[pct-l] anybody out there?

[Kevin]

Sounds like you would be interesting to talk to along the trail. When are you starting? ;)

Misspellings and typos brought to you by iPhone.

On Jan 10, 2011, at 2:17 PM, Timothy Nye <timpnye at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think that the difference in civility between on trail interactions and some list interactions is cultural; the trail creating a subculture all it's own.  
>  
> With respect to the list and the 'real' world, Thoreau noted that most men lead lives of quiet desperation.  Even Marx was consumed with the alienation of individuals in society.  As current economic worries impact an increasing number of people it affects their relationships with all; the the Internet may just be a means for displacement and certainly better than kicking the dog.
>  
> Interestingly to me, I found that the trail fosters anonymity.  The use of trail names, that people aren't identified by their occupation, the lack of an age barrier in social interactions; in short, a diversity of viewpoints and people from all over the country and 'all walks of life' who ordinarily wouldn't socialize with one another do and form friendships to boot ( or perhaps to trail runner).  In this context, the lack of conformity to the 'real world' culture helps to form an egalitarian nomadic structure of shifting interactions that is truly enjoyable.
>  
> Once people decompress and tell time by the sun and forecast the coming weather from the clouds, they (forgive the new age sound of this) become part of the rhythm's of the earth. We are able to approximate the way we lived for hundreds of thousands of years before the recent development of civilization.  ( Maybe without having to kill the sundry prey animal or rattlesnake :-) )
>  
> The easy fellowship of the trail is enhanced, in my opinion, by comfort in being by one's self and confidence in one's ability to be self reliant on the trail.  It's like avoiding a rebound relationship after a divorce.  Most people on the trail have all this already, but if for any reason you don't, embrace any time you spend by yourself.
>  
> I wonder to what extent we may be genetically programmed to so easily fall back into the rhythms of nomadic life.  Man is a an intellectual and social being, but one that evolved to live in small groups and engage in complex behaviours that facilitated survival in that context.  Even then it was a complex emotional and intellectual life.  A domesticated pig becomes feral after only a couple of generations reverting to it's wild predecessor; an astonishing physical change promoted by the lack of domesticity.  Dog breeds within a matter of generations develop webbing, different size, etc.  Recent studies have shown that starvation by a father in childhood may promote profound changes in the gene expression of his offspring that promote obesity.
>  
> If this is the case, is it reasonable to assume that people, removed from domesticity themselves also revert to a default setting emotionally and intellectually that previously optimized the survival of small nomadic groups?  Of course, we have the advantage of resupply in trail towns and don't have to deal with the political issue of the division of resources within the group.  Similarly, individuals or subgroups could always leave and start their own groups or remain apart.
>  
> If there is any validity to the above, is it also not also possible that our political beliefs are not also inherent within us?  That is, favoring an equal versus an hierarchical division of resources based on factors of perceived need or contribution to the community?  Inherient beliefs that become distorted with recent change to increasingly large population groups, surplus production, the introduction of money all of which leads to further alienation from one another.
>  
> Yep!  These are actually the things I think about while hiking.