The Now
San Diego to Albuquerque, a drive that most people would say would be boring, and “best you go as fast as you can”….! With mostly a 75 mph highway speed limit, we could have been there in 11 hours! My brother-in-law Bob, had his own ‘business’ to do beyond Albuquerque, and so in my desire to find the soul of the American South West, I was often playing the ‘bad boy’ handbrake. I was never bored….probably over stimulated…so read on:
Eventually it took us 3 days, crossing California, Arizona, and almost halfway across New Mexico: Taking the southern route going west via Tucson, Tombstone, and then before El Paso, heading north from Los Cruces up to Albuquerque. All in all about 900 miles, in desert and semi desert terrain, and dealing with temperatures that topped 45 degree centigrade (115 F) temperatures.
Before we turned to go north the road followed the Mexican border just tens of miles south, and the enormity and the extent of Mr Trump’s wall was blatantly apparent. There were road checkpoints every now and again, and with our obvious non-Mexican roots, we were waived on with little interest. I could see how this vast border and its close proximity to the highway facilitating the temptations of illegal immigration, and how with the cowboys now almost extinct a wall is being contemplated! Or are the cowboys in revival and is Mr Trump the new ‘Cowboy in town’ barging into the comical saloon’…?? (See more below!)
We left San Diego just days after the Dallas shooting, and so as we travelled the USA was busy working out what this all means for them personally and the nations as a whole. Arriving in Tucson on the day of the police officer funerals, President Obama’s funeral speech, and talking with locals and getting a feel for the South West slant on the situation was enlightening. I sensed that adding this developing racial dimension onto the already unpalatable Clinton and Trump picture is moving American and its people into a place they don’t want to be, and one that is fuelling angst and increasingly divisions. (More below.)
With endless flat pains, bordered by impressive mountain ranges, the cactus vegetation was occasionally interrupted by fertile farmlands kept alive by man’s ingenious connections to Nature’s big rivers: The Colorado, Rio Grande being the most notable. We found much evidence of Man’s greed and misunderstanding of Nature where Nature’s arteries had been sucked dry and the dependent communities forced to leave.
To my utter amazement one such community, was named Fairbank, and it was the transportation centre for the bustling silver mining area that formed around the neighbour town of Tombstone.
Tombstone was the scene of the Wyatt Earp shoot outs, a Hollywood movie of the same name, and is a true western cowboy town. With its initial attraction of silver mining no more, it is prospering as a tourist hole, for those with an interest in reliving its past. Over the 35 years span of living in and visiting America, I’ve been to many of old US cowboy towns, but with my more enlightened truth searching mind set Tombstone provided some more shocking truths. (More below)
Soon after our turn to head North we passed through the town named ‘Truth or Consequences’ and I can only but feel that my One Point Zero destiny brought me along this route. To me and Mr Gandhi (“My Life is My Message”), life is just about The Truths, strive to live by them, and dealing with personal integrity the consequences of not living by them.
With my deep One Point Zero thinking time on the ship from New Zealand, followed by the shock of my now two weeks in the US, I feel strongly that Society, The Crowd’, are either being purposely prevented from seeing ‘The Truths’, and or ‘The Crowd’ knows ‘The Truths’ and is in selfish ‘convenient denial’. Either way the situation deeply concerns me as a person who walks his truths, is deeply concerned about the path of Humanity.
So Truth or Consequences had deep meaning for me, and as we passed through Bob was reluctant to stop, as I’d told him the huge Society and America significance these three simple words meant. I’d had a few very disturbing racially scary interactions with people in Tombstone, and I wondered how much America was in Truth denial, and the disturbing consequences are nor revealing themselves all over the American society. Maybe the truth is that hypocrisy prevails….?
These are the times of real aloneness, when one accepts that silence is more productive than discussing the truths. I spent the next hour seemingly staring at the vast desert and straight road ahead, but inside me I wondered whether silence was cowardice, and passive belonging with the lies of ‘The Crowd’ that I seemingly openly detest?
This certainly hadn’t been a boring drive as many had intimated it would be…. Exploring ‘The Truths’ and Consequences of Life and Society, can never be boring… To me: “That is Life!”
We soon arrived into the metropolis of Albuquerque, and in with truly amazing team work, Bob and I explored the city without a map or GPS assistance finding the ‘perfect’ motel for our different needs: Bob would leave early in the morning, and I’d be based for rest and exploring, before joining Amtrak on Sunday for my ‘sustainable’ train trip to Chicago. From there it’s Greyhound to Minneapolis, and my blind friend Imtiaz Moosa.
Tombstones, Truth, Consequences and The Future
In the past seven days there have been two major world ‘atrocities’: The Dallas police killings, and now the Nice, Bastille Day, carnage…..! Then yesterday the Turkish attempted coup. Three weeks ago was Brexit, and a country is left without a vision for its contested liberty, and rather is left dealing with the crisis ‘vision’ of minimising the damage. Next week is the Republican Convention, to anoint a potential world leader who seemingly has a vision but one associated with that of the lone cowboy. In anticipation of ‘another tragic event’, amongst unprecedented security initiatives, Cleveland has prepared jail facilities for almost 1000 new prisoners, and has set up an almost 24 hour court infrastructure that includes 12 judges be able to work 10 hour shifts for the whole week.
All around me, I feel that with all these happenings, The Nation (The whole world?) is on tenterhooks. I suspect that for all of us, these events dig into our souls, but we can react by finding distraction, connecting with lies, or searching for the truths and answers for ourselves? . Using the town of Tombstone for its reflecting tombstone significance There were lots of museums and recreations of the past.
I struggled to find a deeper message than the obvious cowboy shootout story and its link to courage and lawlessness. The devastation of the Apaches, and the once vast indigenous wildlife, seemed to have significance only in their insignificant references, and how they added to the positive picture of domination and violent conflict. I even asked Americans in Tombstone what the real message of Tombstone was about, but I never found anything deep and meaningful forthcoming. Messages that could be used positively for the challenges we have in Society today. In fact the shallow messages I got were all supporting domination, power through technology (guns), and winning at all costs….
I was astounded to find both blatant and inferred unapologetic racism I found as I explored. One shopkeeper epitomises the feelings in her telling me that America needs all the blacks out of the country, and that Obama is the cause of all these racial problems. She told me that ‘all of us’ vote for Trump, and said with clarity and conviction that firstly he will keep the Mexicans out, secondly create jobs “so the lazy blacks have to work”, and thirdly he will make America the dominate power over the world again. I don’t see any value in sharing with you how she described ‘black people’, other than to say it was ‘disgusting’ and reminiscent of the words many white people would have used in South Africa 30 years ago before Mandela took over…..
Having come through apartheid in South Africa and having transformed my whole orientation on racial issues, colonisation, success, and the real value in traditional cultures I see the hindsight value of ‘tombstones’ in helping me understand what was right and what was wrong with the human course of the past.
Changing racially wired minds is almost impossible without some trauma like I had in South Africa driving personal motivation. Sadly I don’t see the appetite for voluntary trauma at either government or personal level, and maybe the serious compromise option is that the country is best reorganised around the racism truths in each area? Whatever the solutions to this difficult challenge, I sense relying on politically correct hypocrisy or denial of the Truths to smooth over a very real humanitarian failing will lead to more bloodshed and withering souls.
Beyond society, My Transformation then went further with a different ‘tombstone’ as my guiding reference: This ‘tombstone’, one larger than a human creation, a transcendental tombstone. With the past twelve years of looking at ‘Nature’s tombstone’, I realise we humans need to look as much back as we look forward for where we need to go….America seems to only want to look forward and forget the deep messages from The Tombstones….
Maybe as One Point Six, moves rapidly to One Point Seven, and One Point Zero becomes more distant reflecting on our ‘mistakes’ of the past is where we need to be spending more time, and we will find that Nature’s tombstone has the most valuable lessons of where we have gone wrong…. The messages will be painful, but each day we don’t that will get more painful to deal with! We need to find our power not in Domination through wealth and technology, but in our wonderful submission to Nature’s rules. Nature doesn’t have cowboys, nor heroes, just intensity to thrive within the rules with all the other players in Only Real The Game on offer!
The Last Supper…!
Before saying our goodbyes, Bob and I had a sentimental ‘last supper’ at a Mexican restaurant nearby our motel, and I was just astounded at the volume of food we were given. Bob could only manage half, and when the waiter came and asked if he wanted to take ‘it’ away, and Bob said “No” I asked the waiter what he would do with ‘it’? In a very matter of fact way he said: “Throw ‘it’ away”. With the waiter having left I turned to Bob and sought his agreement in the culture confronting statement, “That’s disgusting, mate, it really is?” Bob sensed I meant his wastage, but I explained I meant the culture of just loading up servings and all the waste. I looked around and without exaggerating 60% of the people in the restaurant would have qualified as overweight, or significantly overweight… This whole experience wasn’t a once off this aberration, this has been the norm since arriving and a norm I have always experienced in America, but now I have my One Point Zero activist hat on! This story is not about judging the individuals involved. We are all casualties. This is about The Facts that something serious is deeply wrong in The Success that is making all these casualties. It’s almost a crime by ‘the architects’ and I feel sad for the casualties who know no better of what is REALLY wrong.
So….
The planet is suffering, the people are suffering, the blacks and whites are at war, the cowboys are returning, and ‘The Game’ of the world’s most powerful Nation just gets finessed to ‘improve’ it’s not negotiable ‘winning’ formula and definition of Success!
Yet…..
‘Nobody’ is looking back at the message from Tombstones and from Nature and questioning the path ahead, and what could be wrong? Questioning our success is failure? ‘Nobody’ is seeing that the wins are not real for Real Human Success. The more ‘the lies’ continue the more the human soul withers and loses its vital influence on the direction. (Read more here) Maybe this is the strategy of ‘The Architects’?
Man, I struggle with all this, and cannot for the life of me see where I’m going wrong in desiring a One Point Zero world for everyone! This is not about Me, nor Sustainability this is about Living as a ‘proper human’ within Nature’s ‘rules’ for Human Success, Present and Future: A success that is surely the most fundamental criteria for unselfish success for every single human?
If one is God fearing and believes Nature is a creation of God, then maybe God set up Nature as the ultimate ‘test game’ to see if all humans can work together irrespective of social class, culture, or creed to ensure human current and future success and existence.
Surely as an individual knowing living a One point Six life (or maybe even worse a Five Point Zero, wealthy high life?) isn’t going to get that ticket through the Pearly gates. Surely even worse, being a walk the talk for that life and promoting a world that is ever moving outside God’s game is a basis for not even getting a pearly gates interview? Surely the test for each of us irrespective of a desire to enter the pearly gates or not, is whether we individually lived within the resource constraints of the game of Nature?
I hope you feel that this isn’t judgement or criticism but rather a desperate call of despair…..
Bye for now…..