Ep13 -- Our Toilets, Ourselves

 Last week we saw how looking back in time is necessary to truly understand the present.  This week, I want to explore ways that you can better understand your home by looking elsewhere.  It's one of the great rewards of traveling just to realize that there are countless little details of our regular lives that could be done differently.  As we live in our normal world, we take so much for granted and oftentimes assume, well, things just have to be that way.  But when you visit another culture, you're like, whoa, I didn't even realize that was an option.  And sometimes when you discover those differences, it helps you learn something about yourself and your fellow citizens that you didn't think about before. 

As cultural historian Paul Fussell once wrote in an essay about the benefits of travel:

I don't want to suggest that Europeans have a special lien on honest dealing,  only that they are sometimes better at facing than euphemizing embarrassing realities, if not unpleasant facts.  The bidet is a case in point. 

So this week, we're going to take a little trip overseas and check out a country whose people look a lot like us, they pretty much all speak English, but for the most part, they look at life a lot differently than we do, at the social political and economic levels. And as much as we tell ourselves, ad nauseum, that this is the greatest country in the history of the world, the data from this little European country suggest otherwise.  To find out which country is kicking our ass in just about every metric of health and happiness, stay tuned. 

I'm Craig Boreth, and this is The Great Ungaslighting, a podcast about how we've all been conned into accepting a human culture that's out of sync with human nature and how we can fight back, and put the kind back into humankind. 

But first, a quick word about a sponsor.  The Great Ungaslighting is not sponsored by Capital One.  And it's not just because, man does every single commercial break at every basketball game have to show Chuck and Sam and Spike with the occasional appearance of multiple Taylors making obscene amounts of money to shill for a company that turned a $4.5 billion profit last year; nor has it because they clearly target young people and anyone else less likely to pay off their cards monthly so they rack up big interest charges, that's just what credit card companies do; no, it's because they think we're just stupid enough to believe that Jennifer Garner, who has been an A-list celebrity for 20 years, has never set foot in an airport lounge before. She looks around the Capital One lounge, all starry-eyed like Eliza Doolittle at the embassy ball. Saying, "I could get used to this". Oh,  fuck off. And sorry, Jen, nobody's that good an actor. Olivia couldn't deliver that line believably.

I mean, I get it. Massive financial institutions need us to be a little gullible and desperate to play along with their usury, but come on at least give us enough respect to pretend otherwise. 

And we're back. 

Actually speaking of bidets, you can learn a lot about a society by examining its toilet details.  Many visitors who travel to the U S for the first time are shocked by how much water there is in our toilets.  See, we use suction-type toilets, which require a high water level and also tend to smell a lot better than many European toilets, because with those whatever's in there just sits down in that hole, exposed to the air until the water flows down and just washes it away.  Plus a lot of Europeans think that we here in America are so self-absorbed that we just need to acknowledge the majesty of what we've left behind, since in European toilets, you really can't see anything down there. 

And then there's the great stall debate.  We always think of Americans as more prudish than Europeans. Well, if that's the case. How come our public bathroom stalls have that big gap under the door while door's in European stalls usually go all the way to the ground?  Some have suggested that it's so that in case of emergency first responders can get in there.  While that certainly seems plausible.  I found some other explanations that are a lot more compelling.  One, for example, suggests that stoles are designed that way to be uncomfortable and exposing so that workers won't spend any more time on the toilet, then it's absolutely necessary.   Now, what does that say about American corporate culture and how much or how little it values the dignity of its workers? 

And somehow that tension between the corporate bottom line and employees' bottom lines is the perfect segue to my guests this week:

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CB: Jonathan Blank is an award-winning writer, director, and creative technologist. His 2019 documentary, "Sex, Drugs, and Bicycles", sought to answer the question:  Are social democracies, specifically in the Netherlands, the miserable Orwellian hellscapes that we Americans are pretty certain they are?  Hey Jonathan, welcome to The Great Ungaslighting.

JB: Hello Craig, how are you?

 CB: I'm good.  Just to start things off can you give us  a few examples of just how terrible Dutch life is?

JB: Yeah, it's a nightmare. You know, everyone has health care which is pretty horrifying. Kids all ride bikes to schools. So their rate of obesity is a fraction of ours. They're actually the healthiest adults and children in the world. They live the longest and they're the tallest people in the world, all of which are pretty awful things. And what else? No homelessness, they're probably the world's leading country when it comes to gay rights, free speech laws, and animal rights. So, all of those things are pretty horrible.

CB: So where did the original idea for the film come from?

JB: I made a documentary about the Netherlands in the nineties and at the time it was the world's most liberal country by far, you know, this was before gay marriage had come to the US and many other places. And, at that time, it was just really, you know, crazy compared to America, how far they had gone in terms of promoting rights. The top tax rate was 72% which is not that crazy when you think in the fifties, the top tax rate in America was 90%.  But since nobody here knows history, we can forget about that. But it was so far out, I used to do screenings. I went around the country with the movie, and people would get up in the theater when I was doing Q&A, and they would ask me, is this real?

And there'd inevitably be someone from the Netherlands there, you know, who just came out of curiosity. And I would say, hey guys, is this real? And they'd go, yeah, it is.  And people just could not believe it. Now, you know, this was pre-internet really, you know, before the widespread internet. And so people, you didn't have all these, you know, videos and YouTube and TikTok and Instagram and, and people sharing all this stuff. Now the Netherlands after our highly successful war on terror and they, you know, that war really created a new world order. And it really promoted this kind of ability for right-wing demagogues to rise up using Islam and terrorism as as ways to frighten people. And so the Netherlands became more conservative. They, they, they, there was a very right-wing party started up, which actually recently got the most number of votes in an election led by this crazy guy with wild hair named Geert Wilders.

And he's been around for a long time now.  So while the country has, has drawn back a bunch from when I was there, it still remains very liberal.

And I said, you know, it would be fun now in the era of Trump, cause it was back when Trump was a president to go back and see exactly what had been the world's most liberal country was doing.

 CB: So, what did you find when you went back?

JB: When you're in the Netherlands and when you're in any Northern European country, really, you get this sense of a place that's very well managed,  that's civilized. That was the word that kept coming to me. You know, it was just, it was a civilized place.

You know, the, the you're guaranteed a minimum of four weeks of vacation every year. And on top of that,  your employer has to pay you an extra month's pay every year because otherwise, you wouldn't have any money to go on vacation, right? Because you have your normal expenses. So you get money to enjoy your vacation.

 There's a very high quality of life. They're in the top five of almost every quality of life indicator longevity maternal death, infant mortality obesity, education.

You just go down the list. And, and they're also very high on things like entrepreneurialism.  So it, it puts the lie to the idea that when the society takes care of certain things that it's going to sap people's entrepreneurial spirit or energy. It's actually, that's what's happening in America is it's becoming harder and harder to become an entrepreneur because you can't leave your dead-end job because you have to stay there for your health care or you, you know, you, you're just barely making it by.

CB: So all this seems to kind of raise the question of why we're not doing what they're doing. And one of the things that was talked about in your film was this concept of polderen. Can you talk about that a little bit?   

JB: Well, 27 percent of the Netherlands is reclaimed from the ocean. And the country was built in the lowlands of Europe. And that was where all of the main rivers of Europe let out. The northern European rivers would flow down and empty out into this alluvial plain that was the Netherlands. And it was probably a place that, you know, people would go who wanted to get away from the monarchies and the feudal system that was taking place in Europe at the time.

And they moved there because it was undesirable land, and the monarchs didn't want the land at the time. And they started developing all these technologies that were really advanced, that used wind power to pump out the water and reclaim the land, and the land in between the dikes was called polders.

And so this was reclaimed land from the ocean, and then they would farm it and it became land that was very productive. And the Dutch are actually the world's second leading exporter of agricultural products after the United States. That's in gross numbers, which is phenomenal when you think of a country the size of New Jersey, basically.

And so the idea behind that is that if you are living on land that's reclaimed from the sea and that you're constantly digging out from the water and setting up these systems that are interconnected between properties,  you have to get along with your neighbor.  And it's very different than Frontier mythology that's in America.

But the idea there is if my land floods, your neighbors come over and they help you because when their land floods, they expect you to come over and help them. And when you're building a new canal to help manage the water, everybody joins in. And when you're building a new windmill, everybody joins in and you don't care if this one's Protestant and this one's Catholic, like in the rest of Europe, where they were killing each other over that,  the Dutch decided we're not going to care about that anymore.

And we're going to. focus on survival. And they became extremely successful. They, you know, and part of that is there's a very dark side to it too. You know, they, they were, they started the world's first mega corporation, you know, the East India Trading Company. And that company was deeply involved in the North Atlantic slave trade.

And a lot of Dutch money came from slave trade, you know, so that's one of the downsides. And I, discuss that in the film as well. But unlike some places that made a lot of money from slavery and then didn't turned it into something positive, at least in some ways they did. And but I think that's what the concept of pauldron is, that you are, you have to get along because you're all in this together.

And of course this sense of we're all in this together is something that's sorely lacking here in the U S and that's got consequences, right?.  

I think that's, I think, you know, we, it is, you know, when, when you get sick, you realize that your health is the most important thing in life, right? And, and when someone you love has a problem, you know, you realize that's really important in life.

And you realize that there are a lot of things that you thought were important and they're not important. And society should really be set up to be promoting what is really important and making those things the priority and making those things  the,  the more perfect union that we are trying to form with each other here on earth.

And I think that's something that, you know, Northern Europeans are doing a lot better than we are. 

CB: One of the things I'm really trying to do with this podcast is give people action items that they can actually incorporate into their lives  to begin to think about the world differently. One of the activities that seems really central to life in the Netherlands is bicycling. And I don't know if you saw this, but there was a study that came out last year that found that bicycling is significantly positively linked to social participation, political participation, neighborhood solidarity, neighborhood helpfulness. I'm wondering what you think about all that.

JB: Well, I mean, you're preaching to the choir.  Absolutely. I mean, I, I think bicycling is a great metaphor for, I mean, transportation is so important and cars are the thing that people spend the second most amount of money on after their homes in, in life for the average person.

And our entire society has become geared around cars in which almost all of them, there's only one person in the car, and it's a huge waste on on resources, on energy use, pollution, and for most people bicycling  could certainly be an alternative for a lot of their local transportation.

And it is, it is always interesting because people don't, with all of those studies, you never know, it's a chicken and egg question, did they get into bicycling because of they're a more social society, or did being a more social society lead them to more bicycling, and the, in the Netherlands, I'd have to say that, you know, they were a big bicycle society and then following World War Two, they became a very car centric society and they, you know, people think, Oh, they always rode bikes.

Well, no, you know, if you look at images of any of the cities in Holland in the seventies, they were jam packed with traffic.  And what happened is, is people were getting run over. And not as many as here in Los Angeles, which is the getting run over capital of America, but the but it was enough to get people upset.

And  at one point, a child got killed and the Dutch moms got together and they said, this is enough. We're shutting down the country until something is done about children being run over by cars. And they staged these massive protests that a huge percentage of the population participated in.

And as a result, the government then started taking action to, change their cities over to being much more friendly to bicycles, public transportation, and walking. And so now they're by far the leading bicycle country in the world. But it's not by accident. There are plans that have been implemented. A lot of money is spent every year to improve bikepaths and create new ones. But the thing is that what they found is, that for I don't have the exact amount, so I'm not going to say, but for every euro that you spend on bicycle infrastructure, it returns X number of euros back to you in improved productivity, less pollution it actually increases retail sales in places, which is a thing, you know, every time they try to expand bicycling and bicycle lanes, local businesses complain.

And, and what they found is, but after it happens, local businesses, business improves because people are riding by at 10 miles an hour instead of 30 or 40 miles an hour and they can just stop and hop off the bike and go buy something and it's just a lot better and you can fit, you can fit, you know, what is it like eight bikes in the space of one car, you know, and you can, so you, it's actually really good for community.

It's really good for local businesses. It's really good for kids because kids can then start getting around on their own 

And it lets you go, you're not sitting there waiting for mom and dad to take you anywhere. And you go to the playground, you go get together with your buddies and play soccer or whatever it is you're doing and, and, and your parents are, you know, be home at six for dinner and, and it's safe and, and in addition to being safe, it's not a society that's completely paranoid.

And one of the things that you find, and Daniel Kahneman found this and researchers find this all the time, is that fear is a much stronger motivator than hope. And it's a big problem with humans, and you can see why that exists from an  evolutionary  perspective, because you want to, to survive, it's more important for you to be afraid of risks than to feel that something might turn out well that could kill you, for instance. But we, we should be able to be moving beyond that kind of fight or flight reality and moving into a reality where we're doing things because we study what works, we find a good solution that's environmentally sustainable, that's good for children, good for adults good for people's health and longevity and happiness, and we create plans based on those studies but it's, you know,  we have, we have very serious challenges, but we also have  really great solutions available to us.

And, and I wish we as a society were using those solutions and and and solving our problems together, which we certainly can and should. 

CB: Well, I certainly recommend that as many people as possible watch your documentary "Sex, Drugs, and Bicycles" because it it really is it's relatable, it's not something from another planet, it's not science fiction. It's, it's,   a reality that's happening right now as we speak You know, I think it's it can be a very powerful thing. Where can people stream the movie ? 

JB: You can stream it basically anywhere it's available on Tubi and Redbox and Amazon and Apple TV and YouTube and like just about anywhere you can find it. 

CB: And what are you working on now?  

JB: I am working on a new comedic documentary called "The Bible All-Stars Reunion Tour".

CB: Okay, go on. 

JB: And we are going to put the fun in fundamentalism. I got a hold of a time machine and I'm going to be interviewing all of the Bible All Stars and sharing their wisdom with everyone. 

CB: I look forward to it good luck finishing that up and thank you so much for taking the time to talk.

JB: Thank you.  

CB: Jonathan Blank is the award-winning writer and director of the documentary, "Sex, Drugs, and Bicycles". Check it out.  

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So what's the big takeaway this week?  It's simply to remind yourself that the way we do things down to the finest detail, can almost always be done differently.  And as with the bathroom stall doors, you have to ask yourself: Why is it this way? Who benefits from it being this way? How could it be done differently? And what does that say about us that we just accept it as the way it has to be? 

Obviously, I think traveling to other countries and experiencing different cultures is the best way to learn about ourselves and our culture and discover how we could improve both.  But for folks who can't, or really don't want to travel to another country, there is something you can do right now that can help transform how you see your regular world.  It's to follow the Dutch lead and get on a bicycle.  There's something about moving through your everyday landscape, and specifically traveling on the roads but not being sealed off from the world in 3000 pounds of metal and glass, that opens your eyes. You just interact with everything differently. And it's a great way to develop the habit of opening yourself to the possibility of alternative realities.  So grab your bike and get riding. But be sure to wear a helmet because as I'm sure you know, those drivers are nuts. 

Well, that's it for this week. Until next time, be kind to yourself. Cut each other, some slack, and leave the car behind and hop on your bike instead. But if you absolutely have to drive,  drive nice, honk twice,  and use your damn turn signal.