Profile of Critical Thinking, Mistakes, and Systemic Language

Through approximately 13 years of blogs, I've made a number of errors. There are too many blogs now to really go back and change. And arguably it's a mistake to edit the history of the thought, it is a snapshot of evolution.

When my dear friend and co-founder of the company, Yadji Moussa, drowned eight years ago, I wrote a rather passionate eulogy. I wanted to be honest and not cover up some of Yadji's problems - he had lost his family through drinking and in the 12 years he lived in Middlebury and worked with me, he'd spent an enormous percent of his paychecks frivolously. I thought I'd also been equally complimentary about why he'd been my best friend in Cameroon, and why his family in Michigan still loved him as much as I did. 

Well, I didn't accomplish a Neil Young song about the setting sun. And a stranger from University of Vermont chimed into the comment section about all of the ways my tribute/critique of Yadji's life were implicitly racist.

Well, the slap in the face to me was bittersweet, and coming through this blog which is mostly centered around systemic racial profiling in the recycling and repair industry, a tad ironic. But I appreciate it years later. If not but for that harsh criticism, I would not have read up on the UVM academic's articles, or learned as much vocabulary regarding overt, implicit, and systematic racism and racial profiling.

Yes, I certainly had a theme of white man's burden detectible in the eulogy. Even though I have an almost identical relationship with my brother of the same mother, from an outsiders perspective it appeared very paternalistic. Referring to another adult's "childlike" qualities can seem complimentary in one context, but in another (racially divided) context it can smell of racism.

The point is that the Good Point Ideas Blog is intended not only to persuade, but to invite counterpoints, criticism, argument, and critical thinking. It does not follow the advice of professional bloggers. It's not simply written, it's not always edited as it should be. I make mistakes. But to its credit, it provides critical analysis, critical thinking, and that's often missing in a System of environmental management. 

R2, ISO, E-Stewards, Basel Convention and other standards base their valuation upon "CONSENSUS STANDARD DEVELOPMENT". But a systemic analysis shows that the jury is often rigged to the advantage of powerful, that access to standard development leads to a "last man standing" dynamic. 

• Africa's Tech Sector has NEVER been represented at any of those standards, despite Africa being the continent that mines anglesite / leaded silicate (Burkina Faso ships it out of the port of Tema, Ghana. Kabwe Mine in Zambia is probably the most toxic place on earth). 

• Africa's Tech Sector has NEVER been represented at any of those standards, despite Africa being the continent with the longest average maintenance, reuse and repair of electronic devices. Africans maintain televisions - and the environmental costs embedded in them - three decades longer than Europeans and Americans do. But the continent's diaspora #FreeHurricaneBenson was railroaded based on added language "fully functional" that was appended to European interpretations of the Basel Convention - a convention which EXPLICITLY identified export for repair as completely legitimate and legal (Annex IX, B110).

The access to the standards by so-called "Parties" is rife with self-interest. Peter Buffet described a "Charitable Industrial Complex" for do-gooders and well-intentioned development professionals to be aware of.

Keep the criticism coming. I care deeply about the earth's Network of Tinkerers, so deeply that I want every one of our mistakes to be exposed, learned from, and sharpened for the next game. Planned Obsolescence, Big Shred, and Certification NGOs do not even see what they are doing is wrong. I sometimes don't see what I'm doing is wrong. Critical thinking and dialectic is the only path forward, and access to development (such as R2 SERI fully staffing its TAC, instead of a core "consensus" group writing unintentionally racist systematic language into the new 2018 standard) is the way to grow. If you are angry at me for criticising you, you are probably not being the critical thinker you are capable of being.

The System has to be self-aware. Without criticism and critical thinking, we will not address systematic language which creates unfair barriers to the so-called "INFORMAL SECTOR". The UNEP is making progress - I like to think I can take some credit for that - in recognizing systemic bias in favor of Big Shred and Planned Obsolescence. But as pointed out in the previous blog, they continue to use systemic bias against the so-called "informal sector". Assuming an African's purchase of a TV from Norway or UK is less "circular" than a European company which charges money to destroy that TV or monitor is not only symbolic - but a clanging cymbal - of smug privilege. The African recyclers are ten times better than the European ones, but because UNEP doesn't get "data" out of them, they are profiled as being responsible for the eventual end of life practices by orphans and slum dwellers who are NEVER the original buyer or importer of the eventual waste, after three times longer use than EU consumers.

Final note - PBS's series on Africa History (Africa's Great Civilizations) with Harvard's Henry Louis Gates is a great resource for conversations about the history of slavery. It was trade between African slave owners and European brokers. Powerful African tribes raided and enslaved rival African tribes and sold them. Giving Africa a voice in responsible tech policy is good. It's also good to hold Africans as powerful historically, and not get into the victimhood trap which the UVM racial history professor was guilty of in her assumptions about Yadji's profile.