Reykjavík Grapevine - 03.12.2010, Síða 8

8
Can you believe that the actual RAINBOW GUY, he of THE INTERNET, was
here? In our very own Iceland? That's amazing. Here's hoping he comes back
for a series of lectures.
Article | Rainbows
In Rainbow We Trust
‘Double Rainbow Guy’ heeds higher calling and visits Iceland
paul Vasquez, AKA double Rainbow
Guy, was in Iceland this past month
to spread the word of the Rainbow.
As readers familiar with youTube will
recall, paul's video, which he posted
on January 8, 2010, created a sensa-
tion this past summer after Jimmy
Kimmel “tweeted” it on July 3rd.
The video has since received over 19
million hits and paul has been nomi-
nated for a new category in the 2011
people's Choice Awards, i.e. 'Favor-
ite Viral Video Star'. The Grapevine
had the pleasure of interviewing the
famous double Rainbow Guy before
he set off on his tour of southern
Iceland, his first trip outside North
America. And he picks Iceland. BUT
WHAT dOES IT MEAN?
RAGS TO RAINBOWS
In line with the popular narrative so dear
to the American entertainment industry,
Paul Vasquez' story is one of rags to rain-
bows. He describes an abusive upbring-
ing in the rough streets of East L.A.: “It
was a ghetto…I was born to a woman
who beat me so bad that I thought she
was going to kill me.” Paul, who is of
Mexican and Native American descent,
grew up to be a firefighter and it was
this that first brought him to Yosemite
National Park in 1985. By 1990, after a
short-lived marriage that resulted in two
children, Paul was living alone, in the
same home that features in his YouTube
videos, on a remote plot of land about
16 kilometres (“as the crow flies”) from
the park's border. For the following two
decades, Paul leads a lonely existence:
“I drove long-haul trucks in 48 states
and Canada for ten years and one day.
Meanwhile I was just living alone on that
mountain out in the middle of nowhere,
and that put me through a big transfor-
mation.”
Paul’s transformation centered on
his relationship with women and what
he calls “femininity.” In January 2009,
after almost twenty years of isolation, “I
called femininity into my life” by joining
WWOOF, World Wide Opportunities on
Organic Farms, and “all these beauti-
ful, young women started coming to me
from all over the world.” Incidentally, Paul
is interested in local, sustainable farming
and in addition to “breeding dogs for
cash,” he has an organic farm with “25
fruit trees, gardens and chickens.” After
a year of hosting WWOOF volunteers,
Paul arrives at a profound realization: “I
had owed a debt to femininity. I needed
to learn how to love women without sex
because…I was damaged [from child-
hood].” Paul attaches a lot of importance
to his various epiphanies, and claims that
they are often accompanied by outward
signs, which he then tries to capture on
video for YouTube: “My videos are those
signs of my spiritual and emotional pro-
gression.”
MESSAGES FROM GOd
In this way, Paul interprets the double
rainbow as an outward manifesta-
tion of a moment of inner clarity. As
the WWOOF volunteers’ stay was only
temporary, their departure cast a dark
shadow over rainbow land: “I gave them
all a piece of my heart, and at the end of
the summer, I was left with a big whole in
my chest.” Paul sought help from various
sources, “I was going to a psychiatrist, a
psychologist, a doctor, a shaman, and I
was doing sweats just to try and figure it
all out, and then at the beginning of this
year, I figured it out and it was like com-
ing out of a cocoon...and that’s when the
double rainbow came, and it was like: I
understand and I caught it all on video!”
Paul further interprets these outward
signs as messages from God: “It doesn’t
show that well on my inexpensive cam-
era, but it was a complete disc of colour.
It looked like a giant eye looking at me…
that must be God’s eye.” Paul eventually
came to the conclusion that God chose
him to spread a message to humanity,
which he has distilled into three decrees:
“Love your fellow man, walk gently on
Mother Earth and connect to Spirit.”
Yet, besides practicing Native Ameri-
can spiritual traditions, Paul is not affili-
ated to any religious organisation and his
idea of God is expansive: “I think all the
rainbows are the spirit of the universe
saying: “Look, pay attention to Mother
Nature!” There is a spirit to the universe
that you can connect into; it will make
you more successful and happier.” As it
happens, Paul is a big fan of both Oprah
and Avatar.
RAINBOW WARRIORS
Since his video went viral, Paul has had
to adjust to celebrity status. He describes
how he can no longer keep track of the
number of requests he receives from
people wanting to live and work on his
farm. “I call them rainbow warriors,”
he says laughing. Speaking with Paul
at Hressó, where he orders a humble
breakfast of porridge, toast and coffee
(with an elephant’s share of sugar mind
you), I am struck by his sincerity and
guru-like charm. Still, he carries more
the aura of a harmless, West coast hip-
pie than a zealous cult leader. It may be
noteworthy to add that although Paul
occasionally uses marijuana for medical
reasons (he has a prescription), and ad-
mits to having experimented with other
hallucinogens, he claims not to have
been under the influence of any drugs
when he shot the famous Double Rain-
bow video.

THERE IS A BALANCE
I question whether Paul can use his new-
found fame to bring awareness to spe-
cific environmental and social causes
and thus spread his overall message of
peace, love and environmental sustain-
ability in a more direct way. Paul nods his
head in agreement and cites some of his
political interests, such as Native Ameri-
can rights and his distrust of monocul-
ture in the agricultural industry. And
yet, these causes seem overshadowed
by such self-aggrandizing measures as
his YouTube campaign to get on Oprah
and by ingratiating himself to corpora-
tions such as Microsoft, Subaru and
Sony. But Paul disagrees: “There is a bal-
ance. You can't just live in a hole. We're
living in reality here...everyone's gotta
have some kind of toll. The problem is
greed, I mean how much wealth do you
need, how many houses and cars? Some
people have so much wealth, it doesn't
make sense.” But is there any company
Paul would refuse to work with? "I don't
like McDonalds".
At the loss of some poetic justice, it
was not Iceland's McDonalds-free sta-
tus that brought Paul here, but rather
the student council of a local second-
ary school, Menntaskólinn Hraðbraut.
For the fun of it. Although Paul seems
geared up to celebrate with the students,
and plans to take lots of videos with his
new, underwater camera throughout his
stay, he does not like leaving his home on
Bear Mountain. “I was called here, I have
a job to do, that's why God showed him-
self to me.” At the time of the interview,
Paul had yet to see an Icelandic rainbow,
but if he goes bananas over potential
rainbows at Gullfoss or the green rains of
Aurora Borealis, I’m confident you will be
able to check it out on YouTube.
ALdA KRAVEC
OddUR EySTEINN
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 18 — 2010
As a stranger, you can understand
some things because you don’t un-
derstand everything. That was a
leitmotif of my stay in Iceland and a
personal justification for conduct-
ing my research there. The aim of
my three month long postdoctoral
research project at the University
of Iceland was to look at how so-
cial bonds in Iceland have changed
because of the economic crisis. In
a way I was prepared for this ex-
perience, being sort of an expert
on the subject - social capital. On
the other hand, I was an outsider,
visiting Iceland for the first time
and speaking hardly any Icelandic.
So I repeated like a mantra: “as a
stranger you can…” any time I was
faced with a situation where I had
no idea what was going on..
Among the results of the project there
are some findings I would like to share
with you Grapevine readers. The data
shows that there has been a recent
change in the values and attitudes of
people in Iceland. I made comparisons
between the results of my own survey
conducted in the spring of 2010 and
data from before the crisis—the years
2004/5 (European Social Survey), 1999
and 1984 (both World Values Survey).
From the ESS and WVS data sets I se-
lected subsamples of students as my
survey had been based on a sample of
students.
TRUST, LACK THEREOF
Before the economic crisis, Iceland
was one of the world’s most trusting
societies. Only Scandinavian countries
like Norway and Denmark were slightly
ahead. Today, this is no longer the case.
Levels of social trust have dropped
significantly in Iceland, increasing the
distance between Iceland and Scandi-
navia. However, Icelanders still display
relatively high levels of trust, much
higher in fact than in continental Eu-
rope, and this is the outcome I want to
stress.
What is notable in Iceland is that it
is trust in parliament, the legal system,
politicians and political parties that has
dropped significantly. Only trust in the
police remains as high as it was before
the crisis. This makes for a disturbing
picture, although some people might
say that it is obvious that trust toward
institutions will decline during an eco-
nomic crisis. But when the trust be-
tween ordinary people drops too, this
means that society is undergoing a big-
ger change.
INdEpENdENT pEOpLE?
An economic crisis can go beyond eco-
nomics. When Finland went through
economic problems in the 1990s, po-
litical scientists claimed that there was
nothing to worry about, as despite the
decrease in trust toward institutions,
trust between people remained con-
stant. Social trust—the assumption that
other people are willing to cooperate
and have benevolent intent towards
one another—is something that keeps
the core of a society together. Finland
in the 1990s bounced back and con-
quered the world, or at least cornered
the market in mobile phones with its in-
novative Nokia products. This is a situ-
ation which would not have been pos-
sible without social trust, since people
need to know that they will be listen to
and respected when they come up with
new ideas: that is how an innovative
economy works.
Icelanders are renowned for be-
ing independent people, and not only
because of the internationally famous
book by Halldór Laxness. It is rather the
other way around. The book became fa-
mous because of the truth of the values
mocked within it. My research may be
small in scale but it suggests that dur-
ing the last 26 years—what we gener-
ally refer to as one generation—social
embeddedness has become more and
more important for Icelanders. Let me
explain what I mean. Social embedded-
ness has many aspects; one of them is
the relationship between adult children
and their parents. If adult children look
up to their parents for help and support,
it means that they give up some of their
z for the price of this social embedded-
ness.
The countries wherein adult chil-
dren are the most independent from
their parents are Norway, The Neth-
erlands, Sweden and Denmark. At the
other end of this continuum are Poland,
India and South Korea. The situation in
Iceland has changed gradually over the
last 26 years. Nowadays young Iceland-
ers expect parental help to a greater
extent compared to their parents when
they were young. This is probably due
to the unstable economic situation and
the difficulty of finding a first job with
proper wages.
These findings go along with the
idea of Icelanders as brave, well-in-
tegrated and independent people at
the same time, although this is only
scratching the surface of a very deep
subject. Ancient philosophers teach us
that we can easily be misguided by our
senses while modern sociologists know
that we can easily be misled by statis-
tics. There are many ways of depicting
reality. And the one that appeals to us
tends to be the one that appeals to our
hearts.
A Crisis Of Trust?
KATARzyNA GROWIEC
Article | Katarzyna Growiec
“Before the economic crisis,
Iceland was one of the world’s
most trusting societies. Only
Scandinavian countries like
Norway and Denmark were
slightly ahead. Today, this is no
longer the case.”