127: Why We Chose Nomadic Freedom for Our Family | The Conrads & Jamie Rumble - Self Directed

Episode Transcript
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Jesper Conrad (00:00):
Today we are together with Jamie Rumble.
One day there came a message inour inbox saying hey, I'm doing
a master's and I would love tointerview you guys for it, and I
just said yes, but could wethen also use it as a podcast
recording?
So today I will actually handover the baton to you, jamie, to

(00:24):
make things work, and then wewill chat back and forth and
hopefully we have some answersfor your question.
But first, what is yourmaster's about?

Jamie Rumble (00:33):
Thank you so much for this opportunity.
It's been actually reallychallenging to find digital
nomads to participate in thisstudy, digital nomads to
participate in this study andI'm speaking to you from the
unceded ancestral territory ofthe Mi'kmaq people here in Nova
Scotia, canada.
Specifically, I'm in Gasparo,which is just down the road from

(01:07):
Gluskap First Nation, and Istarted my master's quite a few
years ago actually with CapeBreton University here in Nova
Scotia, and it's a master's ineducation focusing on
sustainability, creativity andinnovation.
And for my thesis I decided tofocus on digital nomads and how
they're adapting to climatechange and what lessons can be
shared with educators from thedigital nomad community, mostly

(01:34):
because I believe that we aremoving because of climate change
and climate collapse.
We are moving into a we aremoving into a nomadic future,
essentially, or a semi-nomadicfuture.
I believe that extreme climateevents will actually cause a lot

(02:01):
of the human population on theplanet to actually have to
become nomadic or semi-nomadic,because parts of the planet will
be uninhabitable for parts ofthe year, or perhaps for
millennia, we just don't know.
So that's kind of themotivation for choosing digital
nomads.
I read a book about a year agosomewhere around here called

(02:23):
Nomad Century, where it kind ofoutlined a little bit this
similar type thought.
Mostly, the thought from thatbook was that we were going to
have to move to the northernhemispheres, that those would be
really the only habitableplaces left on Earth.
That's uncertain, though,because the AMOC, the Atlantic

(02:45):
Current, is currently breakingdown.
We're not really sure howthat's going to affect global
climate patterns, weatherpatterns, yeah.
So that's kind of a little bitof the background of my
motivation to reach out todigital nomads, and I'm hoping
that this interview can be alittle bit of a weaving of ideas

(03:05):
and philosophies.
And I'm really, reallyinterested to learn about your
digital nomad story and how youyourselves have been adapting to
climate change or your visionof that as a potential future,
your vision of that as apotential future.

So climate for us is something I think we have
been joking about, not theclimate but we have said that we
were Climate refugees.
Yes, because Denmark isuninhabitable in the winters.
We actually had a doctor afamily doctor, many, many years
ago, said to us so you shouldn'tlive in Denmark from around

(03:51):
October till May and that wasbased on his 40 years of being a
practicing doctor because hesaid that is where all the
illnesses come, that is wherepeople get sick.
And a couple of years after hesaid that we took it to heart.
But not because of that, westarted traveling of different

(04:11):
reasons.
But we like to be outside.
We like to be in a climatewhere you enjoy being outside.
So Spain is too hot in July.
We have tried.
Denmark is wonderful in thesummer, but actually also quite
cold sometimes.

(04:32):
So not to challenge your idea,but I think that we maybe have
inhabited places that was toocold in the first place, where
we came from a nomadic culture,and maybe it wasn't meant that
we should live in Denmark in thewinter.

Yeah, I totally agree and that's part of my.
I guess my thesis explorationand part of the philosophy
behind why and what I'm studyingis based on the premise that,
yes, I believe that humans wereoriginally nomadic.

(05:12):
We followed the seasons, wefollowed the animals and I feel
myself personally.
I went to Japan in 1999, partlybecause I had a desire to leave
the nine-to-five grind and Iwas motivated to explore all of

(05:34):
Southeast Asia.
I thought I ended up staying inJapan for 17 years, loving it,
and actually I'm planning to goback to teach and it was kind of
a jumping off point for me,even leaving and then getting
into this study, because myfinal teaching job I was

(05:57):
teaching at a junior high schoolthere and was teaching English
but was actually teaching globalstudies in English and I found
the focus of environmentaleducation in Japan and worldwide
for the most part is onsustainable development and
that's the United Nations has,you know, their sustainable

(06:18):
development goals and that hasreally been the focus of
environmental education for atleast the last decade or more.
But even when I was teachingthere, I found that there was a
real lack of critical literacyand critical thinking skills

(06:49):
into the eco-pedagogy aspect ofmy study, the lens that I'm kind
of looking at digital nomadismthrough is eco-pedagogy and
planetary citizenship, which isconnected to the Brazilian
educator, paulo Freire, whocreated the pedagogy of the
oppressed way back when, and soecopedagogy is kind of of the
same lineage or is the latestiteration of critical literacy

(07:11):
education, which could beconsidered a radical pedagogy,
which is challenging traditionaleducation and traditional
schooling systems, and thebanking education is what he
called it, where essentially weare depositing knowledge into
students rather than gettingthem to think critically, and

(07:32):
that was something that I reallynoticed in Japan.
That was really problematic forme as a teacher, because I just
felt like we're not preparingyoung people for the potential
future that seems to be more andmore emergent as we look at the
climate news all around us.
But I'm also fascinated by yourstory of becoming climate

(07:52):
refugees for health reasons,because that's also something
that is kind of emerging as atheme through interviewing
people is the mental health andhealth aspect of nomadic living,
both positive and negative.
So I think that's a reallyfascinating aspect of being a
nomad.

Cecilie Conrad (08:13):
It's also the critical thinking is.
That's a big part of our story.
We don't follow the news feedmore or less at all.
I don't follow it at all, youfollow it a little bit and we
don't follow the climate changeresearch.

(08:35):
I think we have the opinionthat there's not much we can do
about it, so we put our effortthere where we can make an
impact and around the thingsthat we're really passionate
about and the context climatebeing one part of context is
something we're going to have toadapt to, and adaptability is

(08:57):
the center piece of our valuesystem and our focus, and the
reason we sold our house andbecame nomadic and chose to let
our three youngest children growup without a home, without a
steady home, growing up movingall the time, was partly

(09:20):
adaptability that we thought.
Well, if we can choose where weare, we can choose the context,
whereas if you decide to buy ahouse and you know, accept the
school system and the everydaylife, the grind like that, the
context becomes something thatyou have to cope with and we

(09:48):
think adaptability is a verygood thing, but not at any
expense.
So we can adapt to a lot ofdifferent things.
Our context change all the timeand we have to cope with that.
But we don't cope with anythingand everything.
There are limits and this is amaybe stupid, naive point.

(10:13):
But let's say it rains all thetime.
I can look at the forecast andsay, okay, it's not raining over
there, let's go and we get intothe car and we drive 800
kilometers and then the sunshines.
We're happy again.
And so if the context is notwhat we want it to be, we can
work on it, but only to acertain extent can I decide

(10:34):
what's going on around me, andif I really don't like it, I can
leave.
And that was a big thing beforewe became fully nomadic, that
we talked about a lot how.
Yes, it's very good to becomevery good at adapting to
whatever hits you, whatever isthere.
You choose your own happinessand you and you work to put into

(10:59):
the system what you can to makethe system a good thing.
The context whatever is aroundyou.
But if it really isn't what youneed or make the system a good
thing, the context whatever isaround you, but if it really
isn't what you need, or if itreally is negative or wrong or
unhealthy or not safe or notnice, then it's very nice to
have a setup for life where youcan actually just leave.

(11:22):
In Danish we have this, thissaying.
I don't think it translates,but in danish we say if you
don't like the smell in thebakery, you're welcome to leave.
And that's basically what we do.

yeah, to build on that, just so it doesn't come
off as we don't do anything forthe environment.
I have had a couple of yearsworking for Gaia Education, an
institution where they createeducations and help people how
to create ecovillages andalternative societies.
But that aside, I think that ifyou look at the CO2 print of

(11:59):
travelers like us, then our vanis we have solar power.
And if you look at the dailycommute for many people even we,
even though we are driving fromDenmark to Spain from time to
time then the daily commute backand forth to work is extremely
big on how much diesel and stuffyou use, but that is not why we

(12:24):
are doing it.
On how much diesel and stuffyou use, but that is not why we
are doing it.
It is not, for us, an ecoproject or a health project.
It is more a freedom project.
We want to be free and we wantour kids to live up without the
restraints of what the societydeems that the norm is, and

(12:48):
we're quite happy with the lifewe have created.
It works quite well for us.

Interesting.
Yeah, I was going to ask youabout some of the adaptations or
the environmental impact ofliving nomadically which you
just touched on.
And I'm curious, like I readeven this morning that the
amount of CO2 that a 90 minutesfor an oligarch or a billionaire

(13:20):
or a billionaire, they createthe same CO2 as somebody at the
bottom percentile of humanity asthey would produce in a
lifetime.
So there's this massiveimbalance.

Of course there is, but you can only, as a
person, vote with your actionsand your money.
People can have so many bannersand stuff.
They're like, hey, we're doingthis and this, but it all comes
down to what you do in youreveryday life.
We are primarily plant-based.

(13:59):
We live with a small CO2footprint based on the size we
are, and we buy maybe 50% of ourclothes or something secondhand
.
And then if we are in a placewhere we can choose to buy
organic or with a local farmer,compared to buying organic in

(14:20):
plastic in a supermarket, thenwe buy with the local farmer.
That is easier when you are inSpain, for example, where the
weather is more all around forthe produce.
So that is one of the things wehave talked about in our life is
our values.
What are our values and can weuse our money in accordance with

(14:44):
our values?
I think if more people did that, then the planet would look
different.
And I'm sitting here with aniPhone on a MacBook and that
doesn't align perfectly with myvalues because of the production
, et cetera, et cetera.
So none of us are saints, butwe have thought about the things

(15:05):
.

Yeah, I'm very interested and this is one of
the things that I'm noticing andI knew as well for myself
because, as I mentioned, I wentto Japan in 1999, thinking that
I was going to live nomadicallyor semi-nomadically, traveling
around Southeast Asia, and I'vewatched the technology evolve so

(15:30):
like, for example, when I firstwent to Japan in 1999, there
were internet cafes.
That was the extent of thetechnology, and the actual term
digital nomad was actuallycoined by a Japanese person in
the mid-90s.
His name escapes me right nowMakoto, I think Something.

(15:51):
It's there, but it's not there.
So I hadn't even heard of theterm digital nomad when I went
to Japan, but I was, you know,connecting with people around
the world family, friendsthrough internet cafes, and it
wasn't until smartphones, andespecially the iPhone in 2006,

(16:13):
is when the kind of real digitalnomad lifestyle started to
emerge as it is now because ofthe tools.
Because of the tools.
But yeah, I'm curious, like oneof the things that I'm really
wondering about with regards toclimate change or climate
collapse is if digital nomadismis the future of humanity or,

(16:36):
you know, large parts of theglobal population.
What I've seen so far is thatthe digital nomads are
essentially fiercely independentand it's one of the motivations
for a lot of people to becomedigital nomads is the
independence and freedom.
There's an old saying if youwant to go fast, go alone, if

(16:58):
you want to go far, go together.
And so I'm wondering and it's achallenging question how might
digital nomadism be scalable forpopulations rather than
individuals or small groups?

It's interesting we just talked about it a few
days ago how there's this wholeconcept of living outside the
box and a lot of people talkabout escaping the mainstream or
the matrix or whatever.
But in a way and it's verypopular people get very often
very interested when they hearabout our lives and they ask all

(17:42):
the questions and it becomesthis oh, it's so fascinating,
it's so interesting and howcould you do all that Blah blah?
In a way, there has to be amatrix in order for us to escape
it.
There has to be a box in orderfor me to leave it.
And if we all leave the box,then what?
I am driving on the same roadsas everyone else, I'm shopping

(18:05):
in the same supermarkets, I'mwalking into the same art
museums.
I'm actually enjoying that boxquite a lot.
I'm just using it in adifferent way.
And I think scalability fordigital nomadism well, it's not
our lifestyle that would be, Ithink, scalable.
I think there are someinitiatives out there people

(18:33):
sharing apartments in manydifferent countries and they buy
into it and can move around,and there's a lot of people
trying to make money off thatidea and but.
But I think there is thisInstagram version of digital
nomads with, you know, thelaptop and the blue sky and

(18:58):
maybe the pool or the beach andthe idea of and the very small
backpack.
I get a lot of ads very smallbackpacks that can, apparently.

A lot of single persons out there, a lot of
singles, people actually withsmall children.

It's quite easy to travel with children under
five.
People who have children underfive think it's very hard, but
it's.
It's not.
But the reality of beingnomadic is many different things
and it changes all the time.
And the reality of beingnomadic with a family is a story
in and of itself.

(19:35):
But I don't think there is a wayto define what it is really to
be a digital nomad.
What's that?
We're all digital, so that'sjust a nothing word.
Basically, to be a digitalnomad is to be a nomad, and to
be a nomad basically, I suppose,means to be someone who moves

(19:57):
around more than those who don'tmove around, and that's all it
is.
So you can move every secondyear to a new place.
It could be a new city in thesame country and you'd still be
nomadic.
You could move every week to anew country on the planet.
You can only do that for solong, but you can do it for a
few years, and that's also beingnomadic.

(20:18):
So what are we even talkingabout when we talk about scaling
this phenomenon?
Because what is it?
That's the question, and we'vebeen doing it for seven years
now, with three children and twodogs, so we're a big group.
It's not just me and mybackpack and my smartphone in my

(20:41):
back pocket.
There are lots of things tothink about, lots of moving
parts and lots of peopleinvolved, a family moving around
, and we've been doing so manydifferent things.
So when I say I've been nomadicfor seven years and and the
next question is so how do youtravel?

(21:02):
How do you choose where to go?
What do you bring?
How do you move?
We've done all the things, allthe things.
We've been staying for lessthan 24 hours in some of our
locations and more than 10months in others.
And did we plan it?
No, it's working with whatevermakes the most sense in the

(21:22):
context at the moment, with whatwe have, with the options and
the needs of everyone involved,of everyone involved.
So it's very hard to answer thequestion, because the
foundation of the question is wecould try to define it, but it
wouldn't make sense.

Because it would also only be our definition and
we cannot be spokespersons forwhat other people do.
So just to be clear, ourproject is not even a project.
We are just a family.
We like to travel.
We felt as we startedhomeschooling our kids and

(22:01):
Cecilia was at home.
We saw in our life that theonly thing keeping us in one
place was that I went to work.
So we looked at hey, can wetransfer my income over to
becoming online?
Then we can be where we want tobe.
And I think everyone who hasbeen on a holiday or something

(22:22):
have been considering why am Igoing back right now?
Why not stay?
Then there is the change thatit is not vacation, it's not
holiday, because you bring workand you end up becoming most
often a freelancer, and it is.
I am absolutely not complaining, but being a freelancer is also
.
It makes it difficult to say noto work.

(22:45):
It makes it difficult to figureout when are you off work, when
are you not on.
So there is some other issuesthere that you maybe work more
or less and don't, but you don'tvacate in the same way you do.

You're not on vacation we don't do weekends,
we don't do pauses, we don't dovacations, we don't take breaks.
We we don't separate what we dowork, and sometimes it feels
like work and we call it work.
But we do a lot of differentthings and some of them have the
ripple effect that money comeour way.
Some of them we do and there'snot a lot of money coming our

(23:24):
way, and some is fun and some isprivate life maybe, but it's
just not.
Our time is not organized underthe same constructs.
Um, it's definitely notvacation and I think it's very,

(23:45):
very hard.
If you're not doing it or doingsomething like that, something
in in the region of it, it'svery hard to imagine what it is,
how it feels.

I think it's fascinating how this lifestyle
has emerged essentially in mylifetime.
I'm a Generation X person and,through my research, obviously
nomadism or nomadic lifestyles,I think it's personally the norm
.
If you look at human history,the last 2,000 years with, you

(24:25):
know statism to me that would bethe aberration and you know
neoliberal politics of the day.
There seems to be this tensiongrowing between what you know
statism versus nomadism, andwhat it means to be a human on

(24:47):
this planet, what it means to befree.
You know the.
You mentioned your values and Ithink that you know we're
moving maybe back to educationsystems that are more about
values rather than the bankingsystem where you're, you know,
inputting information intostudents to prepare them for a

(25:08):
life as part of the system.
And you mentioned the matrix.
Right, Kind of got me thinkingabout decolonization or
decolonizing education, where weare essentially decolonizing
our minds.
Our minds have been colonizedand we're taught to live and

(25:28):
work in the world in such andsuch a way, but I'm finding with
a lot of digital nomads thatpart of their process of
becoming a digital nomad or anomad is to decolonize their
mind and to live outside the box, as you say.
So there's a whole politicalside to it I think, which is
part of it, and the other aspectof it I think is philosophical,

(25:51):
which I think you're kind oftouching on it, and the other
aspect of it I think isphilosophical, which I think
you're kind of touching on, andthat also has a parallel
historical, I guess trajectory.
So I look at what I've beenresearching about the early
origins of modern nomadism andso I looked at certain films and

(26:12):
the zeitgeist, and one of thekind of earliest examples that
kind of popped into my mind wasthe surfing movie Endless Summer
, where the surfers, you knowthey go around the world I think
it was in the late 60s, early70s when they made that movie
these privileged, wealthyAmerican surfer type people who

(26:34):
are trying to live thislifestyle, the endless summer,
where you know it's idyllic.
And I think that alsocontributed to the appeal of
being a nomad is that you canactually have an endless summer,
and why wouldn't you want that?
It sounds amazing and wonderful.

(26:54):
But in parallel to thatmovement there was also a
philosophical movement based inFrance, especially with a
philosopher named Deleuze, withhis partner Guattari, and they
actually created the philosophyof nomadology, which is all
about essentially flexiblethinking.

(27:16):
That thought is emergent andrhizomatic and I think that it
has actually taken root for lackof a better word in the global
population, that people are kindof waking up and saying I don't
want to.
The global population, thatpeople are kind of waking up and

(27:36):
saying I don't want tonecessarily live this linear
life.
I want to live my liferhizomatically, I want to pop up
and, you know, if I want totake root somewhere else, I can
do that.
I don't need to plant myselfand commit myself to living in
this one spot.
I think that there is this shifthappening globally with global

(27:57):
consciousness.
And I also like to check myselfbecause I don't like to use the
word global, because of mybackground of teaching global
studies, because I think whenyou look at ecopedagogy and
planetary citizenship, if I usethe word global, it transforms
the planet into an object, right, a simple object, a globe.

(28:21):
But if I use the word planet,it invokes a whole different
mindset, a whole different wayof thinking.
So that's why my focus is onecopedagogy and planetary
thinking.
And eco-pedagogy, with itsroots in critical literacy, does
include decolonization.
You know the pedagogy of theoppressed and so I'm also

(28:44):
hearing through you that therewas some feeling of oppression
being in the status quo system,that that you wanted to escape,
or or just I yeah so manytensions I don't know I think,

it can also be kind of a little bit too easy to
say that we escape theoppression and we we, we have
freed ourselves, and I honestlybelieve that you can have a very
happy and free and criticallythinking-based, valuable,

(29:25):
passionate life living in ahouse on a street, your entire
life on a street, of your entirelife.
I think it's a question ofpersonality and of getting clear
on your values, knowing whatyou really want and what you
really enjoy and what's rightfor you and those who are
important to you, and I don'twant to be saying that this way

(29:51):
of living that we have chosen isbetter than any other way of
living.
I think the unconscious isbetter than not being conscious.
Thinking is better than notthinking, all real thinking
being critical, because that'swhat thinking is.
The other one is reproducingfacts, producing facts.

(30:12):
So I just want to.
It's not about whether I'mnomadic or not and it's not
about some sort of what.
To me, it felt like pressure,felt wrong to stay in the same
place, but I know that a lot ofpeople find freedom in knowing

(30:34):
exactly where the the blackpepper is on the shelf and they
could find it in the dark, andknowing exactly where to go for
a beautiful walk the last weekof october, you know, and and
there is freedom in that, andthere is.
We have sacrifices that we havemade and there is work we have

(30:58):
to do, taking up our time andenergy and mind, space and focus
and decision making.
That is just because we chooseto live this life and it's not
necessarily always fun.
We, just for the past 10 days,have really laughed more and

(31:19):
more about how much time wespend planning, and it's the way
we're actually not passionateabout planning, but we talk
planning a lot and sometimeswe're trying to have a cup of
tea together in the eveningbefore we go to bed, Just have a
little chat.
At the end of the day, we livewith a lot of different people,
a lot of different places andlots of stuff happening, and

(31:41):
it's nice to talk to each otheractually before we go to bed and
so that we succeed to do everyI don't know five or six days.
It's not like we do it everyday, we aim to do it and we try
to not talk planning andlogistics just for 10 minutes.
So much planning and logisticsand I'm losing my point.

(32:02):
My point is there's theInstagram nomad and there's the
almost self-righteous.
You know, almost self-righteous.
You know I'm all organic and Ibroke free from the system and
the oppressor didn't get to meall these things and I just
think we shouldn't forget thatthere are sacrifices in this way

(32:25):
of living and there is otherrestrictions and there are
things that we cannot do andmore things that are easy.
If you have a means that nowuse the word mainstream, but a
more life that is recognizablefor most people, uh, if you have
that, there are certain thingsthat are way easier, and then

(32:47):
it's nice that they're easierman we needed an x-ray of an arm
three weeks ago.
It took me forever to get to thepoint of actually putting that
arm into that machine.
So those things.
So yeah, the point being maybewe shouldn't be too judgmental
and also not be toocompartmentalized about what

(33:09):
this is versus what the other is.

Yep, yep, I agree, and I think that kind of
touches on nomadic thinking,right, Nomadic thinking
philosophically, if we look at,like I mentioned, Deleuze and
Guattari.
They even say you can benomadic in place.
It's all about the thinking,and so I wonder sometimes if

(33:36):
this trend growing trend, thereare millions of folks who do
identify now as digital nomads.
I think the last time I checkedthere was over 30 million
worldwide.
Oh, wow.
There's been predictions that itcould grow into the hundreds of
millions in the coming yearsbecause of climate change, that

(33:59):
it'll just be a necessity.
But I'm also noticing the waythat it's and I don't know which
is first, if it's the chickenor the egg type thing.
Is it the nomadic thinking thatis there or that is kind of
like part of our ancient DNAthat we do think nomadically, or

(34:22):
is it the lifestyle that isactually?

Maybe there were loads of nomads before we
called it nomads.

Oh yeah, yeah, long time, but where, due to
financial resources, it wasn'tpossible for them to be in a

(34:50):
specific place.
But people have also traveledlike that, where they just went
and then they took a job in akindergarten here and a
restaurant there.
And in Denmark we have loads ofyoung adults being here for the
summer working in cafes,traveling, and it is just easier
now with the internet.

(35:11):
There were two thoughts I wassitting with.
One is nomadic is not beingrootless.
It is also about having rootsin different places, where you
come and go and return to placesyou love and people you love
who are in those places.

(35:32):
There's something wonderful inseeing a garden grow.
I don't think rice we see now,but I come from the Nordic
countries so that might be why.
But I think the rice has moreto do with availability of how
you can work and earn money thanit has to do with climate, and

(35:55):
I'm sorry if that goes againstyour thesis, but that is my take
on it.
Then I think there's somethingto consider about the nuclear
family and the decline in familyclans and big families and
where families were supportingeach other.
Now we live in smaller andsmaller family units.

(36:16):
You even see the number ofpeople never getting a family
getting bigger.
The number of singles aregetting bigger, so therefore you
can also see maybe a rise therewhere people don't move as a
group.
The bigger your group is, themore difficult it gets to move
it.
The more expensive it gets tomove it, the bigger the place

(36:39):
you need.
We need a place for five andour two dogs and we have a
grown-up daughter and herboyfriend.
So it's quite a circussometimes to travel with.
And I think that you can alsosee the rise in digital nomism,
just the rise in nomadism as aresult of what is happening in
society.

(36:59):
So with families they'regetting smaller.
Ergo it is easier to travel,and I'm not saying it's a good
thing.
I'm just saying that's what Isee from the side smaller and
smaller families.
I'm just saying that's what Isee from the side smaller and
smaller families.

I was going to ask you and you just touched on it
a little bit the role ofcommunity for you personally,
and also how you navigateboundaries and all that kind of
thing, or any challenges thatyou've faced with regards to
that.

So community is everything.
We like people.
We travel for people.
We often say the adventure isthe people.
One of the things you gain withco-living or being close
together and having more time asyou are not necessarily in a
workplace from eight to four istime to talk.

(37:57):
I think that whatever happensbetween people is often that
they don't talk enough, thatthey don't have the time to talk
or they don't say themselvesout loud.
So it's a question of talking,being together, enjoying each
other's time, doing stufftogether and then saying

(38:19):
yourself out loud.
You just get used to it.
It is not super difficult, butyou need to get used to talking
with people about what you like,what you don't like, and then
don't take it personal.

I don't think it's been hard to find community
.
No, I think that it's aquestion.
We get a lot, whether we arelonely in one way or the other,
and our life is overflown bypeople.
There are so many people andit's been like that for the most
part of our travels that wemeet people.

(38:56):
Very, very quickly.
After we became fully nomadic,we started saying the real
adventure is the people, becauseit really is.
It's not about the places we go, it's about the people we meet
fills my heart just thinkingabout it right now
Overwhelmingly amazing, awesomepeople that we met and who has

(39:19):
been part of filling our lifewith joy and wisdom and presence
and beauty, including thebeauty of friendship and love,
and we are very grateful forthat.

(39:45):
And it happens spontaneously,obviously good things in life.
It's worth putting someattention into making sure they
are good, making sure that thatwe do our part, that we do what
we can to maintain goodcommunities and create good
communities.
We're very good at creatinghappy days with lots of people.
That's what we do.
So where it looks on thesurface like if you pull the

(40:10):
plug and start moving around,how can you maintain
relationships?
But the reality of it for ushas been clearly that our
relationships have become betterand powerful.
We met not that the friendswere left behind whom we still
see and maintain relationshipswith were not awesome, but we

(40:32):
met more awesome people than Ican hardly have them in my space
, you know.
Sometimes I literally sit downand write a list Not of everyone
I know, but just okay.
There's actually all of thesepeople that I want to get back
to within this week, and it's alot, and I'm not a big fan of

(40:53):
spending a lot of time on mycomputer or my smartphone, but
one of the things those twomachines can do is to keep me in
contact with those who are notin my present location.
It's a lot and it's amazing, andthere's a lot to cooperate
around with people we meet whoare also choosing a life based

(41:17):
on their values, choosing a lifethat might be different from
what would have been expected ofthem.
So we have that in common withthe people we meet and the
people we choose to spend ourtime with, and that sparks very
interesting conversations butalso a lot of support.
We know how important it is tohave a good friend, so our good

(41:44):
friends take the time to help uswith the things where they can
help, and we do the same theother way around, and the
urgency that's built into ourlifestyle, the fact that I'm not
here three months from now I'mhere now ensures that we do
these things.
We're not putting it off, we doit now or like, put it okay.

(42:07):
So tomorrow morning we'rehaving coffee and we're
discussing that thing that weneed to talk about.
Where I can help you because Ihave some special knowledge yes,
let's go 930 that cafe and thenwe're doing it, and I think
that's a very good benefit.
It's not hard.

It's just different.
No, nomadism helps youprioritize life in a good way.
Can I take it back to thecolonization which is I've been
considering my own journey fromliving the more nine to five

(42:43):
lives and my journey isdifferent than my wife's because
she was at home and had beenmore rebellious soul than I have
, but I was the one going towork, et cetera.

Making it possible for me to be very
rebellious.

And we have been grateful for the arrangement
both of us.

I'm just not fooling myself.

No, no, but being grateful for the arrangement
both of us.
So I can see when I decided togo on this path.
I started out by needing tohave a more negative definition
of what I left and I think that,being now seven years down the

(43:25):
road, I don't do that.
I can see what's kind of somemental crutches I had to move
myself away from what I thoughtlife was.
Then I criticize something torelease myself from it.
I think it's a very naturalthing.
I think that most people gothrough it.
You see it all the time indivorces, et cetera, where

(43:47):
people end up thinking theydon't like each other just
because it's not right for them,and then later on they can
figure out to work again, etcetera.

Some of them.

Some of them, some of them just didn't fit.

My parents never talked again.

No, no.
But to go back to my thoughtabout it, so sometimes today,
when I hear about decolonizationand being oppressed, I'm like
oh, and I of course speak from a50-year-old white male
perspective.

From one of the richest countries of the planet,
from one of the richestcountries of the planet.
And happiest country.

Yeah, yeah yeah, so I know what privilege my life
has been.
I've been born in a good place?
Yes, absolutely, but that is myperspective.
I have never been oppressed.
If I have been oppressed, can Ihave been oppressed?
It has been by my mind, bymyself, but I needed someone to

(44:47):
put the blame on when I neededto find the strength to move
away from what I thoughteveryday life should be.
And that is sometimes what Isee, this kind of eschew system
where it's someone else's faultthat your life is like that, and
I just don't take the premiseany longer.
I can see that I did some of itmyself.

(45:09):
I needed to strengthen mybelief in what I felt was the
right way for me, and I neededto do it by being negative and
against something.
But society never came to meand say hey, jesper, please
don't travel, come back to work.
No one had a grasp of me.

(45:29):
Okay, no, but most of what mademade me, it was in my mind and I
.
There's never been anyonesaying come, you need to be in
denmark working all the time,and and so the whole oppressed
thing, it is by ourselves.

(45:50):
And then you, of course, cantry to take it on a different
level and say have that, thatbeen installed with you, with
the banking of the school system, etc.
You are a free person.
If you are over 18, 20 yearsold, you're free to think your
thoughts, and even fromchildhood.
Yeah, all the way, yeah.
But I mean at some point, whenyou are grown up, please take

(46:12):
responsibility for your own lifeand to stop blaming people and
just do what you find is thegood thing to do.

The topic of oppression and decolonization
and this is something that theeducator Paolo Freire talks
about is so we've got theoppressors, you've got the
oppressed, and then there is arole for people to play who may
have been oppressors.

(46:40):
And so the quote that kind ofcomes to mind is we are not free
unless we're all free.
Responsibility on people whoare of the quote-unquote

(47:02):
oppressing, or oppressor ratherthan being oppressed, is there a
responsibility, if you are aprivileged person, to commit
yourself to the liberation ofthe people who are oppressed,
for example, the people who arein Spain when it's too hot to
live, or the people who are inthe sub-zero temperatures, when

(47:27):
it's miserable and impactingtheir physical and mental health
, people who don't have theprivilege or the capacity to
live as freely, I guess you know.
So that quote we are not freeunless we're all free which is
kind of very timely.

I still don't see who the oppressor is.
Is it the school teacher aswell?
Is it the guy working in thebank who is saying yes to people
whose job it is to talk?
Well, that's linked to taking amortgage.
What I'm saying is all of usare part of a society.
Yes, all of us is taking ourdecisions, all of us is looking

(48:09):
out for ourselves, and I thinkthat everybody are free, but
that sometimes it is easier tolive a life where you believe
you aren't free.
Of course, there are countrieswhere people live under slave
labor kind of thing, but that'snot the people I'm talking about

(48:32):
now.
I'm talking about the ones whohave the capacity to talk about
their decolonizing, colonizingtheir mind, etc.
And I'm like, oh sorry, youhave never been oppressed.
Many of you guys I have.
When I look at my life, the onlything that have oppressed me is
that I grew up in a societywith a school with a set way of

(48:57):
thinking, where the norm waswhat the norm was, and when I
came to a point where I thought,if I did agree in that norm,
then I was free to leave it,there was no one holding me back
.
That's just my point about it.
And then there's, of course youcan talk about how organized is

(49:17):
it?
And I know the whole storiesand I know them from way back
when I also was on.
The school is the enemy andit's created to make people walk
in line and take these jobs.
I actually think a lot ofschool teachers Cecilia is back
with her coffee schoolteachersCecilia is back with her coffee

(49:38):
I actually think a lot ofschoolteachers are doing what
they can because they reallylove teaching and they're people
and they really want to do thebest for them.

We were just having a little segue
conversation about oppressionand I mentioned the quote we are
not free unless we're all free.
And I had a question for you,cecilia, because you mentioned
earlier about the Instagramnomads, and this is another kind
of very large segment of thedigital nomad population which

(50:11):
seems to be the most popular orvisible because of social media.
But it's also a big questionfor me as a researcher is how,
in this neoliberal economy andworld that people are
essentially, especially theInstagram nomads are monetizing

(50:34):
their lives.
Instagram nomads are monetizingtheir lives and to me that kind
of points back to the topic ofoppression, because if you're in
the system, you know, theneoliberal economy, where it's
all about being an individual,promoting the lifestyle of being
an individual, but also you'reessentially monetizing your life

(50:55):
and every aspect of your lifecounts for something you know
like.
You're posting your life inorder to make money, and is that
not also potentially a form ofoppression if you're part of

(51:15):
that system where you have tomonetize your life through
social media?
And I'm wondering, sometimes aswell, is this contributing to
to mental health issues, wherewe have commodified all aspects
of existence, from birth todeath?

I think it has a lot to do with mindset, as
maybe well as not maybe aseverything in this life has a
lot to do with mindset.
I also want to say that we'renot free until everybody's free.
I know we have privilege and Iknow that there are certain
circumstances where you couldsay people are not free.
I know we have privilege and Iknow that there are certain

(51:55):
circumstances where you couldsay people are not free, but on
the other hand, we are all freealready.
It's a question of how muchoppression we choose to let
affect us and how much we'rewilling to fight back.
On the mindset mindset point ofview.
We just visited my 101 year oldgrandmother a few days ago, and

(52:20):
one of her sons was in one ofthe death camps in during the
second world war, the one calleddachau in poland, and he writes
in his journal that one of thethings that made him really
happy while in Dachau was thathe could move freely between the

(52:43):
houses and at one point therewas an elevation.
This is a horrible place.
There was a little elevation sohe could get a little bit
further up than the rest of thesurface of the camp and from
there, if he stood on histiptoes and looked as far as he
could on the horizon, he couldsee the top of one tree and that

(53:06):
made him feel free.
A lot of these people whosurvived the camp had that
mindset.
The camp had that mindset.
We were just in Krakow recentlyand did a deep dive into those
horrors and I was reading PrimoLevi again.
I read it first time when I was16, 17.

(53:27):
I read the whole thing,everything he wrote, and I did
it again and it's the same thing.
It's a question of how we copewith what is and of course I
respect this too as much as Ican extend my, my empathy.
The what is can be horrible.
It can be beyond what I canimagine.

(53:49):
I know that and I'm a cancersurvivor.
I've been in a quite horriblespot in my own life a few times,
one of them being the cancerand this freedom thought it's an
illusion in many ways.
You can say that we are morefree than other people, but I
would say some of them are freein other ways.

(54:10):
There are things they don'thave to think about, worry about
spend their time doing I don'tknow.
There are things they don'thave to think about, worry about
spend their time doing.
There are things they don'tneed to adapt to.
They're free to do whatever,and we have to pay attention to
things that other people don't.
So it's just, it's this.
It's a bit like when I criticizethe movement of nomadism and

(54:32):
talk about the Instagram nomads,and they all look the same and
they're painting this picture ofwhat it's supposed to be.
And there's this whole battleof how many countries have you
been this month or this year orin your life or whatever.
And I'm like, okay, but what ifI've been to 50 different
places in this one country andthey were all different and
amazing?

(54:53):
That doesn't get on your list,and then I can't battle you and
win this instagram contest.
It's and the same thing withthe freedom.
We talk a lot about freedom andI, I, I am very much for
freedom.
I just think we have toremember to think about what it
really is and what it really isnot, and and there's a lot of

(55:14):
illusion going on to say that Iam more free than my friend I
live with here at the farm Ilive at the moment, who lives in
a huge estate.
Am I more free than her?
I don't know that I am.
I don't think I am.
I'm free in a different way andhopefully I'm free in the way I

(55:34):
need to be free and she's freein the way I need to be free and
she's free in the way she needsto be free.
And if we don't feel that weshould do something about it
because, that's freedom to beable to realize, when the
constrictions are not fit foryour personality or the even
just where your life is rightnow, because that's another
illusion that I am in this oneway and I need this kind of life

(55:59):
and I will go on thistrajectory trajectory and that
will make me happy forever.
I wasn't unhappy when I livedin a house.
We had an amazing life inhovenhagen before we left and we
might even I consider it alittle unlikely, but we could
settle down at some point.
Maybe I don't know.

So much of our conversation has centered around
values and especially the ethicof freedom, or I would even
call it the practice of freedom.
And so I'm wondering because Idid a little bit of a dive on
your podcast and background andthe concept of world schooling

(56:39):
I'm wondering if you could justshare that a little bit.
What does that mean for you?
How would you describe that?

Well, world schooling is just a great word.

It's a fancy name .

It's a fancy name, like nomadism, but it's a
great word because for us itcame instead of unschooling,
which is another big word in ourlife and world.
schooling makes more intuitivesense to people and they can
project more ideas that makesense to them into the word and

(57:10):
imagine what our life is, andthen we can skip the whole
explaining part about how ourkids get an education, which is
really a relief for us.
But world schooling really hasno definition and it's a bit
like digital nomadism thateveryone who does it can come up

(57:31):
with what they think it is anddo it and call themselves world
schoolers.
For us.
What does it mean?
It means to be, I think it'simportant.

No, no, please don't.
No, no, I wanted to talk abouta point I think that we need to
talk about what we calleducation, and you can say the
word I can't Educationese, Idon't know what you want to say.

the word I can't Educationese.
I don't know what you want tosay, so that makes it hard.

So, okay, please follow up on it then when I try
to find my phone.
So, homeschooling, unschooling,world schooling different words
, different meanings.
Homeschooling, you can say it'sabout taking the school home,
where you are taking on the roleof the teacher, but it looks

(58:22):
different in different houses.
Then there's unschooling, whichJohn Hall coined, and it's more
free and it's not a setdefinition of what you're
teaching.
You are living a passionatelife, set definition of what
you're teaching.
You are living a passionatelife.
World schooling in Compass formany people, both homeschooling
and world schooling.
For some it encompasses puttingtheir kids in school in another

(58:46):
country.
It is a wonderful umbrella foreverything you want to put into
it.
There is an interesting thingabout the mindset of a person
like me and others who have wentto school that it is that we
have a vocabulary and anunderstanding of what learning

(59:08):
is that is based on our, ourtime in school.
And there is this old ein, orit's quoted to Einstein, that,
if it's this cartoon where youask you want to educate a fish
by its ability to climb a tree.
Yes, you're going to fail.

So if you want to evaluate the education of a
fish.
But all of these Einsteinquotes are wrong anyway,
absolutely wrong.

We can make them up and say that Einstein said it
.
No.

So maybe you just say what you want.

Yeah, what I want to say is that for some people,
they need to have what we dotranslated into oh, what did
they learn?
And then we need to translateit into what they understand as
learning based on that they werein school.
It is called education needs.

Yeah.

Jesper Conrad (01:00:00):
Now I pronounce it correctly.
Sometimes I'm really shitty atthat word.
Education needs, yeah, so thatwould be that we take to make
them happy and translate how welive our life into something
they can understand.
It is not my need, it can betheir need.
We do not have to go to a homecountry, as we are fully nomadic

(01:00:23):
, and say our kids have learnedthis in this different state and
translate our life intoteaching.
We are very free in the sensethat we actually just live our
life, enjoy, allow life, do whatwe do, and learning isn't the
goal of of our life.

(01:00:44):
Living is the is the goal ofour life and we love learning,
but it's not the goal.
We don't do things, true,because we then can say, oh, I
learned this and we do itbecause it's fun and we learn it
, and then we can be proud ofhaving learned new stuff.
I've learned to whittle spoons.
I'm very happy about that.
I didn't sit down, take acourse to learn to do it.

(01:01:07):
I had a goal of wanting to tryto make a wooden spoon.
I figured it out and got somehelp, some good advice.
Under the way, you can say itwas education, but it was never
a goal to now I will have acourse in this kind of stuff?

Cecilie Conrad (01:01:22):
But you can say, on the other hand, what is
world schooling?
If we are to answer thequestion, when we started our
fully nomadic lifestyle sevenyears ago, our children, we had
an 18-year-old who had moved outfrom home at that point and
then we had a I want to say12-year-old, a six-year-old and

(01:01:47):
a no.

No, they were.
How was it?

The youngest was six.
Yeah, so they must have beensix nine and 12.

Jamie Rumble (01:01:55):
Yeah, Six, nine and 12.
Okay, so they youngest was six.

Yeah, so they must have been six, nine and
twelve.
Yeah, six, nine and twelve.
Okay, so they were what youwould call school children.
At that point in time they werealready not in school and we
were already not teaching themanything, especially nothing you
could call a curriculum.
We, of course, were stillespecially me, because me,
because I was the one at homeanswering questions and

(01:02:17):
facilitating things.
So if they say, if asix-year-old says to you, I want
to learn to draw a house, youfacilitate that one way or the
other.
You take out pen and paper sodrawing can be done, or whatever
some drawing tools, and maybeyou show an example, or you find
a YouTube video or a book or afriend who's really good at

(01:02:39):
drawing.
And is that teaching?
Yes, it's teaching, it'slearning.
But it's not me who sat downtwo years before and planned out
that in the third week ofFebruary we would draw houses.
I never did that.
So this unschooling lifestylewhere there was no curriculum,

(01:03:01):
no agenda, no workbooks, wedon't even know what grade our
children are not in Really, Ihave to do math to figure it out
that kind of life we alreadylived when we started traveling
and, of course, we did putthoughts into.
We put a lot of thoughts intowhy would we not send our

(01:03:24):
children to school and why wouldwe not teach them at home?
Do homeschooling in atraditional curriculum based way
?
And how would that affect theirlife?
What kind of education couldyou say they then would get?
And how did that make sense?
Of course we put a lot,hundreds of hours of thought and

(01:03:46):
conversation into that, beforewe chose to become nomadic.
And when we chose to becomenomadic, of course, we put loads
of hours into thinking andtalking and and researching.
What does this mean forchildren?
And how, how, what, what is the?
What is the effect of this, why, why does this make sense?

(01:04:07):
And and so, of course, worldschooling.
There is a strategy.
It's.
It's very easy to say there'sno strategy and we're just not
doing it and we just live apassionate life, and learning is
a byproduct of doing somethingyou find interesting, which it
is.
But, on the other hand, we willcircle back to the value thing
and arrive at the point where,well, we know, jesper and I,

(01:04:31):
what we think is reallyimportant, and we also know that
we want to know what ourchildren think is really
important, and we have theseconversations regularly and what
we want them to learn beforewhat you might say was a high
school graduation, it's not somuch the languages and the

(01:04:56):
history and the grammar and themath and the science and the
social science and whatever allthese things.
At the end of the day, thesethings are quite hard to not
learn living a life.
No, what we really want them tolearn is the adaptability we
talked about before.
We want them to learn to evolvesolid ethics, to know what they

(01:05:25):
believe is true and right.
It doesn't have to be what Ibelieve is true and right, but I
want them to think about it andact upon it and have experience
making mistakes.
Think about it and act upon itand have experience making
mistakes and have experiencewith all kinds of cultures and
settings and situations wherethings happen.
And because we live the way wedo, we have a lot of time to

(01:05:46):
talk about what we experiencewith each other, but also with
other people, that we're aroundgetting their input, their value
system, their way of thinking.
That we're around getting theirinput, their value system,
their way of thinking.
So we want them to be reallystrong with that.
We want them to be able to love.

(01:06:09):
It's a vulnerable thing to do infriendships and romantic
relationships and familyrelations to be in a loving
position to give and receivelove.
We want them to be able tonavigate the complexities of
social life and the complexitiesof existence.
Those things are so much moreimportant If you want to learn

(01:06:31):
the history of the AmericanRevolution, whatever It'll take
you like a month of focusing fora few hours a day.
You can do that whenever inyour life.
But in the formative years ofgrowing up, from you're a little
toddler and until you're ayoung adult these things that I

(01:06:52):
just mentioned they will have ahardcore impact on the quality
of your life and also on thequality of your impact on this
planet.
So you talk about climatechange and these things.
Well, we don't worry too muchabout climate change because
it's one of the things we can'tdo anything about anyways, but
we do worry about I really needthe word only in English.

Proper.

How to be proper apparently is the word in
English how to be in this life.
In a way, that's okay, thatmakes sense, where you're doing
the right thing, where yourcontribution is the contribution
you want to make really, whenyou stop to think about it.
That we do worry about andthat's what we want to pass on

(01:07:41):
to our children that they makegood choices around human beings
, about all beings around theplanet.
So that's what world schoolingreally is to us, and taking them

(01:08:09):
out on this crazy journey ofliving in so many different
places with so many differentpeople in so many different ways
for so many different reasonswas a way to expose them to a
lot of different things so thatthey could more likely have more
different experiences to workwith, to evolve these things I
just mentioned.
Of course, they're alsolearning math.
I mean that's not hard andhistory and languages and those
things, but that's just morelike a ripple effect.

But again, it wasn't our curriculum.
Sometimes if you go to Rome,you go to Rome because you want
to go to Rome, you want to seesome of the museums, you want to
see the history there.
If you go to New Mexico, it'sbecause there's something
drawing there.
It's difficult not to learnsomething about that culture if

(01:08:54):
you are an interested humanbeing who knows the culture you
come from and see thedifferences, and then we talk
among each other about, hey,this is different, why is it
different?
And then the curiosity drive,for that we absorb knowledge in
our dialogue around these things, things, because it is when

(01:09:15):
something is different.
My curiosity often wants toknow why are we answering your
questions?
Good enough?

yeah, no, sometimes I'm like, oh, we are
chatting away what I'm, what,what kind of is is gestating or
going through my mind, iswhether or not nomadism is a
reaction or an instinct or a mixof and this is the other thing.

(01:09:44):
I think in this modern day andage we've been kind of brought
up to have this kind of black orwhite thinking where it's one
or the other right.
But I think, cecilia, you kindof touched on it's poly, it's,
you know, multipolar, and Ithink that's part of the nomadic
philosophy or thinking which Imentioned earlier.

(01:10:07):
Yeah, lots of thoughts, so manythoughts.
I also wanted to know a littlebit more about Jesper, your
background as a teacher and asan educator.

I have absolutely none.

Oh, okay, you mentioned.

Gaia, no, no, no, I started working with
marketing part and then I worked, so I never did any of the
curriculum work for it.
But I know the organizationinside out because it was part
of my work to help them get outto the right people for it.
But I know the organizationinside out because it was part
of my work to help them get outto the right people for them.
Okay, so it was part of mydigital nomad job.

I did it while I was traveling, okay, and so you
mentioned about the values thatyou're trying to, I guess,
develop in your children, thatyou see as being important.
I guess I'm wondering do youfeel or think that the world
needs healing?
Is that part of the process?

I don't think I want to define what the world
needs.
That would put me in a positionof you know, some sort of
superior position.
I think it needs awakening.
If I am to, you know, I talkedabout oh sorry, inside the
camera.
I talked about consciousnessbefore, and the only thing that

(01:11:29):
really worries me is the lack ofconsciousness, the lack of
focus, the distractions, thenon-thinking Healing.
Is it broken?
I don't think I'm part of thatdiscourse.
Really, I think we're on somesort of path and it is what it

(01:11:50):
is, and I'm not sure I am smartenough to know whether it's good
or bad or right or wrong.
There are disadvantages, butclearly there are also
advantages.
There are lots of good thingsabout the modern life and where
we are as humanity.
Of course, I'm not a climatechange denier or anything like

(01:12:13):
that.
I'm just saying we can talkabout all the black spots on the
world, but we could also talkabout the whole house, you know,
and and there's a lot of goodthings going on.
So maybe, so my, my choices,our choices to, to work for and
with the, the good vibes and andthe things that we believe is

(01:12:35):
making the world a better place,and if I think the world is
such, or or humanity as such.
Need anything?
I think always consciousness,awareness and presence is a good
thing, and I see a lot of notthat I see that and it saddens
me and it worries me, because Ithink people are quite smart and

(01:12:58):
people are quite, you know,full of empathy and love and
they do care.
Can be hard to see the bigpicture, but at least you can
see your own picture and careabout that.
But if you're not aware, ifyou're not present, if you're
not aware, if you're not awake,then maybe it can just be the
machine hammering on andsuddenly you wake up because you

(01:13:22):
get cancer or you get divorced,or get hit by a car or a health
scare or something happens, andsuddenly you wake up and
realize, oh, maybe I shouldthink about what I'm doing and
I'm a little bit sad when I seethat that's sometimes not the
case.
As you said, with the educationsystem we spend Notes of

(01:13:47):
cultures, countries have thisagenda of educating their
children and young people andthey put a lot of effort, a lot
of tax money, a lot of people'slife hours into it and really
this is what you call it banking.
You know it's not educatingyoung people to think and feel
and be present and understandand ask critical questions and

(01:14:07):
finding the answers.
It's more like the foie gras.
You know how they feed theducks by shaking things down the
coast.
And you know, and then you get agold star.
If you can get a big fat liver,that's the gold star.
If you can reproduce, vomit outall of that knowledge that was

(01:14:28):
pushed into you rather thanlearning to actually engage with
this life and, you know, havereally deep dives into knowledge
that makes sense to you toabsorb.
I find that quite sad.

About the healing of the world, then again, the
world is made up of people.
It is you are there, we're here.
I think if we take and say, oh,society is sick, or the world
is sick and it needs healing,then it again is an excuse for

(01:15:09):
doing something, because ifeverybody did their best, the
world would look way different.

It wouldn't need healing it wouldn't need
healing.

It wouldn't need healing.
So I think that taking it up onthese global kind of scales is
a way to not take responsibilityAgain, to quote a wonderful
song by Michael Jackson I'mstarting with the man in the
mirror If everybody did that.
I've seen so many people talkabout climate change and then

(01:15:37):
they go down and buy a burgerwith meat that is shitty,
produced from places that noanimals should live and, of
course, this is my bacon at theend of the talking.
But at the same time, I thinkthere's a lot of people who
don't stand with their values,who talk, who say it's a

(01:15:59):
societal problem or it's a worldproblem.
I'm like no, no, no.
If you're right there, you takeresponsibility for your own
life, you do what you think isright and you do it good, then
the world will come along.
And that is my problem withwhat I would call eschewsism,

(01:16:20):
this putting it over as asocietal thing.
It's the schools, it's the men,it's the oligarchies.
It's like start cleaning upyour own house, then the world
is really good yeah.

I think it's both.
I mean, I'm not saying thereisn't a point to be made, for
you know, we I used to be afull-blown anarchist and I am
not as full-blown any longer.
I think states, laws and rulescan have a really good impact
for human beings and it can bereally important.
So I'm not against thinkingbigger scale.

(01:17:02):
I just think that you're right,the most part is the
individuals, and humanity ismade up of a lot of individuals
in a lot of groups.
So it's not just the individualindividual in a lot of groups.
So it's not just the individualindividual, it's also what
communities are you part of andhow can you make those

(01:17:22):
communities thrive so thatpeople inside those communities
feel good when they wake up inthe morning, so that people in
those communities have love andsupport and freedom and
consciousness?
Can you be part of makingcreating more of that and peace?
Peace and clearness is what Ipray for.
If I ever pray, I pray that Ican be clear in my mind and that

(01:17:45):
I can have peace in my mind if,if we can be part of creating
more of that in the communitieswe, we are in, and that can just
be you and your or it can beyou and the 50 people you live
in in your local community,whatever.
If you can create more of that,you're making the world a
better place.
So, and I think that's moreimportant, and I think also

(01:18:10):
that's also why we don't talkabout climate change.
It's not interesting becausethere's not much we can do about
it.
But we can do something aboutwhat we put in.
We can do something about how weconsume.
We can do something about howwe feel and how we act and react
to what's happening around us,what we contribute with and what

(01:18:35):
vibe, you might say, what stateof mind we leave behind us when
we leave a location or asituation or a group or a
country or a space.
So we think a lot about thatand this is where we can act.
And I think if everyone didthat not exactly what I do, but

(01:18:56):
if everyone did their best inthe ways where they are good at
doing their best, which is notthe same for everyone, and I
think we would see a huge effect, and maybe we already do.

maybe that's the awakening you talked about
before yeah, and that'ssomething that the educator
frary talks about, isconsciousness raising.
He uses a specific word that Ican't pronounce in Portuguese
consciência-sazão, or somethinglike that as part of
the-pedagogy as well learning tothink that we are not separate

(01:19:32):
from nature, that you know thethings around us the trees, the
rivers also have their ownconsciousness, and to be
connected more with the world.
So that's, I guess, kind ofwrapping up the world schooling

(01:19:55):
piece as well.

The fun thing for me with our podcast is we
really like diving into people,ideas, thoughts, and we have, at
the same time, thought a lotabout the subjects that are the
life we live, why we live it,our values, et cetera.
So it's quite interesting to benot challenged but asked into.

(01:20:18):
Why do you do stuff like that?
And your perspective is fun,because there is some areas
where I'm like ooh, no, no,that's not what I think, and
then I need to explain it andthat makes a very interesting
conversation.
So I think we should continuethe conversation and then round
up like that.

(01:20:39):
Jamie, it has been a bigpleasure and for the people
listening out there, this ispart of Jamie's project.
At some point there will come amaster's out.
I don't know when, but we willlink to it, go back in the old
podcast notes and link to itwhen time is.
So if you listen to this yearsfrom now, there will be a link

(01:20:59):
to the masters.
But for us now it's time to saygoodbye, but also see you again
pretty soon, because it couldbe really interesting to get to
the rest of the list of thequestions on your long list.
That would be a big pleasure.

Yeah, thank you so much.

Thank you for your time, it was fun.

Yeah, thank you.

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127: Why We Chose Nomadic Freedom for Our Family | The Conrads & Jamie Rumble

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}127: Why We Chose Nomadic Freedom for Our Family | The Conrads & Jamie Rumble