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The Summer Along The East Cost

By Robert Fryer on June 5, 2010

The U.S.’s best computer modeling is showing what the summer along the East Cost U.S. might be.

Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan

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How To Cut Your Carbon Footprint by 50%: What We Can Learn From Ramit Sethi and Personal Finance – Part 2

By Robert Fryer on May 26, 2010

technotheory

This is the second part of a long post, but – again – worth it.  Go grab a cup of coffee.

How does the personal finance model translate to “going green”?

If you recall from Part 1, I made the observation of two patterns:

  1. The assumption that to live responsibly (or do the right thing) means a drop in the quality of life
  2. That people say one thing, but they do another

In this post, I’m going to show how the assumption that doing the right thing means giving up what you love and a drop in your quality of life is a myth by looking across disciplines to personal finance and applying a successful solution as flushed out by the NY Times Bestseller, Ramit Sethi.

Point 1: Living responsibly means a drop in quality of life – myth

Rebuttal: Living responsibly is another way of saying “I am consciously aware of what my values are and I prioritize them while also permitting myself to be ‘frivolous’ where I choose to be”.

I think the word “responsible” causes some people trouble.  It suggests we’re being judged and told what to do.  And who likes that?  Plus, when I write the word “responsibly” it really opens me up to ridicule and I (and what I say) can be easily dismissed, as David Foster Wallace discussed.

The point here is that the quality of your life is always improved when you are making conscious decisions on how to allocate and use your resources, like time and money.

If you value showing your children how to do the right thing, if you value a healthy home – and I know you do, because you tell me that, too – then consciously arranging your lifestyle to align with these does not mean a drop in your quality of life, it actually means an increase in it!

Now, you might say that you value these things, but you also value other possessions or activities that you feel guilty about, that you know are not the best thing for the earth or the environment or the limited amount of petroleum left to use.  Here’s a tool to help with that: a conscious carbon spending plan.

The Conscious Carbon Spending Plan

Let’s use Ramit’s formula as a place to start:

60% Fixed Costs (translates to: heating, lighting, cooling, transportation, food, etc)

10% Long term investment (translates to: setting aside carbon use for a currently unknown use in the future)

10% Savings (translates to: setting aside carbon use to use for specific goals)

20% Guilt-free spending (translates to: vacations, flying, must-have-home-products, etc)

Like Chris pointed out in his recent blog post, finding the amount of carbon generated by your choices is less than perfect.  But, let’s not sweat the details – at least not yet.   As Ramit always says, “Just get started!”  We can optimize later.  All you perfectionist, type A people take a deep breath.

Personal carbon “budgets” are not entirely new, although they aren’t discussed in the same way that I am here.  For example, the UK government is considering mandating this in 2020 for all UK citizens.  The proposal has some issues, such as the cost-benefit ratio of personal carbon credit trading, but the notion of establishing a budget is gaining steam.  Trial runs in the UK show that the use of a spending plan reduces personal emissions by 5%.

I think cutting 5% is very easy to do, especially for Americans.  Consider the average household in the UK has emissions that are roughly 30% of a family of four in the US.  It’s much easier for Americans to trim the fat when compared to the relatively carbon-fit Brit.  I think a family of four should easily be able to cut 30% of their carbon emissions, especially using a conscious carbon spending plan and other ideas on this website.

If you’ve never thought about the carbon content of your decisions, this process will be eye opening, and it will also guarantee it will be very easy for you and your family to reduce your carbon emissions.  Study after study shows that if people are simply made aware of how much energy they use (especially in comparison with their neighbors) they quickly make changes – a time when keeping up with the Jones’s is actually a good thing!

So, what’s a “good” total carbon target for you and your family?

The average CO2 emissions for a family of four in the US are 100 tons CO2e per year – the Nature Conservancy says 110 for family of four, but I’m going to round off to keep the numbers easy.  And the average is 22 tonsCO2 for each American – which is equivalent to the global average for a family of four!

What the carbon spending plan translates to based on 100 tons of CO2 per year:

60 tons (120,000 lbs) for Fixed Costs

10 tons (20,000 lbs) for Long Term Investments

10 tons (20,000 lbs) for Savings

20 tons (40,000 lbs) for Guilt-free spending

Let’s put these numbers in context so they make some sense:

  • How much does a long haul (over six hrs one-way) flight cost?  2,000 lbs per person
  • How much does a 42” plasma screen tv cost?  726 lbs / yr
  • A dvd player? 110 lbs / yr
  • Your laptop?  About 44 lbs per yr if it’s turned on for 4 hrs per day and unplugged when not in use.

Energy misers

Here is an example of how an American family of four could get to 37 tons per year as outlined by the Rocky Mountain Institute:

  • Meet the Miser family. This family of four lives in a three-bedroom house in town. [in Colorado]
  • Dad bikes to work. Mom works from home. The kids walk to school.
  • Mom shops and does errands, driving either the family’s Prius hybrid or riding her bike. The family checks the air filter and tire pressure on their car monthly.
  • This vegetarian family buys organic food and recycles everything they can. They compost, spreading the black stuff around their backyard vegetable plot.
  • Plane trips? Rarely. They prefer to drive to sites in Colorado or other nearby locales for family vacations.
  • Their monthly electricity bill is well below the Xcel Energy average of about $57 a household. Their February gas bill is well below the Xcel average of about $108.
  • TV? Only for the occasional DVD. It’s unplugged most of the time. And they don’t subscribe to cable.
  • Mom does use a computer for her home office, but she unplugs it when it’s not in use. Lights – many using compact fluorescent bulbs – are turned off when not needed.
  • The thermostat is turned down in the winter to below 60 degrees. Sweaters are a ubiquitous part of the household wardrobe. They rarely use air conditioning in the summer.
  • Showers are short, and the hot water temperature is turned down to 120 degrees.
  • 37 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent are released by this family yearly.

Your reaction to this scenario is probably “No way! This is too different from what my family does now, and I can’t see us living like this.  For example, we like meat and both my husband and I need to drive our cars.”  That’s why I’m suggesting a better way that I’m confident will work.

A reasonable way to cut your CO2 emissions in half

Instead of being a miser – even that word primes a person to reject the notion of changing behavior because it sounds so awful – try this out:  the conscious carbon spending plan can outline a reasonable path for you and your family.

For example, let me show a reasonable way to get a Philadelphia family down to 51 tons of CO2e per year – more than a 50% reduction in their carbon footprint if you use the Nature Conservancy’s published average of 110 CO2e.

Assume a family of four:

  1. Knows the things they value the most (for example, a big annual vacation including long haul flights, organic food, the need for cars to get to work, outings with family, large tv’s)
  2. They plan accordingly, using a conscious carbon spending plan – splurging on what they value and consider necessary for a high quality of life, but ruthlessly cutting back on the things they don’t care about (for example, they are satisfied with less exotic but more efficient cars, they optimized their thermostat settings, they continue to eat meat every week but make it a side dish rather than main course)

Here’s what their life looks like:

  • Both parents drive a combined total of 18,000 miles per year – one an efficient car (30-40mpg) and the other a sort-of efficient car (20-30mpg).  No hybrids.  They try to not drive too much.
  • Their home is automated, optimized and they invested in insulation, weatherization and other recommendations their energy audit suggested.  See my post here on how to automate, optimize and invest and why you should pay a pro to audit your house.
  • As part of their home automization, they never leave lights on anymore (without having to remember to turn them off) and they never have electricity vampires draining away kilowatts as they sleep – again without having to think about it.
  • All of their appliances are Energy Star
  • They have low-flow shower heads, and still take hot showers for about 10-15 minutes
  • They save their carbon to splurge on vacations – they love to fly to Europe and the US west coast
  • They recycle all they can, but don’t compost.  Instead they put all of their food scraps into their garbage disposal.
  • They invest in organic food

Calculated using The Nature Conservancy's Calculator

Does this seem better to you?  This is what’s possible if you simply become aware of how much your choices cost you in carbon and align your carbon spending with your goals.  So, what do you think – is it possible to do the right thing and have a very high quality of life – maybe even higher than you’re accustomed to?

If you already doing these things – then pat yourself on the back.  You have aligned your carbon spending with your goals.  But please remember, these are only the beginning steps.  There is so much more you can do.  You may have more goals.  You may still feel guilty about other choices.  But rest assured that you are on the right path.  If you are comfortable doing these things, then I urge you to keep going.  I will be laying out specific steps later.  Stay tuned.

Here’s what you can do now

Step 1: The first step is to identify the things you and your family value most.  It may be that you are in love with your 3,500 sf home.  Fine.  It may be that your Hummer is your raison d’être. Fine again.  I’m not judging, I just want to you to be honest and get started.  Rank this list roughly into three categories: touch-it-and-I’ll-hurt-you, medium, and like-it-but-don’t-need-it.

Step 2: Calculate the emissions associated with each item.  A good source of calculators and figures is here:

The Nature Conservancy Calculator

Terra Pass Calculator

The EPA’s Calculator

Step 3: Compare these results to the ideal spending plan (60-10-10-20).  Are you within budget for the average family of four (100 tons or 120,000 lbs of CO2e)?  If so – can you reduce your carbon footprint by 30%? 50%?  Start by identifying the big wins.

Step 4: If you are not within 100 tons, then identify the big wins – these are the places that you are spending the most carbon. For most of you it’s going to be your home and transportation.  If you find items that you’re spending on, but don’t value – be ruthless and reduce them, or maybe even eliminate them!

Step 5: Check out my posts (here and here)  to see how to start to tackle your home and make it more energy efficient

Please leave a comment and tell me if this post was helpful – or not.

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Study Results on Agricultural Pesticides and ADHD in Children

By Robert Fryer on May 19, 2010

Bruce Tuten

Analysis

There’s a lot of attention being paid to a new study from the University of Montreal that suggests a link between pesticides (specifically organophosphates) used on fruits and vegetables and ADHD in children.  So, I’d like to point out some key issues the study finds and some comments on it from other scientists.

  • This study attempts to show correlation not causation
  • The amount of correlation between pesticides and ADHD is not beyond chance
  • The study did not look at where the pesticides came from – that is the children could be getting exposure from different sources such as food, water or inhaled through the air
  • 94% of the urine tested found detectable levels of pesticides
  • Dr. Lynn Goldman of Johns Hopkins University (not involved in the study) agreed the tests were well conducted, but the urine samples were only taken once per child and this is not ideal
  • 20% of the children that tested positive for higher levels of pesticides also have ADHD
  • In the children with no detectable levels of pesticides, 10% have ADHD
  • The study used interviews with the children’s parents to determine if the child has ADHD
  • The EPA limits the amount of pesticide residue allowed to remain on food, but the study suggests that even this amount may not be safe
  • “Experts” say the study does not prove anything, but makes a persuasive case that justifies further study

Conclusion

Based on this information, it seems to the Smarter Context Team that this study did not show much, and in itself is not very meaningful.  We do, however, agree with the call to study it further.

We also agree with the Environmental Working Group when it states the following issues with safety standards, especially for newborns and mothers and their children while pregnant:

. . . From a regulatory perspective, fetal exposure to industrial chemicals is quite literally out of control.

The reason: the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the nation’s notoriously weak chemical safety law.   TSCA deprives the EPA of the most basic regulatory tools.  The vast majority of chemicals in use today do not have anywhere near sufficient data needed to assess their safety, particularly their safety for the unborn baby or young child.  Under TSCA, however, the EPA cannot require this data as a condition of continued chemical use.  Instead, the EPA must negotiate with industry or complete a formal “test rule” for every study that it needs, for every chemical on the market. Consequently, very few high quality toxicity tests are conducted.

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Home Solar Power or Changing Habits: Which One Has the Largest Home Energy Savings?

By Rob Fleming on May 18, 2010

For many, the idea of buying solar panels as a way to generate electricity and reduce energy bills seems pretty straightforward. But upon deeper reflection, and experience, it’s not so simple.

But first let’s start with the great news – our suburban family of four just received its April electricity bill. It was 11 dollars, that’s right 11 dollars – how did we do it?

Well let’s start back last year where our family used 603 KWH during the month of April – just below the national average for a family of four. Fast forward to April 2010 and we see that we used only 303KWH. So we saved 300KWH just by changing our behavior.

We started by simply paying attention to our lights, TVs, appliances, and heating (which is forced air so it needs electricity). It wasn’t hard at all, but the savings were huge.

Now, the solar panels that we purchased generated 263KWH, nearly half of our previous year’s electricity use. The chart below explains the supply and demands of energy.

So, think of getting to zero bills as a big squeeze. On one end is the behavior change moving towards zero, and on the other is the power generation through solar panels which is generating power and moves the family towards a zero bill.

Now, I can spend huge amounts of money and buy a gigantic solar array and get to zero. Or I can live in a cave and get to zero – neither is desirable. Think of it as supply and demand. We reduce demand by changing behavior and increase supply by purchasing solar panels.

So, if you want to cut your electric bills in half without spending any money, pay attention to your behavior and maintain the momentum. It’s easy to turn the lights on/off once in a while. It’s another thing to make it a habit – something that you do automatically. It can be contagious as the wife and kids have started following suit.

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Have a Time Out

By Robert Fryer on May 11, 2010

Numbers and nature – Enjoy!

Hat tip: gogerty.com

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How To Cut Your Carbon Footprint by 50%: What We Can Learn From Ramit Sethi and Personal Finance – Part 1

By Robert Fryer on May 11, 2010

technotheory

This is the first part of a long post, but worth it.  Go grab a cup of coffee.

Our choices and actions aren’t always rational, like lifestyle choices.  This is what science, experience and economists show us again and again.  To make smarter choices we need a path that accounts for that, otherwise, we’ll miss opportunities that we might regret later.

Make smarter choices

My personal goal is to show you ways to make better choices.  How do I know you want to make better choices?  Because that’s what you tell me!  Here’s a summary of a conversation I have over and over again with people at seminars, surveys and focus groups:

I am concerned about the environment, really.  But I’m not an environmentalist.  I like a lot of my stuff.  I really don’t want to deprive myself.  But, I feel some guilt.  I don’t think we live as responsibly as we can.  I want to do the right thing.  I want to set a good example for my children.  I recycle!  I read green tips and try to do them.  But, what I’d really like to know is how can I do more?  Is there a strategy?  And can I do the right thing without having to deprive myself of the things I love?

Does this sound familiar to you?  What strikes me about this is two things:

  1. The assumption that to live responsibly (or do the right thing) means a drop in the quality of life
  2. That people say one thing, but they do another

Where to find solutions

I look for solutions in places others don’t.  What I do, is look around and see where these same patterns are already being solved successfully.

So, where else do we see patterns that account for human nature?  Personal finance.  And there is one individual in particular who I think has an approach that successfully deals with often-less-than-rational behaviors we all have from time to time.

Ramit Sethi is the NY Times Best Selling Author of “I Will Teach You To Be Rich”.  I know, the title sounds like a scam, and that’s something Ramit has had to deal with.  But his results speak for themselves.  Check out his website here.   I personally used his system to save just under $10,000. Note: I am not selling anything with this link, and there are no affiliate relationships between Ramit and I.

What are the problem patterns?

Here are the common issues that people run into when sorting their personal finances:

  • There is the feeling of being judged for wanting what we think is “frivolous”. Ramit recounts a conversation with a friend of his that goes, “You probably won’t approve, but I want to go the Carribbean.”  Ramit replies, “Huh?  Why wouldn’t I approve? . . . Apparently he thought of me as a Finger-Wagging Money Judge, as if I silently disapprove of him for spending his money on something ‘frivolous’.  In other words, someone who writes about personal finance is automatically ‘the guy who tells me I can’t do stuff because it costs too much money.’”
  • There is the need to keep up with our friends and peers, and this can push us away from being frugal and conscious  spenders
  • The misunderstanding of the word “frugal”. Ramit says to understand it as “choosing the things you love to spend extravagantly on – and then cutting costs mercilessly on the things you don’t love”.   He adds, “The problem is that hardly anyone is deciding what’s important and what’s not, dammit! That’s where the idea of conscious spending comes in.”  For example, he goes on to discuss, “My friend spends $21,000 a year on going out – guilt-free.”

What are the solution patterns?

Here are the patterns I found in Ramit’s solutions:

  • Know what you care about and value in a prioritized list
  • Account for human nature, don’t pretend it doesn’t exist. His system permits for “frivolity” or spending on things you love, so long as you’re smart about it.
  • Go for the big wins. Tackling the places where you spend the most frees up money for other things that you value more.
  • Conscious spending and the proper understanding of “frugality”. You need to spend consciously to provide for yourself in the long term, as well as to spend freely now.
  • Spend for the long term and the rest is guilt-free to spend now

How to plan to spend consciously?  Here are Ramit’s guidelines:

  • 60%  Fixed Costs
  • 10%  Long term investments
  • 10%  Savings goals
  • 20%  Guilt-free spending money

This may lead to some questions, such as “What if you want to spend more than 20% of your take home pay on guilt-free purchases?”  In his bestseller, Ramit responds,

Bad answer: decrease contributions to long term investments and savings

Good answer: pick the three biggest expenses and optimize them to get the additional money required for guilt-free purchases

Once people start this, he finds that they become inspired by the changes, and start to modify their behavior even more.  He adds, the “idea of sustainable change is core to personal finance”.  So he suggests making realistic goals and implementing a strategy to reach each goal, collecting success after success.  Good goals are measurable, realistic and meaningful.  “Don’t just save, save for a goal.”

By now, this should sound very familiar to readers of Smarter Context.

My next post will show you what all of this has to do with “going green”, and translates these patterns into solutions that will make dramatic changes to the quality of your life.

Stay tuned . . .

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What’s the Best Car for the Environment? Maybe Not What You Think

By Chris Pastore on May 7, 2010

Kevin Dooley

The pending arrival of the Nissan Leaf got me thinking about cars and the environment again.  (BTW my previous post on the Prius vs. the Hummer is here). Considering that for many of us an automobile is a necessity, we have a new range of choices in automobile purchases to minimize the impact.

  • High efficiency conventional (like Honda Fit)
  • Gasoline-electric hybrids (like Toyota Prius)
  • Clean Diesel (like Volkswagen TDI, which COULD run on biodiesel)
  • Electric only (like the Nissan Leaf)

So which type is best?

There are different ways to consider the problem.  Some choices are to look at total cost of ownership, look at tailpipe emissions, or look at total life cycle cost.

Each of the manufacturers have their own arguments about why their technology is superior, and they are basically correct even when they disagree with each other.  That’s because it is possible to consider a select measurement of impact for any particular engine system find a way that it is best.

For example, if we look at tailpipe emissions there is no competition.  Electric vehicles win.  They make no exhaust, just heat, and less heat than other cars.

But, suppose we look at the emissions associated driving the car.  The electric cars got their power from somewhere, and that somewhere probably had emissions.  We could look at the total greenhouse gas emissions associated with driving (like GHG per mile) that includes the electricity generation.

The Institute for Life Cycle Analysis did this.  When they considered total greenhouse gas emissions, the biodiesel has the smallest total impact, the electric car the worst (still good, but worst of the 5) and the other 3 about equal in the middle.

It gets more complicated the closer you look

What is the real greenhouse gas emissions associated with an electric car?  Clearly it makes a difference if you got your power from a coal burning plant, a nuclear plant, or an hydroelectric dam.

And if that’s not complicated enough, we really need to consider the energy and pollution associated with actually making the car.  The Center for Transportation Research at Argonne National Laboratory has developed a detailed model of green house gases over the lifetime of automobiles. This includes the pollution associated with producing the car and what is created while driving (or charging).

A telling comment from one of their research papers is:

We found that the production of materials accounts for a majority of the vehicle-cycle energy use and emissions of all the vehicles examined.

As cars get more energy efficient, the production of the car is more polluting than running it!

You might think the key would be to reduce the weight of the car.  If there’s less stuff, there must have been less energy to produce the stuff.  And that would be right if we were using the same stuff.  5,000 pounds of steel is more polluting than 3,000 pounds.  And a lighter car makes the engine more efficient.

But, in order to keep the cars safe while making them lighter, designers are using advanced materials – high tech aluminum alloys, carbon/epoxy composites, etc. And these materials use more energy per pound to produce than traditional materials!

What car should you buy?

I think at this point it is fair to say that when you want a car with minimal impact, just make sure it is energy efficient, look for government incentives, and find something you like.  One’s not really better than the other right now.

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Dr. Andrew Weil Video Recommends Organic Food Shopping Guide

By Robert Fryer on April 28, 2010

foodnews.org and ewg.org

Organic food is worthwhile buying, especially because it’s pesticide free.  But, organic food is expensive.  Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to know which organic food contained the most pesticides?  And which the least?  So that you could spend your money where it really mattered?

The folks at the Environmental Working Group (EWG)  did just that.  Here’s a video with Dr. Andrew Weil explaining why this shopping guide is necessary.

You can download this guide and take it with you to the grocery store.  I actually do this.  You can download it here.  It’s free.

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Another Nail in the Coffin of “Tips for Going Green” and The Pursuit of Honest Green Residential Building

By Robert Fryer on April 23, 2010

As the readers of this blog know, I am highly suspicious of the well meaning, yet misleading and short sighted green home and lifestyle tips peddled at other websites and in books.  That’s why I write in the Lifestyle and Green Hacking parts of this site that you must target the big wins first and tackle them ruthlessly.

Well, I discovered a kindred spirit in that philosophy.  Notice how Catherine Mohr talks about the elephant in the living room.  Brilliant.

Now, after watching this, ask yourself what other elephants she herself may have missed!  Leave a comment with your answer, and I’ll post later with what I was thinking.

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David Foster Wallace on American Culture and Choices

By Robert Fryer on April 18, 2010

Lesezugriff

The following is an excerpt from a 2003 interview that was just released with David Foster Wallace.  I made the transcript myself, but the interview can be found here, in ten parts.

I include this as part of Smarter Context as a way to understand why we make the choices we do as a culture.  Hopefully, insight like this will lead to awareness.  Hopefully, awareness will lead to change.

DFW:  To the extent that I understand it, being grown up isn’t a lot of fun a lot of the time.  There’ re things that you have to do, there are things that you want to do that you can’t do for a variety of reasons.  I think for young people in America there are very mixed messages from the culture.  There’s a streak of moralism in American life that extols the virtue being grown up and having a family and being a responsible citizen.  But, there’s also the sense of do what you want, gratify your appetites.  When I’m a corporation, appealing to the parts of you that are selfish and self centered and wanting to have fun all the time is the best way to sell you things.

And the point that emerges from all of that is, I think, one more example of American cultural and economic systems that work very well in terms of selling people products and keeping the economy thriving, but do not work as well when it comes to educating children or helping each other know how to live and to be happy.

Q: Where doesn’t it work?

DFW: One’s reduced to talking about general terms like being grown up.  Or a term that’s rarely used here anymore, and see it’s  . . . now I feel embarrassed because I’m going to sound like my grandfather, but the word “citizen”.  The idea of being a citizen would be to understand your country’s history and the things about it that are good and not so good, and how the system works and taking the trouble to learn about candidates for political office, which means often reading stuff.  Which often isn’t fun – sometimes it’s boring.  When people don’t do that, here’s what happens.  The candidates win who have the most money to buy television advertisements, because television advertisements are almost all that voters know about the candidates.  Therefore, we get candidates who are beholden to large donors and become in some ways corrupt, which disgusts the voters and makes the voters even less interested in politics, less willing to read and do the work of citizenship.

When I was a little boy, there was this class called “Citizenship”.  Here are certain things about America and America’s history, here’s why it’s important to vote.  Here’s why it’s important not to go in and just vote for who the best looking candidate is . . .

. . . here’s what’s really interesting, and I don’t know if you can translate this.  But talking about this now, I feel ashamed, because my saying all this sounds to me like an older person saying this, like a person wagging their finger lecturing.  Which, in American culture, sets me up to be ridiculed.  It would be very easy to make fun of what I’m saying.  And I can hear in my head a voice making fun of this stuff as I’m saying it, and this is the kind of paradox, I think, of what it is to be a halfway intelligent American right now, and probably also a western European, is that there are things we know that are right, and good, and probably would be better for us to do, but constantly it’s so much funnier and nicer to go and do something else.  Who cares?  And it’s all bullshit anyway.

One of the things this causes is tension and unhappiness in people.  I don’t think it’s very complicated, and I don’t think I’ve named the only reason for it.  The paradox is that that sort of tension and complication and conflict in people also makes them very easy to market to, because I can say, “Feeling uneasy?  Life feels empty?  Here’s something you can buy and something you can go do.”  The economic word is “inelasticity of demand”; I demand all the time, no matter what the price of it is.  And it works really well in an economic way.  Emotionally, spiritually, in terms of citizenship, in terms of feeling like a meaningful part even of this country – forget the world – I’m sure the US government’s sort of arrogance and disdain for the rest of the world is unpleasant.  But, it’s also a natural extension of certain cultural messages we send ourselves about ourselves that work very well in some ways and that make us very rich and very powerful.  It’s all . . . complicated.

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