The Navigators

Part 1

Jack is awoken from his deep slumber by the sound of the alarm bell ringing and pandemonium erupting around him. His fellow seamen are out of their hammocks running around in a hurry and are shouting at each other. Someone grabs his hammock and pulls him out. He hits the floor hard. “Lets go, all men aboard!” Jack stumbles to his feet still half asleep. He makes his way through the chaos, navigating with his hands in the darkness along the corridor that takes him to the massive wooden stairs leading up to the deck. As he reaches the deck he breathes in a long deep breath and is calm for a minute. Since he joined the crew this is his favorite thing to do in the early hours of the morning. The sun is just coming up over the perfectly flat ocean and illuminates the puffy white clouds in a rich golden hue. The wind is chilling his body and he inhales a deep breath of the salty ocean air which is in stark contrast to the sweaty hot conditions below deck. Jack knows that this again, will be a perfect day with perfect weather and no real worries ahead. He is about to smile. Until he turns and is awoken out of his trance. Finally he grasps what is going on, on deck. His fellow crewmen have come to a stand still in formation. In front is the captain. In fact it looks like every person of the entire ship has assembled. Jack hurriedly joins his maintenance crew earning some condescending glances from some of his fellow mates. Some of the men keep looking up and just as Jack follows their gaze he realises what has happened. Nothing else matters anymore as the adrenaline is pumping through his body.

Sexy Tokyo

It all begins with a line. A short line that becomes longer and longer, and longer, and longer. It is the simplest thing we humans can come up with. It is a skillles skill that can be achieved by everyone. Just this simple shape is the basis for all the complex things. It can turn into a bridge, a road, a building.

Lines build cities. The organised and simple geometries that make up our modern world are easy to comprehend and easy to make. The scale to which we have pushed lines is mind-boggling. There are 81 cities in the world with a population exceeding five million people. Bogotá has 10 million people. São Paulo has 21 million people. Shanghai, 25 million people. Delhi, 28 million people. Tokyo a whopping 37 million people. So sexy that we are capable of accomodating so many beings in such a small space with straightforward tools.

Creativity is Our Redemption

Our creativity breeds progress, it makes innovation and disrupts the conservative structures. It is the bit of unknown territory in which the human mind walks and prospers. Too much is too scary, too little is too safe. And before the age of dissection it worked fine. But right now, we believe that everything needs a breakdown, needs to be clear, out in the open, not hidden. In order for everyone to do it, to copy it. No inspiration is needed to follow a step by step manual. But this scientific approach strips away all the magic and wonder we feel when we see something that we can’t explain. We are assured that there must be a rational explanation to everything. We are not inspired and mystified, challenged to take a step into the unknown and try, with ones creativity to guide the way and do something similar, but not to copy it. We are not encouraged anymore. As much as humans are inspired by the world around them, they are mainly moved by the actions of other human beings. Not knowing how to reach a goal and trying many possible options can lead to the most bizarre and beautiful creations. If the one way that worked is seen as the only possible option, the exclusive technique to do something, preferably patented and held by an entity that is part of the capitalistic game, exploration is discouraged or even prohibited. Everything becomes a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy that is smothering creation. In this case, it is beneficial not to know the way, to be oblivious.

Why do you hate your People

My dear friend, I write to you today in order to answer the question you posed at me some days ago: “Why do you hate your people?” But I am not just writing this letter to answer it for you, but for myself as well. Because the moment you uttered it, it became clear to me that I did not know the answer myself. All I had was a feeling, something hard to describe and hard to put in words. But I will try anyway for your and for my clarity.

System Administrator

The black rectangle that was Andi’s phone came to life with an intense blue glow illuminated the dark surroundings of the room. Andi who was slumped over a small box against the wall, got up slowly to answer the call. A glance at the phone revealed an unknown caller.

“Yes, hello,” he whispered in a calm and annoyed manner.

On the other side was a deep and scrambled voice that could barely be understood.

Welcome to Spectacle Park

At the entrance, the glamour was so grand. She had never seen such an enticing thing before, and standing in front of it was a breath taking experience. The promise of infinity, of all one could ever want, all here in this place. The orgastic premise of doing it all, of seeing it all, of changing ones destiny. Everything everyone was talking about was right here in front of her.

Shokunin – Learning a Skill

Recently I had a dream. A very beautiful dream, one that came somewhat out of the left field and I have no idea why I had it or why I had it just in this moment. But recently I had been thinking about what jobs and skills truly made people happy and contributed meaning to the human condition. That helped to develop us further. A traditional Japanese House

I was standing in an open field that was surrounded by forests. The sun was shining and a mild breeze was blowing. There was a stone foundation on which I was building a wooden house. Wooden houses are numerous and they are not that special, but this house was special. Because it was build according to traditional Japanese wood working techniques. A house that would neither need nails nor screw but would be erected entirely from interlocking intricate joinery all manufactured to tight tolerances. By hand. Wood is just a fantastic and beautiful material for superior to everything we humans have concocted over the centuries in our research facilities. Wood is organic, wood makes you feel more connected to nature and studies have shown that living in such a building improves mental health drastically. When being connected to nature makes us feel alive, a wooden house is the closest we can come to being isolated from it. That is also why we have found a new interest in such buildings in recent years but of course as always the old is not good enough it needs to be more complex and over engineered. Buildings today are build using complex wood composites like CLT (cross laminated timber) or similar that are produced in industrial settings and are as far removed from nature as concrete or glass. It is engineered, perfected and every bit of character beaten out of it. The human still cannot relate to it because the trees went into a black box and out came these pre cut precise panels from wood.

Misconceptions About Our Green Future

As with most problems, the solutions have existed for a long time. The modern world just seems to think that a solution cannot be practical if no bells and whistles are added, it looks fancy and the it is marketed in an enticing way.

A few weeks ago I read Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach. It was published in 1975 and I only stumbled upon it because it was sitting in a doorway, to be given away for free with many other books. When I finally read it, I was amazed, or rather blown away by his foresight and that even forty-eight years later we are still looking for solutions to environmental destruction, climate change and societal inequalities while simple, democratic and easy to implement solutions have been around for a long time.

It is a Spectacle and We All Participate

It is a giant party that we are all watching. Like with all parties, they have to end eventually because they are very demanding and distract us from the important things.

Chapter 1: So much Time

There I was, staring at my phone. How it sat inconspicuously on the table not giving off any signs of life. But I knew it was alive. I resisted the urge to pick it up. But I was curious if I had received any new messages. Maybe a message that Silvy was late.

Next Stop: Australia

Next Stop: Australia - is a book I wrote

The New and Shiny, the Old and Boring

We are obsessed with new products and want more and more all the time. Lets have a look at what’s going on.

In this essay I will go into the topic of new things that are marketed and hyped and purchased by millions. And this is a cycle that is repeated year over year and is only increasing in speed. But I will also look at the “old” things and how they are actually very important and make our modern lives possible.

The Modularity of Colombia

In this essay I will deep dive into the things I learned about the daily life in the country of Colombia with a focus on its efficiency.

Chapter 1: The Introduction

I have been living in the beautiful country of Colombia since the beginning of this year. Of course for someone coming from central Europe this has been quite a shock. Don’t get me wrong, I travel a lot and am used to different places operating differently. But what intrigued me a lot about Colombia was their approach to doing the daily tasks of life very efficiently.

The Pornification of Everything

Consumption, Over-consumption, Pornification

In this essay I am going to talk about the pornification of basically every aspect of our modern lives, what consequences it has on all of us and what we can do to stop it. Pornification is consumption run wild which in turn is causing many of the major problems we face today. From bigger is better in every aspect to the shameless waste of resources in order to produces things that are of no use. Our society is stuck in a over-consumption spiral that will only increase.