The Doldrums: Let’s Spend Money to Lift the Spirits!
One Point Zero
Howard Fairbank
Wed 7 Sep 2016 04:10
ANL Bindaree's position today: 11:24.90S 158:58.40W
'From the Bridge'
Another Sunset! Two suns this time!
Today we are in 20 knots of Trade winds, just like it is ‘supposed to be out here! Yesterday was also as it is supposed to be: The Doldrums: No wind at all, and hot! As you can see we are flying along, and another hour gained yesterday, as we set the clock back.
Quite a few islands / atolls from the Kiibati group passed. The closest one was Starbuck Island, and of course it does make one have a light hearted wonder: Have their cappuccinos reached here??
This morning at 6am we were right above the first big mountain cone, rising almost 4000 m off the bottom as a 7 mile diameter cone! Just after that we entered the Penryhn Basis zone a depression that goes down to 5500 metres below sea level, and at the one edge has the sea mountain of some 18 000 ft that forms Penryhn island / atoll that sticks up above the surface. That’s a tall mountain by anyone’s standards! All reminds me of the many islands and atolls I visited on Allone in 2014. I have to say it’s much more intimate and special being on Allone and being able to enter these atolls and feel our connection with Nature. We’ll be back together soon, and hopefully heading for Fiji!
Inside an atoll, with the outer (fringe) reef or ‘motu’ in the distance with the waves crashing on it!
I went down to the bilge yesterday with Comin, the Romanian Chief Officer. Seven storeys below deck: Down caged ladders to check if the pumps and stuff were all working. Interestingly these ships are all double skinned and between the skins are interconnecting water ballast tanks that supposedly smooth our ride! Today the ship has been rocking and rolling quite a bit, but they say it’s normal!
That's Comin and the bilge entry hatch.
The 2015 A.T. Kearney Consumer Wealth and Spending Study Report states: “It's no surprise that global wealth and spending have soared since 1990 and will continue to do so. Adjusting for inflation in both unit cost of goods and currency, growth in real spending will increase by $12 trillion in the next 10 years. Spending on food will account for about 10 percent of this growth, while spending on durable goods, personal care items, transportation, healthcare, hotels, and leisure activities will account for a larger percentage. The United States will continue to be the largest contributor to this increased spending.
Advertisers Will Spend Nearly $600 Billion Worldwide in 2015
A cool add for beer in Cook Islands!
Flying going Skyward:
Enough, enough, we know all this…..
We all know all this, but hey man when is it going to stop, slow down, or at least just take a break??? Can I stop it? Can ‘you and I’ stop it? Can ‘lots of us’ stop it? Yeah, I think ‘lots of us’ can…. But ‘we’ need to want to…?
Huge Inspiration needed!! Will ‘our’ Anthropocentricism one day be seen as a much worse Apartheid! Seems OK today, but so did slavery and apartheid at one time!
The Reality of The Chasm…..
A cool add for beer in Cook Islands!
From eMarketer: Around the world, advertisers will spend $592.43 billion in 2015, according to new figures from eMarketer, an increase of 6.0% over 2014 stats. US, China, Japan, Germany and the UK lead as the top five ad markets.
Did you know? Google and Facebook were very recently ranked no 2 and 5 respectively on the largest listed companies, by market capitalization in the US? Well, it may be a surprise, but both the companies are ‘Advertising Companies’! They make their money from being the best at connecting the most buyers to (the most?) sellers through advertising! I haven’t seen one advertisement for more than a week now!
“Flights over the Atlantic were up 6.3 % last year and worldwide up 5.1 %. There were 1400 flights a day cross the North Atlantic alone…! Advances in aircraft positioning is allowing planes to get closer and 5 carriage ways tracks across the Atlantic now expanded to six to enable more planes!” London Times & Sunday Times, 4 December 2015.
Hmmm, rather than this fourteen day ‘ship stuff’ with all these new highways opening up, maybe I’ll just join ‘The Crowd’ that does it ‘overnight’, again? After all, the planes still fly with or without little, One Point Zero, Howard as a passenger!!
You fly, I fly, they fly, we all fly, and then the plane can fly and none individually takes responsibility for the footprint problem. After all, “It was the airlines who offered us the seat and service???” Also..... “Oh, but if they didn’t, another airline would?!! And each month I get a letter from my Airline Frequent Flyer offering more flying for me. And the more flying I do, the more free flying I get…” Who is at the centre of the ‘crime’ ? Hmmm, if only…..???
Enough, enough, we know all this…..
We all know all this, but hey man when is it going to stop, slow down, or at least just take a break??? Can I stop it? Can ‘you and I’ stop it? Can ‘lots of us’ stop it? Yeah, I think ‘lots of us’ can…. But ‘we’ need to want to…?
On that one, this ‘Trumped by Adventure’ has really got me by the ‘short and curlies’ and challenging my very core with a ‘Big Why’:
Why don’t 97% (???) of ‘us’, people ‘of my demographic’ want ‘IT’…???
Huge Inspiration needed!! Will ‘our’ Anthropocentricism one day be seen as a much worse Apartheid! Seems OK today, but so did slavery and apartheid at one time!
I have many views on this, but probably the ‘today conclusion’ is: People don’t know what ‘IT’ is or if they do, ‘IT’ isn’t important enough in their life priorities…
Hmmm, this makes me wonder what I have got wrong??? Because if 97% (??) of people ‘like me’ don’t want ‘IT’, I must have something wrong with me as a ‘normal’ human? No laughing hey! This is really challenging me at the moment, but that’s my problem not yours! (And I do realize ‘you’ could already be a way more advanced and dedicated One Point Zero-er already. If so please, please send an email to me or comment here, and I’d love to link up.)
Well what is ‘IT’ then?
‘IT’ is a very simple thing: ‘IT’ is a restored and fully working, give-take, flourishing relationship with Nature. Basically where we are back to One Point Zero! Given how long we have been living on a fractured relationship, I sense ‘we’ developed nation people don’t know what it’s like to have a flourishing one?
I had to go out and live in the full intensity of Nature’s Grand Adventure to find ‘IT’ myself: Crisscrossing much of the surface of this planet by yacht, bicycle, foot and skis to find out what this ‘IT’ is about….. I found many people, and communities who knew ‘IT’. For some, ‘IT’ was just a memory, taken away by the anthropocentric colonialists who promised a ‘better ‘IT’. A few were still living ‘IT’ and I stopped, chatted and learnt more about ‘IT’. They were oblivious to ‘The Fracture’, and as they say: ‘Ignorance is Bliss’, and especially in this situation”.
But as I had these ‘IT’ experiences and saw how western ideology was being rolled out everywhere, I realized that Nature has long walked away from the whole of Humanity and the relationship is fractured. Sadly the innocent are being abandoned by Nature too, as it’s a ‘whole planet’ issue. In ‘managing’ the Planet, Nature just deals with us as a whole, so to repair the fracture we need to start dealing with ‘US’ as a whole.
Nature is now just doing what it has to do, in the void of human cooperation. Not just the void of cooperation but a human pursuit of ‘mass planet destruction’…. Humans don’t belong, nor are wanted on this planet any more. Not by any other creature but ‘our’ pets! We are like alien pirates of rape and pillage, who seemingly have ‘somewhere else’ as home!
The Reality of The Chasm…..
Beyond the wonderful experience of seeing our amazing planet, Nature’s special wilderness, and understanding ‘IT’, this fracture, The Chasm, has made me all very sad! I realize it’s not something I can just fix for me. We as humanity have to fix it and it will take a supreme desire and effort.
The most difficult has been seeing that for almost forty five years of my life, I was contributing to ‘the destruction’. I was just following the Western Success Ideology, oblivious to its myths, tentacles, and self-fulfilling lies that were leading me away from the most important earthly belonging relationship: that with Nature.
As I ‘go my journey’, I find myself apologizing to many of the younger generation I meet. Apologizing for my contribution to the destruction and asking forgiveness in my admission, and the fact that, once I knew I was a planet destroyer, I have tried to stop, and as abruptly as I could….
What made me stop, go try and find ‘IT’ I don’t know? I have asked myself this question many times, but in the absence of rational reason, I sense the embers of my soul, almost extinguished by Western Ideology, had just enough warmth to fuel a fire that took me on an amazing adventure and discovery that found ‘IT’ and the earthly spiritual belonging context!
Trying to have ‘IT’ a flourishing relationship, when Nature has turned its back on all humans has been my challenge since experiencing what the full ‘IT’ could be like! In a spiritual context I do believe that living according to Nature’s rules does have some transcendental peace context, and knowingly contravening Nature’s rules has a soul eroding context.
This is captured in the Pantheist views, and although I’m not a formal Pantheist, I do align almost totally with their views. Here is an excerpt from ‘Elements of Pantheism’ by Paul Harrison:
“Pantheists view their place in Nature as quite different from that of ‘other’ western religions. It does not see humans as masters of Nature. Neither does it see humans as stewards of Nature. (A steward simply managing for an absent master, Rather Pantheists see humans as members of the natural community of all life on earth with the same rights as other members, but with greater duties because of our greater power to do harm. We must be partners and participants in nature.”
You may see why I focused on our ‘Environmental Identity’ aspect and also why I believe One Point Zero is the conditional minimum for a relationship with Nature. Anything less will not budge Nature’s cold shoulder!
How is your Environmental Identity exploration going???