Learn to swim...

I have been wondering about some things lately; some things that I think you might be wondering about too in your own lives. What is my top priority? Having an enjoyable life where I enjoy the respect of my peers or doing the maximum to advance my ideals? Right now, I am not so sure that I like my answer. The one thing I have always respected about myself is my ambition, but I am not sure that I have always pointed my energy in the right direction. I have a propensity to get lost in numbers that define strength or intelligence, while losing sight of my purpose. I think it is important to achieve individual success and happiness, but that is supposed to serve primarily as a conduit to a higher purpose. Thus, I think it is important to re-declare the purpose of my life, while recognizing my uncertainty as to the path it should take. Please permit me to quote myself. "I am a political being. I do not believe in the political system of my homeland. I do not believe that I can accomplish my political goals through our political or academic institutions. I am an eco-socialist and I wish to contribute directly to the creation of a world more in line with my ideals. I have no idea what I should do to advance toward this end, but I am vain enough to believe that if the world does not move rapidly in this direction, our future will be wrought with peril. I am a scientist-in-training and I wish to contribute directly and significantly to the advancement of knowledge in my field. I believe that I can accomplish this within the academic institutions of my country. I do not know how to resolve the contradiction between these ambitions." So, that is my uncertain purpose. I feel that I have taken a reasonable course to fulfill my scientific ambitions; however, I am uncertain as to the best means of accomplishing my political goals. I have been thinking long and hard about this during my many wanderings over the past month. I am open to suggestion, but I have very little faith in the capacity of human societies to be persuaded to undergo radical change through rational argument alone. Typically change is forced upon people by violence or nature. I believe that we will see great political change in our lifetime and it will be driven by our planet Earth.
It was long thought that capitalism would meet its end when the growing working class identified the sources of their exploitation and united across national boundaries to take control of international capital. Of course, this did not happen and it never will. There are many reasons for this and I will only discuss a couple of them. First of all, the industrial working class has largely been exported to the developing world and the working class of the Western world has been largely placated by social democratic innovations, such as social security, unemployment insurance, and collective bargaining rights. Secondly, the working class in the Western world has largely been switched from industrial and agricultural labor to service jobs of a less physically demanding nature.
This being said, capitalism as we know it will still end and it will do so very soon. It may come to a grinding halt in my lifetime. While we as Westerners have been able to export tyranny and the exploitation of labor to the developing world so as to maintain democratic capitalism at home,  our attempts to export environmental destruction are sure to fail. This is because the environment recognizes no national boundaries and economic policies that we pursue in America/Europe can lead to climate change, desertification, and ocean acidification on the other side of the globe. Further, capitalism is based on a principle of permanent economic growth through the exploitation of labor and consumption of non-renewable resources. On the face of it, this is intrinsically unsustainable as permanent economic growth cannot be achieved using non-renewable resources. With the human population and per capita consumption both growing rapidly on a global level, especially in the developing world, we are tearing through the world's resources at an exponential rate and altering the climate in profound, often irreversible ways. Thus, in order to achieve global environmental sustainability, we must abandon the growth paradigm that all major world economies are based upon. We cannot expect that each new generation should have a greater per capita income than the generation before, and we cannot permit the human population to continue to grow. While it is impossible to speak of a human carrying capacity because human lifestyles and rates of consumption vary across regions and time, it is clear that a combination of economic and population growth cannot be maintained indefinitely. There is only one Earth, we cannot export the consequences of our actions on the environment as we were able to do with labor.
Capitalism is based on the privatization of profit and the socialization of cost; we have seen a perfect example of this with the current financial crisis. Private institutions (banks, funds, etc.) reaped profits from reckless financial activities and when the market went south, we had to pay with our taxes and our jobs to bring it back up. When the system collapsed, these private institutions lacked the resources to rebuild on their own and required massive subsidies from the public to prop the system up again. As repugnant as this system may be, it will not be eradicated on any moral grounds. It will end, because at some point we will have to simply maintain what we have or perhaps make due with a lot less in order to maintain a livable environment for ourselves and our descendents. This cannot be achieved without an increased reliance on global governance and an increasing central control of the economy; all of the things that conservatives fear.
In my mind, our democracies are trivial things. Public opinion has little connection to truth and justice, especially in a country such as mine where public education is of such a poor quality. We will only change when we are forced to change and nothing short of nature itself will force us into said change. We can only hope for our own sakes that we will be forced to change before it is too late. So, to quote Maynard James Keenan of Tool, "I'm praying for mayhem. I'm praying for tidal waves. I want to see the ground give way. I want to see it all come down. Mom, please, flush it all away."
We as humans are resilient beings. I am sure we will find a way to survive albeit in a far different societal construct. However, change will not come through peaceful gradualism, but rather through a punctuated equilibrium that will result in great suffering for the generations who happen to inhabit our Earth when the time comes. We are quite young, perhaps it will begin with us. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that the time is now as extreme weather events have grown rapidly in prevalence in recent years. With sea levels conservatively projected to rise 12 inches by 2050, it is anticipated that if things stay the same, large segments of American coastal cities could be under water well before the end of the century, including New Orleans and Miami. Other coastal cities, such as New York, are expected to face increased incidence of flooding. This says nothing about the disastrous consequences of our rapacious global economy for the developing world: flooding in Bangladesh, desertification in China, depletion of fresh water resources in Africa, etc. Thus, I leave my fellow Americans with an appropriately ominous quote from Bill Hicks: "Learn to swim! I will see you down in Arizona Bay."

An Odyssey of the Mind

       Hello everyone! Welcome to my new blog. I was inspired to create this blog by my European Odyssey. I saw 9 different countries in 18 days. I was traveling through Europe from June 15th through July 2nd. I spent 10 days in Scotland, 3 days in Germany, and 5 days in Slovenia. I saw a lot of nature, met new people, and experienced different cultures. It was my first time in Europe, so it was one hell of a learning experience. I will leave the pictures and niceties for Facebook. This is a blog and blogs should be deeper than that, so I will discuss the lessons that I learned on my journey that I believe can be applied to life in general.

Lesson #1: Whenever you are despondent about the present or your prospects for the future, look to the past and see how far you have come.

Rationale: In Slovenia, I was asked to give a couple of presentations to organizations advocating on behalf of developmentally challenged children and teachers that work with them. I was asked to do this on the basis of the fact that I myself was slow to develop, but was eventually able to progress through the education and higher education systems. As I spoke about my life and the problems that I had as a child, it became apparent to me that my periodic phases of hopelessness were irrational. For one, it was very nice to receive such a positive reception speaking about things that were always a source of shame. As a matter of fact, it was the result of these presentations that I even started this blog as I was asked multiple times if I had one. Additionally, I realized that if I was able to get to the point where I am now from the point where I began, it is surely within the realm of possibility that a higher level of personal development and happiness is in my future. In short, it will be difficult for me to rationalize any degree of hopelessness following this trip. To anyone reading this who has something in their past that causes a lingering sense of pain, I ask that you find some means of exposing this pain to the light. Please use the darkness as an impetus to drive yourself forward and see the resilience you have shown in getting to this point as a source of hope.

Lesson #2: Time is the currency of life; you possess nothing more valuable than your time.

Rationale: On my plane ride back to Houston, I had a 9.5-hour talk with a 65-year old man. He had a lot of interesting things to say, but the thing that stood out to me the most was what he had to say about time. He said that as you get older, time speeds up. This is because you slow down as you get older and it takes you longer to cover the same distance as a younger person. Thus, there are fewer things that you can fit into a single day as you age. When combining this insight with the great magnitude of physical and social activities that we were able to squeeze into my 5 days in Slovenia, I realized that I was fretting away a significant portion of my youth. I realized that both physically and mentally I was capable of doing a lot more in a day than I would have previously thought. Before my trip, I wasted several hours each day maintaining my garden of dark thoughts. Perhaps, the most valuable lesson of this trip was that I must have an adequate appreciation for my youth and my time.

Lesson #3: Always make time for physical activity.

Rationale: I never would have believed that after only 3 hours of sleep, I would be able to climb/hike up and down a 2108-meter high mountain in a single summer day. I also never would have believed that I would be able to dance that night and wake up the next day after only 3 hours of sleep again, and swim for 2 hours at the seaside. I discovered on this trip that I enjoy outdoor activities and that even without proper training, I am able to do a lot of them. I am very excited about this, because I love nature and activities such as these allow me to experience it in a new way. Additionally, physical activity allows me to focus my thoughts in a far more constructive manner. Things that were not readily apparent to me in my daily life became quite obvious while on the mountain. In short, I feel as though this trip has given me an additional coping strategy for managing the chaos that periodically grips my life.

Me climbing Ledenski Vrh :-)

Lesson #4: Sometimes separation is the only cure for family problems.

Rationale: I have a very close relationship with my maternal grandparents and my mother; however, my grandparents and my mother cannot stand each other. My grandparents and my mother would never talk before I went to Europe. However, the shock of my absence and the desire for information on my whereabouts and exploits brought my mother and grandmother into communication. My mother and I would at times have an adversarial relationship, but while I was away we could not possibly have been nicer to each other. This continued when I came back as I had plenty of stories to tell and a renewed desire to help around the house. All of my family was terrified about me taking this trip, because they did not believe that I would be able to look after myself. My mother strongly advised against it. The fact that I went anyway and was able to survive it without incident has no doubt built a more healthy and respectful relationship between my family and I. As a matter of fact, my mother has already asked me when I plan to travel again. Overall, I feel that this trip provided a significant boost to my family life as it gave us the opportunity to miss each other. It also gives me a greater sense of independence and a greater sense of belief in myself.

Lesson #5: Self-discovery is not the result of brooding over oneself in the comfort of one’s own home, but rather the result of deviation from one’s normal routine and separation from one’s comfort zone.

Rationale: There were moments on this journey, particularly in Scotland, where I would feel alone or out of place. The cold, wet weather of Scotland surely did not help with this situation. Despite the fact that these feelings and the weather were not particularly pleasant, I consider my Scottish journey to be one of the more educational experiences of my life. For one, I did not allow these feelings to depress me to the point where I would just stay at home and brood. I continued to explore the city of Edinburgh, I went up and down Arthur’s Seat twice, and I went on a day trip to the Highlands. I took lots of pictures and was able to make something beautiful out of the situation. Additionally, it became readily apparent to me why I was struggling; I was separate from my work and my writing. This journey taught me how important science and writing are to my self-esteem and my normal daily functioning. Without them, I was not the same person; not on the inside or the outside. This is one of the reasons I was so happy to give the presentations; it gave me an excuse to write and focus my thoughts onto something productive. I was also frustrated with my inability to lift weights normally while abroad, so one of the first things I did when I came back was bench press. In short, this journey taught me a lot about myself by showing me how much I missed certain aspects of my normal life. I will never take these things for granted again.

In conclusion, I learned a lot on this journey. I learned that I love traveling, Slovenia, and outdoor activities. I also learned a lot about myself and the importance of time. I took over 1300 pictures while I was away, so that I would be able to keep the memories fresh and maintain a connection to the nature that I experienced. I have already looked through all of the pictures several times since I got back. It was an awesome, life-changing experience and I am happy to share it with you all. I hope that you enjoyed my blog and that you will visit again soon.

       Special thanks to Teja Ograjsek for organizing this trip and providing me with housing though out.