From green to blue 2022!

For more green and blue, follow the ongoing Blue Space collaborative initiative by me , just started up in its beginnings for an enduring lifetime project of blue and blue planet with the first Blue Space Videocast and Blue State LiveAid (multi-art for charity) soundhealing videos, and in some years time a book launch. Blue Space Mobile Recording Studio and label can anywhere produce content and creations for publishing and audiosynch. Online projects are part of the sole proprietorship Iselin Fergestad Music and Communication located in Norway. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@bluespacevideocast

 

Eco in Sweden: We're all Global Natives. The importance of keep travelling.

Gothenburg Museum of World Culture

I went to see an exciting exhibition at the World Culture Museum in our nabour country Sweden, which gave me some thoughts on the importance of travelling, and the reason why travelling does make you more aware of the environment if you're one of the globalized modern people. And also, that humans originally are migratory species and the idea of "Nations" is a relatively new idea historically speaking when we think thousands and not hundereds of years back- who would guess that! Evolution has it that prolonged settlement has a vertical axis of some ten thousand years, as explained on this badge:

Isolation, as we know it, is not very ecological. Permanent permaculture, maybe, if constructed in an international eco society. But most of us, do not live within permaculture or tend to think of the environment in every aspect, and therefor we have lost a lot of the experience since no grandfather is teaching us such anymore. Becoming more aware is not just for the political activists anymore, either. Some, even without activism in blood, might become even more active in the ecological field after travelling just a few places around the globe for getting the sense of another environment and culture, and we experience not only change in the culture shock, but also change within ourselves.

We will realize, that your homestead is largely influenced by your local supermarket instead of the wide inspiration on earth. My travel, has for sure expanded my horizons to become more aware. Even though it's not "to become aware", it became a result of the whole travel. The travel itself, was to get what I've felt is missing. And what is missing, lies within all of us. From this exhibition, images and words were explaining my travel sum-up.

Our late ancestors were local people with global economy ambitions; travel to conquer - not to explore, and to bring home the goods of another world, leaving traces in a rather brutal way.

But, our early ancestors on the other hand,  were more likely global people with no permanent homes, living with local economies.

We wandered all the way from early Stone Age to the previous ice ages, coping with environments we'd never dream of coping with today, sleeping with the Neanderthals, giving in to the mushroom feed and continuing with travel across Asia and the northern territory, continuing using our native drums in music all the way from Africa and bringing tents on animals who became our carriers, like donkeys and horses. Why did we travel or, did we?

When we are on travel, we are also at home. We are where we are. Present. I`d like to state that we need to remember that the continents in very early ages of humankind, looked quite different from today.. the Mediterranean was not there, and Africa was linked to Asia, South America to Europe (a new discovery of link between Palestine and Native Americans) and Australia to The Middle East and Egypt- making the tribes of Aborigine and Sumerian quite familiar at some points, that we can also spot in their spiritual habits of "free the soul"-rituals.

Further more, the islands of Fiji, Haiti, Easter Island and even Hawaii did not exist in the shape they are today, they were linked to the mainland, and which - made all native tribes more "in contact" with each other, and wandering between places for finding new "green areas" for their animals to feed them. In fact, there is a link through all natives in all countries in the semi-nomadic lifestyle. Why do they otherwise look so the same, to us? Why do we still call natives - "natives"? the cultures have changed, alongside nations, but we still know they like to keep some of their past traditions.

They all live from day- to- day-basis ,like using sun dials instead of daily clocks controlling time schedule. When building community for the future and now, their significance is especially to maintain a vertical family- and society structure. This is an opposite to our horizontal structure for forward-thinking.

Having vertical structure, means that their rituals or traditions (like cooking or music; in other words identity ) are based on ancient pride, while usage of resources and leadership-communities are based on future generations' and climate demands, often formed as spiral seashells in dialogue. Even their dance routines generally speaking, is often a spiral form dance. Based on ancestor-instincts, but also based on the fact that the whole Earth had ONE source (the very elements we all need to live), and not divided into several states and several powers.

Wheather-harmony; Sun Dials in most native societies.

When we started conquering other countries (mainly the British...erm), and separeted ourselves from nature, we also unfortunately made all our natives separate into many "different" tribes and conditions. WE as high-industrial nations, actually made them isolated. They were not, from the beginning, isolated from the rest of the world, even how local and soul-searching they might seem. So, this whole concept of ideas we have of isolated, primitive and not-so-global natives are completely wrong ideas. They were in fact our global citizens, that we are stribing to become today in all our adjustment to globalization and universal ideas, long before we started to name anyone a president or anyone a king.

The importance of travelling (in the aim of discovery) is therefor something we must not reconsider together with all the other things we are reconsidering today that are environmentally friendly. Yes, I am aware of plane traffics, but on the other hand - without transport of people in and out of other countries, how can we then become ecologically educated enough to provide politics or even make decisions that are affecting other countries? We NEED to get to know our roots and ourselves better by asking our neighbor, to understand that we are connected.

Not to mention, to appreciate the beauty of nature's diversity. When travelling, you are "forced" to look around. You can not escape from finding challenges in nature on your road, and you can not escape from meeting new people that are local experts on their own natural fields. I am all - into travel. And, I will continue with it. On the other note: Travelling has made me more aware of the many local economies out there. That the global economy we once were dependant on, is shrinking. This is extremely important. Learning is by experiencing differences and similarities, also.

Because life would never be able to evolve, without a knowledge and practice of a local feed, then on a global scale we need information of local climate to survive. And when you understand what is local, you might also start to build bridges between your own habitat - and - theirs, more like a winwin-union; where local opportunities meet global challenges and generational teaching can continue. This is when the Earth will evolve, I believe. When we understand that there are more roads than what is decided by your government or by your ruling company, when we see more than just 1 road which would more like to take personal advantages of your local resource than to develop it, honestly. To get into the depth of the soil we all came from, I guess the first step is to start exploring it, digging it, and if you can't access Google Mongolia or Google Amazon to breath the clean oxygen from trees and climbing mountains, you'd need to go and look for it yourself! Reading about it is one thing, experience is something quite different.



Apart from our civilized, organized and growing families within nations, we're all global natives from the very roots.

Eco in Denmark: Arriving at ecovillage Friland, Djursland



Boat ride on Sept 2nd in a 4 hour sail with other wwoofers and hosts.

About time for some updates. Arriving at "Friland" (Freeland) in Djursland on August 30th and now it is the 5th of September, and many exciting things are going on here already. Right now, I am at the fantasy house of Einer's, who cannot stand squares -so all his equipment and house is formed un-square (soon to be uploaded!), and my previous host until September 4th, was Caroline and Tahir from Pakistan as posted below in the supportlink. 

Arriving at ecovillage Friland, I first started whitewashing the outside wall of my host with calc and water mixed, to cover the brownish straw bales. The house also hosted a kitchen garden, as Friland stribes to become a hundred percent self-sustained as households. Their goals are pretty ambitious, both self-sustained, but also free from all loans. And most of them, has houses and area built for less than 300.000 DKK, which includes material. There is about 100.000 for material, and 200.000 for VVS,watersupply and common area costs. The host I first arrived to is on phase 2 of Friland, which means they are houses in building after phase 1 is almost finished. Phase 3 is in planning, and right now I am just gazing at the open yellow field there. Even though there are plenty more "fantasy buildings" here than at Fri & Fro in Odsherred where I was at first, I'd say I am still waiting for that badass hippie, and most of those who came here are simply average danish families, mostly with first-born children, often from the city and tired of the noices there, and the big wavy skirts and rasta-hairdos are still nowhere to be seen... hmm. Surprising, even here.

My current host's greenhouse, where I am working

Eco in Denmark: Odsherred.

Arriving in Odsherred on August 1-9, there was a little village in the middle of the yellow fields. 16 families with children live here, the ecovillage established at a parking lot where the public road ends. In Denmark it is not called "ecovillages", though rather eco society. This is because ecovillages do not only appear in the middle of yellow fields, but also nearby the towns. Because they are so integrated as local contributors, that they are not separated from the average citizen and not seen as anything "exotic". 


Welcoming me at the community, were two parents who were architects from Copenhagen and little girl. Sun was shining, and the garden smiling at my willing hands to take a big deep dig into its soil. Like a village, these houses do have quite big gardens. The biggest investment they probably had to make, was acres of space and field to build their sustainable home. The rest of the upwards - and widely constructed area, costed them the minimum of money.

To understand how cheap it is to build this home and how much they gain from its sustainability, to create yet more freedom and yet more flexible activities in everyday life, one has to know its ground philosophy and ground fundament which I'll try to explain through some of these blog posts. This is not something new in Denmark. In fact, Norway where I come from, is estimated 15 years behind - both in the infrastructure and development of societies like this. 

But the interesing part, is that all industrial countries seem to move towards ecological balance as a result of consumer needs and consumer's deadly health from functional lifestyle, so therefor Denmark and Germany are frontiers of life style whereas countries like Norway do have a lot of peace development across borders and energy research. The sad thing, is that we seem to group ourselves as "they do this" and "we do that" , instead of looking at the society as one building and developing board where we need the eco balance as the pre-fabricated lifestyle seem not so much in balance at all. I'd avoid saying commercial lifestyle, as ecological lifestyle can be super commercial when given a chance, like we have proves in Denmark. So there is no separation between earning and slow consumption here.  

In fact, slow consumption and models given thoughts to profit the society and planet just as much as yourself, seem to be the winning gain in the end. And this we must not forget; our future and now is dependant on each other both ways. So if you want a good now, look at coming aspects so that you can relax. Knowing that your future will be a good one is surprisingly healthy for stress and concentration it seems here at the ecovillage. And the only "stressful" thing you really need to worry about, is to dedicate time for creativity and social meetings to develope the common ground where your house lives. 

Yes, lives. The house lives. And by building breathing straw bale houses, external air conditioning is a no buy and no use. The more natural material, the more they figure out how the elements work with each other to get all the resources we normally just copy from nature in the other synthetic way anyway.