Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in a post-appocalyptic world?To live by defense.
To only be able to survive by living off the land.
The use of modern technology truly a luxury.
To be forced to work in cooperation with those around you.
To survive.
There is a big difference in surviving and living. However, in todays world, it seems like we don't really live. To live is to take in as many experiences as the world will offer us. It is to live, laugh, love, cry, be frustrated, angered, to try, to achieve, and in the end, to die.
But today, it seems like all that people do is live by possession. People get angry with their parents because they can't go to "THE" party. Rather, they should make the attempt to understand why.
We don't work together as a community anymore. People live in such close quarters with each other and have such easy access to each other that they begin to not care about those around them. Is it possible to work in cooperation with people? To discover who they are as a person and realise how who they are balances out who we are.
Living in a post-appocalyptic world, people would be forced to work together. The family unit would become tighter and more important to an individual. Money and possessions would diminish. If you had to work to be able to survive, there would be little time for the collection of items that serve little purpose other than to entertain.
If you lived in a mini comunity of only thirty people, which would you rather be doing one night: 1) Listening to music on a dying iPod OR 2) Sit around a bon fire, telling stories, creating music, dancing, and laughing.
The older civilisation gets, the more people try to control each other. The less freedom we have. Humans should be allowed to be free to roam to walk to run around the world and enjoy the way that life was created for us. But instead, control becomes more important. Governments control us. Schools control us. Towns, provinces, states, counties, courts, people everything makes an attempt to take some form of control over us.
But why? Why do we have to be controlled in order to obtain some sort of happiness? Is it because we have become out of control? Maybe. I feel like it is technology.
Technology has made it possible for people to be able to live so easily these days. No longer do we have to hunt and forage. No longer do we have to skin and cut up an animal for food. No longer do we have to spend long hot days toiling on a feild to be able to eat that night. It's simply a matter of going down to the store to get food. There's no appreciation left in the simplicity of eating. I find it almost a shame.
To be thankful to simply eat.
There are simplicities all around us:
The birth of a child.
The smile of a friend.
The understanding of a handshake.
The love in a kiss.
The beauty in looking into someone's eyes.
The sweet song of the wind.
The rush of running through the woods.
The energy of swimming in a river.
The warmth of optimism.
Those are all things in my ever growing list that I love. I live for the simplicities in life and wish that at times, technology didn't exist. I'd be able to live freely. Today, people are all about the big things in life. They forget about the way that things are in their basic forms.
Everything is basic.
We just make it more difficult.
If we lived post-appocalyptic, maybe people would be able to understand what really counts. Maybe they'd be able to see the simplicities that we truly live by...
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First of all, I love this. It's awesome. However, I think you're a little too rough on technology, you're coming off very anarcho-primitivist. Technology brings people closer, and allows us to feel for and connect with people half a planet away. It lets you meet and befriend people you never otherwise could have. The internet is redividing who we interact with from simple spatial boundaries to our interests and values. Technology makes everything easy, whether it be having fun, making friends, or indeed shutting yourself out. Still, I think the world is better for it. That too after all, is freedom.
ReplyDeleteAlso, those pictures rock, kudos.
I demand photo credits for me and Laura. ;D
ReplyDeleteOh, Fin and Laura are the ones that took the pictures.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I don't hate technology, it's simply my way of interpreting it. I'm comparing a world of today and like an indian (Native American to be politically correct) tribe hundreds of years ago. People would be closer together with the Indians because they had to be. Whilst today people are friends with those whom they may never meet. They can serve benefits like helping people out with mental problems and such, but it defeats the purpose of people being able to read body language and understand how someone is feeling by the way they act.
Anyway, technology has its benefits, but one day after my children move out (that is, after i've had them :P) I will give all up but a phone and maybe a tv and stereo. Because I want to become closer to people and nature.
I wholeheartedly agree with you, Jessi, but remember not to overly romanticize lack of technology. It was a hard life, living closer to nature and a simpler life - disease was rampant, there was really no such thing as deodorant and you bathed about once or twice a year. Anytime before the invention of penicillin in the 1800's, if you got an infection, you basically died - or your odds of dying were far, far higher. And more often than not, you worked twelve hour days every day, from dawn til dusk, depending on what social class you were in.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to go even further back before cities, imagine every night, stealing only a few hours of sleep when you can, because you constantly have to watch out for wild animals that will steal your food, your children, and your life if you're not careful. And the aforementioned disease - I'm sure you're aware how something as simple as small pox wiped out a huge amount of the native people. =/
I agree with what you're saying that we need to learn how to reconnect with each other and how to tear down the wall, but there's a balance to be had.
And to be honest, you're not the only one who thinks this. It's no coincidence that as technology was really taking over our lives in the late 1800's and early 1900's, there was a movement called modernism that was basically all about the loss of that humanism, the simple pleasures of sitting by a fire and telling stories, in favour of this huge behemoth of technology and society that was swallowing us, turning us into individual cogs in the great machine of our society.
http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/TheScream.jpg
That picture is basically the manifesto for the type of isolation from our fellow humans that you're talking about. There's tons of literature, art, and plays addressing this issue... even in the 70s, Pink Floyd's concept album "The Wall" was all about this. Isolation.
The saddest thing is, they knew all this was happening... and they were unable to prevent it. And we have no idea just how far we've fallen today, since it's something we've grown up with all of our lives.
The least we can do is to reach out, and try to connect with our friends, our family, and total strangers on a person-to-person basis. There's nothing technology can do to take away the primal joys of simple eye contact, a smile, and a hello.