Interrogations

By Ophelia Benson

An eclectic, literary challenge to everyday thinking.

Number Twenty One: Desert Island Dreams

We live in a human world, whether we like it or not. And some of us don't much like it. We would prefer (or think we would, until we try it) to live in a different kind. A god world, a nature world, a snow and ice world. Or an algorithm world, a silicon world, a numerical world. Bertrand Russell had some yearnings for a mathematical world: "But I simply can't stand a view limited to this earth, I feel life is so small unless it has windows into other worlds...I like mathematics largely because it is not human." (Letters) A steel and iron, bolts and rivets world, a machine world. A carbon world, a star world, a gas world. A sky, rock, mountain world; a field, plant, crop, livestock world. In short, a variety of kinds of world where humans play smaller roles or no role, where the facts and objects and forces are independent of human whims and vagaries, where the other lumps of matter are either inert and lifeless like rocks or motivated by factors quite other than human desires, like wolves or emus or sharks. A few of us want to get away from the human world entirely, whether via fantasy or reality; many of us want at least a break from it, such as on the job; others of us are happy to be immersed in it all day every day.

It's very difficult, in fact nearly impossible, to escape the human world entirely and live in another. A very few people can do a Thoreau or a Ted Kaczynski - but even they still live in a fairly human world, only a few miles from town, able to walk or bike to the grocery store and to have their laundry done. There are a few hunters and trappers, prospectors and miners; a few lighthouse keepers, fire watchers, anchorites, disappearers. But even they usually rely on human artifacts, and in any case they don't always last long. Chris McCandless set off to try it in Alaska and starved to death in a matter of weeks, a few miles from a highway. And the vast majority of us can't even do that much, or anything like it - not with six billion people on the planet. Can't and don't want to in any case. We need the eggs. It's not only survival, it's everything else. Not just food and shelter, sex and reproduction, commerce and trade goods, but jokes and stories, conversation and debate, learning and teaching. As Aristotle pointed out to hardly anyone's disagreement, we're a social animal; a pack animal like chimps and gorillas, elephants and wildebeests, rather than solitaries like orang-utans or snakes.

So we're stuck with that, therefore we're always trying to make that nest more comfortable. That's what a lot of human activity is all about - turning around and around and around in that nest before finally flopping down in comfort. Much of that is purely material, purely about calories, providing and preserving them. But then comes the hard part - navigating, managing, negotiating all that human presence. It doesn't just take care of itself, after all. It would save a lot of trouble if it did, but it doesn't. Just as it doesn't with a lot of other animals - they're always wanting the same bit of territory, the same nesting site, berry bush, water access, mate, carcass, tree. They're always having to bare their fangs at each other, spray rocks and tree trunks, puff out their hair or feathers, stamp, bark, scream, roar, throw things. Never a moment's peace. And so it is with us. Some of the stamping and screaming takes slightly more sophisticated forms - people screaming on tv shows or in bars or kitchens instead of on the Savannah; diplomacy; nicely graded offers, bargains, threats - and then when that doesn't work down to good old bombs and guns - to throwing things.All very stressful. What with traffic (everyone wanting the same bit of ground, again) and waiting in line at the supermarket and demanding bosses, teasing co-workers, noisy neighbours, intrusive or unavailable friends - our stomachs hurt, our hearts beat too fast, our breath comes too short - and we long for Antarctica.

Ophelia Benson is editor of Butterflies and Wheels - http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com.

She can be emailed here.

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Interrogations will next be updated mid April 2004

Previous Interrogations

1. Self and Internet
2. Perfection Isn't
3. Homo Quaerens
4. Showtime
5. Thinking Makes It So
6. Who's In There?
7. Gustave and Dawn
8. Sense and Sentimentality
9. Mind the gap
10. Weave a Net to Catch the Wind
11. Done and Not Done
12. Mere
13. Influence
14. Other Minds
15. Mystery, Drama, Surprise
16. Work
17. Mutability
18. Do I Wake or Sleep
19. The Right Tools
20. Tap Tap

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