How desperate are you to preserve what you are and what you think? Not at all desperate? A bit desperate? Totally unconcerned?
Would you be capable, in the face of a threat to what you are spiritually, emotionally, mentally, of moving to a completely isolated spot. Imagine. Far removed from any human contact, not just for a short time but for your entire life. You, and maybe those you love, abandoning a previous life for an uncertain one filled with harshness because in abandonment, you persevere, you survive as what you were before the threat.
You can read about the Lykovs, a Russian family threatened first by the Tsar and then by the communists. They left the world they knew and traveled into the wilderness, where they remained so isolated that two of the children born into the family had never seen anyone outside mother, father, and siblings until a group of geologists discovered them. Isolation. All the things they took with them eventually fell into decay, even the metal cooking utensils, forcing them to adapt as they could. At one point they had a single seed that they nurtured and developed into crop seeds. They hunted, gathered seeds and berries, and grew potatoes. They survived, and the children born in the wilderness learned to write not with ink and paper, but rather with birch sticks dipped in honeysuckle juice.*
Geologists discovered the Lykovs in 1978. They had been living in isolation since before World War II, and, in fact, were unaware of its occurrence. They had seen satellites pass overhead, and senior Lykov guessed that people had invented something to compete with the stars. Imagine being so isolated. But then also imagine that true to their religion, when sickness befell one of them, he refused to go with the geologists to a modern hospital. Giving up their isolation after decades was not an option because it might have meant giving up their beliefs.
The last of the Lykov family is living alone in the only home she ever knew, a shack put together from whatever materials the family found in their environment. Imagine the isolation. Total. But then by rejecting help and offers to move into civilization, even into the villages where distant relatives would welcome her, she remained exactly the person that she always knew, unencumbered by the distractions of a modern world with values at odds with her upbringing.
Six thousand feet above sea level on the steep side of a river valley, she has a place that allows her to be completely who she is. You, I, and all the others around us have to struggle for such a place, a place without the pressure to change, a place without the need to conform to the wishes of others, a place without the distractions of our modern society, and a place without conflict. Imagine.
So, here I am, earphones sending Beethoven into my brain as I type this, wondering whether you might fare better as an individual if I had just a birch stick and some honeysuckle juice to write on some birch bark. I certainly couldn’t reach you with the distractions of my thoughts. You could thrive on your own, develop some seed of thought into a yearly crop of your own ideas, look to the heavens in wonder, and remain who you are without my interference.
Having been a geologist, I am like those geologists who stumbled onto the Lykovs. I’ve interrupted your day, turned your world into one now shared by someone else, an outsider with thoughts incompatible with many of your own. And I have forced you to make a decision about where you want to be: Off on your own or coupled to another mind, another way of seeing the world. Sorry for the intrusion.
* http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-russian-family-was-cut-off-from-all-human-contact-unaware-of-world-war-ii-7354256/
Would you be capable, in the face of a threat to what you are spiritually, emotionally, mentally, of moving to a completely isolated spot. Imagine. Far removed from any human contact, not just for a short time but for your entire life. You, and maybe those you love, abandoning a previous life for an uncertain one filled with harshness because in abandonment, you persevere, you survive as what you were before the threat.
You can read about the Lykovs, a Russian family threatened first by the Tsar and then by the communists. They left the world they knew and traveled into the wilderness, where they remained so isolated that two of the children born into the family had never seen anyone outside mother, father, and siblings until a group of geologists discovered them. Isolation. All the things they took with them eventually fell into decay, even the metal cooking utensils, forcing them to adapt as they could. At one point they had a single seed that they nurtured and developed into crop seeds. They hunted, gathered seeds and berries, and grew potatoes. They survived, and the children born in the wilderness learned to write not with ink and paper, but rather with birch sticks dipped in honeysuckle juice.*
Geologists discovered the Lykovs in 1978. They had been living in isolation since before World War II, and, in fact, were unaware of its occurrence. They had seen satellites pass overhead, and senior Lykov guessed that people had invented something to compete with the stars. Imagine being so isolated. But then also imagine that true to their religion, when sickness befell one of them, he refused to go with the geologists to a modern hospital. Giving up their isolation after decades was not an option because it might have meant giving up their beliefs.
The last of the Lykov family is living alone in the only home she ever knew, a shack put together from whatever materials the family found in their environment. Imagine the isolation. Total. But then by rejecting help and offers to move into civilization, even into the villages where distant relatives would welcome her, she remained exactly the person that she always knew, unencumbered by the distractions of a modern world with values at odds with her upbringing.
Six thousand feet above sea level on the steep side of a river valley, she has a place that allows her to be completely who she is. You, I, and all the others around us have to struggle for such a place, a place without the pressure to change, a place without the need to conform to the wishes of others, a place without the distractions of our modern society, and a place without conflict. Imagine.
So, here I am, earphones sending Beethoven into my brain as I type this, wondering whether you might fare better as an individual if I had just a birch stick and some honeysuckle juice to write on some birch bark. I certainly couldn’t reach you with the distractions of my thoughts. You could thrive on your own, develop some seed of thought into a yearly crop of your own ideas, look to the heavens in wonder, and remain who you are without my interference.
Having been a geologist, I am like those geologists who stumbled onto the Lykovs. I’ve interrupted your day, turned your world into one now shared by someone else, an outsider with thoughts incompatible with many of your own. And I have forced you to make a decision about where you want to be: Off on your own or coupled to another mind, another way of seeing the world. Sorry for the intrusion.
* http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-russian-family-was-cut-off-from-all-human-contact-unaware-of-world-war-ii-7354256/
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