Four Hurdles To Opening The Mind - We Must Unlearn What We Have Learned To Explore With Fresh Eyes - By Elissa Hawke

I am so enamored with @stevesmith for opening up the conversation in an honest response to yesterdays essay pondering Where in god-dang fundamentally far-flung heavenly hell are we?.

Thanks for not fearing information which may show or "make" either of us be incorrect or "wrong".
For challenging the ideas without needing to insult me.
For humbling yourself to explain your position and some of your reasons. Steve eloquently expresses the first few mental hurdles we all experience when we consider, why people would ever even consider entertaining this ridiculous idea

This was Steves excellent response
"As a lifelong sailor. I have a real hard time wrapping my head around the idea of a flat earth. I haven't circumnavigated the globe myself however. So I guess that there is the possibility that those stories I've read by Joshua Slocum and many others about having done so could be lies. But when I look through a telescope and see that the other planets are globes, I have to assume that the one I'm standing on is too don't I?
I know that I'm not the smartest guy in the world. But I just don't get it. Isn't it possible, today, to get on an airplane and simply fly around the globe? Hasn't that been done recently by the solar plane?
I'm not arguing with you as I'm not educated enough to figure out all the science. But I really have to ask myself. What does it gain anyone to conduct such a massive hoax? A hoax that must be at least as old as the bible since that book mentions something about spheres. How is this benefiting anyone? The so-called hoax of a globe earth or for that matter the so-called truth of a flat-earth must be being promulgated for some reason. I can't for the life of me figure out why".

I want to address a few things here that are common initial responses to the Flat Earth Model. I had these same responses. I´m going to litter some links that helped me continue my research (like pebbles on the path -in case I need to find my way back to "reality"), and so I can be corrected if I, or the source can be proved wrong.

Circumnavigation of the planet is possible on the flat plane model, or the globe. On the flat plane a plane can circumnavigate east to west or west to east, the same as along the equator on a globe, around the center line. However upon investigation it seems there is no good proof anyone has ever circumnavigated the globe north to south. This is a bit mysterious. Adding to the mystery is the fact that Antarctica is off limits for any independent explorers as it is under the longest held military treaty on earth.

When we see the Guinness Book of records entry about north south circumnavigation we get this :
The first surface circumnavigation via both the geographical Poles was achieved by Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Charles Burton (both UK) of the British Trans-Globe Expedition. They travelled south from Greenwich, London, UK on 2 September 1979, crossed the South Pole on 15 December 1980, the North Pole on 10 April 1982, and returned to Greenwich on 29 August 1982 after a 56,000 km (35,000 mile) journey.
(source: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/first-circumnavigation-via-both-poles-surface)

The trouble is, there is no evidence! No footage or photos?

Here is a response from a reader

Jett Rink · Works at None of Your Business
Actually the proof is on the side that claims it actually took place. This would be a pretty big deal since it's only been done once but a Google image search comes up with no photos taken during this historic feat and really the only mention you find is that it allegedly took place. No news reports or videos. Not a single YouTube video or documentary about this monumental and historical event, just some hearsay and a blurb here and there saying that it happened. Sorry but I require more proof than a handful (at best) of articles saying it happened. Even a Photoshopped picture would be nice. You can find Lindbergh and Earhart photos and videos and that happened a hell of a lot longer ago than 1979. This never happened. Nobody can cross the south pole. If they can then mount up a current expidition and get to it. Prove me wrong.

One thing that makes me stumped about flat earth theory, is *how could all the sailors and pilots and explorers and travellers ever have got anywhere or mapped anything throughout time on such a vastly different models. All the latitudinal distances on a globe model shrink past the equator heading towards the south"pole" but on a flat earth, something like the Gleesons map (http://maps.bpl.org/id/15442) those distances are expanding outwards.

This video from Eric Dubay explains

Then you read about Captain Cook, or James Clark Ross, and other early explorers who travelled for upwards of 60,000 miles along an ice wall and being miles out on their measurements every day. The entire circumference of Antarctica on the globe model is around 10,000 miles so these explorers spent 3-4 years travelling along this 150-200 ft tall ice wall with no breaks, effectively, they did SIX LAPS of the tiny Antarctic continent, or were they (on the flat earth) circling around the big wide outer southern pole ring, the actual flat earths circumference?
I have a never shortening list of points to explore

During Captain James Clark Ross’s voyages around the Antarctic circumference, he often wrote in his journal perplexed at how they routinely found themselves out of accordance with their charts, stating that they found themselves an average of 12-16 miles outside their reckoning every day, some days as much as 29 miles. Lieutenant Charles Wilkes commanded a United States Navy exploration expedition to the Antarctic from August 18th, 1838 to June 10th, 1842, almost four years spent “exploring and surveying the Southern ocean.” In his journals Lieutenant Wilkes also mentioned being consistently east of his reckoning, sometimes over 20 miles in less than 18 hours.
(From Eric Dubay http://www.atlanteanconspiracy.com/2015/06/south-pole-does-not-exist.html)

“The commanders of these various expeditions were, of course, with their education and belief in the earth's rotundity, unable to conceive of any other cause for the differences between log and chronometer results than the existence of currents. But one simple fact is entirely fatal to such an explanation, viz., that when the route taken is east or west the same results are experienced. The water of the southern region cannot be running in two opposite directions at the same time; and hence, although various local and variable currents have been noticed, they cannot be shown to be the cause of the discrepancies so generally observed in high southern latitudes between time and log results. The conclusion is one of necessity, forced upon us by the sum of the evidence collected that the degrees of longitude in any given southern latitude are larger than the degrees in any latitude nearer to the northern center; thus proving the already more than sufficiently demonstrated fact that the earth is a plane, having a northern center, in relation to which degrees of latitude are concentric, and from which degrees of longitude are diverging lines, continually increasing in their distance from each other as they are prolonged towards the great glacial southern circumference.” -Dr. Samuel Rowbotham, “Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe!” (261)

The solar plane circumnavigation you mentioned I hadnt heard of but when I googled I see it was west east.

If a table looks around at all the chairs, must the table assume it is a chair?
We assume the earth, sun, moon, planets are spheres. Partly because we´ve been told and partly because we can see. But do we really know the moon is a sphere? It looks like it but we only ever see the exact same face, from different angles, from different places. It is weird that the moon never spins, yet it is a sphere.
Perhaps the sun could be a disk shape? Perhaps they are electro-magnetic lights that hover over. It looks like a ball through telescopes but I dont know for sure.
I don´t see how the sun here could be both, in shot, leaving a hotspot, and ninety three million miles away. I need to research for ever.

Trust me I´m not the smartest either. I think it is the main reason I avoided looking into this craziness. I think what is sad is that I have learnt that it is not an incredible intelligence required to ask basic questions which reveal the anomalies with the globe model. That level of mathmatical and scientific genius has been known to disappear up its own arse now and then

I dont want to argue with anyone about such an insane topic either! No good can come out of any short blasts... this is the slowest creeping fascinating fake/realisation that creeps and creeps every day a little bit more possible each day that you consider you cant completely rule it out. I am happy for anyone to offer me their own evidences wherever you see I am wrong! I welcome it! Heeeelllllp Meeeeeeeeee

Many of us, most flat earth researchers are less than a few years studied after a lifetime of not just study but constant indoctrination of the globe model. Anyone born in our time has "seen photos" of the "globe" from "outer space". That alone is easily debunked as not a proof, but it sits in all of us as something mostly unchallenged data.
We see film footage of the globe, the ISS, we see distant stars exploding in other galaxies... perhaps we do, its hard for me to take any information from NASA, ESA, JAXA etc thesedays.

This dude can rap

After many years research into the Apollo moon landings , maybe a decade or more, I finally felt comfortable saying in a public forum that it was a hoax. If anyone still believes the moon landings really happened I suggest the this hilarious fourteen part essay by Dave McGowan. http://www.futile.work/nwsltrs/wagging-the-moondoggie-part-1
Its well researched entertainment!
To see through this lie was a necessary step in seeing the potential for how so many people could be collectively fooled, ongoing, by the elitists. It is a good example for why, and who would do such a thing.
The freemasonic ordered elitists would do it, _because they can _.

And why? These explanations are mind boggling

This is my favourite concise explanation for "Why would they lie?" that I have heard so far...

As for the sphere references in the bible I still havent read that book yet. Im too mad at all those men for burning and drowning all the best herbal healers and wise women.
I have been hearing a lot about how many references there are to a flat earth in the bible. That is part of the reason why I thought at first that Flat Earth theory was a resurgence of inbred bible bashers. It is something I may have to look into one day, but for now there are so many angles from which to attack this subject I havent gone too deep there

Lastly, I want to thank anyone and everyone for listening, for their responses because they always help me learn.
Every day I get stumped, and then I learn some more and then I get stumped again.

I leave this last video as a GREAT example of the paradox we are all suffering or about to suffer as this body of knowledge grows or is defeated.