Note: During my sojourn in Paradox I often held debates with a campfire; in this excerpt, from chapter 11, I am debating whether or not to return to civilization.
"But the wilderness might have to be my home," I respond somberly, an ache of dread rising like heartburn in my throat. That civilization back home, it is a crime against humanity--and nature. Really, to speak clearly, it is not a civiliazation at all, absolutely undeserving of the name: more an organized gang of independant individuals reverting back to the barbarous individualism of childhood. Civilization is a delicate balance between reason and instinct, between passion and restraint, between nature and nurture, order and chaos. Some phases of culture are more balanced than others, yes, and some are just plain corrupt.
Forgive me, O enlightened postmodern age, if my admiration leans more toward the austere virtue of self-restraint and discipline in the Victorian nineteenth century, more than the rich pot-smoke baccanalia of thoughtless self-indulgence in the hippy sixties and beyond. Forgive me if I doubt such highminded social progress, if I point out that tolerance can be taken too far (and usually is), that individualism is a herd-instinct which eradicates distinctions and mutilates identity, that all the great social causes have failed, leaving only new and more subtle evils in their wake. Forgive me if I judge the obsession with individual psychology and "finding one's self" more as narcissism than personal improvement, if I fail to see how the assertion of personal liberty needs a criminal indulgence--like Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov, who proved his freedom by casual homicide. Forgive me if I want conventional mores and responsibilities, sacred traditions and the difficulty of achievement--and personal freedom.
Asked for centuries to swallow the idea of a slow, geologic creep toward the grand perfection of culture and humanity, and then to have that entrenched idea exposed as a cruel fraud in the hideous burnout of the twentieth century. Broken promises. With a history like that, isn't it forgivable that we run like mindless partisans to one extreme or another? that we find shelter in the murderous Puritanism of rightwing religion and politics; or that we dissappear in leftwing liberal paralysis, naive and cynical, ever with that reactionary peaches-and-cream idealism so helpless in the real world--flee the conservative bughouse to wander a liberal wasteland, as Thomas Mann said. Or that we hideout in the chaotic and vulgar nightmare of unrestrained individualism, nursing a sixties hangover, where everything is equal and the Will is God and no value judgment is possible; or that we take shelter in the sickheaded self-absorbed narcissism of eastern-style meditation, that mystical bootlicking guru-guided life-denying creed of the perpetually unsound; or that we dissolve our personalities into that insensate nebula of the gullible self-help junky; or that we descend groping into that thoughtless paradise-in-a-pill labyrinth, ever believing that happiness is simply a chemical reaction; or that we stow away in the deadhead distraction and soul-tainting flatulence of the mass-media megalith and all its many arms of crude amusement... One creed or another, any creed, all creeds, all counterfeit, all temporary, all products of some invisible cultural neurosis.
Speak of values, either proclaim them inviolable, or butt blindly against them. But we are forever unable even to define the term, for the old ones don't make sense anymore, and the new ones are futureless and empty. We are infantile in our helplessness but reckless in our pride, and so we become a culture of shallow makebelieve and pernicious falsehood. The obvious evils and blatant failures of society are either cut out of the picture or conveniently blamed on forces claimed beyond control. Anything that does not come quickly and with ease we ridicule as obsolete or simply treat with indifference. The difficult questions of life are left to a gaggle of experts, the important decisions left to queue of authorities, and the rest of us dance around in the vacuum. The future is now, tomorrow is disposable, and manifestly disposed of... Who could wonder at the inexplicable hopelessness, the wrenching despair, the inarticulate angst we sense everywhere these days...? Who could wonder...
"No way," I affirm, solemnly, to the campfire. "The wilderness is the only thing left for us, the only thing left worth fighting for, the last refuge of sanity. I can't go back to that ironclad shell of a social disorder, that integrated disintegration they call civilization... I must learn to live off the land, find the primitive and rebuild the good world out here in Paradox... No, I can't go back. I won't go back."
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