You Gotta Laugh, We’re Facing Armageddon and I’m Talking Tourism

So...

• We (the world) have just a biblical 40 day supply of wheat stocked.
• The price of (healthy) soya beans went up 50% last week.
• Rice is now rationed in many countries and definitely “not for export”.
• Water is looking more and more precious.
• The world’s population is set to go up by 3bn (ie 50%) in the next 20 years.
• The message from the 2,500 scientists of the IPCC InterGovernmental Panel on Climate Change is that “The overwhelming majority of scientists agree that atmospheric concentrations of GreenHouse Gases in 2005 exceeded by far the natural range over the last 650,000 years…the net effect of human activities has been one of warming.”
• Due to global warming, there will certainly be less land to live in.
• Inflation, that destroyer of assets, is looking us in the eye.
• Banks and big businesses are looking more and more shaky.
• House prices are tumbling down the chimneys and negative equity is a real option.

SHOCKED AND AWED?

Those are the facts that have kindly been retailed by our media.

They also say that, on the brighter side…

Russia, China and India, developing apace, will join us, all precariously balanced at the peak of consumerism . Yes, within 20 years 2.1bn residents of developing countries will be earning over $10,000 a year – there are just some 350m today.

The majority of the Millennium Development goals will be hit in Asia (that means far less poor, uneducated people). But not, of course, in Africa.

Millions (possibly billions of people, including me) are joining social networks like Facebook and living second lives on Second Life.

I’m old and biased, and I’ve seen it all before, so I know that behind all those bits of frightening, uplifting and fascinating news, there’s quite another another message. More of that later.

I’m concentrating on tourism, because it’s what I know and it’s what I do. It’s where I can make a difference.

My schtick is empowerment. Empowerment through tourism? You gotta be joking! Hold that thought.

What’s empowerment then? In my view empowerment means having a realistic appreciation of your strengths and weaknesses and taking charge of your own life, yourself and not handing over your power to anyone else,, any set of ideas or anything that’s not you. In other words taking responsibility yourself for you.

Or taking responsibility myself for me, in my case. That’s me told.

Tourism is an economic, cultural and environmental activity that hasn’t many barriers to entry. In other words almost anyone can work in it and be successful at it if they do it OK.

You can make something, grow it or buy it and sell it to tourists, you can show tourists around, you can even jump in at the deep end and rent out a room in your home for a night or two. And you need little or no training. Actually.

The tourism activity depends on the quality, integrity and authenticity of your culture and your environment, so anybody working in tourism sooner or later has to take responsibility for their surroundings.

And tourism depends on you too.

So, to be a success at tourism, you need to take responsibility for yourself, your culture and your environment. The economic benefits will follow.

Seems pretty empowering to me.

And the wild media stories?

When someone shouts at you too loud to look one way, they usually don’t want you to look somewhere else. Where the real game is going on.

So, why the big noise about global warming, population increase, floods, disasters, famine and thirst? And Iran?

When they all shouted loudly about terrorism, it became an excuse to disempower us, to remove some of our rights. The more they shouted “Look here” the more the guys in the other room were drafting legislation.

You can almost feel the screw turning a little can’t you?

Just laugh, and talk about tourism…