Endurance

Early May this year I was reading (or rather listening to - to be precise) the Endurance (Shackleton's Incredible Voyage) by Alfred Lansing. The story is truly incredible and the overall reflection is this was probably the last one like that. The last major expedition without radio communication. Something that simply is not possible today. Even when the first daredevils fly to Mars, their every minute will be covered on the Internet.

There were many fascinating aspects of surviving on pack ice. I highly recommend immersing in this book. But probably the most striking has been the realization that a trip like that - a trip of a lifetime, is not possible today. Thanks to the radio communications and GPS satellites the world is no longer an uncharted area to explore. I got so fascinated with what (and how) they did, that I decided to learn using a sextant for navigation. Of course not to drive from one city to another but to restore that skill of finding geographic coordinates based on a very simple (yet smart) mechanical - optical device (and a watch).

In the world where we use apps to find a pickup locker (or even better - use another app to have someone pick up the goods from the locker and deliver them to our couch), it is super easy to forget the most basic skills and senses. To some extent, through the convenient apps, we are slowly degrading ourselves into dumb slaves who cannot read maps, city plans or get a sense of location just by looking at the sky.

The smart tools make us a whole lot dumber.

We are increasingly prone to be manipulated by the tool making elites. [To some extent I have been fighting my own war against this manipulation, often trying to dig deep to where the truth is, not relying on shallow / repeated opinions. And discovering many lies on the way.]

The Endurance is also super interesting from the entrepreneur's perspective. One can say there are only so many things which can go wrong. And many - in Shackleton's position - would have given up. Yet he had this incredible strength to fight and motivate his team to follow. And even if from the pure "reaching the goal" perspective this expedition was not successful, but on the other hand, considering all circumstances, it was one of the most successful ever.