...I will say this to further though. Farming with draft horses as opposed to machines (meh) is pretty sublime. I literally never get used to how magnificent my horses are, it awes me every single day. The life is a consolation prize for sure, but a pretty good one for its evils. For me, some hybrid of subsistence farming and hunting, deep in some range of hills, would be the ultimate. The lives of the Iroquois, the Metis, the Appalachian mountaineers prior to the railroad. Perhaps the best of all worlds?
Yes, now you're talking! Seriously though, I constantly contemplate those existences and what it would be like. I may romanticize, but then again, I consider the fate of some people stuck in a tortured state of affluence and choice.
Oh, they were living he ultimate dream. I guess i think most of those mountaineers, the various iterations of the hillbilly, perhaps because most of them shared my Ulster genes. With regards to romanticizing, i like to evoke my own horse-farming background, which began with a patch of land, some green Clydesdales, and a couple of manuals on how to train and work them. I made the system work, but most importantly, before i had farmed and worked horses, i had this subconscious inkling - romaticizing if you will - of all that we had lost in the case of substituting mere machines for horses, (which i think serves as metaphor as well for many things about modernity.) Going into it, it was a hunch about all we had lost. A half decade into living it, and it was no longer a hunch. It was actually deeply saddening on the one hand knowing beyond equivocation now just how much richness of experience we had lost as a people abandoning the horse culture, substituted for richness of pocketbook and volume in general, which no one needs. Fortunately the sadness was offset by the fact that i myself was one who turned back to it and was in living it reaping those fruits. Thanks Jesse.
Amen to all this. "Fragmented mediocrity" indeed. Or, just as aptly in my observation, frantic mediocrity. I've begun my spring bear hunts, yesterday. Nothing is more real nor fabulous than being out in hills after bear, aside from other versions of this involving equally galvanizing quarry.
I think i may have mentioned, you must read Herne's "White Hunters" if you have not. Such fabulous - and not infrequently short - lives illuminated here. It's not just a celebration of living the genome, but a withering indictment by comparison of indeed just how mediocre - and just how truly shockingly dull - modern existence is for most. Isn't it perverse to witness just how much of our day, our attentions, our lives, we devote to producing an experiential nothingness today?
I lived a high-tech, store bought life...until I didn't. At age 50, I started angling again, hunted for the first time and found deep connections to my place in the world...when I field dressed my first mammals. It only took one squirrel to get over my gag-conditioning and to embrace the natural reverence and reciprocity I feel now. It moves me before, during and after a hunt. Many researchers have documented the livelihood and health of hunter gatherers, especially in those cultures that lasted into the 20th century. Yet somehow we mostly study TikTok, deep-fried twinkies and the endless scroll of what everyone else is doing. It's just so hard for us to think about where we came from, why we might benefit living more like our ancestors lived and that human labor is the renewable energy of the future.
Great thoughts here, and I appreciate them. Your story resonates, especially the part about starting hunting later in life (I started at 27, which is “late” by some people’s standards).
Here’s to accepting our hunter-gatherer ancestors as integral to who we are today!
This provides lots of great reading material ideas! Thank you Jesse.
As I send more and more emails, a friend of mine who does physical work, who I met while also doing physical work, jokingly/derisively calls me “email guy.” There is just something so deeply satisfying about working for a palpable, concrete result.
James- Thanks for your note here. I find it difficult to reach that balance between the digital and physical worlds. If I'm 'all in' one or the other, I'm generally not satisfied.
Thank you Jesse, and I completely agree. For a time i worked indoors during the academic year, so the digital world, then outdoors working physically between the years. I haven’t been able to recreate that balance, but all in on either direction isn’t a direct route to satisfaction. I really enjoyed your article.
Jesse, I enjoyed this thoughtful reflection on knowledge work v. Our collective lineage as hunter/gatherers. Although I’m not a hunter, I resonate with the spirit of this post that there is something unnatural about the knowledge worker’s day-to-day grind of sitting in a cubicle, handling spreadsheets, sending and responding to emails, etc. In a sillier context, it reminds me of Peter Gibbons’ lament in the movie Office Space that human beings weren’t meant to sit in a cubicle all day and stare at computer screens. There’s something deeper, more visceral and human many of us seem to be disconnected from. Anyway, enjoyed this! Looking forward to more!
I can't believe I forgot about Peter Gibbons! Totally pertinent here. Thanks for reading and reminding me of that reference. I think there must be a way to harness the momentum of our lineage into modern knowledge work.
...I will say this to further though. Farming with draft horses as opposed to machines (meh) is pretty sublime. I literally never get used to how magnificent my horses are, it awes me every single day. The life is a consolation prize for sure, but a pretty good one for its evils. For me, some hybrid of subsistence farming and hunting, deep in some range of hills, would be the ultimate. The lives of the Iroquois, the Metis, the Appalachian mountaineers prior to the railroad. Perhaps the best of all worlds?
Yes, now you're talking! Seriously though, I constantly contemplate those existences and what it would be like. I may romanticize, but then again, I consider the fate of some people stuck in a tortured state of affluence and choice.
Oh, they were living he ultimate dream. I guess i think most of those mountaineers, the various iterations of the hillbilly, perhaps because most of them shared my Ulster genes. With regards to romanticizing, i like to evoke my own horse-farming background, which began with a patch of land, some green Clydesdales, and a couple of manuals on how to train and work them. I made the system work, but most importantly, before i had farmed and worked horses, i had this subconscious inkling - romaticizing if you will - of all that we had lost in the case of substituting mere machines for horses, (which i think serves as metaphor as well for many things about modernity.) Going into it, it was a hunch about all we had lost. A half decade into living it, and it was no longer a hunch. It was actually deeply saddening on the one hand knowing beyond equivocation now just how much richness of experience we had lost as a people abandoning the horse culture, substituted for richness of pocketbook and volume in general, which no one needs. Fortunately the sadness was offset by the fact that i myself was one who turned back to it and was in living it reaping those fruits. Thanks Jesse.
Amen to all this. "Fragmented mediocrity" indeed. Or, just as aptly in my observation, frantic mediocrity. I've begun my spring bear hunts, yesterday. Nothing is more real nor fabulous than being out in hills after bear, aside from other versions of this involving equally galvanizing quarry.
I think i may have mentioned, you must read Herne's "White Hunters" if you have not. Such fabulous - and not infrequently short - lives illuminated here. It's not just a celebration of living the genome, but a withering indictment by comparison of indeed just how mediocre - and just how truly shockingly dull - modern existence is for most. Isn't it perverse to witness just how much of our day, our attentions, our lives, we devote to producing an experiential nothingness today?
Beautifully said. I've just bumped "White Hunters" to the top of my list.
Beautiful. Lemmee know what you think if you have the time. The pre-WWII era was best in my view, but all of it fascinating.
This is a fact of our existence that is only recently being discussed in any meaningful way, thank you for pushing this critical discussion forward!
For sure and I’m glad it resonated. My hope is that this awareness leads to meaningful change, especially beginning in the classroom.
I lived a high-tech, store bought life...until I didn't. At age 50, I started angling again, hunted for the first time and found deep connections to my place in the world...when I field dressed my first mammals. It only took one squirrel to get over my gag-conditioning and to embrace the natural reverence and reciprocity I feel now. It moves me before, during and after a hunt. Many researchers have documented the livelihood and health of hunter gatherers, especially in those cultures that lasted into the 20th century. Yet somehow we mostly study TikTok, deep-fried twinkies and the endless scroll of what everyone else is doing. It's just so hard for us to think about where we came from, why we might benefit living more like our ancestors lived and that human labor is the renewable energy of the future.
Great thoughts here, and I appreciate them. Your story resonates, especially the part about starting hunting later in life (I started at 27, which is “late” by some people’s standards).
Here’s to accepting our hunter-gatherer ancestors as integral to who we are today!
This provides lots of great reading material ideas! Thank you Jesse.
As I send more and more emails, a friend of mine who does physical work, who I met while also doing physical work, jokingly/derisively calls me “email guy.” There is just something so deeply satisfying about working for a palpable, concrete result.
James- Thanks for your note here. I find it difficult to reach that balance between the digital and physical worlds. If I'm 'all in' one or the other, I'm generally not satisfied.
Thank you Jesse, and I completely agree. For a time i worked indoors during the academic year, so the digital world, then outdoors working physically between the years. I haven’t been able to recreate that balance, but all in on either direction isn’t a direct route to satisfaction. I really enjoyed your article.
Paul Shepard! Not widely read!
I know. I’m happy to have discovered him.
Jesse, I enjoyed this thoughtful reflection on knowledge work v. Our collective lineage as hunter/gatherers. Although I’m not a hunter, I resonate with the spirit of this post that there is something unnatural about the knowledge worker’s day-to-day grind of sitting in a cubicle, handling spreadsheets, sending and responding to emails, etc. In a sillier context, it reminds me of Peter Gibbons’ lament in the movie Office Space that human beings weren’t meant to sit in a cubicle all day and stare at computer screens. There’s something deeper, more visceral and human many of us seem to be disconnected from. Anyway, enjoyed this! Looking forward to more!
I can't believe I forgot about Peter Gibbons! Totally pertinent here. Thanks for reading and reminding me of that reference. I think there must be a way to harness the momentum of our lineage into modern knowledge work.