Creating the world’s first floating country part 1

1. I want to thank all those generous people who have taken the time to send me responses to my website and its posts. They have inspired me to do more posts more regularly and to add more of my real life experiences into the posts. I have been overseas on business travelling firstly in January 2010 to my favourite city New York City (NYC) for almost two weeks and then to the Republic of Kiribati 17-23 February 2010.  I stayed on the island of Tarawa where the capital is located.  Kiribati is an Island nation, comprising 33 islands (mainly coral atolls) in the South Pacific Ocean that is tragically through no fault of its own, threatened with destruction by 2030 by rising sea levels. I am blessed and respectful of being born in an age that allows such travel to such places. NYC and Kiribati are two very different cultures, landscapes and climates. What strikes me in this extreme contrast is the determining role of cultural conditioning in determining behaviour in both countries.  I will return to explore the role of all forms of conditioning such as biological, cultural conditioning or even personal history, as inhibitors of evolution or development in future posts. – My aim is to overlay an evolutionary perspective  over all the issues I investigate be they economics, future trends and societal issues generally.  One of the key qualities in an evolutionary context is seen as risk and development. 
2. NYC, which to me is a country that happens to be in the USA, is where the world intersects. Where I expect the unexpected. That is my experience. I am fortunate of course that my energetic and inspiring Cousin Gloria Starr Kins lives in NYC.  It is through her amazing life that I experience the stimulating creative friction first hand that emerges from this intersection of people from around the world. It was at Gloria’s in January this year, that I met an amazing Japanese man, Shingo Nomura. While our level of communication is limited by lack of language on both our parts, from his drawings and translated text I was in awe at the audaciousness of his passion and his project that commenced in 2001 – To save a civilisation that in 30 years will either be uninhabitable or submerged due to predicted rising sea levels by designing and hopefully constructing a floating country – that country being the Republic of Kiribati. This is a wholesome and purposeful project that is being developed in a not for profit context and yet combines its funding with a innovative market project of salt production on one of the 33 islands of Kiribati that will provide it is expected part of the USD5Billion required to make this happen! Sounds audacious alright at one level- however on another level it provides the opportunity for Kiribati to leap into the 21 st century. It would also be an example of a new evolutionary economic development model.  It is very exciting to have been invited to be a part of this project. During the discussions in NYC I was asked by Shingo to attend meetings with the President of Kiribati and his advisors in the capital city Tarawa in February and I instinctively said , “Of course “, not knowing in my mind what this meant but another part of myself was full hearted in responding positively to the invitation. No meeting date had been determined at that stage other than it would be between 14 -23 February.
3. How did this project start and how did over 20 of Japan’s leading specialists in engineering, architecture, ocean research and engineering, agriculture, education  and city planning  join the venture donating their time, expertise and patents. Shingo organised a symposium in Utsunomiya Japan in August 2001 called the Spaceship Earth Junior conference for children around the world to speak about their visions for the world and or their countries. One 12 yr old from Kiribati cried out please save our country, please preserve for us our country in which the blue sky and sea which is who we are. Shingo responded to that from his heart and mind by making this there and then, his mission for the rest of his life and brought together this powerful team to turn his vision into a real project.  He had previously, I was told by Gloria, donated his personal wealth of USD50 M to a reduction of poverty project in Africa. He is now 66 years old. In writing about this amazingman and project, I feel I have become the energy and itelleigence that is the evolutionary impulse or creative impulse that made something come from nothing at the beginning of time and space- the big bang.  That is what I mean when I speak about spirit in the evolutionary context, that is what spirit is as me and this is the same for all human beings. It is the cosmic process of evolution becoming aware of itself through me and all of us if we dare to be aware of it- and it is always there, it is part of us, if we dare to awaken to that part of ourselves more and more as a conscious choice.  I have had many experiences of spirit as self in my childhood and adult life but I had no context for that experience other that what I found  in nature, poetry especially of William Wordsworth, my own poetry and the philosophy of Spinoza. It has been Andrew Cohen, since meeting him in 1999, who has given me the context for a deeper understanding of spirit and moe importantly, who am I, how shall I live and shining the light on the many parts that make up the self and how to enlighten my choosing faculty by making effort to objectively see more and more of my conditioning so that then I can make informed and rational choices – this is true freedom, true liberation. Please refer to Andrew Cohen’s retreats and website www.andrewcohen.org  for more information if you are interested in a 21 st century liberation perspective. In my next post I will go into more detail on the floating nation project and my time in Tarawa with my two Japanese colleagues, Shingo and Hiroke.