Traveling is a fool’s paradise

Traveling is a fool’s paradise

Can Belonging Save Us from Ourselves?

Traveling is a fool’s paradise.

Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of place:

an affect to be intoxicated with the new sights and sounds, but I am not -

For the hole within me goes with me wherever I go.

– from Self Reliance by Henry D. Thoreau

Council for the Town of Canmore passed a motion to restrict overnight camping in vehicles on public land on May 7

In the June 10 edition of the National Post there was an interesting article on people living in their camping vehicles on public land all summer long.

Living in any number of Western Canada’s mountain towns has its advantages — namely, access to adventure — but it includes a list of challenges, including finding a place to live that’s affordable. And so, when rental rates start to climb, purchasing outright is out of reach and vacancy rates slide towards nil, some people are living out of their vehicles, parking on municipal and Crown land in order to live the dream without going broke while doing it. It’s leading, in some places, to standoffs between those who say they’ve chosen to live in their vans or live there out of necessity, and municipal councils that are trying to be receptive to public complaints over the van lifers. https://nationalpost.com/news/vanmore-mountain-towns-van-livers-co-exist-in-a-delicate-balance

This article got me thinking about two issues: housing affordability and the whole idea of not being rooted to place – what it is to live with no sense of home? of not belonging? of not feeling, deep in your bones, that you are part of a place? Now, while housing affordability is clearly a good political issue if you are a candidate in an election [as I am] it just didn’t resonate with my Club of Rome persona. So, instead, you get stuck reading about belonging or rather, the lack thereof, as expressed by peoples’ insane [to me] desire to constantly travel and find yet another perfect view for their photo album collection.  In the interest in ‘fairness’ I will admit that this writing has no intention of being fair. I will simply propose to you the following provocative statement:

Your need for constant travel is rooted in a deep disconnection to the land and people where you live.

Now, to be clear, I am not talking about travel to see a new baby, or a funeral or a business trip or a once in decade tour of Paris or Machu Picchu. I am talking about the travel that is a type of escape from yourself, a type of travel you, as the quote from Thoreau shows, that is your substitute for the healthy self-examination best found in the woods and hills of your backyard as you walk with your neighbour or sister on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. This picture of mountain climbers near the summit on Everest makes it clear: our insane need to “find ourselves” at the far end of the globe is not dubious in terms of filling “that hole within” that Thoreau refers to, but is clearly absurd when so many people are doing the same thing as you. In effect, this ‘solution’ has created a new ‘problem’ – mass tourism that destroys the very thing the tourist has come admire and enjoy.

Traffic chokes the Hillary Step on May 19/2012. Some climbers spent 2 hrs waiting:

234 people reached the top on this day – 4 died.

Last month there was a new development: three Western climbers were involved in a bloody brawl at 21,000ft with an estimated 100 Sherpas. Ice picks were brandished, rocks thrown and the snow stained with blood. Swiss climber Ueli Steck – one of the world’s celebrated mountaineers – was hit in the face with a stone.

The fight broke out after an altercation higher up the mountain, when the three climbers crossed paths with a group of Sherpas laying ropes for wealthy clients, who will pay up to £50,000 for the trek. Angry queues and criss-crossed ropes are now a common sight. All the evidence suggests that Everest is at risk of becoming a towering symbol of human intrusion, rather than endurance. Hillary and Norgay famously declined to say who reached the summit first in order to share the credit. Now people are elbowing each other on their way to the top, often with scant regard for their own safety and that of others. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/mounteverest/10082953/Everest-waiting-time-two-hours.html

Personally, I find this insane. While I do not mean that all the individuals climbing are ‘nuts’; just that a society where people have a need to do this kind of thing at such a mass level is just not a sign of health. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not against all travelling. I certainly did my share of traveling when young, which I think is a GREAT way to mature and learn when young. However, like all youth in the past, I did so with almost no money. That meant, while in France, sleeping at youth hostels and eating baguettes and cheese on the front steps with a cheap bottle of local red wine. Back then there were no crowds, as I biked from small town to small town – because it was fun and all that I could afford. It’s different now. People travel like crazy and demand comfort. In doing so, they risk destroying the very beauty and culture they came to see. Here is a case in point.

BAR HARBOR, Me. — Residents of this scenic coastal town have struggled for the last several years with a conundrum familiar to anyone living in a beautiful place that attracts tourists: How do you maintain its essence when crowds threaten the very qualities they come to enjoy? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/31/us/bar-harbor-cruise-acadia.html

There are many more examples of the above, but you get the idea. Here is another perspective. There is much research these days that much of our unhappiness, that sadly often become mental illness, stems from being alone – from not belonging. Belonging is complex – but at its foundation is the sense that “I” and the place I live, are one. Here is a quote from a book that I strongly recommend reading – by Sebastian Junger, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

In effect, humans have dragged a body with a long hominid history into an overfed, malnourished, sedentary, sunlight-deficient, sleep-deprived, competitive, inequitable, and socially-isolating environment with dire consequences.

And in Alone Together by Sherri Turkle we hear this commentary about our modern society:

“But when technology engineers intimacy, relationships can be reduced to mere connections. And then, easy connection becomes redefined as intimacy. Put otherwise, cyberintimacies slide into cybersolitudes. And with constant connection comes new anxieties of disconnection,”

As a final argument for not traveling for the sake of mere titillation I remind you that the genius of Dante, whose epic poem The Divine Comedy became the foundation for the Italian language, was lit of fire when he was banished for life from his beloved Florence – for him, to not live in Florence was a banishment into the Hell he so vividly portrayed in this poem. And don’t forget that Socrates, a foundation stone of Western Civilization, took poison rather than leave his beloved Athens.

So, let’s be more like Dorothy, who when she wanted to leave Oz and return home, had only to say:

There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home…

Climate change could make insurance too expensive for most people

Climate change could make insurance too expensive for most people – report

Munich Re, world’s largest reinsurance firm, warns premium rises could become social issue

Arthur Neslen 21 Mar2019 2  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/21/climate-change-could-make-insurance-too-expensive-for-ordinary-people-report

Insurers have warned that climate change could make cover for ordinary people unaffordable after the world’s largest reinsurance firm blamed global warming for $24bn (£18bn) of losses in the Californian wildfires.Ernst Rauch, Munich Re’s chief climatologist, told the Guardian that the costs could soon be widely felt, with premium rises already under discussion with clients holding asset concentrations in vulnerable parts of the state.

“If the risk from wildfires, flooding, storms or hail is increasing then the only sustainable option we have is to adjust our risk prices accordingly. In the long run it might become a social issue,” he said after Munich Re published a report into climate change’s impact on wildfires. “Affordability is so critical [because] some people on low and average incomes in some regions will no longer be able to buy insurance.”The lion’s share of California’s 20 worst forest blazes since the 1930s have occurred this millennium, in years characterised by abnormally high summer temperatures and “exceptional dryness” between May and October, according to a new analysis by Munich Re.Wetter and more humid winters spurred new forest growth which became tinder dry in heatwave conditions that preceded the wildfires, the report’s authors said.After comparing observational data spanning several decades with climate models, the report concluded that the wildfires, which killed 85 people, were “broadly consistent with climate change”.

Climate change threatens ability of insurers to manage risk

Nicolas Jeanmart, the head of personal insurance, general insurance and macroeconomics at Insurance Europe, which speaks for 34 national insurance associations, said

the knock-on effects from rising premiums could pose a threat to social order. “The sector is concerned that continuing global increases in temperature could make it increasingly difficult to offer the affordable financial protection that people deserve, and that modern society requires to function properly,”

he said.Munich Re’s insurance cover in hurricane-prone regions such as Florida is already higher than in northern Europe, by an order of magnitude.Premiums are also being adjusted in regions facing an increased threat from severe convective storms which hold an energy and severity primed by global warming. These include parts of Germany, Austria, France, south-west Italy and the US midwest.

Increases in the intensity and frequency of California’s wildfire season are predicted by climate models, and the Munich Re analysis combines monthly meteorological data with financial losses to graph the trend’s rise since 2001.Average annual wildfire losses trailed well below $5bn even within this millennium, until 2017 and 2018, when they leapt to more than $20bn. Munich Re believes that global warming made a “significant contribution” to this.No insurer has linked wildfires to climate change before, although a Lloyds report into Superstorm Sandy in 2014 found that global warming-linked sea level rises had increased surge losses around Manhattan by 30%.Climate scientists say that linking extreme weather events to climate change is akin to attributing the performance of a steroid-taking sportsman to drug use – the connections are clearer in patterns than in individual disasters.

Paul Fisher, the Bank of England’s former coordinator on climate change, and a fellow at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, said: “In general, one can’t prove that a single event is the result of climate change but it is likely to cause more such events of greater severity.”“It is very interesting if insurers conclude that climate change was a significant contributory factor to the event and will make the insurance companies think carefully about the pricing and availability of similar insurance policies.”It may also influence several court cases testing the liability of fossil fuel companies for the effects of global warming.Dr Ben Caldecott, the director of Oxford University’s sustainable finance programme, said: “Company directors and fiduciaries will ultimately be held responsible for avoidable climate-related damages and losses and urgently need to up their game to avoid litigation and liability.”Munich Re has divested its large thermal coal holdings. However, it maintains some gas and oil investments.

Inevitably, national growth economies reach a point where many citizens begin to suspect that growth is no longer worth the cost

I just needed to read something of pure intellect to clear my mind. So here is my sharing today - food for thought, if you enjoy this kind of thing {I do!}

Inevitably, national growth economies reach a point where many citizens begin to suspect that growth is no longer worth the cost of excessively rapid adaptation to an accelerating economy of no return—that so-called economic growth has in reality become uneconomicgrowth. John Stuart Mill recognized that long ago. Why have not more recognized it? Why is growth still the summum bonum of economists and politicians? Probably because growth is our substitute for sharing as a cure for poverty. And because our national accounts (GDP) are incapable of even registering uneconomic growth because they count only value added by labor and capital, and omit entirely the cost of using up that to which value is added, namely the entropic flow of natural resources, the very sap of life and wealth.

More at http://www.pelicanweb.org/solisustv15n06page14.html