Givers

I listened to a podcast www.furledsails.com last night where they interviewed a couple Dave Zeiger and Anke Wagner their cruising experiences in Alaska. The couple spend 9/10 of the year at sea living on wild grown plants, fish, and seaweed they buy few grocery store products and have a food budget of only $1,000 per year. Their sailing craft was built out of plywood and coated in copper and biodegradable paints, when they die at sea everything about what they do will simply be consumed and reused by the earth.

In the book "Ishmael" they discuss the idea of takers and givers. If you haven't read the book I don't want to take anything away, just that you should read it. In the book it outlines the fact that Humans give nothing back after their life, their lifestyles consume at the burden of all other living things on the planet. At the end Humans don't even donate their flesh back to the earth, selfishly they burn their flesh or bury it in concrete boxes to 'Protect' it from the bugs and planetary recycling system. Take everything and give nothing back.

Animals, plants and all other species on the planet are there to protect their planet and provide through "Consumption Recycling" and or their own death to provide a balance that protects and ensure the future. In the end they leave this planet and donate their bones and flesh back to it to support the smallest of creatures which in turn ensure vibrant healthy soil for plants, which provide food for animals, which provide meat for carnivours, which in turn die and provide food for the earth.

Humans truly 'takers' of the planets resources giving nothing back. The perfect example of this is the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" which is a grouping of floating trash in two sections of the Pacific estimated to be larger than the continental United States is further decaying the fabric of our oceans. Unseen it's not even visible on Google Earth and receives little media attention. Maybe it's not even there.

Recently two men sailed on a pile of trash lashed together with the cockpit of a smal Cessna Airplane to Hawaii to bring further interest to the area but few noticed. Bloggers and other people have tried to shed light on it, but no one is offering any solutions. I have a solution.

I believe it's time for environmentalists to creat their own nation. Self serving, self governing and self aware. LIke the men in the raft an area of floating trash lashed together, topsoiled and turned into a small floating continent. Although it would continually spin at a very slow rate it would hardly move. The rolling of the nation would be unnoticed after some time and the mild weather of that region would provide a wonderfull area for sustainable crops. Certainly no exports or imports could be allowed because in order to be truly a giver the floating island should only support the basic necessities and that which it could not provide on it's own should not survive.

Population could not explode because food and fresh water would be limited. Electricity could only be used that could be generated by wind, sun or current but most of that may need to be used to generate water. All things must be gathered from itself. Excrement should be used to creat soil with shreaded plastic (possible), burials should be done in the created land. Fishing should be done to sustain only the population on the land, and shelters should be created from the trash basis. Government will be needed with a strong constitution not singling out Human life as the priority but the sustainability of the land as the priority. When we no longer value human life over that of the land our decisions will change.

Why higher learing is as corrupt as politics.

Get a degree!

 

It's getting more and more crucial that you get a degree to get a decent job.  Even in the direct sales market it's becoming a requirement of many companies that applicants have a bachelors and some require a masters degree in order to be considered.  On my recent job hunt a position that truly interested me with GE required a masters degree to be even considered, mind you no experience in sales was required, just the masters degree.  Master's degree in WHAT?

 

I postulated maybe a masters in engineering as the position was an industrial equipment sales position and I could see how an engineering degree would be beneficial. Nope.  Maybe Masters in Psychology, after all sales is psychological more than anything else, will over instinct, leading questions and discerning a persons true interest?  Nope.  Mind you any of these specialty degrees would earn an excellent income in their respective fields, so why would you put yourself into a sales position?

 

Actually the ad did not distinguish the type of Masters degree needed, just simply that you had one.  Indicating that the true desire of companies is that you have completed higher education simply to weed through the pack regardless of the value or even the relevance of that education.  I guess a masters in art would prove just as valuable to the position of Industrial Cleaning Products specific to the Automotive Manufacturing Industry, that makes tons of sense.

 

I guess that's what brings me to my real point.  The value of that degree.  My wife has recently taken on the challenge of becoming a teacher and has completed her first year of school and onto the second, I'm very proud of her.  The first year she spent at University of Phoenix, sold on the idea of flexibility of schedule and expedited degree we ignored the outrageous price tag in favor of time.  Besides after rashioning out the expense of books travel etc... it seemed like a good idea.

 

Replacing in class time came at a cost, 3 500 to 1500 word essays per week with only two classes.  Resources were specified web pages and on your own studies but could not include some websites, like Wikipedia.  By the end of the first year she was so burnt out she decided to take classes at our local city college and take advantage of the transferability of her credits she was PROMISED by U of P.  Basically after working with the new college and going through the transcripts we spent 10k on Electives, I don't know how History, English, Education, and Computer classes are electives but when you're talking about money each college really just values their own curriculum.

 

And they don't stop there, her philosophy class takes the cake.  She told me today that she won't be able to recoup the $140.00 cost of the book she bought for philosophy by selling it.  "Why?"  I asked.  Well the Professor makes it part of the grade that you use all the white space in the book for personal ideas thoughts and suggestions, "Write everywhere, your grade requires it."  The next obvious question asked "What does this guy get a kickback from the publisher?"  He's the author it turns out.  OF PHILOSOPHY.  I have a deep ethical objection to a teacher of philosophy teaching their own book on the subject to begin with, the basis of philosophy to me has always been to question everything, therefore it's not possible to teach a subject on a book you wrote as there's no one to question the text, not to mention the purely greedy requirement of destroying the book to increase his own sales. 

 

Get a degree!  It won't make you smarter but it'll make your life easier.