In 2016 we sailed Pylades around the south of England, through the Kiel Canal, and on to Leningrad Oblast, returning via the Gota Canal in Sweden and the Caledonian of Scotland, a voyage of 3800 miles. See our story in; The Russian Voyage.
Beginning 2009, I was privileged to spend three years sailing around the world.
Between 1994 and 1997, Katherine, my wife and I, built a 12-meter steel boat, Pylades. In 2009 we sailed from Kinvara on a circumnavigation. For three hundred days and nights, mostly fair, riding down the trades under brilliant star-fields….. nights, staring out at the far constellation of Andromeda, back through two and a half million years of time…..These were the perfect conditions for reading, dreaming and writing;
‘The Republic of Reason & The Poverty of Philosophy’
A book which might contribute in some way to a necessary debate.
“While the Republic of Reason stands deliciously controversial, it is a necessary vision. Its implementation requires shrewd courage. It is a road that could be taken with cool pride and some fun.”
When the driver of an economy is competitive greed, those most skilled in competitive greed rise to control it in their interest. When money alters from being a means of exchange, to a mechanism for the purchase and maintenance of power, it concentrates and poisons the foundations of the economy. As the dictatorship of capital intensifies, social democracy fades, exploitation and avarice rise to corrupt our beautiful species into mindless operatives and consumers. The spectre of a full dystopia is stemmed only by reason, natural empathy and unified action ……………