Dee Dee Warren
March 9th 2003, 12:44 PM
The Myth of the Simpler Lifestyle or "What Would Jesus Drive?"
(www.americanvision.org)
By Gary DeMar
One of the advantages of accumulating wealth is the opportunity to choose an alternate style of living. If I had the financial means and reduced obligations, I would like to build a log-cabin home in the mountains. From there I could research and write and do a little hiking and fishing. Because of advances in communication technology, I could maintain contact with my office by phone, fax, and e-mail. Contact with outside world could be maintained with a satellite dish. If I needed to have a face-to-face meeting, I could be at nearly any destination in a few hours by plane. Ah, the miracles of modern technology.
While there are drawbacks with increased technology--rush-hour traffic and subdivisions being two of them--the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages. Life in the so-called simpler times was rough. A mild infection could send you to an early grave. While kings and noblemen had access to running water because they had servants and slaves running to get it for them, the peasants were left to haul water for themselves. Imagine having to haul water from the river or the well to "bathe" yourself. You couldn’t take a shower, but you possibly might be able to wipe down your armpits with some cold water and "soap" made from ash and/or animal fat.
Advances in technology, at first affordable by only the wealthy, are now commonplace among every economic stratum. The first computer filled a large room, cost millions of dollars, and allowed access to only a select few. Today, a computer with a hundred times the capacity of the first Univac can be purchased for less than $500.
Increased wealth and advances in technology enable people to choose a simpler lifestyle. This is quite different from modern-day Luddites who want to impose a simpler lifestyle on all of us through regulation and legislation. Most cultures have no such choice. Their lack of capital traps them in the mundane world of working just for necessities. If today's simpler-lifers had their way, we would all be consigned to a life of drudgery and hopelessness, not to mention disease and horrible smells. Consider what life would be like if we turned back the clock just 100 years. Here’s one rather disgusting example . . .
In America today, great pains are being taken to rid our air of exhaust pollutants. This is certainly a good thing. But compared to the horse, the automobile is a non-polluter. Consider what it was like when horse power was literal.
Sanitary experts in the early part of the twentieth century agreed that the normal city horse produced between fifteen and thirty pounds of manure a day, with the average being something like twenty-two pounds. In a city like Milwaukee in 1907, for instance, with a human population of 350,000 and a horse population of 12,500, this meant 133 tons of manure a day, for a daily average of nearly three-quarters of a pound of manure for each resident.
As one can imagine, keeping the streets clean was a major problem. Some even suggested that epidemics of cholera, smallpox, yellow fever, and typhoid were caused by "‘a combination of certain atmospheric conditions and putrefying filth,’ among which horse manure was a chief offender."-
The cost of keeping the streets clean was expensive. Some cities tried to cover the cost by selling the manure for fertilizer. This caused another unforseen problem since collecting manure was more profitable than collecting regular trash. Daily refuse often remained in the streets along with the leftover manure. What they wouldn’t have given for a good ol’ garbage truck back then.
Streets turned into cesspools during inclement weather. Women with long skirts suffered the worst of it. Dodging street cleaners was another hazard. There was no relief during the summer when people had to endure breathing "pulverized cow dung." Modernized roads were of little help. "The coming of paved streets accelerated this problem, as wheels and hoofs ground the sun-dried manure against the hard surfaces and amplified the amount of dust." Although the following was written in 1977, its conclusions are equally valid today.
The fact is that nature itself is both a pollutant and a self-cleansing mechanism on a gigantic scale. An average-size hurricane releases the energy of 100,000 H-bombs. Dr Mishan's estimate that there were (1967) 10 million tons of man-made pollutants in the atmosphere should be set against the 1,600 million tons of methane gas emitted by natural swamps every year. Even cattle produce several million tons of methane gas annually; forests and other vegetation discharge 170 million tons annually of various hydrocarbons. . . . In some respects, the car--often identified by the ecolobby as the chief villain of growth--has led to less pollution, since a 1972 United States study shows that the average-size car emits 6 grammes of pollutants per mile, while a horse emits 600 grammes of solid and 300 grammes of liquid pollutants per mile.
So the next time some one insists that we would do better by scrapping modern technology and buying horses, you can paint a picture of what life was like in the streets before Henry Ford's "horseless carriage."
The latest craze is "What Would Jesus Drive?" Sound familiar? It is. It’s a ripoff of "What Would Jesus Do?" According to Rev. Jim Ball, of the Evangelical Environmental Network, "‘What Would Jesus Drive?’ is just a more specific version. What would he want me to do as a Christian? Would he want me to use public transportation?" Jesus could have a had a car in the first century if he really wanted to. He’s God, He could’ve had a spaceship in A.D. 30. But He didn’t; He rode around on a donkey, which was as big an offender as the 19th century horse. So if we’re really going to be like Jesus we should each get a Bessie the Mule and have her relieve herself all over our expressways. Or we could "love our neighbors as ourselves" and drive cars so they don’t catch diseases from our horses’ poop.
Notes
1 The information for much of this article is taken from Joel Tarr, "Urban Pollution—Many Long Years Ago," American Heritage (October 1971). Tarr was a professor at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
2 E.J. Mishan, The Costs of Economic Growth (1967).
3 Paul Johnson, Enemies of Society (New York: Atheneum, 1977), 91–92.
Reprinted by permission of:
American Vision P.O. Box 220, Powder Springs, GA 30127, 800-628-9460.
(www.americanvision.org)
By Gary DeMar
One of the advantages of accumulating wealth is the opportunity to choose an alternate style of living. If I had the financial means and reduced obligations, I would like to build a log-cabin home in the mountains. From there I could research and write and do a little hiking and fishing. Because of advances in communication technology, I could maintain contact with my office by phone, fax, and e-mail. Contact with outside world could be maintained with a satellite dish. If I needed to have a face-to-face meeting, I could be at nearly any destination in a few hours by plane. Ah, the miracles of modern technology.
While there are drawbacks with increased technology--rush-hour traffic and subdivisions being two of them--the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages. Life in the so-called simpler times was rough. A mild infection could send you to an early grave. While kings and noblemen had access to running water because they had servants and slaves running to get it for them, the peasants were left to haul water for themselves. Imagine having to haul water from the river or the well to "bathe" yourself. You couldn’t take a shower, but you possibly might be able to wipe down your armpits with some cold water and "soap" made from ash and/or animal fat.
Advances in technology, at first affordable by only the wealthy, are now commonplace among every economic stratum. The first computer filled a large room, cost millions of dollars, and allowed access to only a select few. Today, a computer with a hundred times the capacity of the first Univac can be purchased for less than $500.
Increased wealth and advances in technology enable people to choose a simpler lifestyle. This is quite different from modern-day Luddites who want to impose a simpler lifestyle on all of us through regulation and legislation. Most cultures have no such choice. Their lack of capital traps them in the mundane world of working just for necessities. If today's simpler-lifers had their way, we would all be consigned to a life of drudgery and hopelessness, not to mention disease and horrible smells. Consider what life would be like if we turned back the clock just 100 years. Here’s one rather disgusting example . . .
In America today, great pains are being taken to rid our air of exhaust pollutants. This is certainly a good thing. But compared to the horse, the automobile is a non-polluter. Consider what it was like when horse power was literal.
Sanitary experts in the early part of the twentieth century agreed that the normal city horse produced between fifteen and thirty pounds of manure a day, with the average being something like twenty-two pounds. In a city like Milwaukee in 1907, for instance, with a human population of 350,000 and a horse population of 12,500, this meant 133 tons of manure a day, for a daily average of nearly three-quarters of a pound of manure for each resident.
As one can imagine, keeping the streets clean was a major problem. Some even suggested that epidemics of cholera, smallpox, yellow fever, and typhoid were caused by "‘a combination of certain atmospheric conditions and putrefying filth,’ among which horse manure was a chief offender."-
The cost of keeping the streets clean was expensive. Some cities tried to cover the cost by selling the manure for fertilizer. This caused another unforseen problem since collecting manure was more profitable than collecting regular trash. Daily refuse often remained in the streets along with the leftover manure. What they wouldn’t have given for a good ol’ garbage truck back then.
Streets turned into cesspools during inclement weather. Women with long skirts suffered the worst of it. Dodging street cleaners was another hazard. There was no relief during the summer when people had to endure breathing "pulverized cow dung." Modernized roads were of little help. "The coming of paved streets accelerated this problem, as wheels and hoofs ground the sun-dried manure against the hard surfaces and amplified the amount of dust." Although the following was written in 1977, its conclusions are equally valid today.
The fact is that nature itself is both a pollutant and a self-cleansing mechanism on a gigantic scale. An average-size hurricane releases the energy of 100,000 H-bombs. Dr Mishan's estimate that there were (1967) 10 million tons of man-made pollutants in the atmosphere should be set against the 1,600 million tons of methane gas emitted by natural swamps every year. Even cattle produce several million tons of methane gas annually; forests and other vegetation discharge 170 million tons annually of various hydrocarbons. . . . In some respects, the car--often identified by the ecolobby as the chief villain of growth--has led to less pollution, since a 1972 United States study shows that the average-size car emits 6 grammes of pollutants per mile, while a horse emits 600 grammes of solid and 300 grammes of liquid pollutants per mile.
So the next time some one insists that we would do better by scrapping modern technology and buying horses, you can paint a picture of what life was like in the streets before Henry Ford's "horseless carriage."
The latest craze is "What Would Jesus Drive?" Sound familiar? It is. It’s a ripoff of "What Would Jesus Do?" According to Rev. Jim Ball, of the Evangelical Environmental Network, "‘What Would Jesus Drive?’ is just a more specific version. What would he want me to do as a Christian? Would he want me to use public transportation?" Jesus could have a had a car in the first century if he really wanted to. He’s God, He could’ve had a spaceship in A.D. 30. But He didn’t; He rode around on a donkey, which was as big an offender as the 19th century horse. So if we’re really going to be like Jesus we should each get a Bessie the Mule and have her relieve herself all over our expressways. Or we could "love our neighbors as ourselves" and drive cars so they don’t catch diseases from our horses’ poop.
Notes
1 The information for much of this article is taken from Joel Tarr, "Urban Pollution—Many Long Years Ago," American Heritage (October 1971). Tarr was a professor at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
2 E.J. Mishan, The Costs of Economic Growth (1967).
3 Paul Johnson, Enemies of Society (New York: Atheneum, 1977), 91–92.
Reprinted by permission of:
American Vision P.O. Box 220, Powder Springs, GA 30127, 800-628-9460.