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recent
It has been a while since I have listened to my once favorite radio talk show, "Talk of the Nation". I tuned in again today as I cleaned the apartment. It turned me right back on. What an interesting show!
How high does gas have to go before our behavior changes? And is that tipping point economic, or psychological?
In Gas prices 101, the guest is a marketing guy seems to know a lot about where peoples' limits are when prices are raised. Resisting my urge to assume he uses that knowledge to let businesses know how high they can set their prices before consumers stop buying (yeah, yeah, I know... nothing like that happens because we live in a free market society where the prices are based on supply and demand, right?). Anyway, he talks about the psychological aspects of how we deal with the price of gas at the pump.
He says that we have two prices in our mind, an external price (what we see on the price tag) and an internal price (what we are used to paying.. what we feel something is worth). If we see an external price that is close to our internal price, we assimilate it, but if it is too far outside, we react to it by changing our behavior. In other words, if my internal price for beer in Japan is 211 yen per .5 liter, and internally I can allow for a 20 yen deviation, I will still buy it as though nothing is wrong even if it is 231 yen, but once it hits 232 yen, I start to buy third generation hopposhu instead.
Another interesting thing to consider, is that even though prices are are higher, demand is up 1.5% over last year. Obviously the high prices are not having a negative effect on demand. One explanation they cite is that using gas is so much a part of our lifestyle that we will try to save money in other areas in order to pay for gas. The guest compared this to a coffee freeze in Brazil in the '70s. When the price of coffee rose, people refused to pay and looked for substitutes. Unfortunately, there is no realistic substitute for gasoline. (other than taking a little responsibility for our actions, which most people seem un-willing to do.)
Although the fact that even higher prices does not deter people from messing up the earth, there were some encouraging contributions from listeners. One person wrote in saying that instead of cutting down on the amount they pay for gas, they cut down on the money they spend on other useless disposable income crap. Wall mart has recently said that their earnings are suffering because people are saving their money to buy gas at higher prices. I guess this is better than nothing.
In fact, this seems to me to be simply a small example of what we really need... people to pay the *real* price for what we use. Sure people's dollar will not go near as far, we will have to choose between a new thingamajig from wal-mart, a coffee at starbucks, or taking our kids to school in the morning in a gas powered car.
Finally, they mention how irrational people are when they are willing to drive across town to save $4 on a twenty gallon purchase of gas, but they would not drive to save $4 on a $100 coat that is on sale across town. This is one thing I don't understand, although sometimes I wish I could be blessed with the ability to ignore such thoughts. Every time I buy something, I compare it with how much it costs to make at home, or to buy it closer, how much time and resources are saved, how much I could make if I spent that time working, or if I am not working, how much the free time is worth to me, and how much I think the costs are to other people in far away lands. Sometimes I wish I could just buy things without thinking. Oh how easy life would be.
They had another interesting conversation with Hector Avalos, author of Fighting Words: The Origins Of Religious Violence, about religion's role in war, death, murder, and everything evil. Do religions that preach peace also promote violence?
Hector stipulates that all religion has the potential to incite violence because they can not be verified by objective means, leaving violence as one of the few ways to settle disputes. He talks about scarcity and it's role in violence. Obviously scarcity of food or water can incite violence, but he shows how the scarcity or real or perceived resources inherent in religion does the same. Some of the scarcity religion creates are:
- Inscripturation; the idea that God's word is only contained in a certain text, and not found anywhere else
- Sacred space, where one space is declared to be more valuable than surrounding space for religious reasons
- Group privilege; when believers believe they have certain privileges that non-believers don't and other fight to get the privilege, or, what seems more obvious to me, people fight the oppression that comes when one group believes that they are more privileged. This includes particularism, whereby every religion differentiates itself from others by saying that they know the truth and the light and the way.
- Salvation; the idea that you derive some benefits by belonging to a certain religion. When other people don't have access to this salvation, it functions as a scarce resource.
As much as I agree that religion usually causes more problems than it solves (which is why I am so scared when I hear people unquestioningly following "sustainability" as though it were the truth and the light and the way), the theory of scarcity seems a little weak to me. I mean, if all the people of different religions feel that their religion is the "right" religion, and people who don't believe in it will be damned, where is the scarcity in salvation? If I think that only people who have a silver button on their pocket will go to heaven, and you think that only people who have a golden button on their pocket will go to heaven, there is no reason to fight. We can each have our own color of button and each be happy knowing that we will be the one going to heaven.
Of course, scarcity does come into the picture in one way that he did not mention. This is when we look at the financial and political power that comes with having a large following. Since there are only a limited number of "souls", one religion has to fight against another in order to "save" them, and acquire the financial / political resources that go along with it.
Of course, the most obvious question was raised by a caller, and the author evaded it. What about violence that results from economic reasons, yet the leaders of that violence use religion as a means to gain followers, and to make those followers do things they otherwise wouldn't do.
A second guest was Charles Kimball, professor of religion at Wake Forest University; author of When Religion Becomes Evil. He lists five warnings of when religion goes awry.
- Absolute truth claims
- Blind obedience
- Pursuing an ideal time (not sure what this means)
- The means justifies the end
- Declaring holy war
Basically, the message was that usually when people think that they are doing what they are doing because they think it is what God wants them to be doing, nothing good can come of it, be it the leader of a nation, or a regular joe like me.
The photos are from Malaysia.
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