Last spring, I had a tremendous urge to hit the highway. Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss called this a seasonal structure of mind, related to temperate zone people who feel the need to move on in spring, and to energetically provision themselves in the fall, and it seems this is correct. But I thought that I had exhausted the need for travel in the past. Not so. This year, it came on nearly as strongly as when I was twenty, and risked months hitchhiking the highways of America. Now it would be different. I had a fairly new car, a credit card, and lots of camping gear. I counted uneasily as the months of summer rushed by.
But then, my wife got the bug, and our son, too. Before I could fully plan, just eleven days ago we were on the road heading west from Wisconsin, on our way to the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone via Iowa and Nebraska. The car was so packed that I could not see out the back window. A typical late - middle aged American was on the move.
Yes, there were adventures, as all such trips have. We got stuck in an hours-long rain on a mountain in the Tetons, chilled to the bone hours later when we returned; and I accidentally hit the "spray" button while practicing with the bear repellent like a cowboy with a Colt 45. My wife and I got only the slightest whiff from a tenth of a second burst, but still I was on my knees nearly throwing up from coughing. A bear could have eaten us like low-hanging fruit. Chevy Chase on the camping trail.
The rest was scenery, with a surprisingly large amount of large animals allowing themselves to be photographed, as if humans were nothing at all. Buffalo by the car. A bear in the campsite. Antelopes calmly clipping the grass by the side of a path. Squirrels without fear. Prairie hens lining up for handouts. It could have been paradise had the larger animals not had their biologically-bound turns of temper that let us know that they are still wild, and we are not in Eden.
But I was also looking for any changes that had occurred in the forty years since I had hitched through the northern West, and there were plenty. In the high plains, there were as many Meso- Americans as Euro and US Native Americans. Cities had become larger, some too large, and everywhere were the strands of electrical wire that delivered energy to the East and South while burning tons and tons of coal per hour in the rolling grass lands. And of course, the easier areas of the National Parks were as crowded as one might expect. It was not Armageddon, but rather the slow drip-drip of industrial progress that many of us have come to resent, even as we live by it.
And so, in the 3,000 miles of driving, came the discussions with my college-age son. Few of us are truly happy with civilization. At the Little Big Horn, we read Crazy Horse's defiant speech, ending with, "We do not want your civilization!" And neither do we. We DO want good dentists and food security and security in general, and that has always been the devil's bargain with civilization. It is a coward's culture, what most of the world has, playing on our insecurities even as we give up so much. Yes, some freedom, but all cultures reign in freedom. No, what we truly give up is a natural pattern of work, which in non-civilized societies (that is, technically speaking, societies without cities. What I also mean is, societies without leaders who are removed from the immediate family) is not work at all. We see the bears in the park hunting for food all the time; this is not work, but what they do. We see the antelope and buffalo grazing, but this is not work. We see the squirrels skittering in search of nuts and tidbits, and this, too, is not work. It is what they do.
We, on the other hand, hate what we have to do to eat. We have managed to be proud of ourselves for our ability to sustain a life that we hate, calling it our work ethic, viewing ourselves as martyrs. Jesus told us that God loves the sparrows, even though they did not reap or sow. As as matter of fact, that was how God showed them His love; but we needed a martyr. Now, we do not even reap and sow. Rather, we make widgets or push paper to gain what others reap and sow.
This is nothing new, I know - it is the old 60's hippy lament, which began the back-to-the-land movement that failed so many. Reaping and sowing is hard, even as it is closer to the earth, but it is still not what we do naturally, not what is in our bones. The prairie Indians had it right.
But the whole conversation on civilization came about by my son's question - why is suicide so great in the more highly civilized countries?, for, as far as I know, except for ritualized and necessary sacrifice, it is largely absent from primitive societies. And then I thought of civilization and (as Freud put it) its discontents, of how suicide could even happen. For it is not natural. Even the very old usually cling to life, and the Buffalo would never think of self-inflicted death, even as a swarm of bot flies or humans edged them towards a cliff. Life wants life; it is a condition of it, for death comes easily without the desire for life.
Yes, there are a few good reasons for suicide; humans sometimes are plagued with mental disease, which, like the bot flies, force them off a cliff. But often, suicide is the choice of alienation. Many have become removed from what they are by doing what they do not want to do, so much so that they do not even really believe they are killing the self, but rather an undesirable other self. Life permits killing another. Many also secretly wish for the death of civilization, even though they might not understand that it would most likely result in the death of the self. We do not like this other self, this civilization. But most understand that it is now the only way for life, and most still cling to life.
We are not sparrows or buffalo; we are not born naturally to a certain self, for we are split, made both god and animal. But without becoming full spirit - something that is so hard to do, and perhaps not desirable for many - we cannot cut ourselves off from our animal, from our natural way, without negative consequences. And the further we are removed, the more likely it is that we will end this false self and this false civilization. In this is found the confrontation of the beast and the spirit, for we must surly succumb, at least for a time, to flame if we do not end in spirit. Since the latter is so far, the former becomes that much closer. "We do not want your civilization!" could be our own call. But now we raise the spear against ourselves. We crowd the parks (as well as our nation) and watch the animals from our cars, and become glad when we are home and safe and secure. But we also wish we never had to leave, and sigh for the days when the buffalo roamed free and men hunted them in excitement and joy from a horse. FK
But then, my wife got the bug, and our son, too. Before I could fully plan, just eleven days ago we were on the road heading west from Wisconsin, on our way to the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone via Iowa and Nebraska. The car was so packed that I could not see out the back window. A typical late - middle aged American was on the move.
Yes, there were adventures, as all such trips have. We got stuck in an hours-long rain on a mountain in the Tetons, chilled to the bone hours later when we returned; and I accidentally hit the "spray" button while practicing with the bear repellent like a cowboy with a Colt 45. My wife and I got only the slightest whiff from a tenth of a second burst, but still I was on my knees nearly throwing up from coughing. A bear could have eaten us like low-hanging fruit. Chevy Chase on the camping trail.
The rest was scenery, with a surprisingly large amount of large animals allowing themselves to be photographed, as if humans were nothing at all. Buffalo by the car. A bear in the campsite. Antelopes calmly clipping the grass by the side of a path. Squirrels without fear. Prairie hens lining up for handouts. It could have been paradise had the larger animals not had their biologically-bound turns of temper that let us know that they are still wild, and we are not in Eden.
But I was also looking for any changes that had occurred in the forty years since I had hitched through the northern West, and there were plenty. In the high plains, there were as many Meso- Americans as Euro and US Native Americans. Cities had become larger, some too large, and everywhere were the strands of electrical wire that delivered energy to the East and South while burning tons and tons of coal per hour in the rolling grass lands. And of course, the easier areas of the National Parks were as crowded as one might expect. It was not Armageddon, but rather the slow drip-drip of industrial progress that many of us have come to resent, even as we live by it.
And so, in the 3,000 miles of driving, came the discussions with my college-age son. Few of us are truly happy with civilization. At the Little Big Horn, we read Crazy Horse's defiant speech, ending with, "We do not want your civilization!" And neither do we. We DO want good dentists and food security and security in general, and that has always been the devil's bargain with civilization. It is a coward's culture, what most of the world has, playing on our insecurities even as we give up so much. Yes, some freedom, but all cultures reign in freedom. No, what we truly give up is a natural pattern of work, which in non-civilized societies (that is, technically speaking, societies without cities. What I also mean is, societies without leaders who are removed from the immediate family) is not work at all. We see the bears in the park hunting for food all the time; this is not work, but what they do. We see the antelope and buffalo grazing, but this is not work. We see the squirrels skittering in search of nuts and tidbits, and this, too, is not work. It is what they do.
We, on the other hand, hate what we have to do to eat. We have managed to be proud of ourselves for our ability to sustain a life that we hate, calling it our work ethic, viewing ourselves as martyrs. Jesus told us that God loves the sparrows, even though they did not reap or sow. As as matter of fact, that was how God showed them His love; but we needed a martyr. Now, we do not even reap and sow. Rather, we make widgets or push paper to gain what others reap and sow.
This is nothing new, I know - it is the old 60's hippy lament, which began the back-to-the-land movement that failed so many. Reaping and sowing is hard, even as it is closer to the earth, but it is still not what we do naturally, not what is in our bones. The prairie Indians had it right.
But the whole conversation on civilization came about by my son's question - why is suicide so great in the more highly civilized countries?, for, as far as I know, except for ritualized and necessary sacrifice, it is largely absent from primitive societies. And then I thought of civilization and (as Freud put it) its discontents, of how suicide could even happen. For it is not natural. Even the very old usually cling to life, and the Buffalo would never think of self-inflicted death, even as a swarm of bot flies or humans edged them towards a cliff. Life wants life; it is a condition of it, for death comes easily without the desire for life.
Yes, there are a few good reasons for suicide; humans sometimes are plagued with mental disease, which, like the bot flies, force them off a cliff. But often, suicide is the choice of alienation. Many have become removed from what they are by doing what they do not want to do, so much so that they do not even really believe they are killing the self, but rather an undesirable other self. Life permits killing another. Many also secretly wish for the death of civilization, even though they might not understand that it would most likely result in the death of the self. We do not like this other self, this civilization. But most understand that it is now the only way for life, and most still cling to life.
We are not sparrows or buffalo; we are not born naturally to a certain self, for we are split, made both god and animal. But without becoming full spirit - something that is so hard to do, and perhaps not desirable for many - we cannot cut ourselves off from our animal, from our natural way, without negative consequences. And the further we are removed, the more likely it is that we will end this false self and this false civilization. In this is found the confrontation of the beast and the spirit, for we must surly succumb, at least for a time, to flame if we do not end in spirit. Since the latter is so far, the former becomes that much closer. "We do not want your civilization!" could be our own call. But now we raise the spear against ourselves. We crowd the parks (as well as our nation) and watch the animals from our cars, and become glad when we are home and safe and secure. But we also wish we never had to leave, and sigh for the days when the buffalo roamed free and men hunted them in excitement and joy from a horse. FK
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