A Sociecity Film Production by Suhee Kang and Patrick Lydon
Filmed at Gallery M in Seoul, South Korea

After graduating from university, she traveled for 14 months without money, wrote a hand-drawing traveling essay book called ‘Journey of Dust,’ decided to work seriously in the field of painting, and 3 years later had her first solo exhibition.

…if I believed in someone’s good will at heart, that I would get back kindness and goodness from them.

The heroine of this story is Munji Shinhe – Munji meaning dust. We caught up with Shinhe recently at her gallery opening in Seoul’s Insadong neighborhood, where we learned a bit more about her traveling experiences, energetic art works, hopeful attitude towards life.

대학 졸업 후 1년 2개월 동안 무전여행을 했고, 돌아와 ‘먼지의 여행’이라는 독특한 여행기를 펴냈다. 그리고 3년간 두문불출하며 그림에 몰두한 후, 수십 점의 그림들로 첫 개인전을 열었다. 이 변화무쌍한 이야기의 주인공은 먼지신혜. 밝고 힘찬 기운을 가득 담고 있는 먼지신혜의 작품세계와, 그 배경을 이루고 있는 독특한 경험들에 대해, 그리고 앞으로 이어질 또 다른 ‘먼지의 여행, 그 후’에 대해 들어보았다.

Traveling Without Money / 먼지가 되어 떠난 여행

When I graduated from university, I had this feeling that everything I did was like dust, so like the dust, I traveled with the wind, to Japan, India, Nepal, Thailand, and China, all without money. Many people told me “Shinhe, it’s impossible to travel without money” but my thought was that, if I believed in someone’s good will at heart, that I would get back kindness and goodness from them. On the other hand, if I doubted, or feared for my safety, I would get back such a feeling from the world. In the end, the love and positive feeling within me are like mirror. To follow this line of thinking means that I can essentially create my own world. If I already have my own richness in my heart, and I already feel comfortable by myself, then it does not matter what I do. Coming back from this journey, it was really not easy to live among others in Korea.

대학을 졸업할 때 쯤에, 남들이 생각하는 해야 한다는 일들을 해야 살아갈 수 있다는 생각이 있었던 것 같아요. 과연 지금까지 내가 뭘 해왔던 걸까, 제가 쌓아왔던 모든 게 그냥 한번에 훅 가버릴 수 있는 먼지처럼 느껴지는 그런 시점이 있었어요. 그때 돈 없이 세계를 여행하는 독일인 순례자 부부를 만났어요. 나도 저 사람들처럼 살아보고 싶다는 생각이 들어서 같이 떠나게 됐어요.
돈 없이 여행한다는 게 불가능할 거라고 생각하기 쉽지만, 내가 상대방을 믿고 그 안의 선한 마음을 봐주면 그 사람도 내게 친절함을 줘요. 반대로 만약 내가 의심이나 두려움을 갖고 그 사람을 대하면, 그런 감정들이 거울처럼 되돌아와요. 결국 내 안의 사랑, 내 안의 가치들이 거울처럼 보여지고, 그래서 내가 세상을 창조해가는 듯한 느낌이 있었어요. 그리고 내 안에 이미 풍족함이 있고 편안하니까, 무엇을 하든 상관없이 그냥 이 상태로도 행복했어요. 하지만 한국으로 돌아오고 나서는 다시 이 사회 속에 어울리기가 쉽지 않았죠.

Just Being, Like Dust  / 있는 그대로 존재하기

When I returned, I had hoped to do my own art work, but I thought I was unable to partake in art creation fully because of several impediments. Above all, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to express in my art. Through my traveling I was inspired, and thought about my drawing deeply; I practiced listening to my heart, my inner voice. Whatever I did, I tried to follow the feeling from my heart, not from my head. With this as guidance, when I draw I do it instinctively, with my inner feeling.

내가 상대방을 믿고 그 안의 선한 마음을 봐주면 그 사람도 내게 친절함을 줘요. 반대로 만약 내가 의심이나 두려움을 갖고 그 사람을 대하면, 그런 감정들이 거울처럼 되돌아와요.

어릴 적부터 늘 예술을 하고싶었지만 현실적인 어려움도 컸고, 무엇보다도 제가 예술에 담고 싶은 메시지가 무엇인지 막연했어요. 그러다 여행을 하면서 힘이 생겼어요. 그동안은 그림에 대해 그저 멀리 있는 막연한 것으로 생각했는데, 앞으로 이걸 갖고 살아보고 싶다는 바람을 갖게 됐어요.

여행에서도 계속해서 제 안의 목소리에 귀기울이는 연습을 했어요. 무슨 일을 하든 머리로부터 생각하는 게 아니라, 가슴에 오는 느낌에 따라 살아가려고 했죠. 그래서 그림을 그릴 때도 미리 계획하지 않고 직관적으로 가슴에서 나오는대로 그리게 됐어요. 그런 내면의 목소리를 들어주는 데에서 이런 영감들이 오지 않나 생각했어요.

The hugging arms in drawings, mean the feeling of just “being,” of hugging my inner elements and doing so without any judgement. This is the state of being comfortable, like being at rest. And the empty cup means that this space which seems full, is actually an empty space. The experiences of variety and abundance seem excited and lively, but essentially they are really only just images, empty.

그림 속 껴안는 팔의 모양은 판단하지 않고, 그저 있는 그대로 존재하는 느낌, 제 안의 여러 요소들을 감싸는 느낌에 대한 표현이에요. 평화롭고 편안하면서도 자유로운 상태를 나타내고 싶었어요. 그리고 빈 찻잔은, 가득 차 있는 이 공간이 실제로는 비어 있는 것과 같다는 뜻이에요. 내가 체험하는 다양하고 풍부한 경험들이 재미있게 느껴지지만, 사실은 그 또한 이미지일 뿐일 수 있고, 본질적으로는 비어있다는 걸 말하고 싶었어요.

Communication Through Drawing / 그림으로 소통하기

I hope people who see my drawings can be at rest, not in a physical sense, but one of mental relaxation. Without any standard or judgement, there is a feeling, a state of being comfortable; I’d like to share that feeling. I try be in this state myself, then express these kinds of feelings, then people can understand what I felt in creating the drawings.

그림을 보는 사람들이 휴식을 얻으면 좋겠어요. 몸이 피곤할 때 쉬는 육체적인 휴식이 아닌, 정신적인 휴식이에요. 스스로 갖고 있는 잣대나, 옳고 그름이라는 판단, 그런 것들을 다 내려놓고 편안해진 상태에서 느끼는 정신적인 쉼을 공유하고 싶어요. 내가 먼저 그런 걸 추구하고 표현하면, 사람들도 그걸 보면서 공감할 수 있지 않을까, 생각했어요.

I was given an interesting idea through the experience of drawing… as people, we want to get some new feelings from traveling, feelings like freedom, like joyfulness, etc… and people want to discover new things, too. But in drawing, I realized that I can connect with the same feelings which I would otherwise only get from traveling. So instead of traveling, I feel this through the act of drawing. So I feel okay not to go to travel anymore.

그리고 그림을 그리면서 새로 알게 된 게 하나 있어요. 보통 여행을 가는 건 그 여행을 통해 자유롭고 재밌는 느낌이라든가, 새로운 걸 발견한다거나 하는 어떤 ‘느낌’을 받고 싶은 거잖아요. 그런데 그림을 그릴 때 그 속에 내가 체험하고 싶은 느낌을 넣으면, 그걸 느낄 수 있게 돼요. 그러다보니 꼭 여행을 가지 않아도 괜찮더라고요.

Traveling was a flow, and I think it was very necessary progression. Now I think I want to travel in a completely different way. I’ll bring my drawings, talk about them with people. I feel these drawings are the way of communication, and also good friends of mine. In the future, I would like to communicate about my drawings with many people, and I hope to explore collaborations for animation, stage design, and music video.

여행은 제게 하나의 흐름이었고, 필요한 과정이었다고 생각해요. 이제는 여행을 가더라도 좀 다르게 다녀보고 싶어요. 그림을 갖고 다니면서 사람들과 이야기도 나누고 싶고요. 이제는 그림이 제 소통의 도구, 나의 친구 같은 느낌이에요. 제 그림으로 여러 나라 사람들과 함께 커뮤니케이션을 해보고 싶고요, 작품으로 갤러리에서 전시되고 판매되고 끝나는 게 아니라, 이 그림이 애니메이션이 된다든가, 무대디자인, 뮤직비디오처럼 다양한 분야로 콜라보레이션을 해보고 싶다고 생각하고 있어요.

Want More?

Visit Shinhe’s blog:
http://blog.naver.com/nanyanya 

and find her on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/ShinheMunji

Freedom, Economics, and the Law (photos + illustration: P.M. Lydon | sociecity)

In this, Part 1 of the series, we tackle issues of freedom and economics.

Living in a modern country in today’s modern world, we are able to enjoy far more ‘freedoms’ than have been afforded to just about anyone at any time in history. But what exactly is ‘freedom’ in modern society?

As described today, freedom is a very relative term.

The Thorns

In contemplating what our ‘relative’ freedoms are, where they have taken us and/or where they will take us in the future, it is essential that we first contemplate the Economic and the Legal Systems which guide these freedoms.

In the past few centuries, these two systems of human invention have become nearly indispensable to the modern way of life, to the point where — at least in times of relative peace — they dictate the general path of a population more than any other influence.

These methods of social guidance however, have always had a few little thorns sticking to them. These thorns are namely the individuals who, for one reason or another, insist on operating outside of, or otherwise ignoring the systems of money and law.

A bucket list of illuminary figures from our world’s history — from Plato to Henry David Thoreau, to the unfortunate recent addition of Aaron Swartz – all fit this description of the ‘thorn,’ and all of them had their bouts with the legal systems of their day.

In a general sense, the ‘thorns’ do what they do because:

1. It is possible (eg: we can live without economics and without complex sets of laws, they don’t rule the world, nature does) and…
2. They have taken issue with the way that these systems work and what they do to a society and its people.

In a society where economics and complex, ever-changing sets of laws (often created by the heads of the aforementioned economic system) dictate so much of what we do and how we live, the thorns are important points of check-and-balance outside of such ‘official’ governmental systems, yet at times the thorns can also seem quite pesky. They are pesky to us because they operate against the pre-determined, categorical, rule-based systems that the majority of us live within, and we, being the law-abiding citizens of good standing, obviously don’t like that.

But are these thorns more necessary than we know?

Part 1: Economics

From an economic perspective in the U.S. or most any other industrialized nation, our entire lives and everything we consume today — from entertainment to learning to the basics of food, shelter and clothing — are plugged into the economic machine. This is rightly so of course, as this connection ensures the survival of the economy, which is in turn a requirement of the system we know as capitalism.

Looking at how the economy puts the things we need and want up for sale is important. From this view we can see supply and demand at work, and can further examine the elements of wealth, power, and class struggles as they come into play. But looking at the economy in this way also only touches the surface of the issue, a nick to the shiny cover of the machine which drives our modern world.

Let us then, dig deeper than this, to consider the role which economics has, not just in locking up goods, services, and intellectual information — let’s call these things ‘product’ for the sake of this article — but also the role the economics has in creating these products in the first place.

How much ‘product’ is generated primarily out of economic need? And further, of that product, how much is truly useful and how much is just a means to an end for the producers and organizations who make this product?

Modern times see billions, maybe even trillions of dollars in ‘wasted’ product: mainly useless things generated by otherwise talented and perhaps even well-meaning writers, artists, designers, intellectuals, service providers, and entrepreneurs, all for the sake of a paycheck.

Possibly worse than this issue, we also see products which could have been world-changing lions, and are instead demoted to cute purring kittens under fear of losing customers, sponsorships,  advertising revenues, causing the ruffling of feathers, or otherwise being too ‘risky.’ When the young and hip use the word ‘tool’ — is this still a young and hip word? — this is pretty close to what they are referring to: the creation of product only to serve the good of the economic engine instead of serving an individual’s pure creative expression. Are the cool and the hip a selfish bunch for asking such at thing? Perhaps they are.

Uneconomics

Yet by the other hand, some of the most socially valuable created works — from Walden to Wikipedia — have been generated without economics as a primary incentive.

Some would also argue that wonderful and great inventions have been generated with a profit motive at the forefront — or at least as a conscious adviser. The MacBook Pro which I happen to be typing this article on is one popular example of a successful, useful, profit-driven project in the typical industrialized nation.

Yet while the MacBook truly is great for all of us who have the ‘privilege’ to conceivably afford one (that is, maybe around 99% of the people who will read this article) we are also the few who are bound to a life that puts value upon, let alone requires the use of such devices. The others — namely those in undeveloped areas of the world who work in the mines, factories, and garbage fields in order to give us this privilege — generally might not count the MacBook as a beautiful invention for human kind. But we all easily lose this relativity in thought while participating in the amazingness of being able to browse facebook from anywhere on earth.

It’s not that the idea of a small, well-designed computer isn’t great, but the process of building it in poor industrial towns in China with metals mined from poor villages in Mongolia only to ‘recycle’ it in a poor village in Africa presents a few issues to humanity.

This kind of product lifecycle is not only legal, but is also the most economically logical route known to the general public by the names of  ’progress’ and ‘growth.’ This is also why it is not confined just to companies like Apple — who are at least building their latest machines in the USA, solving roughly 1/3 of the product lifecycle issue — the issue spans nearly every major technology product we use today.

What is Reality

This is the special reality of how the modern economic system, how it drives us, our society, and our world. The real danger might not be in the system itself, but in its tendancy to be so tragically blind to any kind of reality outside of the economic reality which it created.

When we neglect to interact with and understand the reality which exists outside of our man-made reality, we are inadvertently neglecting humanity…

…when the system at large neglects to recognize that the larger human and natural world has existed, does exist, and will exist without the discipline of economics, it is this lapse in cognition which causes major issues for the future of humanity and this earth.

By that same notion, the natural economy in which all life on earth trades (oxygen, water, food), and the natural laws by which the world works, will always supersede our own inventions of human law and monetary economics.

It can seem like a harrowing message, but it’s also a call to action. It’s a call for us to investigate the true realities of a world beyond our rules, regulations, and personal financial gains, for us to put aside the imaginary concepts of monetary wealth and social success, and to understand how we fit into this world without any of this superfluousness.

Only then can we see in truth.

Only then can we understand our personal possibilities.

Only then can we understand as a society, where we can go, where we should go, and hopefully, where we will go in the future.

And it may even be a call for some of us, to be those pesky thorns…

Last week the city of London announced one of the largest cycling transportation development budgets in the history of the bicycle. The city’s Mayor, Borris Johnson, committed nearly £1 Billion ($1.4 Billion USD) to building up London’s bicycle infrastructure over the next decade. When completed the cycling network will qualify as one of the world’s largest public works projects.

To grasp the enormity of London’s $1.4 billion bicycle investment, Janette Sadik-Khan, the sitting Commissioner of New York’s Department of Transportation (DOT) has a budget of roughly $2 billion at her disposal… that’s her entire transportation budget. The entire New York City cycling development budget over the past five years is in the neighborhood of $2 million, or about 0.009% of what London’s budget will be in 2015 alone. The proposal is enormous.

New York City’s cycling budget over the past five years was roughly $2 million, that’s 0.009% of what London plans to spend in a single year alone.

But largely, Americans aren’t taking notice, and neither is the American media rushing to task. Take the words  ”Boris, Cycling“ for a spin on the New York Times internal search engine and you’ll come up with a big goose egg: ’0 results,’ says the Times.

All of this is not unexpected of course. Cycling has gained tremendous popularity among commuters in London, many of whom speak largely of cycling’s physical and mental health benefits, as well as a general frustration at the high costs associated with operating motor vehicles. On the other side of the Atlantic, however, Americans have been notoriously slow to covert to pedal power. In the U.S., cycling is still considered by the majority to be a poor person’s transport, or perhaps at best, a lifestyle accessory. The overwhelming successes and lessons from Europe are often mockingly shrugged off as ‘not relevant’ in America.

Still, cities like New York do aggressively attempt to put in place new cycling infrastructures, and it remains an uphill battle, competing against powerful lobbyists —  from old-fashioned district presidents to passionate residents — who are often most vocal in defense of the neighborhood parking spaces which tend to fall prey to new bicycle lanes. Even so, bike use in New York City has tripled since 2008, and hundreds of miles of bike lanes were put in place for this reason; since then, the two numbers have begun to feed off each other.

A Critical Mass?

Other cities across America are battling similar problems, but most are plagued by a duo of budgetary constraints and lack of direct demands from citizens.

Bike riders in Valencia, Spain (photo: P.M. Lydon | sociecity)

According to Nancy Folbre, economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the city of Portland, Oregon — perhaps the most bike friendly city in America — has a commuting population of just 5.8-percent (less than 30,000 persons). Comparatively, some areas of London see over 50-percent of commute trips taken by bicycle. So which comes first, infrastructure or riders?

In London, not only did the chicken come before the egg, it pretty well popped out and started walking before the egg, too. When a city the size of London suddenly finds its commute routes saturated with bicycle riders, there is a necessity to respond with the proper infrastructure. Barring popular critical-mass-style bike rides, most cities in the United States seem to be many years away from having a ‘problem’ of too many bike riders.

But as John Pucher and Ralph Buehler of Rutgers University argue, bicycle development hasn’t always followed a chicken-before-the-egg path. Their study points out that bicycle use in the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany — all seen as cycling meccas today — were subject to decades of tremendous decline through 1975; at one point in the 1950′s, the UK even sported a cycling mode-share higher than that of Germany. The changes, say Pucher and Buehler, were not spurred by cultural factors alone, but by government policy-makers who “focused on serving people, making their cities people-friendly rather than car-friendly,” shaping laws and regulations at encouraging human-powered transportation and discouraging the use of motor vehicles.

Today, most government bodies in the U.S. aren’t quite so pushy, they require immense pressure from riders to push for new bicycle infrastructure on a large scale, and also for more riders to be out on the streets in spite of the lack of infrastructure. Looking at trends in the U.S. over the past decade — where both ridership and government investment have risen steadily — these are issues that the States will eventually come to terms with.

At this point, it’s likely a matter of whether it will be slow and excruciating, or quick and painless. We, of course, vote for the latter.

===

More on Bikes @ Sociecity

NYC: Moving on Two Wheels
Transforming Suburbia to Eco-Utopia
Copenhagen Economics: Cars a Net Loss, Bikes a Benefit
Does Car + Bike = A Good Thing?

Further Reading and Resources

http://grist.org/biking/2011-06-21-in-london-bike-commuters-are-the-majority-in-some-pla-outnumbers/
http://policy.rutgers.edu/faculty/pucher/irresistible.pdf
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6456
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/04/the-bicycle-dividend/
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/bikemain.shtml

New York Times Dumps Environmental Coverage Unit (photo-illustration, P.M. Lydon | sociecity)

A month short of its third anniversary, the New York Times Green blog is being dumped. The move to dismantle the reporting unit comes just a few months after the paper axed their Environmental reporting desk.

We like you, environment, really we do, but we’re just … not that into you?

It strikes many as a curious move, especially after Obama’s recent commitment to the environment. The Times’ blog noted that the move was necessary in order to “direct production resources to other online projects,” of which they were not very specific. They did, however, point readers to two new places to ‘watch for’ environmental news, the Caucus political blog, and the Bits technology blog, neither of which featured any kind of environment-related coverage when we checked them.

…if it doesn’t make dollars or sense to report about the environment, it is still most certainly  – as the human beings who use it every day – our responsibility.

The New York Times Green blog was a unit dedicated to environmental coverage, and was spawned from Green Inc. which began in 2008. It was also a bounty of amazingly well-researched news and information that you just couldn’t find anywhere else, and it spawned many stories here at sociecity.

For now, it seems that all which is left at the Times is blogger Andrew Revkin, who wrote recently in his own ‘dotearth’ blog that after the demise of the Green blog, the Times continues to produce “nine sports blogs; nine spanning fashion, lifestyles, health, dining and the like; four business blogs; and four technology blogs.” It’s expected, of course, those blogs likely bring in far more revenue than concern for the planet does.

In the end, business is business and the Times has decided no such charity should we bestow upon Mother Earth, for — at least to advertisers — she isn’t as beautiful, scandalous, or exciting as our world of entertainment. One could argue that our ecosystem is all of these things too, and furthermore that the environment is also far more important than any other topic, and that it is generally the environment which is charitable to us, not the other way around.

The Times may be struggling, yet even if it doesn’t make dollars or sense to report about the environment, it is still most certainly — as those who make use of it each and every day — our responsibility as human beings on this planet.

Worry not, our little volunteer team here at sociecity will continue to put what resources we have towards the environment and other issues of people, nature, and place. We do it, not for the money, but because it is our responsibility to this place that we live in.

In Kuala Lumpur on vacation… or assignment? (photos, carla vitantonio | sociecity)

An Unexpected Day as an Activist in Malaysia

January the 12th, 2013 – the last day of the holidays in Kuala Lumpur. After 3 weeks spent around Malaysia looking for pirates, I wake up in hangover thanks to one of my “anthropological research in the field” nights.

I had heard something in the Reggae-Bar yesterday evening but nobody was able to tell me more about it, maybe because the guests of the Reggae-Bar, especially after a certain time, have better things to do than talk about politics.

Anyway, though I was shaken in the collective delirium of crazy dances and unusual meetings, I saved a little bit of integrity: I knew I would need some lucidity in order to go back, after all these months, to be a social movements reporter.

I swear this time it wasn’t my responsibility nor did I actively look for it, but it seems like I am now drenched in the biggest demonstration organized in Malaysia in the last 4 years – though somebody says the years number 8. I had heard something in the Reggae-Bar yesterday evening but nobody was able to tell me more about it, maybe because the guests of the Reggae-Bar, especially after a certain time, have better things to do than talk about politics.

Obviously, the newspapers only speak of things like security measures, police, children who are not supposed to be brought to the rally, and about the promise – allegedly made by the activists – to keep everything on a pacific level.

It’s the same song . It seems like I left Italy one week ago.

Because it is impossible to extract any good from the media, I decide I’ll get into the city center to look for these strange, almost extinguished animals – the so called activists – and interview them. Notwithstanding it’s Saturday, many shops are closed. Of course. If one reads the newspaper this individual ends up thinking that the Huns led by Attila are going to invade the town. Some tourists even confess that somebody discouraged them from wandering around the center, to avoid being in the midst of the turmoil. These activists must be pretty pissed off, I think.

I move with the circumspection which directs me automatically when I’m close to a demonstration that I reckon dangerous. My eyes are looking for the policemen – who are many – and I notice, with a little disappointment, that nobody is in riot gear. Uncovered faces, no shields, no gas, rien de rien. What is this? I thought we were getting ready for a day of urban guerrilla.

Very slowly, in the midst of the chaos of Kuaka Lumpur, I recognize them. Them, yes, the ‘feigning-chameleonic’ activists. They gather in small groups, on low stone walls, on foothpaths, in front of the cafes. They wear t-shirts in yellow, orange, green, or violet – depending on the group they are part of. On the t-shirts are printed slogans that of course I don’t understand. But I recognize some acronyms: various environmentalist NGOs, the Islamic Party, the Association for the Freedom of Palestine; in other words a nice big mess.

There’s a group of women in chador, all dressed in violet, I ask ‘excuse me do you speak any English?’ They run away with horrified faces. At the end of the day, I have no chador. I try several times but women are not going to answer. They are a big number, in groups, with their family, but every time i try to get closer they run away. The most talkative points to her husband and suggest I should ask him, but before leaving him the floor she whispers don’t worry, there’s no violence today, it’s a pacific demonstration.

Policemen are human beings. They are like you, like me. They have feelings. If tensions happen…nobody can tell how they will react. They can make mistakes.

I try to explain that it’s not the violence my matter of worry, that I don’t believe the demonstration will spoil my holiday, not least because my holiday is already over, but that I’d like to know what’s happening, just for the sake of curiosity, anthropophily, spirit of research. She smiles and bluntly pushes her husband towards me.

Me: What are you demonstrating for?
Him: For freedom!
Me: Wow great! I want freedom too. Freedom from what?
Him: Freedom of Malaysia (here I start taking him seriously). The last two elections have been rigged and corrupted. In April we will have new elections and we would like everybody to be able to run.
Me: That’s interesting. And who’s demonstrating?
Him: The opposition…the opposition parties and the civil society
Me: (Civil society! It was June the 29th 2012 when I last heard this word!) And do you think you got your point with this demonstration?
Him: Mah, I hope so, anyway there were loads of people, everything is developing in peaceful ways.
Me: It seems to me that you are all really worried about the fact that everything must be absolutely peaceful… (I bite my tongue, here it comes again, the little fussy European schoolmarm who can’t accept that in the world there are many different ways to show one’s dissent)
Him: (Patently he didn’t get my provocation) Well yes, we only want the government to listen to us. We want democracy.
Me: Democracy? Don’t you have democracy now?
Him: (seemingly embarrassed) Well yes, but we want more.

I thank him and go beyond. In front of a department store built inside an old colonial building there’s a group of yellow t-shirts.

Me: Hallo, excuse me, can I ask why are you all wearing a yellow t-shirt?
Yellow T-shirt: It’s the symbol of this day of protest.
Me: Protest against what?
Yellow T-shirt: Against the government.
Me: And what do you want?
Yellow T-shirt: We want peace.
Me: (I cant’ help, I laugh shamelessly) Thank you very much, I want peace also. But I think everybody wants it, isn’t it? Doesn’t your government want peace?
Yellow T-shirt: (He understand and laugh with me) Sorry, I don’t speak English well enough. We want free and peaceful elections, that’s it.
Me: Free from what? Free for whom?
Yellow T-shirt: We think the last elections have been rigged. We want real elections! Democracy!
Me: (Still with this democracy talk. Okay I get it)… and what about all this police?
Yellow T-shirt: All this police, it’s about controlling us.
Me: Do you think there will be any turmoil?
Yellow T-shirt: I can’t know that. Policemen are human beings. They are like you, like me. They have feelings. If tensions happen…nobody can tell how they will react. They can make mistakes.
Me: (Flabergasted by this new point of view on the police, that slightly reminds me the best Pasolini, the one before Saviano [1] started ranting on newspapers) Yes but they are working, they represent the Law, the State. They should better not make mistakes.
Yellow T-shirt: (Giving me a great political science lesson that smarts a bit) But the State is made up by people, and the people can make mistakes.
Me: (Honestly moved. One to zero for Yellow T-shirt) All right. Anyway, I would kindly suggest that you bring a few lemons [2] with you. Just to set some boundaries to human mistakes.
Yellow T-shirt: (smiles)
One to one, ball in the center.

Little more than a year ago I was observing my first demonstrations in Asia: I was living in Seoul, and around me the big mess of “Occupy everything” was spreading, add to that workers strikes and the opposition to the Free Trade Agreement with the USA.

I was fascinated by the goals and disoriented by the ways. It seemed impossible to me that the police could enact a memorandum with the tips for a good demonstration. Even more incredible seemed the people who were actually reading it and abiding by. I was asking myself questions on civil disobedience, on the right to demonstrate, I was totally confused.

…we’re speaking about women and men, for this is what States are … they shouldn’t be abstract entities, disengaged by the people that constitute them.

I had left my heart in Europe. I wanted to go back to Italy and start again trampling on the tarmac of the Old Continent, claiming my rights in the way I was used to.

I look at myself today. I’m still playing a little bit the European schoolmarm. I will probably always play that role, I can’t help it. But I’m feeling much more comfortable here, much more relaxed. There is no single way to express dissent. For these people here, the bare fact they’re wearing the same t-shirt and they’re in the street, Saturday morning, demonstrating with their presence their disappointment, it’s a lot. And perhaps, given the actual political situation in this place, such a rally is more effective than a march in the European manner.

The truth is probably that now my heart is here, with me. To my comrades in Europe I left the right and duty to choose their ways. Here I merely observe what I see, patterns, differences. And I might have almost stopped judging (finally).

Now that I’m not interested anymore in going back, having to decide the place in the world were they do things better is not a big issue.

Suddenly a poem from Machado comes to my mind:

Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino y nada más;
Caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar. [3]

I’m walking through the streets of KL, in the midst of smiling Yellow T-shirts asking me to take a picture with them, and I repeat myself the lesson I learned from the guy at the department store: every time we speak about States, every time, we’re speaking about women and men. For this is what States are, nothing else, and they shouldn’t be abstract entities, disengaged by the people that constitute them.

This was my starting point when I left, two years ago, and I want this to be the smell moving me along the way.

But I’ve no more time for ‘political science’ lucubrations. It’s already afternoon and my last hours in KL are waiting for me. I make my way out, en-route to the usual Reggae-Bar, because I don’t know many other places.

But before that, I must stop by my favourite temple.

There’s a trail of spiritualism I have to sort out.

===

Footnotes:

[1] - Roberto Saviano is a famous Italian journalist, author of “Gomorra”, a book focused on the new mafia organizations. After this good book, though, he started writing on several newspapers showing a certain lack of tactless and sometimes a real lack of historical sense: in December 2010, for example, after a demonstration during which the police had brutally beaten some students, he took the side of the police, misinterpretating a famous -yet not so updated- text from Pasolini.

[2] - Lemons are known to soften the effects of tear gas.

[3] – English translation of this poem “Walker, your footprints/ are the way, and nothing else/ Walker, there’s no way/ the way is made by walking.”

Hands, Plant, and Soil (photo: P.M. Lydon | sociecity)

If humanity were a plant, its current form would be rootless
washed away at the first rain
and all of the soil with it
for the plant, the roots, and the soil
require each other

If the roots of the human spirit should wish to take hold
to travel through the surface of this soil
to know foundations deeper
than a bank account, material possessions, or fleeting fancies
If these roots should wish to run down
to the source of what gives them life

the farm is the teacher these roots would seek
and the place from which true humanity can grow

This is all much less of a metaphor than it may seem, for the ideas behind — and lessons learned from — practices such as natural farming can help us do far more than grow plants. These ideas, and this understanding of the natural world we were born into, can help us restore balance in our lives as we find our true roots as human beings.

For more on natural farming, visit The Final Straw project.

Illustration: Raymond Yeung | sociecity

Through the majestic and infinite
a creature of grace, of beauty, of perfection;
free to roam across man’s boarders,
land and seas.

Always a prize to man,
never a friend to man.
hunted across man’s boarders,
land and seas.

Man fought and killed one another,
for its meat, its beauty.

The creature, no longer,
was once known as Peace.

A woman exits a train on Seoul Metro Line 1 (photo: Patrick Lydon)

Last year, I took a rather ‘complete’ tour of one of the world’s largest metro rail transit systems, visiting all 483 metro stations in Seoul, South Korea over the course of a month.

During that month, I found rapid transit in the South Korean capital city to be not only massive, but also among the most technologically advanced in the world. At the end of the system tour, I was left questioning — even more than I already did — the way that transit development is carried out in the United States, and further, how the world’s second largest integrated rapid transit system with a daily ridership of over 8 million people, was built from nothing in just about three decades.

A total of 469-miles of track and 483-stations were built in Seoul in 30 years. By contrast, it took about the same amount of time just to plan and start construction on a 5-mile, 2-station extension for the BART rail transit system in the San Francisco Bay Area.

A bit cheeky, but also somewhat harrowing, sociecity has put together a graphical timeline comparing three decades of development on the ‘BART to San Jose‘ corridor, set against a general timeline of metro transit development in Seoul.

A Tale of Two Subways, Seoul Metro and The BART Extension to San Jose (graphic | sociecity)

On most levels a comparison such as this is just not a fair fight, but neither is the BART to San Jose extension timeline abnormally slow for an American transit project these days. Certain New York City subway projects wouldn’t fare too well either.

Will Travel for Public Works Projects?

A slightly ‘wild’ suggestion typically floats around when projects such as these are slow to take, that is: we might do well to buy our local policy-makers flights to places like South Korea, Germany, Japan, China, or even Columbia… all countries which are doing many things right in terms of public transit.

It’s actually not so wild a suggestion afterall, but seems more along the lines of common sense; learn and expand your knowledge by taking a live sampling from the world around you, and you will benefit greatly for it.

A Subway Exit into the Unfinished Incheon International Business District (photo: Patrick Lydon | sociecity)

This is not to say that Seoul’s implementations are perfect — they are far from it — or that building at such a rapid pace does not have its downfalls — there are many. But in contemplating possible alternatives to the daunting process of political and financial mishaps in large public works projects, it often takes a bit of looking outside our borders — and comfort zones — to figure out what others are doing right.

Now, seeing how this story is titled a Tale of Two Subways, I’ll have to get back to finishing it later, perhaps around the year 2025… when the first actual BART subway tunnel in San Jose is scheduled to be completed.

Plant and industrially-processed hamburger set into soil (Artists: Vero Alanis, Patrick Lydon)

The mighty, juicy, cheeseburger meets the lowly leafy green… or is it the other way around? Having a curiosity about the energy required to produce different foods, Vero Alanis and I put the Cheeseburger to the energy-efficiency test, pitting it against the cabbage.

Obviously, ‘growing’ a McDonald’s 1/4 pounder with cheese presents a bit more of a challenge than growing a cabbage, but we were interested in just how much more of a challenge it is, energy-wise.

Not to be taken literally, our question for the burger was this: how much more energy is required to create a single cheeseburger, vs creating a single serving of cabbage, carrot, or other vegetable?

A graph showing the number of food servings that can be created with 20 megajoules of energy (2012, Vero Alanis and Patrick Lydon)

Our findings — illustrated in the info graphic at right — are more than a bit surprising.

It takes 20 megajoules of energy to produce a single McDonalds 1/4 pounder — roughly the equivalent of powering the average American house for 4 hours.

By comparison, farmed salmon is twice as efficient to create vs the burger, boiled potatoes are twenty times more efficient, and most fruit will bring forty more servings for the same amount of production energy.

But the winner is the cabbage — may we call it mighty now? Given the amount of energy needed to produce, deliver and cook a McDonalds 1/4 pounder, you could grow, deliver, and cook 100 servings of cabbage.

That information, while starling,  is not exactly going to make most of us sign up to eat kimchi for the rest of our lives — here at sociecity, a few of us are fans of a good burger now and then.

But it does give a little bit of context to our diets and the effect that food choices have on the planet and its all-too-scarce natural resources. A little less burger, a little more veg, we think. Or perhaps there’s a good kimchi burger out there somewhere?

–

Project Team: Patrick Lydon and Vero Alanis

Resources:

U.S. Energy Information Administration – Residential Energy Consumption
Elsevier – Ecological Economics: Identifying Critical Natural Capital

Obesity is responsible for approximately 8,500-times more deaths in the UK than starvation (illustration, Patrick Lydon | sociecity)

According to recent studies by the United Kingdom National Health Service and an Oxford Journal of Public Health study, Obesity is fast becoming a major cause of deaths, accounting for around 9% of deaths in the UK.

But we gleaned something that might perhaps be even more disturbing from this: while around 44,221 persons in the UK died of over-eating in 2009, only 5 persons died from starvation during the same time period.

Food for thought? We think so.