a certain lack of perspective...

Not exactly a happy making trend, some kind of nervous making, and George Takei making some sense...

I don't drive.

I used to... In fact, with most of my formative years being in Los Angeles, there was a time when driving and cars were such a central part of who I was that I'd never have been able to imagine myself giving up driving and not going insane...

Then again these days, I'm not so sure sanity is all it's cracked up to be.

My divorce from the whole owning a car and driving thing was simple... I just moved to Paris where owning a car and driving simply did not make any real sense. Confronted with a reality where I did not need to drive, I was more than happy to give it up. Later, when I sailed to the USVI where a car would have been a bit more handy/sensible, I was tempted but, doing a need/want calculation, it was obvious that a car was not really needful and the added expense, complication, and hassle were just not worth the minor advantages.

I mention this because I would never have given up driving and the automobile culture unless I'd moved to Paris, a place with a different culture and mindset, which allowed me a space to think lucidly about the whole driving experience and its advantages/disadvantages. Face it, you can't really think clearly about something without a bit of perspective.

Oh yeah, this is actually about boat stuff...

Lately, I've taken a perverse pleasure in following a rather idiotic thread about the Pardeys, the cost of the now for sale Talesin, and current ideas in boat essentials/design... I suspect you already know I'm not in agreement with the majority view.

Where I think I differ, is the average person is so caught up with the "now" of consumerist yachting/cruising that they simply cannot imagine living any other way. Not too unlike my thoughts on driving while living in Seattle a year before our move to Paris when I simply had zero perspective on the idea that someone could live a happy/happier life without driving...

I'm old enough to remember when electronics on boats were something of an expensive and unreliable oddity... The first Loose Moose never had any built in electronic instruments. A Walker log, leadline, plastic sextant, and a cheap RDF were all we needed or, for that matter, all that's really needed today. I'm lucky because that experience gives me that little bit of needful perspective that seems to be missing from so many discussions on gear, boat design, and cruising these days.

Which is not to say I dislike progress. In fact, I don't think there's anything like enough real innovation and progress available to us and would love to see more. The trick, as I see it, is that to recognize the difference between hype and progress you need some perspective. Of course, to get it you need to get outside the consumerist bubble we're all in and take a look from a different vantage point...

Listening to Kassav'

So it goes...