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As I learn more about the way humans used to live before agriculture (and a few still do today), I am often reminded of an experience I had in my youth that contains parallels to the situation Indigenous groups find themselves in today. Things were going pretty well for them before their lifeways were destroyed: they had life figured out.
Aside from a brief coda, I’ll let parallels speak for themselves. My small tribe will play the part of displaced people, and the Western “authority” figure will be obvious. In making this parallel, in no way do I mean to imply that my momentary discomfort has even the slightest equivalency. That said, the experience still offers a window, even if a very grubby one.
Oh—and if the story comes off as boring, I do apologize, but that’s only because it hasn’t been embellished.
When I was a co-operative education undergraduate student at Georgia Tech, I spent alternating quarters at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington D.C. (eight 3-month stints in total). I was not the only co-op student at the lab, and we had a tendency to find each other and go on outings together (or take long government-job lunches together).
One time, six of us went on a weekend bike trip to Chincoteague Island off the DelMarVa (Delaware–Maryland–Virginia) peninsula. I can’t remember where we parked the cars to start the bicycle part of the journey, but the idea was to bike most of the day, arrive on the island, pile into one or two cheap motel rooms, and then ride back to the cars the next day. It was summer, and we were all around 20 years old give or take a year or two, traveling very light, wearing shorts and tee-shirts.
The first part of the journey went well enough, although we were all tired and a bit saddle-sore from a long ride. As far as I recall, our first order-of-business was to address ravenous bellies—which we did at a loud bar-type place, our bikes in a pile outside. It got dark while we ate, and when we came out, the mosquitos had come out as well.
I don’t believe I have ever experienced mosquitos at this scale. The explanation was that because Chincoteage was a wildlife refuge, spraying to reduce mosquitos was prohibited. Within five or ten seconds of brushing your forearms, each arm would re-populate with about a dozen mosquitos. They were pretty intense. We were glad to get back on bikes to look for a place to stay—sore undercarriages be damned. This is well before mobile phones and internet, so the most expedient option was just to bump around the small town, stopping at each establishment.
But here’s the thing: on this Saturday night in summer, no place we checked had any vacancy. Some of the kindly proprietors suggested a nearby campground, but we didn’t have tents and the mosquitos were a real concern. We exhausted every possibility, and came up absolutely empty.
I can’t remember why we deviated from the main drag—probably both because we wanted to poke around for out-of-the-box options, and because riding around meant putting off mosquito battles. In any case, we came across a little-league baseball field. Something inspired us to wonder if the mosquitos would be troublesome on the flat roof of the little building behind home plate.
We stashed our bikes in the dugout area—partly shielded from view by plywood walls—and clambered up the adjacent chain-link fence onto the roof. One of our tribe had the foresight to bring a coarse bedroll blanket, which was large enough when spread out for all six of us to lie side-by-side, rather than on the gritty asphalt roof. It was a warm night, so being exposed to the clear sky was plenty comfortable in our pile.
Plus, we were so exhausted by this point that great comfort was not a requirement. It surprised and pleased us that the mosquitos didn’t seem to follow us up to the roof or find us once we were there. Within a few minutes I had drifted into a delightful sleep—as had, I believe, all the others.
We had maybe a half-hour of this intense sleep before being startled awake by someone rapping on the building and calling out: “Anybody up there?”
It was a policeman. He had seen our various bikes’ reflectors in the dugout, and stopped to investigate. We were not terribly pleased.
From our perch on the roof, illuminated by flashlight, we explained to him our plight, that we were not vagabond miscreants, and that this was a last-resort move on our parts. Could he please just let us stay? We’re not bothering anybody or causing any damage, and had just fallen asleep. But no: it was against some law of civilized behavior.
All the same, he wasn’t a total jerk. He offered to drive one of us around to all the places he knew looking for a proper place for us to stay. I ended up being the one to go with him, so I climbed down and hopped in his car—groggy from the exact wrong amount of sleep.
The accommodation story hadn’t changed, and the policeman was a bit miffed that his diligence was no better than ours (and that we were not, in fact, lying to him). The only difference this time is that he swung by the campground a little farther out of town.
The campground host said all his sites were occupied, but that on occasion he lets people set up tents in the field over yonder. When he learned that we had no tents, he told the policeman that he couldn’t in good conscience allow us to sleep in the field unprotected: the mosquitos would probably carry us off!
At this point, the cop turned to me and asked, “Were you happy where you were?”
I found it rather irritating that we had indeed been happy: we had worked out a comfortable situation, and had tried to indicate as much when he first came along. But at least it was clear that we were about to be granted off-the-books permission to stay, which was some solace. I longed to get back to sleep!
By the time we got back to the ball field, everybody was off the roof and ready to roll to wherever we’d be going, swatting the mosquitos away in silent grumpiness. As the cop drove off, I walked over and explained we could stay there after all. Groans.
So, we pulled ourselves back up to the roof. And so did the mosquitos. Maybe they would have eventually found us anyway the first time, but we were at least able to drift off to sleep before. This time, it was proving to be impossible. Our previous arrangement on top of the blanket was untenable.
We decided to lie directly on the uncomfortable roof with the blanket on top of us. It was too hot for six people to cram under a blanket in summer, and the roof was an unpleasant surface to be on. But being on top of the blanket was worse. Nobody slept. We simply endured until first light, when we got on our bikes and headed for the beach.
There, we crashed in the cool morning sand listening to the Atlantic breakers and plunged into the most delicious sleep I can remember. My body felt like it weighed 8,000 tons, and might fall through the sand to the center of the Earth. Two hours later, the full-sun heat woke us up. But we were young and refreshed enough to bike back to our cars.
Indigenous Coda
“Were you happy?” Yes, we were until you came along. We had it worked out and were living comfortably. Now the question comes a bit too late. What we had before is gone, and we can’t simply return to it. The damage is done. I mean, it’s something that you recognize the folly, and begin to suspect or admit that things might have actually been better before all this. But damn.
Views: 1913
With the Supreme Court ruling that cities can ban people from sleeping and camping in public places with it no longer being considered cruel and unusual punishment even if they have nowhere else to go: https://www.npr.org/2024/06/28/nx-s1-4992010/supreme-court-homeless-punish-sleeping-encampments
The EO indicating that homeless individuals be shifted into long-term institutional settings with implementation of 'maximally flexible' civil commitment and institutional treatment: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/ending-crime-and-disorder-on-americas-streets/
And the recent NSPM-7 memo going after pre-crime: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/countering-domestic-terrorism-and-organized-political-violence/
(were you being anti-capitalist terrorists for not paying for a hotel room and greasing the hospitality industry?)
Even the annoyingly 'helpful' cop in your story sounds like the nostalgic good ole days, where at least you weren't beaten up and thrown in a concrete and metal pit to die.
– All suggesting that we've slid steadily further from 'were you happy?'.
I shouldn't overlook the fact that we were white, (mostly) male, and college students. The same circumstance could have gone much worse had we lacked these significant privileges.
True. Afforded because of the flawed hierarchies of the empire. Geography, timeline, energy and financial affluence no doubt provided benefits as well.
If fierce egalitarianism ruled instead, the cop wouldn't have bothered you and you wouldn't need to listen to him if he did. His profession wouldn't even exist.
Is egalitarianism an antidote to empire? Is that one reason why communism was less successful than capitalism? The former being less empire-y. Or why hierarchical industrialists (political right) are more successful in the armoring late-stage empire than the egalitarian industrialists (political left)?
By 'successful', I mean within the context of empire, so in the straightening deck-chairs on the Titanic in order to be a 'successful' interior designer sort of way. Illusory and temporary success in a failing and flawed system.
The thing that serves the empire better is the thing that is more successful within it, so in economic systems we could view ecological economics>communism>capitalism as gradations on a continuum moving left to right with each one serving the empire better in order. One could extrapolate this logic to many things. In politics, a hierarchical industrialist is more useful to the empire than a green anarchist, so the former has more power than the latter. While indigenous people who are doing things in an actually more successful sustainable way are treated as simply being in the way of the empire.
Now, given that the empire is parasitic on the biosphere, then the more successful one is within it, the bigger the parasite they've become. This form of 'success' is not flattering.
It seems like an law of nature that every genration we enshitify the world we live in just that little bit more. Here in Australia my mother (82) opining with fond remberance that back in the day they used to just all sleep on the beach around a campfire or swim, in water holes (all of this being free) that are now bulldozed over for urban sprawl or polluted. Of course not once considering she keeps voting for conservative governments that hastened all this, my Green vote cancelling hers out I guess. For the majorty to not see any value in the environment itself other then as something else to exploit
I think climate change is the answer to all this, like any other species that reproduces beyond the carrying capacity, or pollutes its environment, nature then does it's thing.
Around 80 years ago, Eric Blair (aka George Orwell) wrote this:
>All left-wing parties in the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy. They have internationalist aims, and at the same time they struggle to keep up a standard of life with which those aims are incompatible. We all live by robbing Asiatic coolies, and those of us who are 'enlightened' all maintain that those coolies ought to be set free; but our standard of living, and hence our 'enlightenment,' demands that the robbery shall continue.
Somewhat more recently, Wendell Berry, in an essay entitled "Word and Flesh", wrote this:
>This statement of Orwell's is clearly applicable to our situation now; all we need to do is change a few nouns. The religion and the environmentalism of the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something they do not really wish to destroy. We all live by robbing nature, but our standard of living demands that the robbery shall continue. We must achieve the character and acquire the skills to live much poorer than we do. We must waste less. We must do more for ourselves and each other. It is either that or continue merely to think and talk about changes that we are inviting catastrophe to make. The great obstacle is simply this: the conviction that we cannot change because we are dependent on what is wrong. But that is the addict's excuse, and we know that it will not do.
I keep coming back to just this, as a massive obstacle to genuinely challenging the metacrisis. As I’ve delved into our predicament, the parallels with addicts/addiction often struck me – I assumed it was my own history bleeding through, but maybe that could be helpful to viewing the macrocosm. As I see it, one issue is that the belief that addiction=substance addiction is firmly entrenched (interestingly, the people I know in alcohol/drug recovery are the *most* attached to this, as if it takes away from their struggle to broaden the definition, or they don’t want to address the fact that most just switch to a more socially acceptable addiction like food, shopping or religion). People act like their addictions to comfort, technology, stuff, overconsumption and convenience are cute or funny or dismiss them outright as they’re so common or “good for the economy”. Think back 15 years. Look at how quickly smartphones have devoured social life and attention spans as well as rare minerals and the lives of Congolese child miners, yet this is the new normal-you could ask pretty much anyone in America to put their phone away for a day and I can bet most can’t do it, but they’ll still insist they aren’t addicted.
The other challenge is, despite what $1K a day rehabs and 12-step fanatics would have you believe, we aren’t very good at treating any kind of addiction, whether it’s one socially stigmatized or encouraged. It’s my theory that one reason current treatment doesn’t succeed is failure to integrate the more than human world or promote an animist perspective or allow for any kind of systems thinking. I’ve basically been experimenting on myself for years and this shift in mindset was the most impactful – though it’s a process getting behavior to follow, I’m now mostly indifferent to that which once ruled my life and that I never could have imagined living without a decade ago.
This is what worries me about ecological overshoot. It is not merely the fact that many things today are unsustainable and, at some point, we will have to go back to how things were before that unsustainable “development”. It is the fact that there is no such thing as going back to how things used to be. Yet, too many people seem completely unbothered about it. But we will all have to face the consequences, unfortunately.
People just want to be left alone, but civilization can’t have that!
I appreciate the story (it also seems like the kind of adventure unlikely to happen nowadays due to internet and phones). I hope “windows” like this can get people challenging the narrative that hierarchy is wonderful, natural and logical, and acknowledge the forced acquiescence in situations ranging from ruining a night to ruining entire peoples, cultures and ways of life. I’m sure we all have examples of varying consequences from our own lives – I know I’ve got plenty – of idiotic and arbitrary rules that serve no purpose other than to keep people in line, of authority being pointlessly exercised and obeyed, of having to fawn over entitled jerk/s to get fed, of having to fawn at all when your (correct) instinct is to fight or flight. A lifetime of tolerating it takes a huge toll of the nervous system. Maybe the cop in this story wasn’t that bad, but the whole point is, he COULD have been and you would have had no recourse (he also could have chosen to ignore the bikes and not investigate). Even considering privilege, Imagine if anyone in the group had said “we’re fine here and we’re not moving”. Indigenous groups know the answer to that. The history of colonialism is that of the absolute worst, most deranged “cops” ever.
I think of the part in “Sand Talk” where the author discusses the history and original purposes of schooling, and how that gets a warm reception from those who will defend other aspects of modernity or technology, or hurl accusations of romanticism at any mention of “hunting and gathering”- because who doesn’t have a childhood memory of a mean, needlessly strict teacher punishing them for nothing? I was sold on “We Will Be Jaguars” within the first chapter based on my own experiences with perpetually pinch-faced, sanctimonious, uptight church ladies (I’m maybe not a tough sell in that department, but still…)
For some reason, this also got me thinking about American lawn culture, and the crazy obstacles anyone who wants to do things differently can end up facing, whether it’s getting fined by HOAs or ending up in costly legal battles with neighbors – even though said lawn worshippers barely go outside! It just makes no sense to me (though, I’m glad I rent in an unpretentious working class neighborhood where people have bigger worries than wildflowers on my lawn)
That story was not boring, but revealing – of how far freedom has been eroded (even then). The state and its brainwashed enforcers deciding what people can and can't do (and, increasingly, say).
I read recently that language may have originated from music… I couldn't help picturing our ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors, pre-language, singing in harmony in some field or other idyllic place. Then language, writing… slowly, slowly… buildings, bureaucracy, machines, control… *slowly*, the left hemisphere wrested primacy from the right – mainly via the written word and its 'certainty' (yes, I'm using writing right now, as a product of the system). Fast-foward to today and the left-hemisphere's takeover is almost complete – police, governments, corporations, technology: 'progress'.
Nature being destroyed is taken for granted as part of the deal.
As Michael Jackson sang "What have we done to the world? What have we done?"
I am not uneducated on the lifeways of indigenous peoples, having the good fortune of several teachers and professors who were expert, and one having lived among indigenous peoples for a fairly extended time.
Still, the salesmanship fails to disguise the facts:
—"Living in balance with nature" means watching your children starve in front of you when a lean year comes. Fantastic.
— Without writing, you are doomed to know essentially nothing about anything. Real events become distorted beyond recognition after about 120 years of verbal tradition.
— Modern dentistry is one miracle among many. None of the "indigenous life was great" crowd seem to hesitate to visit the dentist when their tooth starts to ache.
— The joys of having intestinal worms for most of your life.
My mind drifts back to a story I read in an old National Geographic magazine from the 1970's. The authors checked in on an indigenous African tribe. What news?
Well, the rains hadn't come yet and most of the people in the tribe had concluded that this was (somehow) the fault of one of the women.
They were considering killing her so that the rains would come, but hadn't made up their minds yet.
Where do I go to not sign up?
(None of this, BTW, is to dispute that the modern lifestyle is wholly unsustainable. But we are pretty lucky that we got to enjoy it.)
Those listed 'facts' are opinions.
If living more in balance with Nature is so bad, why did Benjamin Franklin observe that children from Native Americans who ended up in 'civilized' society invariably went back, given the chance – but the other way round, they'd rather stay with the Native Americans and not go back?
Without writing – what? "Doomed to know nothing"?? Writing is only external memory (and may even weaken actual memory).
Many times I've had toothache, bad or even broken teeth, yet (due to cost) not been to the dentist. I survived.
Intestinal worms – meh.
One can pick and choose anecdotes to illustrate any pov – there are plenty of examples of extreme cruelty and murder committed by democratic governments.
"we are pretty lucky that we got to enjoy [the modern lifestyle]" – no, given the choice I would also choose the indigenous ways.
I feel almost as if I'm in a psychology experiment: listening to people assert how eminently enjoyable the indigenous lifestyle is — each of whom keeps purchasing electricity from the electric company.
Don't pretend that the pre-industrial life is no longer available because one can't forage and hunt. With the occasional trip to town, food stamps will give you all the supplemental calories you and your friends need to live in the wilds indefinitely. Ask those who formed communes in the '60's.
Growing up in the rural countryside, I knew many who were adults before electricity came to town — but none who didn't purchase it. I knew men (and sometimes couples) who lived in the forest because they had to — none who enjoyed a tent in the freezing slush of winter.
The greater comfort. Is it an opinion? Yes. It just happens to be one shared by everybody here — in action, if not in words.
Lucky? Depends on where one's passions lie, I suppose. If in love with modernity (thus also a sixth mass extinction), preserving and ratcheting knowledge via writing is pretty swell. Lacking any evidence that writing does not lead inexorably to starting a 6ME within a few millennia, I don't feel at liberty to separate the two—as easy a mental trick as it is.
Modern dentistry is mostly necessitated by modern diets of grains and sugars (guilty). Studies of immediate-return hunter-gatherer dental health points to little need for dentists. But one would be foolish to imagine life doesn't involve some pain and discomfort: for humans as for all animals. That's not at all the same as a miserable existence, which many assume, following Hobbes' proclamations based on too-narrow a window into the past.
Sigh. The amount of “salesmanship” coming from advocates of Indigenous or hunter-gatherer lifestyles is nothing compared to that of those promoting modernity and trying to scare and gaslight people into gratitude for it, of which this post is a typical example.
There are plenty of people in the world today watching their children starve, as they have for the past 10,000 years (unless they decided to just abandon them – look up foundling hospitals, but consider yourself warned…). There are plenty of people suffering from intestinal worms along with all the other horrific diseases and chronic illnesses resulting from civilization. In fact, because population has skyrocketed exponentially due to modernity, it means that there’s more people experiencing this than ever.
It’s bold, to say the least, to state that writing is automatically reflective of events as they really happened – it’s the author’s particular take on them. Somehow people in tribes managed to transmit information without it for tens of thousands of years, so I’d have to doubt the assumption of “doomed to know nothing about anything”. As James pointed out, dentistry is behind a paywall (one I’ve also spent most of my life on the wrong side of), though we wouldn’t rely on it so much if it wasn’t for our agricultural commodity grain/sugar-heavy diets. Even considering this, if it’s all so wonderful and miraculous, why do Indigenous people fight to the death to maintain their way of life rather than become like the colonizers?
As for the example of the tribe’s dry season being blamed on a woman – there’s endless cases of this in civilization- ever heard of the witch trials, or any of the myriad religious inquisitions?
By the definition implied, I do see a lot of “lucky” people around me, but oddly, none of them seem to be enjoying life all that much, not even with the constant stream of earth destroying inputs, drugs, screens, constant entertainment and distractions, etc. to convince them modern life is a ball and not just isolating, empty and unsatisfying consumerism, but of course, with the progress myth so pervasive, it can end up feeling like a personal failing to be unhappy, and so the social media charades continue.
For those (few) who are genuinely happy with it – great. And if it all goes away tomorrow, then what? Dependence isn’t sounding so wonderful then. It may not be tomorrow, but modernity is doomed, so please don’t knock the rest of us for questioning a fundamentally unsustainable system, looking back for ideas, or for simply wanting more out of life than to “feed at the trough at which the planet is being devoured” (the best book dedication ever, courtesy of Daniel Quinn)
There's a recent book from Luke Kemp, 'Goliath's Curse', that suggests per the evidence, human on human violence may have been an order of magnitude less during the paleolithic.
In any case, our bones were healthier, teeth healthier, brains larger. Now our brains are shrinking at an accelerated rate and filling with plastics. When considering plastics invading every human organ, PFAS present in every sip of water, and neonicotinoids in the clouds and in 95% of pregnant women's blood, intestinal worms don't sound so bad, at least they're natural and our immune systems have evolved to deal with them, unlike modern novel entities.
Try being someone under the boot of the empire and tell me how great it is. Imagine being imprisoned, enslaved, colonized, genocided, etc. The fact is, western affluence is predicated on violence and exploitation. Maybe you were having a great time, but what about the kid who made your shirt in a sweatshop? Remember, the majority of people in the modern world live in relative poverty.
Thought of this post while coming across two somewhat tangential items – one is a report from Toronto courtesy of the Guardian about a local wetland recovering after more than a century – gives me some optimism about the tenacity and recovery of life ( https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/09/toronto-waterfront-soil-plants-worms ). Also the recent-ish film Eephus: just a movie about normal, timeless, human interactions – all rather banal and mostly pointless and yet somehow that is the whole point. Also about baseball and undesired irreversible change (came across it via the Everyday Anarchism podcast which I also find a more optimistic take about life as it is – trying to cut through some of the layers of abstraction and complexity we seem to pile up in modernity). Life endures – cheers.
Have you read Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn? Talks about civilisation, the human races path after agricultural revolution, our place on earth, happiness and much more.
I have, indeed, and owe a great deal to his works for sharpening my senses around these issues. See previous posts called: A Reading Journey; Call Me, Ishmael; Ishmael Overview (and subsequent posts for each chapter); The Story of B; and My Ishmael. Many of these serve as a refresher or condensation.