Living Outside of Civilization

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the distinction between nature and civilization. At my job, I spend 8 days in a row in the desert, living off the land, without access to any sort of technology or, much less, distraction. We sleep on the ground, create fires from a rock and some wood, and hike with backpacks we cut down from trees. The weekly showers we take are outside, behind a tarp, using water from billie cans. 

After these 8 days are over, I go back to Salt Lake City and live within the material world. At first after each shift, I was stoked to return to civilization with all its amenities and exciting stimulation. But the longer I do this, the harder it is to make the transition. 

It feels as though I’m living in this dual reality between the natural world and the built world. Somehow I’m able to live off of so little outdoors, and yet when I return to the city, I all of a sudden require way more to fit in with the norm. 

This makes me wonder if we really need much at all to survive comfortably. I think I grew up with this mindset that more stuff = less restriction. In other words, the more things we have, the more prepared we are to live life. I thought the purpose of money was to just buy more stuff. This is what I saw my parents do, at least. They spent all their money on things, filled the house up with crap that they never even touched, and repeated this same pattern over and over again. 

All of these things we own, the buildings that surround us, the constant sounds in the air, they give us a very high baseline for the amount of stimulation we require. Constantly our senses are heightened to such a ridiculous degree that sitting in complete silence for an extended period of time would likely drive the average person crazy. But I think that silence is what we need to address the things that are going on inside our minds. 

Going from nearly zero stimulation (besides that which comes from the chaotic teenagers I work with) to the bombardment of stimulation from the man-made world can be a bit overwhelming at times. When I finish my shift and have time off, I have to readjust to the society I live in.

The natural world and the built world operate under different rules. If I smell like body odor in the desert, it doesn’t really matter because everyone smells disgusting. But if I skip a shower one day in the built world, I’m not living up to the ridiculously high hygiene standards imposed on us. In essence, these two realities are at different extremes of a spectrum and I feel like I need to jump back and forth instantly without much time for adjustment or acclimation. 

I’ve never noticed how much my body vibrates in the “real world” due to my heightened senses before I took this stimulation away. It makes me wonder if the built world is doing more harm than good. Why do we believe that we need to live this way? What is the benefit to being distracted literally every moment of every day? Maybe the key to inner peace is a calmer and quieter world. Maybe the epidemic of mental illness is due to the fact that we are surrounded by too much. We’re boxed in by all the things (as in possessions) as well as things (with regards to infrastructure) that surround our bodies. 

I feel restless sitting in my apartment for even a few hours because I don’t like how trapped I feel indoors. It feels like a prison cell, in ways, keeping my body restricted. But also, the rules of society and expectations imposed on us also feel like shackles keeping us in place as well. I never understood why someone would want to give up on society and live in a cabin alone in the woods before, but now the idea is starting to make more and more sense to me. 

I noticed that the first time I really understood the US was when I left the country and was able to look at it from an outsider’s perspective. I think the same is true with the society we live in. Now that I have the opportunity to step outside, I can more clearly see things that I was blind to before. I’m interested to see, as time goes on, how this work dynamic will wake me up to other aspects I didn’t notice about our world.