How to save the world? Part 1 of ?

Check this. Before I left the states, I had an idea. I have lots of ideas. I only worry about the ones that stick with me for a bit. This one stuck.

I was driving in SLC, UT. I hate driving in this city for a lot of reasons. That day I was getting onto I80 from 1300E. They're revamping the interchange and its a complete mess. Traffic was bad, it was hot, and I was in a hurry. I should have more patience, I guess, but sometimes I don't have time to have more patience :-) So I thought: They're spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build bigger freeways to funnel more people around the city. Why not spend a fraction of that money in an advertising campaign to: 1) convince people to have fewer babies; 2) make mass transportation more attractive, and; 3) shame people for driving so damn much (like me!). Wouldn't that be a more efficacious use of limited public funding? The answer, I've come to believe, is yes. But no one is going to like it.

This traffic-reduction advertising blitz sat on the back burner for a while. I had a few conversations with people about it. My dad and I got into a pretty heated discussion about its applicability towards (and my cynicism about) growth in the Eugene, OR area. And I spent a lot of time thinking about it here in Nepal. I also at this time read a book about the diamond business and how outrageously successful they were in creating a demand for a product with no particular use, where no demand previously existed. How did they do this? Advertising and marketing, pure and simple. All you need to do is create what they call a 'cultural imperative' for your product, service, idea, and it will eventually sell. Think about it. Do we really need diamonds, Coke, Pepsi, Gatorade, big cars, fancy televisions, etc? Of course the answer is no, but there are a lot of people who have a huge financial stake in making you think the answer is yes, YES, YESSS!

So I got really pessimistic about things. How can we possibly change the collective trajectory of our culture? No one who thinks about it really denies that we are on a crash course with reality in the near future. Somehow we need to convince 7 billion+ people that the way things have been for the last 10k years isnt actually working, and we need to change. Its a huge job with so many pitfalls.

But there is a way. Let's have a thought experiment. What if you could magically capture every advertising agency and marketing firm in the world and have them do whatever you said. And then what if you told them to be really really sneaky (the way they know how to be) and to create a new cultural imperative. You want them to do this slowly enough that no one in their TV-induced mental fog would recognize it, and you want them to do it very very well. Within say, a generation, you would have them phase out all current advertising and replace it with a new series of ideas and products. Instead of promoting a consumer culture, make people want a sustainable culture.

I know, its trickery. It's 'sleeping with the enemy'. It's the cheap way out. Instead of having a society of free-thinking people who all spontaneously decide that the world would be a better place if we just stopped using all that dang petroleum, we instead have a society of people who have actually been shamed and advertised out of using all that dang petroleum. Different method, but same result. Right now there is only one way to simultaneously influence the mind and wallet of every person in the world-and that way is advertising.

At least, that's what I've been thinking about here in Nepal. I hope that I'm not the only one who thinks that this might work.

Oh, the beautiful mountains!

Nepal. Here the mountains are huge. I really mean it. They're big. Everyone asks, "Are you going to Everest Base Camp?" I always answer, "No, it seems like a junk show up there." As if I know! Which I don't. Mostly I say that to cover up that it sounds intimidating, and that I feel like 'everyone' goes to Everest, which also isn't true. Most people trek the Annapurna Circuit, which I will do in a couple weeks. I guess mostly I have a thing against Everest because it seems so cliche, so 'typical'. But I digress. I also went trekking to the Langtang area and that is what this post is really about.

There are many things to write about. I could write about the ridiculous bus ride to the start of the trek at Syrabrubesi (or Syfrabubensi, or Shyabrubensi, who knows how its really spelled). I could write about how beautiful it was to hike through rhodadendron forests along a steep and rocky creek up a deep canyon. Or the change from fluvial to glacial dominated landforms. Or the HUGE thrust fault that put old crystalline gneisses on to younger metasediments that I saw on the last day. I could ramble about the people and how amazing they are, their kind eyes, high pink cheeks, and colorful clothing. The food was filling and tasty too. But most of you already know all those things-or at least they aren't hard to imagine. It's not hard for you to imagine how comical it would be to see me stuffed into the smallest seat on the bus (no joke-I checked after everyone else got off and I unraveled myself) with only inches between my face and the next seat in front of me. So what will I say about my experience along the Langtang Khola, at 3900m, only a couple miles from Tibet? It starts with a series of questions that I asked myself after reaching Kyanjin Gompa, the village at the end of the valley.

"Why do people go to such great lengths to spend time in the mountains? Why did I spend so much effort getting here? Why did I not spend two months in Nebraska instead?"

At first, the questions seem ridiculous. The natural beauty of the place should be enough justification. But there is equal beauty in a blooming flower, a buzzing fly, simple human existence, the crystal structure of a small garnet embedded in a metaplutonic rock along a creek (yes, I have a hand lens with me). So it must be something else.

Maybe its the chance to feel insignificant. It is so easy to feel important in our lives. Back in the states I have a job, responsibilities, bills to pay, things to do. Standing at over 12,000' elevation, sucking air like a distressed vaccum cleaner just to exist, and being at the bottom of an enormous glacial valley with peaks rising another two miles vertically above me is humbling. And that feels good. It needs no other justification-it just feels good to feel so small. Its like that feeling you get when you lay in a field at night looking up at the stars. 'Here I am,' you think, 'and I am so small and everything feels right in the universe.'

Emily and I stayed for four days at Kyanjin Gompa. We only planned on staying for two, but it was very beautiful and somehow, the place just resonated. So we did some day hikes. We got snowed on, blown around by cold winds, and exhausted by long days and cold nights. And then something else occurred to me. This experience is so different from my 'normal' everyday life. If you lived in a red house with a red room, drove a red car to your red office, and then worked all day with red blinds on the window, you would eventually become, well, redd ed-out. It would be hard to really understand what someone meant when they said 'blue.'

I know what you're thinking. Wow...I just spent 10 minutes of my precio us day for that? Seriously? Yes. You did. And I spent even more time than that writing what you read. I never said that I had reached some new conclusion about the meaning of life, the way the world works, or how to make the world a better place. But I didn't want to write a trip report either.