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Sensible ideas for a civilised life
Franklin W. Knight
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Anyone travelling abroad quickly observes a number of sensible ideas that help to make life bearable, even under the most excruciating circumstances. They are found everywhere and do enhance the general quality of life. Sensible ideas do not correlate uniformly with national wealth or economic development, however those may be measured.
Instead, sensible ideas abound in countries where people understand that civilisation originally meant living together - not some artificial measure of living conditions. That warped connotation emerged only during the 19th century when Europeans were arrogantly trying to dominate the world and myopically thought their industrial and technological advances could disguise their expansionist brutality and inhumanity.
Travel is increasingly becoming a nasty and brutish experience throughout the world. Some countries, however, are doing something about it, adopting sensible ideas designed to ameliorate rather than deteriorate an already burdensome situation.
In Japan, train tickets indicate the exact location on the platform where the door to one's assigned coach will open.
This avoids the endless lines or irregular crowding and jostling. In Spain, urban bus stops have a map of the entire route traversed, indicating transfer points for other buses or metro stops along the way. On its domestic routes Air Canada's A320 planes have ample seating comparable to first class in most other airlines. Each seat has an individual 110 volt receptacle with data port for the use of portable computers.
Moreover, the tables can accommodate a 17-inch portable computer. At the Pierre Trudeau International Airport in Montreal, Canada, coloured arrows drawn on the tiled floors lead passengers to the appropriate stations for customs, immigration, exit and ground transportation. Like the yellow brick road in the Wizard of Oz, that is a really neat idea.
Another really neat idea for harried travellers comes from Spain but is widespread throughout Latin America. There, long-distance buses have built-in TV sets enabling passengers to view football games, watch movies, receive weather and route information or become a captive audience for commercials. In the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul overhead television screens do the same thing, carrying advertisements for its more than 2500 stores. Now that would be a gret idea for the Jamaican craft markets to adopt.
In Canberra, Australia, but also in several other states, the local government presents every new homeowner with a gift of trees and shrubs as a sort of housewarming present. Getting anything from any government anywhere is rare, so the Australian idea is truly exceptional. This idea not only inculcates a sense of beautification but also promotes environmental sensitivity. Any government, local or national, with such agricultural sensitivity cannot be altogether bad.
In Turkey and Barbados, citizens have taken to solar panels with a passion and heat most of their water that way. Others produce electricity to sell to the national grid. Jamaica needs to get on that sort of bandwagon. Bermuda promotes individual cisterns for water collection in each residence, restricts each household to only one car, and legally insists that each residence be hurricane-resistant.
Culture Museums in Madeira, Turkey and Bermuda portray peasant life through the ages with beautiful reproductions of simple farm houses with details of how the common folk lived. With the exception of Bermuda, these are not exceptionally rich countries, yet they are aware of changes so rapid that the present young people have little awareness of how their grandparents lived. People who are proud of themselves are proud of their past and that knowledge builds confidence, creativity, and independence. Such culture museums represent vital educational institutions.
Slums can sometimes be hopeless places. But this is not necessarily so. Not all slums are alike. In Chile and Brazil, some slum communities have organisations that collectively attend to community affairs from health and education, and even have organised tour agencies that plough back part of their income to the community. The Brazilian senator Benedita da Silva began her political career as a slum organiser in Rio de Janeiro. In Brazil too the Fome Zero campaign of president Luis Inacio "Lula" da Silva pays families a minimum monthly income with the requirement that all members of recipient families register with public health authorities and send all school age kids full-time to school.
In Peru and in the state of Parana, Brazil, the government makes free email available in all public libraries and government offices to promote literacy and increase administrative efficiency. Most government documents such as driver's licences and birth certificates must be obtained that way. Estonia goes even farther in the paperless state with an all-purpose plastic personal informational card that accommodates any interaction from shopping to voting.
In Alberta, Canada, a local school district has begun a green school, converting its parking lot to lawn, encouraging the use of collective public transport, buying its power collectively with the nearby hospital, and planting sod on its roof to assist with cooling as well as boosting oxygen production.
Brazil abounds with sensible people-friendly ideas. The city of Recife provides free hot and cold outdoor showers along its magnificent beaches. Many Brazilian restaurants in the McDonald chain go one step beyond the universal drive-up window by using itinerant palm pilot attendants to take orders of those standing in line so that the order is ready by the time the client arrives at the counter. In the progressive, environmentally friendly state of Parana, high school and college students form voluntary clean-up brigades with uniforms that entitle them to free rides, especially during weekends on public transport to pick up litter along the public routes.
Most sensible ideas cost little. Nor do they need experts to develop and implement them. They usually originate with common people accustomed to thinking of people first.
Jamaica could use some of these sensible ideas today.
Franklin W. Knight
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Anyone travelling abroad quickly observes a number of sensible ideas that help to make life bearable, even under the most excruciating circumstances. They are found everywhere and do enhance the general quality of life. Sensible ideas do not correlate uniformly with national wealth or economic development, however those may be measured.
Instead, sensible ideas abound in countries where people understand that civilisation originally meant living together - not some artificial measure of living conditions. That warped connotation emerged only during the 19th century when Europeans were arrogantly trying to dominate the world and myopically thought their industrial and technological advances could disguise their expansionist brutality and inhumanity.
Travel is increasingly becoming a nasty and brutish experience throughout the world. Some countries, however, are doing something about it, adopting sensible ideas designed to ameliorate rather than deteriorate an already burdensome situation.
In Japan, train tickets indicate the exact location on the platform where the door to one's assigned coach will open.
This avoids the endless lines or irregular crowding and jostling. In Spain, urban bus stops have a map of the entire route traversed, indicating transfer points for other buses or metro stops along the way. On its domestic routes Air Canada's A320 planes have ample seating comparable to first class in most other airlines. Each seat has an individual 110 volt receptacle with data port for the use of portable computers.
Moreover, the tables can accommodate a 17-inch portable computer. At the Pierre Trudeau International Airport in Montreal, Canada, coloured arrows drawn on the tiled floors lead passengers to the appropriate stations for customs, immigration, exit and ground transportation. Like the yellow brick road in the Wizard of Oz, that is a really neat idea.
Another really neat idea for harried travellers comes from Spain but is widespread throughout Latin America. There, long-distance buses have built-in TV sets enabling passengers to view football games, watch movies, receive weather and route information or become a captive audience for commercials. In the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul overhead television screens do the same thing, carrying advertisements for its more than 2500 stores. Now that would be a gret idea for the Jamaican craft markets to adopt.
In Canberra, Australia, but also in several other states, the local government presents every new homeowner with a gift of trees and shrubs as a sort of housewarming present. Getting anything from any government anywhere is rare, so the Australian idea is truly exceptional. This idea not only inculcates a sense of beautification but also promotes environmental sensitivity. Any government, local or national, with such agricultural sensitivity cannot be altogether bad.
In Turkey and Barbados, citizens have taken to solar panels with a passion and heat most of their water that way. Others produce electricity to sell to the national grid. Jamaica needs to get on that sort of bandwagon. Bermuda promotes individual cisterns for water collection in each residence, restricts each household to only one car, and legally insists that each residence be hurricane-resistant.
Culture Museums in Madeira, Turkey and Bermuda portray peasant life through the ages with beautiful reproductions of simple farm houses with details of how the common folk lived. With the exception of Bermuda, these are not exceptionally rich countries, yet they are aware of changes so rapid that the present young people have little awareness of how their grandparents lived. People who are proud of themselves are proud of their past and that knowledge builds confidence, creativity, and independence. Such culture museums represent vital educational institutions.
Slums can sometimes be hopeless places. But this is not necessarily so. Not all slums are alike. In Chile and Brazil, some slum communities have organisations that collectively attend to community affairs from health and education, and even have organised tour agencies that plough back part of their income to the community. The Brazilian senator Benedita da Silva began her political career as a slum organiser in Rio de Janeiro. In Brazil too the Fome Zero campaign of president Luis Inacio "Lula" da Silva pays families a minimum monthly income with the requirement that all members of recipient families register with public health authorities and send all school age kids full-time to school.
In Peru and in the state of Parana, Brazil, the government makes free email available in all public libraries and government offices to promote literacy and increase administrative efficiency. Most government documents such as driver's licences and birth certificates must be obtained that way. Estonia goes even farther in the paperless state with an all-purpose plastic personal informational card that accommodates any interaction from shopping to voting.
In Alberta, Canada, a local school district has begun a green school, converting its parking lot to lawn, encouraging the use of collective public transport, buying its power collectively with the nearby hospital, and planting sod on its roof to assist with cooling as well as boosting oxygen production.
Brazil abounds with sensible people-friendly ideas. The city of Recife provides free hot and cold outdoor showers along its magnificent beaches. Many Brazilian restaurants in the McDonald chain go one step beyond the universal drive-up window by using itinerant palm pilot attendants to take orders of those standing in line so that the order is ready by the time the client arrives at the counter. In the progressive, environmentally friendly state of Parana, high school and college students form voluntary clean-up brigades with uniforms that entitle them to free rides, especially during weekends on public transport to pick up litter along the public routes.
Most sensible ideas cost little. Nor do they need experts to develop and implement them. They usually originate with common people accustomed to thinking of people first.
Jamaica could use some of these sensible ideas today.
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