IOLKOS: CROSSING THE ASIA-EUROPE SEAS

The thousands crossing the seas between Asia and Europe these days continue the ancient adventures of Fertile Crescent peoples who developed their agriculture and ship building with the mythical Argonautes as one of the oldest sea voyagers around.

Jason, you may like to know, was the leader of those Argonautes and Prince of Iolkos. He got a ship built in the port of Pagasai. Timber was brought in from Mount Pelion and oak from Dodona and a new excitement arose in the port city. Hammer blows echoed through the streets of the city, until the ship was completed and called Argo, the swift one.

The Argonautes sailed the distant seas and set foot at unknown coasts. When they finally fulfilled their mission by capturing the Golden Fleece, they took off for their homeward journey. They sailed River Danube through the Balkan countries and miraculously arrived in the Adriatic Sea. They continued upstream River Po in Italy and downstream River Rhine through Germany, before returning to familiar waters of the Mediterranean and landing on the island of Crete.

Upon his return in Iolkos, Jason handed the Golden Fleece to the king and demanded to be king himself. But violent family affairs endarkened Jason’s long awaited relief once back in Iolkos. Amidst intense love affairs there was torture, betrayal, corpses cut in pieces and fights over kingdoms that obscured his life.

What will happen with those thousands who sail the seas between Asia and Europe in boats not built with the care and craft of Pagasai carpenters and navigated by skills of Jason? What will be their fate when they move up along River Danube and downstream River Rhine? Will they ever be able to conquer golden fleeces and see Pagasia and Iolkos again? And what turmoil will they go through once back in their homelands?

PERCEPTIVE PEOPLE HAVING TO DEAL WITH JUNGLE GENES

Perceptive people are said to feel more uncertain because they have more impressions to deal with than others. But perhaps there is an additional force that counts, a force that has to do with our distant past and is still stored in our genes.

Humanity could not have survived for seven million years of evolution without the deep sense of uncertainty that gave us the situational awareness needed in dangerous nature. That basic sense of uncertainty, a blessing in the face of danger, got simply engrained in our genes.

Only in the last 10,000 years, when our ancestors started the agrarian revolution, we went for control of nature and belief in the creation of safety. Modernity, with its belief that once-and-for-all control and total comfort are possible, has been the final outcome sofar.

This culture of control makes us believe that a sense of uncertainty is inconsistent with what society achieves or wants to achieve. It can even be seen as an undermining of the collective belief in control. Uncertainty feelings remind us of the permanent alertness that was needed to survive in the jungle but we now find uncomfortable and suppress.

However, our genes have not been eliminated by the control culture. They are still geared towards permanent alertness in the natural environment. So, our genes go on undermining the control culture, while we dislike that undermining and try to suppress it.

But those perceptive people who are in close touch with their own system, including their genes, may feel the awareness that made our ancestors survive in the wild. Because of that awareness, they have to deal with the contrast between what they authentically feel as sound and what society wants them to suppress.

Therefore, those in close touch with themselves get perplexed by this genes-society friction that nobody explains to them. No wonder that their perplexity produces a second layer of uncertainty, an uncertainty that they also learn to see as wrong and to be suppressed.

Courtesy: Richard Leakey, Pedram Shojai; Elise Pattyn

WHY DID PALESTINIAN REFUGEES NOT MOVE TO EUROPE?

West Asia regimes that bring about large refugee problems are not only of Asad and IS. The Israeli regime is far worse. According to the UN, Israel created a plight for the Palestinians that has become the most protracted and largest of all refugee problems in the world.

http://www.irinnews.org/report/89571/middle-east-palestinian-refugee-numbers-whereabouts

Why did the Palestinians not migrate in large numbers to Europe but remained in refugee camps ‘in the area’, in Lebanon, Jordan. Syria, Gaza, Israel, Westbank and Egypt, in due course turning fragile tents into stone houses?

In contrast, present-day Syrians do leave their refugee camps, albeit in relatively small proportions, and move to Europe. Perhaps the social media, higher incomes and more open borders make travel to Europe seen as an option.

Photos: Palestinian refugee camps in 1948 and nowadays, and a recently started Syrian refugee camp

POSTMODERN LATERALLY EXTENDED HOLIDAYS

Emma and Tim go camping in the wild at a lovely lake in Limousin with their mother Susan. Her new friend Bob will join her later on for a holiday with his two sons. But first Paul, the father of Emma and Tim, will come with his new wife Anna and her daughter Eva to spend some days together.

Then Emma and Tim move on with Paul, Anna and Eva to a campsite in the Ardèche and go canoeing in the rapids. Next week Bram, the former husband of Anna, will arrive with his new girlfriend Clara, stay for a few days and make a grand midnight fire with them.

Then Emma and Tim, along with their stepsister Eva, will move on in the car of Bram and Clara for a trip to the Pyrenees. They’ll stay in a small hotel and go for hiking at the steep slopes. In Andorra, Bob, the stepfather of Emma and Tim, and his two sons will arrive from Limousin and join them for a nice hike.

In Bob’s hired car Tim, Bob and his two sons will cross the Pyrenees for a pilgrimage to the great club FC Barcelona and watch a football match to see the legendary Lionel Messi show his brilliance. Bob will leave the car there and the four of them fly back to Amsterdam.

Emma will join Bram, Clara and her daughter for a pilgrimage to the cathedral of Chartres and, on their way back to Holland, make a stopover in Paris to see the Eifel Tower and as many shops as possible to finally collapse at the boulevard terraces in order to recover from the shopping.

They all remember something similar of last year and look forward to their holidays this time.

BIKING AND THE CULTURE OF EQUALITY

That the Dutch are bikers is fairly well-known around the world. But the often mentioned flatness of the country as facilitating our biking can’t be the explanation. Of course, biking is easier in flat country but the world is flat at many places and yet biking is not widespread at those other flat places. 

A better explanation is that the Dutch culture of equality makes biking less associated with low status or as just for the poor. The same culture of equality makes biking OK for girls and women. In Holland the bike is a socially acceptable means of transport to the fullest extent.

Moreover, Dutch government policies have made biking safer, especially after WWII, which made biking more attractive, including for children. 

The only places where I saw masses of bikes were Bangladesh and Beijing, and it was such a relief. You just heard the ringing of bike bells. I wonder what is left of those ringing islands.

Former Queen Juliana (1909–2004)

Present Prime Minister Mark Rutte 

Present-day Dhaka traffic

OUR MURDEROUS GOVERNMENTS: KURDS, GAZA, SREBRENICA

NATO and its western member-state governments implicitly accepts mass cruelty by the Turkish armed forces against the Kurds in order to appease Turkish president Erdogan.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-politics-of-betrayal-obama-backstabs-kurds-to-appease-turkey/5466075

It resembles what NATO and its western member-state governments do when implicitly accepting mass cruelty by Israeli armed forces against the Palestinians in order to appease the Israeli president Netanyahu.

http://stopwar.org.uk/news/david-cameron-defends-israel-s-right-to-commit-mass-murder-of-palestinian-civilians

And it resembles what NATO and its western member-state governments did when they implicitly accepted mass cruelty by the Serbian army against the Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in order to appease the Serbian president Miloševic.

www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/04/west-true-role-in-srebrenica-massacre-bosnia

NATO member-state governments are democratically elected by their populations. These electorates, including the Dutch voters, are therefore co-responsible for mass cruelty against Turkish Kurds, Palestinians and Bosnian Muslims.

MEN DON’T NEED STRATEGIES TO APPROACH WOMEN

Do you go out of your way in passionately courting a woman or pretend that you indifferently wait for her to come after you? Perhaps neither of the two: a woman likes to feel both the genuine love of your heart and your respect for her need of having space to breath.

All fine, but in the end something has to be done, right? And how do you know what should be done? Well, don’t expect her to show the way. If she does, she’s the wrong one for you.

And don’t study her more in order to know what she wants. No? Then what? Here’s the answer. Give up thinking about her and the contact. Give up? Yes. Just focus on yourself and feel yourself, your body.

Feel love moving around in your heart. If you don’t feel it instantly, imagine it is there. Fake it until you make it. Nothing wrong with it, if you are sincere. Feel your longing for sex, not by fantasizing graphically about how you will have sex with her, but by feeling the blood heating up in your belly. Feel your fear of getting rejected or getting real close. Where in your body? And feel your lust for life, breath it in and out.

Feel your respect for her boundaries. No no, don’t try to imagine what her exact boundaries may be. That is up to her. For you it is about feeling your respect, inside of yourself.

And whatever you feel in yourself, express it in words. Deep down she knows already what you feel but she likes you all the more when you express yourself. Words make reality surface. Such words will reassure her. She wants you for that comfort.

Contact will follow. Don’t worry. And that contact may be the fertile breeding ground for deeper contact, for each of you and between the two of you.

If she still goes on asking you what you feel, grow desperate or angry, and show it. She will be quietly taking it in. And ask again. :-)