⛵ Voyage #15 — Resistance
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⛵ VOYAGE #15 — by Nick Jaffe — August, 13, 2021
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Resistance #15
Welcome to edition #15 of VOYAGE: One thing is certain, it cannot be said we didn't give it a good hot go at continuing to travel in these most constricting times...! We have now sailed to the furthest point we can, within the now closed (Covid restricted) internal borders of Australia. We will remain here at a standstill for the foreseeable future... In truth, I look forward to some stillness.
Thank you so much to those who bought me a coffee from my last edition, I really appreciate it! Catch up on previous editions here.
Within the lyrical pages of The Anthropology of Torquise, Ellen Meloy observes the driving forces of monoculture:
population, technology, speed, convenience.
The last I spoke with anyone about monoculture was not in relation to human culture per se, but rather on the topic of how "sustainable" timbers are grown: clear-cut and replanted with just a single eucalyptus seed (often dropped en masse by air). This practice then creates a forest which appears to be successful (because of a visual abundance of new timber saplings), however upon closer inspection, it is ecologically barren in every other way.
While this is likely the fastest way to grow production timbers (bereft of biological competition), these purposeful forests are designed for speed rather than variety or sustainability.
How we treat our environment is in many ways how we treat ourselves. What Meloy laments as being the drivers of human monoculture, are equally the primary tenants of capitalism — for infinite growth requires speed, technology, population and convenience for its smooth function.
In a favourite book of mine, Antifragility, Nassim Taleb reminds us again and again about natural systems:
It’s all about redundancy. Nature likes to over insure itself... Layers of redundancy are the central risk management property of natural systems.
Nature rewards variety and redundancy. When nature is forced into a monoculture, it becomes vulnerable.
I look east into the Tasman Sea from the pilothouse of Euphoria, witnessing an unknown and wild plain of reflective teachings.
To the west is a fixed and low-lying shoreline, littered with small towns and endless beaches. I don't recognise each feature necessarily, but the overarching theme is familiar.
I feel a tension between these two spaces — there is a kind of fear of the unknown to port (ocean) and a fear of the known to starboard (land). Euphoria is sandwiched within a liminal space between two fears; between two primary landscapes. Euphoria has taken us to a space which resists definition and place. I like it here.
Thoreau recognised cultural conformity before the grip of modern monocultures, proposing nature as a possible antidote, for its capacity to "lift us out of the slime and film of our habitual life."
In these times not all can travel. Not all can seek out "wildness in the desert of our civilisation" (Thoreau) ...
Sometimes even the very freedom to think ones own thoughts seems curtailed by current day events and an endless and negative news cycle. Each headline announces a new reduction in freedoms — although they may be temporary, in this moment they feel eternal.
In these times I like to delve and meditate on my reservoir of wild immersions, pondering their lessons and meaning. Seneca led a life of great action, followed by periods of pure reflection and meditation — an adventurous life followed by philosophical withdrawal.
In these times, there becomes available the quiet space required to build layers of redundancy, in preparation for the next great adventure. It is a time to resist the temptation of negative intellectual conformity, and to foster the kind of slow, steady, multi-layered and diversified lessons & systems of the natural world.
In the words of Emerson, "the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind."
Recent inputs
I recently finished Pacific by Simon Winchester. A wide-ranging historical story on how the largest ocean in the world shapes and continues to power the modern world.
I also just finished Tall Man by Chloe Hooper. This is not the kind of book I would normally read, but this story of an Aboriginal death in custody is both detailed, meticulously written and heart breaking.
Elsewhere
Buy me a coffee / My primary Instagram / Website & work / YouTube Channel / Framed photographic prints / My Airbnb / Twitter
Reach out
If there is something you'd like me to riff on in the next edition or delve into further personally — simply reply to this email.
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