Many, many times have I considered isolating myself, separating myself from the seemingly vacuous concerns of a society riddled with senseless traditions, layers upon layers of societal band-aids and pointless struggles over ridiculously subjective arguments.
I spent most of my life being disgusted by the frivolity of most people's desires and qualms, and for this reason, I feel I deeply understand why Chris Knight did what he did. No reason, no justification, no particular aim, just life.
While I still catch myself wishing for such a life, I realized I could not blame or reject what I do not actively participate in. Furthermore, I came to the conclusion, possibly wrongly, that a life worth living is a life worth sharing, that society will always be able to offer you more than you can offer it.
I now believe that the solution is not to reject society, nor be tied by its requirements or norms, but rather behave as a free agent, with independence, compassion and mental fortitude.
Law, Economy, Politics, Religion, Science, Technology, ... are, in my opinion, mere relics and artifacts of thousands of years of civilization, localized attempts at guiding the seemingly mis-guided, while becoming eventually meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
These civilized relics are not necessarily bad, but as with anything else attachment becomes the issue. While becoming a hermit is possibly the quickest way of severing those ties, attachment is the burden of the mind, not of society at large. Isolation diminishes, or even wipes attachment issues altogether, but it does not resolve them.
This might come across as preachy, though it certainly isn't my intention, I simply wanted to share my view with anybody who, like I used to, wishes for isolation as a remedy.
It reminds me of that classic Monty Python sketch about the hermit community. I think most people consider leaving society and taking up this life -- but I estimate that most of them would have a second thought when they have to build a fire.
While a lot of people take the creature comforts offered by civilization for granted, I'd say that as long as they leave society already armed with basic survival skills, it would be fairly easy for them to adjust to the wilderness.
The only thing that would really concern me is lack of quick and easy access to modern medicine. Say you're foraging for food and you trip over a tree branch and break your ankle. What then?
While Chris Knight certainly had basic survival skills, he was definitely not self-sufficient, going on a theft mission for goods approximately once per week. Besides, being self-sufficient in the wild requires quite a lot of land to support a single human - it's not something that a lot of people can do at the same time.
That may be true for us. But for Chris Knight, the environment that he can use for self-sufficiency includes the surrounding human population and their food.
I've had a recurring dream of building a little shack out in the woods and I've constantly wondered if the Ted Kaczynski would have turned so dark with modern access to the internet.
Kaczynski's case was very complicated by the experiments he was a victim of and his retreat into the certainty of his own internal logic. Kaczynski with internet is an interesting thought - though I'm not sure whether I would expect things to have turned better or worse.
Interestingly, Kaczynski is alive and does send and receive mail. One curious enough could ask his perspective.
I spent most of my life being disgusted by the frivolity of most people's desires and qualms, and for this reason, I feel I deeply understand why Chris Knight did what he did. No reason, no justification, no particular aim, just life.
While I still catch myself wishing for such a life, I realized I could not blame or reject what I do not actively participate in. Furthermore, I came to the conclusion, possibly wrongly, that a life worth living is a life worth sharing, that society will always be able to offer you more than you can offer it.
I now believe that the solution is not to reject society, nor be tied by its requirements or norms, but rather behave as a free agent, with independence, compassion and mental fortitude.
Law, Economy, Politics, Religion, Science, Technology, ... are, in my opinion, mere relics and artifacts of thousands of years of civilization, localized attempts at guiding the seemingly mis-guided, while becoming eventually meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
These civilized relics are not necessarily bad, but as with anything else attachment becomes the issue. While becoming a hermit is possibly the quickest way of severing those ties, attachment is the burden of the mind, not of society at large. Isolation diminishes, or even wipes attachment issues altogether, but it does not resolve them.
This might come across as preachy, though it certainly isn't my intention, I simply wanted to share my view with anybody who, like I used to, wishes for isolation as a remedy.