materials – Page 6

Wouldn’t it be cool if this became a reality?

May 3, 2016 — leslie dean brown

This new petition is gathering a lot of momentum right now…

Why should people sign? Because it’s the little things like plastic bottle tops that are easily blown around in windy weather… and these small items are also the most easily mistaken for food by marine animals.

Most plastic floats and now an area of plastic waste that is twice the size of Texas has already accumulated in the Pacific ocean and it even has its own name… the “Pacific Garbage Patch”.

I’m sure that PepsiCo already knows this. The question is, what are they doing about it? I think it’s time they were held a little more accountable. They should be more responsible and invent a completely new bottle opening system, so that the bottletop will not (or cannot) physically separate from the rest of the container. That way, they can be recycled together as once piece (as it should be) — with a smart redesign, plastic bottle tops won’t ever end up in the ocean again!

How come the plastic bottle tops last a thousand years longer than the actual drinks inside? [Read more…]

What is wrong with society today?

April 26, 2016 — leslie dean brown

I was writing an e-mail today regarding a new illustration commission I received from the biodiversity alliance. I got a little side-tracked and this article is what came of it, although the illustration below is one I prepared earlier.

Illustration by Leslie Dean Brown. © 2015. All rights reserved. — Illustration by Leslie Dean Brown. © 2016. All rights reserved.

Yes we dance around and laugh and joke… at our peril. That is what we are doing as a civilisation. I do not think we should even have fireworks and such wasteful things unless we are meeting our targets for global emissions reductions (for example).

I’m not saying that it’s not worth talking about on your website, I just think that people have no choice left but to try to be happy and not get too sad about the state of the world… otherwise look at you and me… I suffer from chronic depression. I am sure that many other clever people suffer from clinical depression too. It is only by working at what we know is right in our hearts that we can feel better about what we are doing for the world. So I believe we must “be the change we want to see in the world”, be a part of the solution, not be a part of the problem. And to make it so that what we think, what we believe and what we do are all aligned. Otherwise, we are only fooling ourselves…

So yes unfortunately people are definitely “having fun while we roast ourselves.” But do we really want people to be miserable about our situation instead of ‘happy’? Miserable & depressed people probably cannot adjust and react to challenges as fast as happy people.

I think many older people are just “making the best of it” in the face of so many daunting challenges (and they really are and it is enough to make me not want to have children). I think a lot of young people are massively depressed because half of the older generation is still telling them what to do the old way based on the industrial model of business (sell more stuff, buy stuff because it is good for the economy, and money = happiness) and they are being simultaneously bombarded with mixed messages about the climate but I think many of them are feeling completely helpless. They are getting mixed messages (consumerism vs environment) and we are mostly stuck.

I think one of the reasons that the adolescent suicide rate has gone up is because of this (my sister who is a secondary high school teacher has told me so directly). I don’t think young people do all these ‘bad’ things intentionally; they behave how they were taught to behave, how society brought them up. I never questioned or considered the environment until year 9 general studies class. And then I heard about all these problems the world was facing essentially all at once…

One other problem is that the older generation is half-expecting that the younger generation will somehow come to the rescue and “save the planet”. How is that going to happen when the exact same mentality is being passed on? How is that going to happen when older politicians and wealthy people are essentially in charge? I think it is us older people who need to change first because all children naturally learn from role models. [Read more…]

“There are no accidents”

April 5, 2016 — leslie dean brown

We assume that true “randomness” exists. But is there really such a thing as a purely random event or thing?

I think we only use the word random to describe things that we can’t fully explain. I think that the events which first appear to be random are actually be very structured and organised. It’s easier to say “it’s entirely random” than to explain the myriad of intricacies of any particular system…

Picture several hundred people moving at a train station or crossing a busy intersection. At first glance it looks purely random. But there is really nothing random about it. Each of the people has a distinct set of reasons for being there. Maybe some of them are going to work, or coming home from night shift or meeting a friend for a coffee. They are doing what people do: shopping, socialising, travelling, working, playing, walking, seeing, doing and a multitude of other things that other people do to make themselves feel happy. None of that is random.

“There are no accidents” — Master Oogway

[Read more…]

Question the status quo.

July 15, 2015 — leslie dean brown

WHEN I was a small boy, my father –who only died last December– once told me to question everything. And being an inquisitive young lad, I invariably asked “why?”, right after he told me. He just answered that someone named “Christian Murty” had once famously said it. So a few weeks ago, I looked this bloke up. And it turns out it wasn’t someone called “Christian Murty”, but rather “Jiddu Krishnamurti”:

You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary. –Jiddu Krishnamurti

One of my first ‘clever’ questions that I asked my parents was “how many atoms are in a teapot?”. Luckily for me, my mum was studying a degree in physics so she could provide me with a fairly accurate answer. I’m pretty sure most parents would have said ‘lots’.

I think being curious and asking questions about the world is a fundamental trait of all good scientists. I think that’s probably what started me on the path to science, because it tends to give the most accurate answers. Except that Krishnamurti wasn’t just talking about questioning how the world works, but rather questioning the status quo. Scientists question how the world works. Philosophers and revolutionaries question the status quo.

So pretty soon, I started questioning everyday things I’d notice like:

“why do so many people wear blue jeans?”¹.
“why do people wear ties?”².
“why do people drive cars?”³.
“why do people drink alcohol?”⁴.

…they are afraid that by observing and questioning everything, by experimenting and making mistakes you may find out something for yourself and break away from the authority of your parents, of society, of tradition. –Jiddu Krishnamurti

This may seem like rather an odd thing to write about, but the essence of questioning everything has made me who I am today. It is the fundamental reason for this website. It is an attempt to question why we do things the way we do. Could we be doing things a different way? A new way. A better way? Yes, I’m going to continue asking questions like an incessant five year old, and probably stirring up a lot of shit in the process. I believe that by questioning what we do, how we do it and ultimately why we do it, the answers can make this a better world (and increase our chances of long-term survival).

Nowadays I ask the following sorts of questions:

“What is the goal of humanity?”
“Do we want to still be around in 500 or 1,000 years’ time?”
“Does consumerism really make people happier?”
“Why do we still measure the prosperity of a nation by it’s Gross Domestic Product instead of its Gross National Happiness?”
“Where do the raw materials of consumer electronics come from?”
“If we want to to be more sustainable, shouldn’t we be looking more at indigenous cultures?”
“Why should citizens who have not voted for a current political party be forced to pay income tax?”