We have just concluded a two-week trip to Baja, California, watching whales and kayaking. It’s different and beautiful down there except for the litter all about, the run down buildings and impoverished population.
Our guides were educated men and women – this is common. One is a marine biologist. What the hell is he doing helping privileged Americans and Canadians push kayaks cross the Sea of Cortez? It is a but choice he made. Why? Because all the other choices were worse. That makes me sad. He wants to apply his learning but cannot break through. So he lives in Lareto and in winter makes his living erecting tents and paddling his kayak at a far slower rate than he is capable of …
Watching gray whales was a treat, of course. There are about 20,000 of them now, long removed from the endangered species list. They travel thousands of miles to enter the lagoons and bays of Baja to have their young and to mate. They are baleen, that is, have no teeth. They feed on the ocean bottom scraping up crustaceans, and consequently are a gentle species. They are safe in the lagoons, as Orcas and other predators do not enter the warmer waters. This gives the calves a fighting chance.
Climate change is a topic of conversation. I am impressed with our system of brainwashing, as the notion that the planet is becoming uninhabitable has made its way into the deepest neurons of every brain held up by two legs. To say otherwise produces no interest, even anger. The anger, the inability to hear an alternative point of view without an irrational aggressive reaction, is a sign of brainwashing. But damned if they are not very, very good at it.
Last evening we had to wait an hour on our plane at LAX, as Alaska Air made the mistake of taking us to a domestic terminal even as we were an international flight. We had to board a bus to be herded to immigration. It is absurd, of course, as 99.99% of us are harmless, yet there were men and women walking around with guns!
This is done, I think, to sell the idea that there is danger about. I think it tells a larger story, however, one that offers the narrowest shaft of light, barely perceivable. Those guns, all those self-important jack offs with their uniforms and rubber stamps, are there for a reason. There is indeed fear in the air. It is us, of course, as we are taught to be that way. But it is the leadership too. They would not herd us like cattle, show us guns, make us pose for photos and state our destinations and activities unless they feared us.
And that offers me some comfort as I live out my days on this wackadoo planet. They fear us! Imagine a world where people who wanted to travel simply bought a ticket and got on a plane. Such a world is possible and would work with no problems. That is a cloesly guarded secret.
Piece of Mindful 
Your observations are enlightening and true for me too. Life could be a lot simpler ⛵️
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Regarding climate change/ocean rise, I came upon these pics of Hawaii’s coastline taken at the turn of the century.
https://www.hawaiimagazine.com/content/photos-waikiki-early-1900s-and-now
Keep in mind presently we have over a billion cars and a 100,000 commercial daily flights today.
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That fear is real. Our consent is all that keeps the man-made fantasy alive. Each debt-slave can choose, individually, to escape this centuries-old dilemma.
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Mark, Thanks so much for sharing your vacation experience! It is so sad to me that such an educated man can only find work as a “kayak pusher”, such a travesty that so many jobs have been farmed out overseas and “we the people” are left with mindless tasks to make ends meet…
I haven’t traveled in several years, but I do recall when companions could go with passengers to the airport gate to see their loved one off or greet them upon arrival. Very sad that the travesty of 9/11 changed all of that and created such fear porn.
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Mark I discovered POM few years back. Since then I cannot begin to express how much more relaxed I am in general. Previously I never bought into the fear being sold to us. But I didn’t know it was fake either. Thanks to POM and MMC (and myself not giving up my web dig for intelligent & real) now I know.
I am grateful to live vicariously through POM/MMC as well since I will never have the means to travel outside the U.S. Which brings me to my point. I also don’t have much patience for hoops affecting my interest. The reasons were cited by you: Traveling is pain in the ass waiting to happen. I believe traveling outside the U.S. is purposely made unappealing by removing the simplicity aspect. If simple like it could be and should be then hundreds more would most likely join in causing maybe crowding problems. In other words I believe TPTB insert difficulties to test how bad we want something. Those that really want it will make it happen. Those on the fence are tested to take it up a notch or do without. In other words I believe TPTB like to install systems to weed out the true majority. Otherwise many more people would possibly be doctors lawyers pilots world travelers… Hence TPTB unnecessary yet cemented in place goon hamster wheel deterrent how bad do you want it tests.
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You could be right, but I tend to think that customs has useful purposes having to do with introduction of plants and vegetables and fruits to a foreign place where they are thrive and harm local production. They seem to be all over that. My wife was once stopped by a “drug”-sniffing dog that discovered cheese from the airplane in her travel backpack. She and a friend stressed over several bottles of table spice they brought in and declared, only to be shrugged off by the officer. It wasn’t a live organism.
If you get a chance, do travel. It has changed me in ways I would not have anticipated.
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marine biologist, personal shopper, …what ever. The world is full of people not doing what they once learned. It is because there is no need for so much labor anymore. If you still want or have to work, you’ll have to adapt, learn new skills, etc. Besides, guiding tourists in a nice holiday place is not such a bad job, isn’t it? If he wants to do something different, what’s stopping him? I once decided to leave a convenient engineering job in a small company in a small city to start working consulting projects for banks in Frankfurt. The problem with people complaining about their jobs is, that they never really learned anything of importance. Making a degree in something does not mean much today. If you have skills, you’ll always find a job, and if you can’t find one, you have no skills. And I say this as a woman who always worked within dominant alpha males. As for the second part of your writing Mark, I’m convinced all this airport harassing is to discourage people from traveling. It sucks, but on the other side, all places got unified. There is no exotic anymore. You’ll find a McDonald everywhere, metaphorically speaking. So why bother to travel? It is not like you can discover anything new there.
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In the US we have a term, “mansplaining,” defined as for a man “to explain something to a woman in a condescending, overconfident, and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner.” I find the “often inaccurate and oversimplified” aspect to be most descriptive of your attitude about everything from the existence of DNA to disease and pain, and now to occupations and customs and travel.
Customs is a highly repetitive process wherein people behind the desks are lulled into a somnambulant state, barely cognizant. Guns are on display for a reason. It has to be for intimidation, as they have never, ever been used in that setting. To discourage people from traveling? They are better than that. If that was tbeir objective, there would not be 100,000 flights daily to every place on the planet.
Our guide, Mario, has to have in him some deep resentment, as would I, to be a servant of people with more money and less ability that he has. Our group of 11 people had within it no one of any partucular skill or of any particularly interesting nature. In fact, they by and large seemed fluffy, that is, overprivileged and underskilled. In his shoes, I would quietly seethe in contempt.
I exclude myself, of course, from any negative description above.
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I sometimes stumble upon one of this fake “customs” shows on TV, where for instance Australian officers are finding very weird food in a Chinese luggage suggesting that this weird stuff is a rare delicacy and some people are willing to risk going to jail just to smuggle some of it. They won’t make a fortune and they know they will get caught. Makes no sense to me. Or some German customs officers taking lots of effort, stopping and searching reucks on the highway just to occasionally get one with some dope in it. Or with some packs of tax free cigarettes? The entire customs business, absurd pseudo security checks, visa requirements, etc. are IMO to discourage people from traveling. They won’t forbid it, they want people to give up traveling or reduce it. It is a long term plan. As they did with cigarettes. Smoking is out now, no? Who would have thought that a few years ago? You yourself just started traveling after you retired, no? Did you travel a lot to Europe before that? Well, I know people who fly around the world on expensive holidays four times a year. They spend all their money on it. We all want some holidays from time to time, that’s a fact. But do we have to travel that much? Or that far? Are business travels really necessary today? Do politicians need to travel at all? Signing documents can legally be made via pdf files, conferences and meetings organized via skype, etc. It’s even more effective, if people cannot face each other directly and take offense to easily. Yet still Angela Merkel has to fly to the USA to shake the hand of Donald Trump? Come on. I think, in a few decades flying will become obsolete and out as cigarettes are now. Same thing with driving long distances with your own car. Electrical cars will do that trick. It just takes some time to come down from 100,000 flights. In the past you could argue, you want to go from Germany to Spain because you’d like to try their food, see their culture. Today the folklore became a parody of itself and the food is the same everywhere, no? I think, the long term goal of TPTB is to eliminate all differences between cultures and between people. You’ll then still want to go to the mountains or to the beach on your holidays. But then it will be the next mountains or the next beach. For the most people at least and for the good.
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The poors don’t get to travel. They can only read about it—and the problems brought about by the hoax of 911, etc.— on the interweb, if they even have access to it.
As far as I can tell, it all has to do with the money, money, shekels.
Not to mention the control of the people via lies and propaganda. Forget the poors. Let them eat cake from the garbage.
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