Walked: 25Km
I had an interesting dream early in the morning:
I dreamed I was with a group of pilgrims in the patio of a bar along the camino. I had switched bodies with a middle aged man, and this seemed normal to both of us. The man was sitting in the sun, and I could see my body was getting sunburned, so I asked him to put on some sunscreen. He recoiled at the suggestion, stating it caused cancer. "But that's my body, why would you care?" I thought, as I (in my friend's body) dragged on the cigarette I was smoking.
"Let's switch back to our bodies" I told him. We both stood up and looked each other in the eyes. Suddenly I wasn't looking at my face anymore, I was looking at his. He started coughing violently, complaining about the smoke in his lungs and the taste in his mouth. I smirked and thought "what a bitch".
They say everyone in your dream is yourself, even the people you know. If this statement is true, the interpretation of this dream would be that there's a part of myself that is concerned about its long term health, and the other likes to live fast.
I'm too tired to write, and at the same time I don't want to spend too much time doing it tomorrow morning. I'll upload the photos of the day, and complete this entry tomorrow.
Yesterday I passed the bus stop that was meant to leave me where I turned back to pick up my credencial, and the bus driver told me to stay on the bus so that he could drop me off on his way back. I chatted with a woman who was also on the bus. She pointed out the window:
"See those fields of olives? They are all very young trees, planted in tight rows so that they can be harvested with machines. Some years ago an investor bought this land. There was nothing, because it's a desert here, but they tapped into the aquifer and after just a couple of years they have almost run it dry".
"See those solar panels over there? Well, the investor changed his plan after draining the aquifer, they are now pulling out the young olive trees and replacing them with solar panels. The entire operation barely employs four people".
The operation reminded me of something I had already seen before, but with a dark twist. It reminded me of a conversation I had with a libertarian friend I have. He said that the ocean should be privatized because—if you own the sea, you will be concerned that it's not overfished. As it is now, it's a tragedy of the commons, it's a race to fish as fast as possible because someone else will do the fishing if you don't fish.
"That could work in the case of the ocean", I said, "but what about the case of mining and such. A company comes and extracts what is valuable from the land, leaving behind a scar where nothing grows. Wasteland".
His answer dumbfounded me: "If someone values the environment as they say, they ought to buy the land from the mining company to restore it".
This conversation came to mind when I looked at the olive grooves and solar fields. In this vision of the world, if we developed a superior technology to produce energy than solar, the investor would be entitled to let his solar panels wither in the open air, blocking the sun yet producing nothing (as long as he owned the land). Where there once was a desert with an aquifer underneath, there would be a extensive junkyard of solar panels, and none of the wealth would have transferred to the community living nearby.
It's strange seeing the same thing as my walk years ago would yield very different sensations. I have no conclusion and I must start my walk as its getting late. Godspeed.