Billy-
Jason, you are skilled at arguement. You have re-created me as a "non-believer".
I suppose I could say no less skilled than you, since you have re-created me as a belligerent debater, uninterested in trying to understand you as a person. But more to the point, I don’t see how I’ve recreated you as a “non-believer.” For one, I abhor the title of this thread, as I said before. If nothing else, I don’t even “believe” in belief as such, with its connotations of an internal mental life separate from our physical participation and dwelling in the world, but also in the ugliness of that sharp division between “believers” and “non-believers.” As a shorthand, I can excuse its use, but only grudgingly, but participating so much under this heading does make me chafe.
But where have I said anything about you as a “believer” or a “non-believer”? For that matter, what have I said about you, aside from estimating you as an accomplished and skilled person, with experiences well worth honoring and giving attention to? If by this you mean that I have traced assumptions underlying your arguments that lead to things you disagree with, then I would hardly call that re-creating you as a “non-believer.” In rewilding, I found myself pursuing lines of thought that ultimately revealed foundations in assumptions I’d long since discarded. When you overturn your old view of the world, so many other ideas remain, springing from conclusions made under a mess of other assumptions, that weeding them out becomes a life-long challenge. I myself have found some hidden under multiple generations of such worldview revolutions, and I see this process as continually ongoing. When I trace the assumptions that underlie a person’s argument, it has nothing to do with what you “believe” or say. It has to do with the intellectual history of the idea you’ve defended. At its best, I hope I can help others with the process I struggle with continually myself of finding what things I’ve continued to cling to long after I overturned its founding assumptions. Since you obviously still live, and I don’t believe that you have ascended to a divine and infallible status, either, then you must partake in that process, too. We all do. But even if you have explored all of the underlying assumptions and received wisdom that lies behind your conclusions, we still live in a particular culture, dwelling in the world in a particular pattern where your words carry certain meanings and undertones. Perhaps you do understand the full history of the ideas you cite to support your contentions, but if you do, you’ve certainly not laid that out in your writing. Whatever you yourself think, you’ve written a piece that relies on certain cultural beliefs in things like asceticism and dualism in order to carry the weight they do, things I very much disagree with. In fact, I cannot express my disagreement with them without digging into their history, because I don’t disagree with the statements you’ve made as you’ve made them–I disagree with the assumptions those statements rely on. Because I reject those assumptions, your statements carry no meaning for me. Ideas build on each other in succession; if I don’t accept your foundations, then our discussion about the ceiling means nothing. So no, I don’t think I’ve misrepresented your words, twisted your words, or re-created you in any way. Really, I haven’t talked about you at all. The foundations for your arguments concern me most of all. We can’t really discuss the ceilings you’ve described, because I take issue with your foundations. I can’t see that as misrepresenting your words at all; on the contrary, by its very nature it sets aside your words entirely and looks at an altogether other level of the discussion. Now, perhaps I’ve misidentified your foundations. Perhaps you have an altogether different foundation than the one most of us would imply, from our shared traditions. That still wouldn’t mean I had twisted your words, but it would invite you to elaborate on those other foundations. That would actually advance this discussion greatly, since we could talk about some ways that would both support your point of view and move us away from our tradition of asceticism.
But I see no reason to indulge in such ugliness as all this. I have a great deal of respect for you, though you seem to have made it clear that you don’t reciprocate that. I can live with that; I see little in my life worth respecting, really. But I would hope that we can at least discuss our differences, since that appeals to the very reason for any message board.
I firmly believe that a wild life in relationship with the natural world is "the good life" and a far better way to live than being a cog in the mechanism of mainstream society. ... The difference is values.
If I wanted to disregard you as much as you’ve disregarded me, I might say that you’ve twisted my words here. But I don’t want to do that. In fact, I can see how you could get that meaning from what I wrote. Let me elaborate on what I meant by that, and I think I can better express the difference here. By putting “the good life” in quotes, I meant to indicate it as a kind of short-hand, appealing to the popular idea of “the good life”–the kind of lifestyle you might see on “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” Greek philosophers often wrote about “the good life” and what constituted it, and we have a long tradition in our culture of speculating about and idolizing this “good life,” right down to the aforementioned TV show, or its contemporary equivalent on MTV, “Cribs.”
I have no doubt that you found something incredible with your family in the woods, and I don’t mean to degrade that or dishonor that in any way. I could hardly hope for anything better than that in my own life, and I really do admire that you achieved that, and I do want to honor that experience. And for you to achieve that good life certainly did involve a different set of values. But in the quoted sense, in the sense of “the good life” I’ve referred to, as a tradition of what luxury means rather than the literal sense of simply a life that we could describe as good, I disagree that we need to change our values.
In my foregoing responses, I’ve already made reference to many of the ways in which hunter-gatherers lived lives of luxury and ease, lives that we can recognize as the good life not only from a different set of values, but even from the current, mainstream values of Western society, including its notion of “the good life.”
Hunting that extensively would require changing hunting grounds regularly, which would mean moving the whole camp or having the hunters go on extended trips and bringing the meat and hides back home.
When I first read your argument, my first instinct urged me to challenge your calculations (I’ve never seen a pattern for a shirt that required more than one deer hide, for example), but Ben beat me to that. Instead, I’ll simply point out that in my admittedly impoverished and even endangered environment, 110 deer live in just 11 square miles. Some small towns cover a larger area than that, and if you put camp in the center of that, you could cover that entire area in day trips.
But, our area admittedly has a deer overpopulation problem. Even so, we often forget that one of the keys to hunter-gatherer life lies in the community. No one individual will take 110 deer in a year. If you live in the community of 12 people you outlined, and only four of you ever hunt, undertaking one successful hunt every two weeks, you’ll get the deer you need, with just 4 people out of 12 contributing, and then only once every two weeks. Now, to me, if you said that only 4 out of every 12 people ever have to work, and then only for a day once every two weeks, I would have a hard time describing that as anything but luxury, and that even before we consider whether or not you’ve overestimated how many deer it would take, as Ben suggested.
Hunting that extensively would require changing hunting grounds regularly, which would mean moving the whole camp or having the hunters go on extended trips and bringing the meat and hides back home.
Absolutely. I assume this to constitute a fundamental element of hunter-gatherer life. The band moves between seasonal camps for precisely this reason.
I love deer meat. We eat lots of deer meat. But man, I'd get pretty bored of nothing but deer meat every meal every day. So we are gonna want to spend some time fishing, bird hunting. How about picking berries, digging roots collecting medicines.
Absolutely, but again, many of us do these recreationally right now. In popular culture, fishing sits as one of the most valued leisure activities. We imagine that only the rich could sit around and just fish all day. Have you ever heard the story of the Mexican fisherman?
An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.The Mexican replied, “only a little while.â€Â
The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish?
The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs.
The American then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?â€Â
The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siestas with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine, and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life.â€Â
The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually New York City, where you will run your expanding enterprise.â€Â
The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?â€Â
To which the American replied, “15 - 20 years.â€Â
“But what then?†Asked the Mexican.
The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions!â€Â
“Millionsâ€â€then what?â€Â
The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siestas with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.â€Â
This story exists precisely because some of us have begun to recognize the luxuries of the simpler life, though Mexican peasants still lead rough lives in many ways. But as I think this illustrates, I think you’d have a hard sell convincing someone that fishing all day would somehow not constitute a life of luxury! (Not that I think you would want to talk someone into that, but you did just cite the need for fishing as part of why no one with conventional Western values would think of this life as luxurious. We could have much the same discussion about picking berries and nuts, which many people also do recreationally.)
There are all of the daily tasks of gathering wood, hauling water, cooking, sewing, repairing, tool making and maintanance, hide preparation, butchering, food preparation and preserving.
As others have pointed out, not all of those happen daily, but yes, that definitely makes up part of hunter-gatherer life. I don’t think I ever suggested that hunting and gathering involves no work whatsoever, only that it constituted a life of luxury. We frequently say that people live in the laps of luxury, even when they must work up to a few hours a day. Rap stars need to go into the studio at least every once in a while, for instance, yet few would hesitate to use the word “luxury” about an episode of “Cribs” (well, they might, but only in preference for synonyms like “tight” and “bangin’” and “off the hook”). As others have pointed out, even these take place in a social context that in many ways undermines our conventional view of work.
The weather is not always co-operative so many of these activities need to be carried out in the pouring down rain, or 30 below, some have to be put off until conditions allow. So timing is very important. "When you feel like it" is an unrealistic attitude. The work needs to be done when the work needs to be done.
On this, the experience of hunter-gatherers seems to disagree with you. When rain pours, people stay inside. In Papua New Guinea, I’ve seen this become a problem for some tribes, because rain can continue for days, and no one will go out collecting food. Days will go by, and people will begin to get hungry. In fact, humans do not need to eat every day, and hunter-gatherers do sometimes go hungry. Not to the point of starvation, but hungry, nonetheless. These definitely indicate the moments in hunter-gatherer life that “luxury” would not apply. But they also happen relatively rarely in most areas.
For my own bioregion, Ben accurately described rain here–“heavy” can only apply for a few minutes, in my life’s experience–though I think he underestimated how cold things can get here. We regularly stay below 30 all winter long. Myself, I find 30 only slightly chilly because it happens so often here. At any rate, I cannot agree that “when you feel like it” forms an unrealistic attitude; hunter-gatherers have lived with that attitude for millions of years quite successfully. It has often infuriated, frustrated and mystified anthropologists, and lays waste to our “common sense” notions about our work ethic and its necessity, but hunter-gatherers genuinely do operate according to that logic, and if someone doesn’t feel like doing something, he doesn’t do it.
This would be typical for the area where I live and I guess probably reasonable for Pennsylvania too. This is just one angle to look at this lifestyle from.
Yes, and I don’t think that it illustrates the angle that hunter-gatherers have seen their lifestyle from. They hunt and gather when they feel like it. They make tools when they feel like it. They prepare food when they get hungry. I’ve seen this lead to some discomfort and no shortage of tension, yet they stick to this principle even so. And in the end, it generally works out all right for them.
Your angle, that “The work needs to be done when the work needs to be done,” sounds more like the work ethic I grew up with, and I assume you grew up with, too. We’ve always heard that we need that work ethic, too; we may not want to do it, but it needs done, so we have to do it. So of course, we’d have a hard time accepting that people could survive like this. Anthropologists had a hard time with it, too. We can know so certainly that it really works like this precisely because it made Western anthropologists so skeptical, and thus so interested in disproving it.
I can't see being able to lay around telling stories and feasting fitting in here to the extent that you would like us to believe. I don't see being able to do all this by working two hours a day if you happen to feel like it.
Well, take a look at how modern hunter-gatherers live, then. Even by your own calculations, you only need four people out of every twelve to go out hunting once every two weeks. So, if you go hunting one day, then sit around camp, laying around telling stories and feasting for thirteen, what would you point to as the major, defining part of your life experience, the occasional hunt or the constant leisure? With so little necessary, you can afford to simply rely on when people feel like it. In a society of trained hunters, you’d need an especially lazy group to find only four out of 12 that ever want to go hunting, and they’ll likely want to go more than once every two weeks. You’ll have kids that want to catch small game, people who want to go fishing. We have people who do these things simply because they want to right now. In fact, many people who would want to do these things more often, if only they could have the time to do so.
I think that the scenario I presented is possible and would love to live that life. The work is meaningful and further deepens my relationship with Creation. This looks like a beautiful life to me. I doubt if many mainstream folks would call it easy, comfortable or luxurious though without a fundamental shift in their values, which has been my point all along in this discussion.
I recognize that, and I agree with you–that scenario sounds like an incredible life, but few would call it easy, comfortable or luxurious. I would want that kind of life, but I know few others who would. But you haven’t really described the experience of hunting and gathering as hunter-gatherers have lived it. In fact, a lot of it seems to imply you as a sole provider, placing the onus for an entire community on one pair of shoulders. I have no doubt that living as a hunter-gatherer, minus the things that make hunting and gathering easy (like a community sharing the burden), would make for a very hard life. When you add in those elements, as I have above, I think most mainstream folks would call it easy, comfortable and luxurious, and there you have my point. I don’t disagree that your scenario very nicely illustrates your point. But I do disagree that your scenario paints a good portrait of hunter-gatherer life. It simply doesn’t line up with what we know about how hunter-gatherers live.
