Life in the Rear-view Mirror

Too Much Technology

I would be the last to downplay the importance of technology in our modern life, but in life everything is about balance. Almost by definition, too much of anything is not good for us. How much is too much?

There is no question that having a gas stove and oven is better than cooking over a wood-fired one. If everybody in a large city switched to a wood-fired stove to cook their meals there would be countless additional health problems. A refrigerator has positive health benefits because it keeps food fresher and lasting longer; and helps us avoid unnecessary digestive tract problems. On the other hand, a dishwasher is a more questionable appliance. It simply trades electricity for good old-fashioned elbow grease.

Moreover, people with dishwashers tend to use more dishes and cutlery than what is necessary because, as my wife often points out, it doesn't matter whether or not the machine is full or half full. This point about full, or half full, reminds me of a joke about the difference between a pessimist and an optimist. To the former, the glass is half empty, while to the latter it's half-full, but to an engineer it's twice as big as it needs to be. At the very least, dishwashers should be made smaller, but getting rid of them altogether, is the best solution for Mother Earth.

Washing dishes and cutlery by hand is more environmentally friendly and saves electricity, which means lower utility bills, and reduced consumption of fossil fuels used in electrical generation. If we all did that, we would reduce environmental pollution, breathe cleaner air, and have a healthier environment and population.

The electric eggbeater and coffee grinder could easily be replaced by the old-fashioned ones, and there are many more. Like most North Americans and Europeans, I enjoy a good cup of coffee made from freshly ground beans. I grind them by hand using a small grinder from my parent's generation rather than a modern electrical one.

On the other hand, I have a daughter living at home, who is a professed environmentalist, but since she started cooking and baking, the number of electrical gadgets in the kitchen has multiplied. Unfortunately, we are all environmentalists when it comes to pointing out other people's failings, but not when those failings are close to home. People's homes are now filled with electricity-consuming gadgets! We are so used to them that we can't imagine what life would be like without them. But fifty years ago, there was life without them!

Last year, on one of my South American trips, I got to experience living without electricity. My wife and I spent a week on several Lake Titicaca islands, with little or no electricity. There were also no motorized vehicles of any type. It was closer to what life might have been like in North America and Europe before the industrial revolution.

On Amantani, the kitchen of the family we stayed with was very simple. It had no refrigerator, modern stove, or running water. It was primitive by any standard! It had what looked like a fireplace, but was really a firebox made from adobe. Its top had holes in it, on which stood the pots that the family cooked in. The sheet-metal tube venting the firebox was way too small to carry the smoke outside; consequently, the kitchen was full of smoke.

In one corner of the kitchen was a small pile of semidry eucalyptus branches with leaves still on them. Every few minutes she placed some of them into the fire and the smoke belched out into the kitchen and some spilled into the eating area. I thought, "We came here for clean air and already I have inhaled more smoke than I do during an entire year from barbequing."

My description of the kitchen didn't leave anything out. There was nothing else: no kitchen counter and no sink because there was no running water. A big plastic bowl on the kitchen floor served as the sink for washing the vegetables, as well as the dishes. The water came from a plastic drum outside, which was filled once a day.