I’ll take this out of order because it clearly strikes to the main problem here.
Billy-
So, you think every time I say “ascetic,” I mean you? You may have made a case that I can’t see as possibly separate from the influence of asceticism, but that doesn’t mean I’ve taken you for an ascetic, much less thank of you as some incarnation of Asceticism! I have no doubt that you don’t think of your own life in that way, and I don’t think I ever said otherwise. Why would you take me to mean you when I talk about an ancient religious tradition?
Would I get it right if I identified your point of contention with this quote from you upthread?
When dealing with the day to day requirements of a "primitive" lifestyle those words would be highly subjective. Ease and comfort compared to what? Luxury? compared to what? Looking through the lens of a typical modern N. American lifestyle that is a pretty hard sell. The value system has got to change before that kind of language starts to look realistic.
So, if the value system has to change before we can call this way of life luxurious, what does that mean? To my understanding, that can only mean that the primitive lifestyle offers little that our current value system would recognize as luxury–otherwise, why would we have to change our value system? What would make it such a “hard sell” if it involved a lot of things that we could call luxurious from our current value system?
Now, for me, the word “luxury” cannot mean anything from a different value system: it refers to very materialistic wealth, sumptuous living, fine food, and “the pleasures of the flesh,” if you will. You seem to deny that much of this takes place, by reminding us of the difficulties hunter-gatherers face. I don’t mean to say that you make it look like an awful existence, but rather, you do emphasize that it entails material hardships and want, in exchange for more immaterial satisfaction. You sound quite happy with your life, and I wouldn’t argue that or try to portray it any other way, but would you not agree that you’ve presented this as a good and happy life not because you live an easy life, but because you lead a fulfilling life?
I hold that from our current value system, the hunter-gatherer lifestyle contains a lot that suggests that we could call it a life of luxury, without any change to what we mean by the word “luxury,” as in sumptuous living, wealth, fine foods, and all those aforementioned “pleasures of the flesh.” That it makes not just for a good life and a happy life and a fulfilling life, but also an easy life. I have a hard time squaring your arguments with the idea that hunting and gathering makes for an easy life. You seem to think that when I take your position to stand against the notion that hunting and gathering makes for an easy life, that I mean that you stand against the notion that it makes for a good, happy, or fulfilling life. I don’t know how to address that. I certainly never said that, and I don’t think I implied it. You might have pulled it from what I said by reading far too much into it, or equating “not easy” with all manner of bad things, but I try to use precision with my language wherever I can. I hope you can recognize that the number of words I’ve put into this reflects the amount of time I’ve put into trying to make myself clear on this–and more than my artfulness or tact, I hope you can recognize that in itself as an offering made in the interest of effecting a real understanding here.
So, when I said…
As much as I respect Billy's experience, it also doesn't surprise me at all to hear that he would think that the hunter-gatherer life would not involve much that we could really call luxury.
… and you reply …
That is not my belief at all and I don't think I ever said that it was.
… I don’t know how to put that together. I think I’ve made it clear that by “luxury” I mean an easy life of material indulgence. You said, " Looking through the lens of a typical modern N. American lifestyle that is a pretty hard sell. The value system has got to change before that kind of language starts to look realistic." If we need to change the value system first, doesn’t that mean we basically need to change what the word “luxury” means first? How can that possibly mean anything other than “the hunter-gatherer life would not involve much that we could really call luxury”? I agree, you’ve made it clear that it involves a good, happy and fulfilling life, but I didn’t say any of those things, I said “luxury,” which presents an altogether different proposition.
Now, if I read you right, then you’ve said that hunting and gathering offers a good life, a happy life, and a fulfilling life, but one that we couldn’t really call easy. It takes a lot of physical hardships, like everything freezing when you wake up in the morning, long treks through driving rain or freezing weather, frequent discomfort and so on. I would call that a hard life, as you have described it. Good, happy and fulfilling, yes, but also hard. Now, that description does not differ all that much from the ascetic tradition. Ascetics promise that by following a particular hard way of life, that devotees can find a good, happy and fulfilling life. You share in this tradition as much as I or anyone else here, so we can’t say that it hasn’t influenced you, it has influenced everyone here. Most of us have enough influence from it that we associate hard work with virtue on a very deep level. In fact, that happens on such a deep level that I heartily suspect that there, in no small part, we’ve hit upon the real reason you’ve responded so passionately to this suggestion. From how you reference your own experience, it seems to me that you’ve invested a great deal of your pride in the notion of yourself as a skilled, experienced outdoorsman. Of course, that image would make you quite mechanical simply as described, but it exudes an unspoken element of moral character sharpened by the difficulties of outdoor life, because of our ascetic tradition that toil makes someone virtuous. I do not believe that if you would sit down and ponder asceticism that you would say, “Yes, I agree with that.” I personally have found that the influences we do not recognize exert the most power in our lives, for precisely that reason. I wouldn’t call you an ascetic, but everyone on this board has had asceticism influence them, and I think that this discussion really involves asceticism more than anything else. If we have to change our value system to understand the luxuries of hunter-gatherer life, if the benefits of that life come from meaningful work and fulfilling relationships, then we really don’t mean luxury. We mean giving up luxury for happiness and fulfillment. I can’t figure out any way in which this doesn’t have something to do with asceticism, can you? If I’ve gotten this wrong, please, help me understand how. I want to understand your position, and I really have no interest in branding you or pigeon-holing you in any way. But as I understand your argument, you have perfectly expressed the heart of the ascetic tradition.
That is your impression. I do not consider the things I was talking about to constitute a hard life.
I think you may misunderstand again what I mean by “hard.” You seem, in general, to conflate any term I use that means something difficult with every other term that means something bad, and I really don’t use my words in such an imprecise way. You’ve described to us in some detail the physical obstacles that hunter-gatherers must overcome to counter the assertion that we can call such a life “luxurious.” A luxurious life makes for an easy life, but a life filled with the obstacles you’ve described would make for a hard life. A hard life does not mean a bad life, an unhappy life, or an unfulfilling life. A life of meaningful work, as you put it, would entail a lot of fulfillment, and for a lot of people, a lot of happiness, too, but I would have a hard time calling it anything but hard. After all, it does mean a life of work, even if we do find it fulfilling and meaningful.
Now, you might say that you don’t consider your life hard, because you measure ease and luxury not in terms of how much you have or how much difficulty you must overcome, but in terms of how meaningful and fulfilling you find your life. I would say that you’ve redefined what luxury, hard and easy mean. Living a hard life doesn’t mean living a bad or unhappy life at all. But, if you don’t live a hard life, if hunter-gatherers do lead an easy life, then what did you make all your previous arguments for? Did you just want to yank our chain? Everything else you wrote, the examples you gave, painted a fairly hard way of life, and you presented them to counter my claim that hunter-gatherers lead a pretty easy way of life, to remind us of how hard hunter-gatherers have to work. I can’t reconcile what you had to say upthread with what you say here unless you take “hard” to simply mean “bad,” and as I said, I don’t use my words so imprecisely.
You have branded me with this ascetic label that is your label not mine. Part of my difficulty is with things like that. I feel like you have made many assumptions about me and where I am coming from based on the fact that I am now wearing that label which you yourself have put on me.
I apologize. I obviously did not do enough to make my meaning clear. I haven’t labeled you at all, or at least, I have tried not to. To say that you, like all of us, have had some influence from the ascetic tradition, means something very different from calling you an ascetic. You can have any number of ideas rooted in asceticism, without ever becoming an ascetic yourself. Most of us do. The Protestant Work Ethic, for example, clearly branches up from ascetic values, and most Americans embrace that work ethic, but few of them count as ascetics. I do not mean to call you an ascetic, but I really only see two possibilities here:
[ul][li]You agree with me that hunting and gathering makes for a life of ease, abundance and luxury. You can get what you need easily. You can spend a great deal of time leisurely sitting about, feasting, gambling and telling stories. People can go to work only when they feel like it. In this instance, you didn’t really mean anything of what you said before. I find this option difficult to believe, since it would mean disregarding most everything you’ve said, including the flat-out and explicit denials of it that you’ve made.[/li]
[li]You disagree with my characterization of hunter-gatherer life. Instead, it sometimes involves want and hard work (you can’t separate these; if you have no want, why would you work hard?). It can offer meaningful work, deep personal fulfillment, and a good, happy life, but it costs you in physical exertion. It doesn’t promise an easy life, just a good one.[/li][/ul]
In the first option, I have to admit, I’d have no idea how we got here, and why you would’ve denied it and instead spent so much time arguing for something you didn’t believe. In the second, you’ve clearly drawn upon our shared ascetic tradition, whether consciously or unconsciously. The second option offers precisely the same deal as any monk or nun: the life might involve a lot of hard work, but it also rewards that with meaningful work and personal fulfillment, and yes, a good and happy life.
Does that make you an ascetic? I don’t think it does. But it does mean that you have a point influenced by asceticism. You might feel comfortable with that, or you might not. If not, then you might want to re-evaluate that belief, explore the assumptions and ideas that underlie it, and see if you still agree with them all, or if perhaps you built up this conclusion long ago, based on assumptions you no longer hold. In that case, you may need to overturn this idea, as well. That doesn’t make for a pleasant process, nor one that most people would want to undergo publicly. I have a few times, but I’ve shown an abnormal comfort with this whole process. I actually find myself in the midst of such a process right now, after reading Tim Ingold’s book, which has challenged a lot of my ideas about things like “culture.”
But no, that does not make you an ascetic. I don’t intend to brand you with that or any other label. I just want to discuss the ideas you’ve put forth, not what we should brand you with. Your ideas didn’t originate inside your skull; they have lives and personalities of their own. I want to discuss where they came from and where they go, not you. I hope you can see how I separate the two, and that what I say about the ideas you’ve expressed, I cannot simply extend to you as well.
