I've been following the geographical movements of people for many years as part of the work I do. In the last five years especially, I have joined many migrations & pilgrimages across the world as part of a wider project on the subject.
I believe that the urge to travel is deeply etched within in the genes of every single one of us. In fact, I have no doubt that this is one of the main reasons that we have become so successful as a species, having now colonised almost every conceivable environment on the planet.
Of course, this genetic success has come at a price as we now appear to be facing a number of major problems with the environment that sustains the lives of us all.
What I find interesting however is that mother nature doesn't appear to care about these problems. In fact, by successfully exporting our species around the globe we are only doing what she originally programmed us to do two hundred thousand odd years ago when we were compelled to make our first steps out of Africa into the wider world of planet earth.
So, I find the current state of the world an inevitable consequence of the natural desire for life to survive and thrive. I believe that historically, given the same genetic advantage, any other species on the planet would have eventually found themselves in the same situation that we now find ourselves in.
I am optimistic about our future in this world. I know that's not a very fashionable idea these days but I believe in the incredible problem solving capabilities of us humans.
Sure, by solving one problem we normally create another, but this is one of the fundamental cycles of life as far as I'm concerned and I believe that as a species we will rectify all the predicaments we currently find ourselves facing as well as many, many more in our shared futures to come.
waaw such incredible two photos, migrating must be hard especially in such weather! keep up the good work 👍👍
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it's amazing that you can stay so positive :)
yes, people do have good problem solving skills and I hope we'll solve the worlds problems someday.
I love that photo at the bottom too by the way
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Hey Timothi, great post indeed. you may have heard the theory of mendel. we always tend to aquire better traits and leave behind weak ones. this has been inside us for thousands of years and current evolution is also a part of this.
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Wow both of the pictures are incredible. What an experience to be with them on the migration.
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I have been a fan of yours ever since I noticed your blog for the first time.I think you are my favorite photographer.When I look at your work I feel so jealous and think that if I had such a talent like you have.
All my best wishes for you,go ahead and post more interesting photos that we are going to love.
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Incredible pictures. Mass migration is so tedious.
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Damn awesome!
Posted using Partiko Android
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There are many reasons why people keep moving. It should not be generalized or simplified. Yet, every new experience is precious and unique. It's up to us what we will take from each lesson. If it comes to travelling itself, I believe the majority is either craving new opportunities or trying to make their lives better. Others are looking for some new, meaningful and authentic moments. And some might be afraid that when they settle down they would become limited, dependent and more vulnerable. All in all, the urge to travel is due to the deep attraction to what we haven't discovered yet or to what we must discover - whatever the reason may be... And not to judge anyone! ... Ps. Beautiful pics! :)))
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Resteemed! Where are these pictures?
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The top one is the Altai Mountains. The bottom one is the Peruvian Andes.
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Q cool naguara buena foto
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I do believe it is in our genes the urge to travel world, but for the pleasure of it. I am from Venezuela and sadly everyone is migrating because of the political situation that has been happening from 20 years ago. In this case, the urge to travel is only for the urge of survival, like many tribes did in the past.
I, like you, want our people to be all around the globe, and I keep my hopes up that we make it a better place.
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Yes I think we will survive as a species. It is just how much collateral we take as we go along. Nice to see an optimist online. They are few and far between. After almost 15 years working on clean technology startups to address some of these problems and watching the world political process and mass global apathy to a lot of critical issues I am starting to loose my optimistic view on things.
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Twenty five years of travel has made me optimistic about the human species. People are good and we predominantly want to work towards a greater good. The kind of chaos that we see today is a side effect of change as far as I'm concerned. Everything changes.
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Yes everything changes. But not always for the better from an ecological perspective and the speed of change is a direct result of human activity. Humans are good at adapting and will survive and thrive regardless. Other animals and ecosystems are not. It will take 5 million years to recover the species diversity we have already lost at normal evolution rates (https://www.care2.com/causes/it-could-take-5-million-years-for-mammals-to-recover-from-our-impact.html)
In shear number terms we have lost almost 60% of all global wildlife in the past 40 years (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/29/earth-lost-50-wildlife-in-40-years-wwf) . There is only so much ecological space here and humans are just consuming more and more of it (both consumption wise and population wise).
It is hard to see anything changing that trend in the next 40 years even with declining fertility rates as there is so much population inertia before you even get to consumption rate leveling between first and second worlds (let alone third world). Africa will go from 1- 4 billion people in the next 100 years (https://www.businessinsider.com/africas-population-explosion-will-change-humanity-2015-8 ) .
The rate of change around us will only speed up and this will drive more populist politicians proposing simplistic solutions which will drive more chaos. When I travel back to places like Indonesia 20 years after I first traveled there you can't ignore the large swathes of ecological decimation of their forests . You go to places like Karachi which sits at the head of the Indius river valley in Pakistan, once part of the cradle of civilization, and it has been subject to massive amounts of human induced desertification and is now an open sewer spewing massive amounts of waste plastics out into the ocean. We did some feasability work trying to implement a project on the landfill to recycle plastics and they had 40k scavengers living in shanties on top of the tip who would sort plastics for free into /PET/PP/PVC/ etc in exchange for the rights to scavenge for food and other things on the landfill for a couple of hours a day.
I wish I could share your optimism on this. I do agree that humans ultimately want to work towards a greater good. I am just not sure we can deal peacefully with the unprecedented rate of change at the moment. Historically rapid social and societal change has led to civil unrest and periods of war prior to any prolonged period of stability. We have more tools at our disposal than ever before but the challenges are on a scale that we have never had to deal with. The challenges are also much more global and interdependent.
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I suspect that we are seeing unprecedented rates of change in almost everything... that of course includes (problem solving) technological advancement... or say the number of people living in poverty... Wealthier people care more for the environment... they can afford to. The quicker we lift people out of abject poverty, the better our long-term environmental situation will be and that plan is currently going very well indeed. In 1820, 94% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. In 1990, 34.8%, and in 2015, just 9.6%. (https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions-in-5-charts)
I think that the problems you see are an inevitable by-product of this rapid speed of change. That doesn't mean that we're not heading in the right direction though. As you say, there is no precedent for what is happening today... so you could be right to be pessimistic. However, I think there is more to be optimistic about.
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I would love to be positive about it; so I am having a reluctant debate here ;-). I guess our difference in opinion comes down to if you focus on the human condition itself or the environmental ecosystem as a whole. The human condition has never been better (for 99% of us); that I agree and I appreciate the link you posted however every one of those metrics related to the human condition . We do however do more damage every decade now to the environmental ecology than we did every century before this last one and this is accelerating. A lot of this damage, such as species extinction is non-reversible unless considered on long term geological timeframes. Even things like reef destruction, while not requiring geological time-frames to recover assuming you save the species, still take in the order of 500-1000 years to recover. You could say change is inevitable and the loss of ecological diversity is just a result of our species domination. All of which is true. We are after all living though the 6th mass extinction event the world has seen since life evolved (the Holocene extinction or Anthropocene extinction) and complex diverse life will recover with enough time. This is not a question of the world or even life surviving; there is no doubt about that. The difference this time is that we are causing the mass extinction event, rather than geological changes or extraterrestrial impacts, and are we ok with that? If we are not ok with that, can we collectively reverse it from where we are now even with all the good will that is out there? Even from a a selfish human perspective the millions of years of diversity that we are losing (particularly in places like the the forests of SEA or the Amazon) from a genetic and molecular organic compounds level is a tragedy when you look at the potential for things like medicines and advanced genetics.
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I agree that it is a tragedy... but I see a certain inevitability in the process thus far. I also believe that science will allow us to reverse declining biodiversity and species extinction at some point in the future. It's hard to imagine what will be possible in 50 years time. Now try and imagine what we could do in 500 years time at the current rate of technological growth. It would be unprecedented for sure.... and to the question of whether we would have annihilated ourselves by then... that's where my optimism about our species comes in.
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Great photos! Must be such a tasking journey!
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