on a blessedly sunny afternoon in October 2001. A 27-unit condominium now stands where several vacant lots of surplus city land once grew wild.

The point is, each of the members who funded the design and construction of their new home took on huge financial risk to do so. I witnessed and participated in the creation of this project and I still can hardly, accurately describe the prevailing ethic that bonded people together to accomplish it. Idealism will only get you so far. Same with beliefs. Trust, faith, and other illusive qualities figure into this heavily. Mostly though, the forces outside of self-interest that keep people together in a joint venture are more magnanimous and promote forward thinking.

What is my vision of the future if it doesn't include you?

Personal goals like education, weight loss, or career development carry a singular point of reference. But when the success or failure of a project demands a personal attachment made public with others, the ties of responsibility are mutual and assume an importance greater than oneself. It was the first time in my life where I felt I had accomplished something of real value outside of what I did for a living. Everyone in the group accommodated demands on their time in addition to their day jobs. Few words can capture the deeply rooted expectations and desires we had for success. At times it seemed sheer will propelled us forward.

So what does all this cooperation stuff have to do with living in the 21st century?

I use this example to illustrate how greater purposes can be served when there is enough impetus by enough people to carry forward a collective vision.

In order to envision more clearly the benefits of a local economy,  groups of cooperatively functioning entrepreneurs hold some promise. In my case, we were selling our housing dreams to ourselves by funding the project over time. However, the example remains valid for any number of other kinds of projects.

The composting economy

Great city's recent panel discussion on transition initiatives gave rise to this comment: "They say the economy is shrinking. I think the economy is composting."
It's an accurate analogy. Formerly vibrant living things die off, rot for awhile and then become fodder for other living things. Many habits of a typical American's consumption will have to die and decompose before new forms of economic life emerge.
These habits must die:

• using disposable plastic bags
• buying plastic bottled water
• the average American who eats 200 pounds of meat annually

To the carnivores among us: Producing animal protein requires eight times as much fossil fuel as producing a comparable amount of plant protein, as reported by David Sirota.

Choice architecture

Who knew economic behaviorists could be so instrumental in helping us learn what encourages people to decrease energy use? In their book Nudge, Richard Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein describe the small triggers that influence our behaviors and call them "choice architecture".
A group of consumers was informed about their average energy consumption per household.
"In the following weeks, the above-average energy users significantly decreased their energy use; the below-average energy users significantly increased their energy use. The latter finding is called a boomerang effect, and it offers an important warning. If you want to nudge people into socially desirable behavior, do not, by any means, let them know that their current actions are better than the social norm."
The experiment gets even more interesting when a small, non-verbal signal is included with the information.
"Those households that consumed more than the norm received an unhappy emoticon, whereas those that consumed less than the norm received a happy emoticon. "
Subsequently,
"The big energy users showed an even larger decrease when they received the unhappy emoticon. The more important finding was that when the below-average energy users received the happy emoticon, the boomerang effect completely disappeared!"
When the information was combined with an emotional nudge the below-average users didn't adjust their use upward. This suggests a lot can be done with a well-chosen social nudge.
Do you believe a simple smiley face on your electric bill will cause you to reduce your energy consumption even more if you are already in the happy, below-average use as compared to others in your neighborhood?
Hell, yes! Who doesn't want to be thought of as virtuous? In these times when doing the right thing isn't always an obvious choice, if City Light, for example, wants to 'architect' my choice by giving me a smiley face, why not? Who am I to complain about those who have taken the time to understand how to manipulate human behavior in the right direction?

A devotee of the intelligent kind

How do you decide what is important to pay attention to during these crazy times? This blog filters economic and environmental thought leaders so you don't have to. Think of yourself as a responsible TFCC, (21st century citizen)? Not so fast. We'll look unflinchingly at daily habits, patterns of behavior, common and unconventional wisdom and much more. TFCC is dedicated to finding the folks that help us make sense of what is possible in the development of sustainable human habitat. From social milieu to physical space to cityscape and beyond, the author promises to bring you smart commentary. Stay tuned.