When you arrive in Bermuda, one of the first things you’re going to notice, likely even before you land,
is that the roofs here are all inconceivably white.
They're like Tom Sawyer fencepost white.
Even when it's shady, when you walk around the streets here, you kind of want sunglasses,
because these things are blinding.
And with that intro out of the way, I'm sure that all of you can guess the topic of today's video:
Freedom.
How much freedom is too much?
How much is not enough?
There’s no right answer, of course.
Everything is situational.
Life is a near-constant attempt to balance freedom and control, not just within ourselves,
but within our societies.
And despite what anarchists and libertarians might have you believe, there’s nobody on this planet
who actually answers that question the same way in every situation.
The right amount of pressure can spur even the Swiss to rebel or tame the most individualistic Oregonian.
It’s all in the nuance.
But perhaps that’s better explained with an example.
Life is always easier with an analogy.
So for your endless scrutiny, I’d like to present the roofs of Bermuda.
After all, they’re basically impossible to ignore.
They're shining at you.
Here in Bermuda, when they build a house, hell, not just a house, when they build anything,
virtually any building here has a white-washed, terraced, limestone roof.
But this is more than just a homeowner’s association gone mad.
They aren’t just doing it because it’s their culture or that’s the abundant local resource.
They aren’t even doing it because it's the law.
Although certainly, all of those play a part.
The reasons that Bermudians are building their homes this way is because that’s just what it takes to survive.
Bermuda is not a nation with a lot of water.
Actually, even that would an overstatement.
Bermuda has virtually no fresh water.
There are a few wells, a brackish cave here or there, but for the most part Bermudians are
and have always been entirely beholden to the rain.
If they want to take a shower, wash their clothes, make coffee
– anything, it all comes from the sky.
There have simply never been any other viable options.
Everyone has to collect water.
Or else.
But luckily, or unluckily, depending on how you feel about being wet, the entirety of Bermuda
experiences year round rain with very little variation by season.
And not just a bit of rain, either.
Enough that you can rely on it.
Without this steady rain, I seriously doubt that Bermuda would be anything more than a military base today.
Sort of like the Diego Garcia of the Atlantic.
Because otherwise, how could people live here in these numbers?
After all, there’s an entire Hawaiian island that’s unpopulated due to a lack of groundwater,
and that’s only a few hundred metres offshore from Maui.
Yet, despite that restriction, Bermuda is the seventh most populated nation or dependency on the planet.
There are already over 3000 people per square mile on this island,
and it’s not like earth’s getting any less populated.
Every new human on the island’s balance sheet comes with the reality
of needing to source another sixty gallons of water a day.
That's just how it is.
And that doesn’t even count the tourists.
So if the government has to restrict a little bit of freedom to be able to exist,
or if homeowners have to restrict a little bit of aesthetic choice to be able to shower, so be it.
That’s what they have to do.
Because of that, virtually all the roofs here are built to collect water,
regardless of their aesthetic purpose.
They’re made from slates of local limestone, whitewashed with a non-toxic paint and built
in a way that funnels rain into underground storage tanks.
Sort of like the Swiss with their nuclear bunkers, virtually every house here has one.
They have to.
And in the somewhat more modern buildings, they’ve even serrated them to help slow
the water’s fall and create less spillage.
Everyone is watching their own supply.
So in turn, Bermudians are among the most water-conscious people in the entire Western world.
Again, because they have to be.
Which, in essence, is why I’m using this example.
There aren’t that many who’d disagree with the restriction of freedom here.
Because they understand that without it, you can’t sustain the population and in turn,
the system would collapse.
And while I’m sure that there are those online who would take the contrarian route just to be contrarians,
in practice I suspect you’d find very few people actually willing to act on it.
As a means of collecting water, Bermuda has essentially given itself a uniform.
A national standard that all citizens must follow.
An identity.
A forced identity, but an identity nevertheless.
I wore uniforms in school.
I also had to wear uniforms at work.
And at no point was I happy to be doing so.
In my eyes, they cost too much, they weren’t particularly comfortable, and they made it
harder for me to peacock to the type of women who I wanted to be be peacocking to.
I didn’t ever really see it as a positive.
It was just a restriction on my freedom that someone else was imposing.
Nobody ever explained to me the nuance.
And because of that I was pissed to have not been given the choice.
But now that I don’t wear a uniform, I’m starting to see the benefits that I couldn't see
whenever I was forced into it.
The ability to mask inequality.
The feeling of community and a sense of belonging.
Knowing what you’re supposed to be wearing at any given moment
with clear guidelines of right and wrong.
These concepts are both appealing and appalling at the same time.
They’re all things I strive for in my life in different ways, and yet at the same time
there’s no denying that I'd completely hate them if they were forced upon me.
Because of their standard Bermuda feels more organized, more unique, and more community oriented.
They’re better for it.
I wish my world had this restriction.
And yet, if it did I would be the first one to fight against it.
Because how much freedom is too much?
How much freedom is not enough?
It really depends on how much groundwater you have.
This is Rare Earth.
That is one very tall palm tree.
What are you doing up there, palm tree?