To Eat or Not to Eat GMO

Genetic modification has been performed on many of the products or ingredients we consume on a daily basis. A GMO is any living organism whose genetic material has been artificially manipulated in a laboratory through genetic engineering. Foods derived from genetically engineered plants and animals, called GMO foods, may not be viable for human consumption, however. While there is no scientific consensus as to whether food from Genetically Modified Organisms is safe or not, GMO foods are demonstrating that they create substantial inflammation and may actually encourage the proliferation of viruses, bacteria, mold, and fungus. It is noteworthy that most of the research used to claim that GMOs are safe has been performed by the biotech companies responsible for creating them, but to date there have been no epidemiological studies investigating potential short- or long-term effects of GMO foods on human health.

There is growing concern among researchers that we may be wise to avoid GMO foods until further test-supported conclusions can be drawn about their safety. There are animal studies showing organ damage, gastrointestinal, and immune system disorders, accelerated aging, and infertility. In humans it has been shown that GM foods can leave material behind, the long-term effects of which are unknown. The genes inserted into GM soy, for example, can transfer into the DNA of bacteria that live within us, and the toxic insecticide produced by GM corn has been found in the blood of both pregnant women and their fetuses.

The percentage of Americans experiencing three or more chronic illnesses jumped from 7% to 13% in just nine years after GM food was approved for use in 1996. Incidence of food allergies during the same period took a meteoric jump, and disorders such as autism, digestive problems, and reproductive disorders rose sharply. While there has not been enough time to research whether GM foods are or are not a contributing factor, many doctors are not waiting to advise us to wait before we eat GM foods, especially our children.

There are other reasons to steer clear of GMOs, not the least of which is the reduction in diversity of the natural gene pool in the name of producing more marketable food products. Cross-pollination of GMO's with organic plants, referred to as self-propagating GMO pollution, further damages the gene pool for the limited number of plant foods we raise for consumption. Irrespective of the type of genes that are inserted, the very process of creating a GM plant can result in massive collateral damage that produces new toxins, allergens, carcinogens, and nutritional deficiencies. GM foods have no special consumer benefits over organic foods, they do not increase yields, and they actually work against feeding a hungry world. Whereas sustainable non-GMO agricultural methods used in developing countries have conclusively resulted in yield increases of 79% and higher, GMOs do not, on average, increase yields at all.

Interestingly, reports from around the world describe how animals, when given a choice, avoid genetically modified food. These include cows, pigs, geese, elk, deer, raccoons, mice, rats, squirrels, chicken, and buffalo. Is there something the animals have to teach us?

Techno-Rejuvenation

“Life begins as a quest of the child for the man, and ends as a journey by the man to rediscover the child.” The longer I stick around the more attention I give to holding the line against the decline of aging. When I close my eyes and examine my own self image it does not equate to the chronological expectations of the culture I find myself in. I push forward each day with the passion and verve of an earlier time and increasingly find it incumbent upon myself to redefine the concept of aging in the eyes of others by my living example. From everything I encounter in my readings and investigations, there are already sufficient findings to show that we can slow down disease and aging processes to the point that baby boomers like myself can remain in good health long enough to still be around for the full blossoming of the biotechnology and nanotechnology revolutions that will enable us to extend our lives for as long as we choose.

A very good friend, only six days older than me, died last Saturday from an aggressive bout with cancer. Too many of my contemporaries seem satisfied to accept aging gracefully as part of the natural cycle of life. Not me. I can find nothing positive in surrendering my mental agility, sensory acuity, physical resilience, and sexual desire to the march of time. I see disease, decline, and debility as problems that can be overcome. The question that faces me each day is how can I live a more optimal life? How can I stretch this experience out to find fulfillment in living for longer?

Aging is not some linear inexorable progression, but consists of a group of interrelated processes which we can manage to one degree or another. If we can stick around long enough, the remarkable advances in biotech and nanotech may allow each of us to manage these variables completely to extend health and life for as long as we like. Everything I read about the scientific revolutions we are in the midst of points to being able to very soon engineer our own senescence – stopping our bodies and brains from becoming more frail and disease-prone as we age.

Sci-fi movies are fond of referring to humans as carbon-based biological units. Essentially that's a pretty good definition. We are biochemistry factories housed in a skin package. Scientists have mapped the human genome and can reprogram our biochemistry. Biotech is finding new ways to change our genes, not just to make designer babies, but to make designer baby boomers. The knowledge is already there to be able to rejuvenate all of the body's tissues and organs by transforming simple skin cells into youthful versions of every other cell type. Research is nearing the stage of verifying robust rejuvenation of animals. Once that is confirmed with exhaustive trials, humans are next.

We are learning the precise biochemical pathways that underlie disease and the aging process by which specific cellular components – RNA and the ribosomes – produce proteins according to a specific genetic blueprint. Gene expression is controlled by peptides and short RNA strands. We are beginning to reverse engineer these biochemical processes to see how it all works. Many new therapies are right now under development and testing to turn off the expression of disease-causing genes and turn on desirable genes that may otherwise not be expressed. Cutting edge somatic gene therapy will enable us to effectively change genes inside the nucleus of any cell by “infecting” it with new DNA. Gene therapy can change adult genes that slow down and even reverse aging processes. Viruses are often the vehicle of choice. There is no greater master of delivering new genetic material to cells. By switching the material a virus unloads into a cell, instead of being infected by a disease the cell experiences a rejuvenation.

Aging involves a multiplicity of changes, processes that encourage senescence, all that can be controlled by technological innovations in the near future. That is what is so encouraging. All of us suffer mutations of our DNA. Our cells discard most mutations, but those that affect orderly cellular reproduction are problematic in that they can result in cancer. If existing gene therapy can be used preemptively to remove from all our cells the genes that cancer needs to turn on in order to maintain their telomeres when they divide, tumors will wither away before they have a chance to grow.

There are also mutations in the thirteen genes of the cell's powerhouses, the mitochondria. A mechanism already exists in the cell to allow nucleus-encoded proteins to be imported by the mitochondria so that they don't need to produce their own. Most of the proteins needed by the mitochondria for healthy function are already coded by the nuclear DNA. Researchers have been very successful at transferring mitochondrial genes into the nucleus in cell cultures.

Sometimes our cells reach a point at which they are not cancerous, but it would be better for the body if they could be gotten rid of. Such worn out cells can be targeted and tagged in such a way that the body's own immune system destroys and discards them. Similarly, toxins accumulate both inside and outside cells. Through somatic gene therapy new genes can be introduced to break down these toxins. A whole spectrum of proteins have been identified that can destroy virtually any toxin, using bacteria to digest and destroy dangerous contaminants from TNT to dioxin. This same strategy has been very successfully ued in cleaning up environmental disasters.

Finally, there is the problem of cell loss and atrophy as we age. Our bodies can replace worn out cells, but this ability is limited to certain organs and is not systemic. The liver can regenerate new tissue, but the heart cannot. The primary strategy here would be to deploy therapeutic cloning of our own cells. Starting with one's own egg or sperm cells, geneticists can trigger differentiation of diverse cell types just as what naturally occurs soon after fertilization, allowing them to clone your own organs from your own tissue for replacement.

Interestingly, no more than a few hundred genes are involved in the aging process. Science is not far from making all of this something each of us has to look forward to. In addition is a hybrid scenario involving both biotech and nanotech solutions turning biological cells into interactive computers. Such cells with “enhanced intelligence” could detect and destroy pathogens and cancer cells and even initiate the regrowth of human tissue at the cellular level, all software driven by nano addendum. At MIT researchers are employing wireless communication with nano chips to send intricate sequences of instructions for implementation at the cellular level. Once we have refined our ability to program cells, we are no longer constrained by the genetic instructions we are born with. New things can be programmed for new patterns. The potential is limitless.

Sure, there is a downside – just as there was with fire, the automobile, and the cell phone. The expansion of intelligence is an unstoppable force, however - the greatest power in the universe. It will happen. The only question is, can you hang on long enough to be there and benefit from it???

The Future Ain't What it Used to Be

The United States is on the move again. For eight years we were told to forget about how things used to be. The good times were over; China was on an inevitable rise to global hegemony and we'd better get used to the fact that the US was declining. The prior administration told us the best we could do would be to manage the decline. The elites got theirs; too bad but you missed out. Then along came Donald Trump. The DJIA pushed convincingly beyond the 25,000 mark today. Consumer confidence as well as productivity are up – way up – even before the new administration crosses it's one year anniversary. People are once again nodding their heads in agreement that this country is exceptional. We can dream and do the impossible and we will thrive in the face of adversity. When we rise, the rest of the world follows us up.

With passage of the recent changes to tax law, tens of trillions of dollars that have been sitting off shore are coming home, to be accompanied immediately by unprecedented foreign investment in a proven winner. Take away the regulations that have been holding back investment and innovation and you have the fertile makings of an expansion of productivity the likes of which this country has not experienced in more than a generation. The path forward is being cleared for America to be Great Again.

There is a wave of change upon us. Donald Trump did not create this wave. Donald Trump was just in the right place at the right time to catch it, and Donald Trump is a very good surfer. The wave that is right now lifting high all boats in its wake is a transforming event that will irreversibly improve every aspect of human life as well as every institution on the planet. It is not just about the United States. We have arrived at the beginning of a time early in the Twenty First Century in which the pace of technological change is becoming so rapid, its impact so significant, that it will transform the very concepts we rely upon that give meaning to our lives.

The pace of change of our human-created technology is accelerating. The same elite that have been holding us back have been holding back technology that will soon be made available to the human population on a wide-scale basis. Behind this unleashing of technology and information is the same new guy in town who doesn't play by the old rules. He's got his and he wants you to get yours too. Among technologies that we have had going all the way back to the 1940's are zero-point energy technology that will free us from the strangling grip of the petro-chemical industry. We won't need fossil fuels or nuclear plants to power our world. Anti-gravity technology will transform far more than just the way we get from one place to another, both on earth and beyond. Disclosure of hyperspace physics will make quantum mechanics look like child's play. Science has been laboring under the wrong assumptions about the universe for a long time. Full disclosure about extra-terrestrial life and our furtive space program going back to before World War II will change everything.

Three overlapping revolutions in science – Genetics, Nanotechnology, and Robotics - will usher in a new human epoch on the earth. Known cures for virtually every disease already exist and have for quite some time. Disease need no longer be the reason we decline and die all too soon. No longer will we be held captive to the profit motives of big pharma. Our biology can already be reprogrammed to virtually eliminate disease, expand human potential, and dramatically extend life with what we have already learned.

The “N” revolution will enable us to redesign and rebuild, molecule by molecule, our bodies and brains as well as the world with which we interact, far exceeding the biological limitations we now live within. But it is the “R” revolution that may be the most powerful of all.  Robots with capabilities that far exceed our own are becoming the standard tools with which we manipulate the future. With robots there are no limits to the most powerful force in the universe – intelligence.

The wave we are only beginning to ride is all about our rapidly accelerating understanding within each of these three fields at this significant juncture of history. With the tide of funding that has been freed up with the recent tax legislation and an unleashing of technology we are about to see we are approaching a time that is already being termed the Soaring Twenties, a time very near of unprecedented growth and human expansion.

Fight for the Soul of America

The republic that we call the United States of America is entrenched in an existential struggle, not against some external enemy, but against forces that would usurp and destroy from within. The enemy has been singled out and labeled as the Deep State, a seemingly nebulous force embedded across the full spectrum of our society, whose aim seems to be to facilitate the suicide of Western civilization along with its incumbent values, replacing it with some arrangement of higher order in which mankind as a whole rises above the parochial distinctions, divisions, and discriminations of the past to become a utopian universal civilization under the guidance of an educated elite whose conclusions are beyond reproach.

So what is the Deep State? And to what is the current administration referring to when it says it is going to drain the swamp? The enemy that seeks to change the American way of life, evidently part of the American landscape since the beginning, has evolved into a two-headed hydra. The twin pillars of the collectivist-progressive-liberal revolution to fundamentally transform America are the administrative state and what has been referred to as the cultural leviathan.

The administrative state has made a very successful intrusion into both political and cultural institutions in America. In the political arena, it's powers are very apparent in the legislative, executive, and judicial realms, powers that can only be described today as illegitimate or “post-constitutional”. Liberal-dominated regulatory agencies and politicized courts make crucial policy while an elected Congress of both parties lacks the will or confidence to confront the takeover from by an ad hoc fourth branch within. Worse, Congress has often even encouraged it.

In the cultural sphere a new sort of “civil religion” has arisen in which Americans are judged not as equal citizens “but by the moral standing established by their group identity.” Under the banner of “diversity”, mainstream liberalism enforces ethnic and gender group rights and political correctness within the major institutions of civil society that progressives control, enforcing a strict ideological-cultural hegemony within the moral-intellectual realm.

The Deep State has grown to dominate the universities, the mainstream media, mainline churches, the entertainment industry, and the HR departments at Fortune 500 companies. Collectively then, Harvard, Yale, CNN, the Episcopal Church, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley make up the onerous cultural leviathan that aligns with the administrative state, dictating within the context of what is politically correct what is acceptable public discourse and what is tolerable or intolerable opinion.

The relentless advance of the administrative state and the cultural leviathan throughout public and private sectors of society presents a confounding dilemma for those who deem themselves conservative. How do you conserve a way of life that holds great value when you perceive it is being attacked and replaced by the dominant streams of culture, politics, and economics all around you in society? A broad swath of the people of this country, likely a majority, have become increasingly alienated within their own homelands. It was a coalition of the alienated that led to the election of Donald J. Trump who ran on an ideology of disruption. Trump gave voice to a growing discontent with the advance of progressivist values in America.

The question remains to be resolved as to how Mr. Trump will restore constitutional values through a disruptive approach. His election has certainly thrown a roadblock in front of the ongoing progressive revolution. His counter-coup is making shocking strides forward towards dislodging modern liberalism from its moral high ground. The commanding heights of the debate are all of a sudden being contested once again. His disruption of the progress advanced during the Obama years has set the Left into a desperate frenzy to effect damage control and remove Trump before he can do further damage.

For over a century conservatives have fought to dismantle the emerging post-constitutional “fourth branch of government”, the administrative state. The new administration's phalanx of deregulation stalwarts is working overtime to render the administrative state less stultifying and more constitutional, sending embedded Obama acolytes packing. Perhaps only by disruption can the advance of the progressive Left be halted and turned around. If this existential war for the soul of America is to be won, it may only occur through the disruption of Donald J. Trump as he works to restore America's economic growth, national security, military, judiciary, world standing, and individual liberty by clearing the swamp of the influence of the administrative state and undoing the rot of the prevailing cultural milieu that surrounds us.

The Republic Strikes Back

America is clearly a country divided. For most of its 242 years, while it has been a nation of diverse peoples that may have held opposing views, it has always been a nation of peoples who have shared the same fundamental principles of liberal democracy – working to expand liberty, equality, and prosperity for all citizens. Where there were differences it has usually been about approaches to implementing policy on how to achieve these same foundational principles. The divide has evolved, however, to a place where there is no longer a coherent debate between left and right. Today we have become a fractured nation where there is a much deeper existential struggle over what the nature of the American experience should be. This divide has become a war for the very soul of America.

Today we have one side that defends the classic constitutionally based American experience and another growing collectivist progressive faction that outright rejects it. The new ideals envision a new America that is governed both in politics and culture based upon identification by race, ethnicity, and gender instead of on our common citizenship. The clash has been most apparent between the former Obama administration's focus on “fundamentally transforming America” and the current Trump administration's undoing of the former to restore the traditional values that have characterized perhaps the greatest nation-state to have ever held power in modern history.

A look at the rise and fall of great nation-states throughout history demonstrates that whenever a major country goes into decline and begins to collapse, there is always a contingent that arises to do everything it possibly can to hasten the process toward collapse. The progressive-liberal campaign to separate America from its founding values clearly fills this role as it vilifies current leadership for being the cause of the nation's woes with simplistic arguments to support their disarming contention. These arguments and accompanying rhetoric that supports the destruction of the establishment and its icons are spread by a vindictive media bent on emotional appeal at the expense of logical discourse based in facts and historic precedent. It is a tried and true recipe. Follow the above instructions, turn up the heat, and bake until done.

The process is playing itself out not only in the United States, but in many other countries as well. It speaks to the nature of power rather than to where we are in the cycle of nation-states. Even at the time of this nation's founding there were those who would do whatever it takes to usurp to power and return the country to tyrannical rule. There was rot within the cabinet of the first administration of George Washington with Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton continually seeking to subvert the objectives of Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was clear to note that “even under the best form of government, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”

“Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%,” again, according to Mr. Jefferson. As a nation, we have passed a significant tipping point where a majority of citizens receive handouts from the government. Once that happens those who wish to usurp to power have a ready tool to sway the “majority” with emotional arguments of entitlement and victimization. Historically, once a nation reaches this point (we are not the first), there is no going back. The nation becomes ripe for revolution.

Again, historically, the irony of such revolutions is that they are generally never for the benefit of the people - only to the benefit of those seeking to usurp to power. Citizens always fare poorly in such (r)evolutions, ending up with fewer freedoms and dominated by the new government to a greater degree. Always.

We're witnessing this (r)evolution in slow-motion right now. The current administration is putting the brakes on the collectivist progressive coup with its own counter-coup, exposing those that seek power for their own benefit, while attempting to re-balance the percentage of the citizenry dependent upon the government with policy changes aimed at shifting economic demographics.

It remains to be seen which side will prevail in the short term. The revolutionary collectivist progressives have one significant historically undeniable fact on their side. In every revolution only a very small minority of the population is necessary to bring about the unseating of establishment leaders. The current leadership is unlikely to be chased or voted out of office any time soon. If a time comes when the current leadership is replaced by the collectivists, whether peacefully or otherwise, the outcome, again, historically, is something that is predictable.

The nation forestalled a rapid decline when a majority chose not to elect Hillary Clinton. Should her ideological successor succeed at some future point, it won't matter what label he or she identifies by. The outcome will be the same. The 51% electorate responsible will euphorically see themselves as heroes of change, but all they will ever be will be the pawns of the new order. Collectivism or socialism or whatever you want to call it always grows to a point of being top-heavy and eventually topples over due to a lack of productivity.

We can only hope the momentum of the collectivists screeches to a halt or reverses direction. Historically, it has never happened. Will the story of the nation of the people, by the people, and for the people have a happy ending? Historically speaking... you already know the answer. But I personally am still a believer, and I hold out hope for what we like to call a miracle. Call me naive, but I believe we are all living through the early days of that miracle right now. Watch and listen very, very carefully. GOD BLESS AMERICA!

Living Large

In Aimee Bender's poem “The Doctor and the Rabbi”, a story is told of an atheist doctor who asks a rabbi to tell him about God. Upon reflection the rabbi said that at the end of life we will each need to apologize to God for the ways we have not lived. “Not for the usual sins,” she said. “For the sin of living small.”

We need reminders like this. We need words that shimmer and enliven and wake us up. A simple story can plant the seed of an idea that takes root and grows within to change us, and one idea at a time, we can transform the world.

Muriel Rukeyser said that “the universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” I think about this... a lot.  I think about the all-too-common "sin of living small”. I think about the responsibility each of us has to live larger and write the most fantastic stories that we can in the time we are allotted here.

Am I living large enough? Am I wasting the gift? Do I hold back a story that can launch a thousand dreams and change the world?

Chrono-Plasticity

Beginning a new calendar year is always good for one thing: resolving to make beneficial change - forging a new path in life, amending old ways that no longer serve, and charting a new course for whatever may lie ahead. With the return of New Year's Day I am thrilled to once again make contributions to my blog. My aim heretofore is to strive for greater resilience in my thinking and attitudes as well as how I use my body to interact with the world through physical expression.

As goes the mind, so follows the body; as goes the body, so follows the mind. I have sensed an increased rigidity in both my mental outlook and physical pliability, and am not satisfied to accept either as a matter of chronology. So the new year will see me exercising greater creativity and logical processing through reading, investigative research, writing, and musical innovation, along with doing whatever plyometric contortions I can devise to get the spring back in my step. So, more blogging, more resistance exercise, and more climbing of trees is in store!

To restore strength, spring, and balance in my body, I am going to school on quarterback Tom Brady and am already implementing a daily regimen of his TB12 series of resistance movements. For my mind, this blog serves as a representative beginning. An explanation of the Brady approach can wait. This first day back as a keyboard jockey I wish to explore thoughts on restoring neuroplasticity.

There is an established scientific understanding that the brain can be re-wired to improve mental well-being and the quality of life. It is not a physiologically static organ at even the most advanced age. Proof of its malleability is undeniably visible through the use of MRI's. The question is – what can we proactively do both physically and functionally to reorganize the brain and build new and beneficial neural connections?

Mental resilience is demonstrated anytime we learn. Our innate plasticity also enables people to recover from stroke, injury, and birth abnormalities, overcome autism, ADD and ADHD, learning disabilities and other brain deficits, overcome depression and addictions, and reverse obsessive compulsive patterns. We are a successful species in large part because of the adaptability of the three-pound computer behind our eyes.

Although brain function tends to decline with age, there are things we can do to tap into plasticity and reinvigorate brain function – things like increased focused attention, determination, hard work and maintaining overall brain health with proper diet and exercise.  It takes attention to detail, but one can re-invigorate life at any age.

In his book, Soft-Wired: How the New Science of Brain Plasticity Can Change Your Life, Dr. Michael Merzenich, a leading pioneer in brain plasticity research and co-founder of Posit Science, lists ten core principles necessary for the remodeling of a brain to take place:

1. Change is mostly limited to  those situations in which the brain is in the mood for it. If you are alert, on the ball, engaged, motivated, ready for action, the brain releases the neurochemicals necessary to enable brain change. When disengaged, inattentive, distracted, or doing something without thinking that requires no real effort, your neuroplastic switches are “off.”

2. The harder you try, the more you’re motivated, the more alert you are, and the better (or worse)  the potential outcome, the bigger the brain change. If you’re intensely focused on the task and really trying to master something for an important reason, the change experienced will be greater.

3. What actually changes in the brain are the strengths of the connections of neurons that are engaged together, moment by moment, in time. The more something is practiced, the more connections are changed and made to include all elements of the experience (sensory info, movement, cognitive patterns). You can think of it like a “master controller” being formed for that particular behavior, which allows it to be performed with remarkable facility and reliability over time.

4. Learning-driven changes in connections increase cell-to cell cooperation, which is crucial for increasing reliability. Merzenich explains this by asking you to imagine the sound of a football stadium full of fans all clapping at random versus the same people clapping in unison. He explains, “The more powerfully coordinated your [nerve cell] teams are, the more powerful and more reliable their behavioral productions.”

5. The brain also strengthens its connections between teams of neurons representing separate moments of successive things that reliably occur in serial time. This allows your brain to predict what happens next and have a continuous “associative flow.” Without this ability, your stream of consciousness would be reduced to “a series of separate, stagnating puddles,” explains Merzenich.

6. Initial changes are temporary. Your brain first records the change, then determines whether it should make the change permanent or not. It only becomes permanent if your brain judges the experience to be fascinating or novel enough or if the behavioral outcome is important, good or bad.

7. The brain is changed by internal mental rehearsal in the same ways and involving precisely the same processes that control changes achieved through interactions with the external world. According to Merzenich, “You don’t have to move an inch to drive positive plastic change in your brain. Your internal representations of things recalled from memory work just fine for progressive brain plasticity-based learning.”

8. Memory guides and controls most learning. As you learn a new skill, your brain takes note of and remembers the good attempts, while discarding the not-so-good trys. Then, it recalls the last good pass, makes incremental adjustments, and progressively improves.

9. Every movement of learning provides a moment of opportunity for the brain to stabilize — and reduce the disruptive power of — potentially interfering backgrounds or “noise.” Each time your brain strengthens a connection to advance your mastery of a skill, it also weakens other connections of neurons that weren’t used at that precise moment. This negative plastic brain change erases some of the irrelevant or interfering activity in the brain.

10. Brain plasticity is a two-way street; it is just as easy to generate negative changes as it is positive ones. You have a “use it or lose it” brain. It’s almost as easy to drive changes that impair memory and physical and mental abilities as it is to improve these things. Merzenich says that older people are absolute masters at encouraging plastic brain change in the wrong direction.

True Friends

Commandments for a New Age

If it feels wrong, don't do it.

Say exactly what you mean.

Don't be a people pleaser.

Trust your instincts.

Never speak bad about yourself.

Never give up on your dreams.

Don't be afraid to say "no".

Don't be afraid to say "yes".

Be kind to yourself.

Let go of what you can't control.

Stay away from drama and negativity.

Love.

Feng Shui

To Infinity and Beyond

You are a traveler by nature. There will be many journeys.