Dear Engineering Honors Students,
I wanted to welcome you officially to our new blogsite, from where we will launch our commentaries on class and reading and to exchange our ideas about the history of theoretical curiosity and wanderlust. You have your first assignment, which I sent to you via email, but I thought that I would repeat it here for those who would prefer a blog format to work on the questions I posed.
As you know from my earlier email message I wanted you to begin some reflection on a small matter that will occupy us off and on for the first month or so. I would like you to consider the familiar culture of our present day. Specifically examine our sedentary existence (the fact that we live in homes, in neighborhoods and communities within cities and suburbs, travel out of leisure rather than economic necessity, and rely upon other enterprises to produce our sustenance) and do so in light of the longer history of human habitation of the globe during which we were nomadic (wandering on foot in occasional alliance with animals living off what the land would yield). Now take some time between now and Tuesday to jot down some thoughts about this rather significant transformation.
Here are some thoughts/questions to guide your reflections: What are the advantages of nomadic life? What are the advantages of sedentary life? How was this grand transformation effected so thoroughly that we have gone from hunter gatherers to city dwellers with scarcely a memory of the history that brought us here? Does it matter?
Some quotes to addle your thinking apparatus:
Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death. (Blaise Pascal, Pensees)
The founders of monastic rule were forever devising techniques for quelling wanderlust in their novices. "A monk out of his cell," said St. Anthony, "is like a fish out of water." Yet, Christ and the Apostles _walked_ their journeys through the hill of Palestine. (Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines)
Life is a bridge; cross over it but build no house on it. (Indian Proverb)
The Desert People (the Bedouin) are closer to being good than settled peoples because they are closer to the First State and are more removed from all the evil habits that have infected the hearts of settlers. (Ib'n Khaldun, Muqaddimah)
Useless to ask a wandering man advice on the construction of a house. The work will never come to completion. (Book of Odes)
He who does not travel does not know the value of men. (Moorish proverb)
In _The Descent of Man_ Darwin notes that in certain birds the migratory impulse is stronger than the maternal. A mother will abandon her fledglings in the nest rather than miss her appointment for the long journey south. (Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines)
I urge you to mull these questions over in light of these quotations and mix in your own sense of the history and lets see what comes out of the effort. Please bring your reflections to class on a sheet of paper with your name and please make certain that they are printed (by means of a computer and a printer) and NOT handwritten.
Thanks a lot. I'll see you very soon.
Dr. J.
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23 comments:
The sedentary culture of the modern era seems no recent development; rather, the advent of agriculture and domestication of animal life comes as a direct correlation to this style of life.
It's easy to point to farming as the cause of the sedentary life, but it's easily as likely that the former is the effect. If prehistoric man at some point decided to settle down, agriculture would be a necessary development. On the other hand, if some pioneering nomad accidentally tamed a wild beast, he might be inclined to settle down.
Either way, the result of such is the world in which we live. One could scarcely imagine the complex sociopolitical constructions by which we are governed without a sedentary life. Communities would be far more limited, given that the dangers and lower birth rate inherent to nomadic life would keep tribes small at best.
The historical population explosions have come twice, with both the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. With a nomadic lifestyle, neither would have occurred.
The reflection here reminds me of a singularly distinct novel, Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. A social commentary masked by involved fiction, the book unravels our modern culture as a decaying system corrupted by its cause: the Agriculture Revolution.
That's all I've got for now. I'm sure I'll add more later.
Great points Brendan (must be that GIS training) but I don't agree that you can make the origins of our lifestyle into a chicken-or-egg debate. Agriculture would have offered a stable food source to the nomad, which must have been a considerable incentive as their lives were pretty much continuous struggles to hunt and gather enough to survive. Prior to farming, there would have been little need or opportunity for hunter-gatherers to 'settle down' - nomads were nomadic because their food sources were inherently unstable. If they settled down, they relied on the food coming to them... fairly risky. In my opinion, it's pretty clear that agriculture forced a sedentary life upon early man in exchange for stability.
of course thats only an opinion, either way this should be a fun topic to discuss
I would say that a desire to have a home, a community, and a place to belong was one of the final steps in humankind's transformation from animal to human. Of course there are some people who constantly need to be on the move but they are the minority, everyone enjoys traveling but in the end it always feels good to return home. This has been particularly driven home to me this last week at Notre Dame. The sense of community within the school as a whole, the individual dorms, and for me the NROTC unit is just incredible and the thought of moving around to a different school each week sounds miserable. The advantages of nomadic life I suppose are greater exposure to different parts of the world however, nomads travel to places for survival not because they are places worth seeing. As for how the change came about, agriculture certainly was what allowed humans to give up their nomadic life then with specialization of labor, a select group of people were now free to do things like write history books which wasn't true for nomads.
Great points, everyone. I'll kind of depart from the "how" question and write about the positives and negatives of nomadic and sendentary life, and whether one could be even wholistically preferred to the other.
The quest for learning is accompanied by a quest for new experiences, and this requires change. Change, in this sense, though, offers a broad definition. It is too limiting to declare that sedentary life prohibits change. In fact, a sedentary lifestyle could possibly offer more opportunities to learn. Hunter-gatherers, under constant pressure to find food, must have had little freedom to find new experiences. On the other hand, the developments of agriculture and animal domestication brought surpluses of food, which, in turn, allowed specialization, and thus the ability for people to invent, to travel, and to discover.
Yet the progress of society does not always aid learning, either. When technology becomes less of a method of allowing more freedom, and more of a device for accumulating more material goods, it quickly loses its usefulness for affecting personal growth. The 1950s, for example, were the dawn of the modern materialistic age. Since then, rapid technological progress in electrical and computer engineering has allowed the development of more and more advanced consumer goods. Yet all this has had little account on general well-being. Since the 1950s, some surveys report, the level of happiness among U.S. citizens has remained virtually unchanged. Thus, this technological boon may have had little effect on the personal growth and learning that are real life-long quests.
So, obviously, one lifestlye could not fairly be wholistally compared to the other. Rather, the comparison would have to result from the summation of many smaller considerations; and, more likely than not, there would be a turning point in each of those considerations between having too little and too much technological development.
Hmm...sorry: that was too long-winded. I typed up the assignment offline first before considering what to post on the bog. See you all in class!
I agree that our sedentary culture has led to great advancements in technology and standard of living which would have been impossible if we were still devoting all our waking hours to feeding and protecting ourselves.
Yet, our culture has also been shaped by explorers and travelers who benefited from the inventions of our culture to discover new areas or cultures. Even though the world is mostly charted now, the solar system and space is largely unknown to man.
Society has not completely forgotten its nomadic roots, people still cherish their vacations and about half of the student population travels abroad during their years at Notre Dame to experience a different culture and location. Even though they are a minority, there are still wanderers in today's society, those who like Kerouac feel the desire for the open road.
I think that a completely sedentary lifestyle leads to stagnation. Think of the stereotypical complacent American who does not care about foreign affairs and poverty in third world countries or moral or spiritual progress, but simply wants a bigger television or to pay fewer taxes.
I do not propose we revert back to a nomadic culture, but I do believe experiencing the world and learning from all its diversity is an integral part to becoming a knowledgeable and ultimately better person.
In my opinion, it is the nature of human beings to be constantly searching for something better. However, in certain circumstances, this nature can become subverted in individuals or even in a whole society. This happens to a society which seeks only to retain what it has rather than to improve itself. Such societies become complacent, decay, and eventually are replaced by more energetic societies. It seems to me that this caused the fall of the Roman Empire, which was content to be the ruler of most of the known world, and therefore saw no reason to change or improve itself. Rome became complacent, decadent and fell apart from within, before finally being overrun by the less advanced but more energetic “barbarians”.
In this idea, that a society must not become complacent if it wishes to survive, lies the advantage of a nomadic lifestyle. In a nomadic society, where one must constantly search for new food sources in order to survive on a daily basis, complacency can never arise. Therefore, nomadic societies can endure for tens of thousands of years (as in Australia) without the eventual decay and collapse that is the curse of all sedentary societies.
However, what we would term “progress” rarely or never occurs in nomadic societies. For this, one must have agriculture which results in surplus food. This surplus food allows populations to expand and frees some individuals to focus on things other than day-to-day survival. Hence, nearly all technology has been developed in sedentary societies practicing food production. These societies, although much less stable and long-lasting than nomadic societies, become larger and more advanced and tend to overrun their nomadic or less advanced neighbors. As a result, nearly all nomadic societies have become sedentary or been replaced in the modern world.
The reason that we scarcely remember our nomadic past is that no nomadic society ever developed a system of writing. And although sedentary societies are a comparatively recent development in terms of the entirety of human history, too much time has passed and too many civilization have risen and fallen for any memory of our nomadic past to have survived by word of mouth.
In response to the last question, I must say that understanding our nomadic past and the transition to sedentary societies is important for several reasons. First, it helps us to understand the natural need of human beings for change and the tendency to be constantly searching, even if we often don’t know what we’re looking for. Second, understanding this transition helps us to better study and comprehend the course of human history and the development of technology.
But perhaps the most important lesson is that complacency is death for a society. Sedentary societies must find some pursuit to replace the geographical wandering of nomadic societies and satisfy the human tendency to be in a constant state of searching. Many sedentary society that have collapsed did so because they became stagnant and complacent. It happened to Rome and it is starting to happen to the United States. Whereas once America aspired to great things, now we only want to live comfortable, complacent lives (with plenty of government handouts, of course). For example, instead of demanding of our leaders that we find a better energy source to replace gasoline, we simply demand that they lower gasoline prices so that we can delay the inevitable and go back to living our daily lives with no thought of the future. Like Rome in the time of Marcus Aurelius, our country is becoming content and stagnant and is on a downward spiral that must be reversed if history is not to repeat itself.
Considering the dichotomy of the nomadic and sedentary sides of human existence, it should be evident that distinct yet equally rewarding benefits may be earned through the application of each lifestyle. As a nomad, life becomes a daily struggle to survive. Minimal infrastructure exists to provide him support, and thus he requires considerable focus and intensity in order to remain strong. In times of weakness, the nomad is alone, or perhaps is attended to by some small group of his fellows. This is his sacrifice; like the candle that burns brightest, his life is often short. But he stands to gain much even as he spurns the comfort and assistance of sedentary stability. The true nomad is unfettered by the chains of habit and social duty that bow the heads of his civilized brethren. He possesses a freedom that they do not understand, deriving from his complete ownership of life. He is self-reliant; he has attained an ideal yet impermanent individuality.
The sedentary man is invariably a member of society. He is expected to behave in a certain fashion, to eat and drink and sleep and live in accordance with the arbitrary standards of an intangible civilization. Yet he can grow to cherish freedoms the nomad cannot; the freedom to educate oneself in the abstract, and to take avail of the collected knowledge of those who came before him, is one such example. While the nomad spends the vast majority of his time dealing with the practical considerations of life, the sedentary man may break from his somewhat less essential duties (for an infrastructure exists through which he be supported) and consider luxuries which bring their own rewards – literature, architecture, artistic endeavors, and the sciences. Through these luxuries he is enriched, and becomes able to play his own small part in the construction of an institution far larger than himself.
Agriculture would have offered a stable food source to the prehistoric nomad, which must have been a considerable incentive to a people locked into a continuous struggle for survival. Prior to farming, there would have been little need or opportunity for hunter-gatherers to 'settle down' - nomads were nomadic because their food sources were inherently unstable. If they settled down, they relied on the food coming to them, at the risk of their lives. Agriculture forced a sedentary life upon early man in exchange for stability. And as men began to join in the agricultural revolution, they began to collaborate, to form villages and cities and nations out of what had once been loose collections of drifters.
Nomadic peoples are rare in today’s world; it would seem that the sedentary side of man’s nature has emerged the victor in a struggle between the two lifestyles. But sedentary life is based on a fragile framework, a civilization that many seem to naively consider impregnable. Without the total cooperation of a group of single-minded persons, civilization becomes difficult to preserve, and when it falters man is forced to revert to the tradition of the nomad by which he becomes totally responsible for the preservation of his existence and nothing more.
We today face a crisis that has been faced by all civilizations throughout history, the crisis of maintaining our society in a time of apathy and laziness. Will we come together as a unit to protect and preserve a venerable society greater than ourselves? Or are we in need of a reversion to our simpler, less opulent nomadic roots?
Among the numerous social and economic evolutionary changes in man’s history, the change from a predominantly nomadic existence to a sedentary lifestyle is perhaps one of the most interesting and compelling.
Nomadic life certainly had its place at one point and many of its advantages remain in the present day. Perhaps primary among the advantages of nomadic life is that there is not as pressing of a need for complex social and economic structures—especially early on in man’s development, simplicity was king. Using only what one needs for basic survival simplifies life in many ways. Paradoxically, however, this life of necessity makes one a virtual slave to the mercy of nature, dependent on the movements of less advanced organisms, upon whom one relies for nourishment, as well as to uncontrollable environmenal factors.
Although this dependence was also a problem in the somewhat more advanced agricultural life, albeit to a perhaps lesser extent, agriculture provides at least a measure of stability in the form of reserves, or conserved resources. The natural successor, developmentally, to agricultural societies would be the diversified, industrial society which we live in today. Although uncontrollable factors can still cause socioeconomic reverberations, societies advance and diversify to such a point that no one factor can upset, too much, the socioeconomic status quo. Ultimately, the evolution from nomadic life to so-called sedentary life represents the desire of human beings to control their surroundings so as to have the greatest possible sense of stability and reliability. Some of the most compelling advantages of sedentary life might be the greater stability of resources and the ability to rely upon a consistent existence. This stability is something of particular importance to human beings, who are fundamentally conservative in certain respects, even to such a degree that, in some cases, they will forego the prospect of improvement and avoid venturing out into the unknown for mere fear that they may lose the little they already have.
Humanity would lose out, to a certain degree, on important opportunities for both personal and collective development if it were to remain solely nomadic. The opportunities for personal and collective social development are far greater in a so-called “sedentary” society than are found in a nomadic lifestyle. In addition, the natural restrictions of a nomadic lifestyle are prohibitive to the development of the arts, another important stimulus to human development. And, while so intently focusing upon survival in a nomadic existence, man is unable to pursue intellectual development.
It certainly matters that we have come so far along this evolutionary road of sorts. It is, however, important to note that although stability and reliability of socioeconomic conditions is undoubtedly important, the compounding attempts to control arguably uncontrollable factors can have dire consequences. Friedrich Hayek discussed this problem in one vein in his monumental work The Road to Serfdom, arguing that excessive control of an economy—and by extrapolation, a society—especially by the organizational tool of government, could potentially lead to an infringement upon essential human rights.
Although Hayek provides an extreme example, there are undeniably some less stark examples of how humanity loses out by living a sedentary existence. One can certainly argue that humanity—or at least the vast majority that insists upon living a sedentary life, eschewing a traveling or "nomadic" lifestyle—loses out upon a different kind of development. Exposure to “diversity,” whether it be in geography, climate, or culture and creed, is a necessity if one truly wishes to live fully and unshadowed by the cloud of ignorance that often prevails in certain sedentary societies.
There is no simple answer as to which—or whether—one lifestyle is better than the other. Each has its advantages, but the inherent characteristics of each are so diametrically opposed that there is no apparent practical synthesis of the two.
just my thoughts...sorry it's so long
The reasons for the change in lifestyle of our society from nomadic to sedentary may rely mostly on limited resources that a particular region would have to offer. For example, in order for a nomadic lifestyle to be beneficial, the land occupied would have to be extremely rich in resources before it was even inhabited, including, among other things, game to hunt, plants to harvest for food, and shelter-building materials. Since resources are necessarily limited, the number of people that a given region could support would also be limited. Living with large groups of people would not be practical in terms of physically moving the settlement nor would it be possible based on the limited amount of people that could be fed, clothed, and housed based on the means of the land. Additionally, nomadic life would not be an efficient use of resources in terms of the amount of time spent moving from one place to another or the energy required to pack up an entire community and relocate.
At the same time, however, sedentary life also has its disadvantages. In terms of time and energy spent, communities must invest these in providing themselves with food and livestock to feed on, while in a nomadic lifestyle, these would be provided by the region’s natural resources. However, I think there is a natural tendency in humans to desire a certain aspect of consistency in life, and a nomadic life would hardly provide that. Moving from place to place leaves one with no place to call home, no roots, no place or sometimes even people to identify with. In addition, with a routine and set existence in place, it is easier to perfect the way one does things; innovation that improves upon existing methods is easier when there is an element of constancy to build on.
Also, in response to the suggestion that sedentary life would lead to complacency, I disagree. Although physical movement from place to place is limited in a sedentary society, the idea of progress and advancement, as many have already pointed out, is much more prevalent in such a society in which survival is not a dire issue as it is in nomadic life. This suggests the very opposite of complacency. Innovation and the pursuit of knowledge stems from a desire to know more, a desire to achieve more, and, in short, a desire for change. This could not be called complacency in any form. Rather, I think that a nomadic life would be more likely to generate a feeling of complacency, in that the need to hunt and gather food leaves little time for developing minds or improving lifestyles.
Although the advent of sedentary life has led to numerous technological advancements, present day society suffers from a lack of true progress because many inventions today simply improve upon the already created and upgrade existing programs. A modern day example would be the automobile industry, which although it is slowly beginning to recognize the market value of hybrid and zero emissions cars, continues to market unnecessary luxuries like heated seats and back-up sensors. These superfluous features, in my opinion, are not symbols of progress, but of misguided use of time and resources.
Regarding nomadic life, I do not believe it is complacent because the word complacency implies a feeling of security and well-being, and that conflicts with the inherently unstable and insecure life of a nomad.
It is very interesting to read everyone's thoughts on the subject. Here are some of my own to contribute, feel free to respond to me:
The sedentary lifestyle makes survival a matter of less effort than in nomadic times. If a nomad doesn’t catch food for itself than they do not eat, nowadays it only takes a trip to the local grocery store and an exchange of a relatively small amount of currency for food. Consider the amount of work symbolized by that currency and compare it to the amount of work used by the nomad to track down an animal or harvest a crop. I bet the sedentary life seems a lot easier now.
This transformation to a sedentary lifestyle came when people started to develop ways to harvest the power of nature, man stopped living with nature and instead started to harvest it to make survival easier. As life became easier thanks to different parts contributing to the whole of human survival, man pushed itself to the limit trying to produce the most. However, this shift towards a more relaxed lifestyle continues to increase when thought about it. Many major industries that were developed to help man have also been converted to entertain them. Consider telephones, televisions, and computers. All developed to help man become a more efficient race and send large amounts of information over long distances, but have also been turned into means of communication between people for entertainment.
Sorry I was having trouble posting my comments, this is Alan.
The distinct advantages of the nomadic lifestyle are that through the movement of groups new experiences occur and new cultures are observed. With the constant movement comes the opportunity to see the world from a new viewpoint and form your own opinions because people are exposed to everything without being influenced by the community in which one lives. The nomadic lifestyle develops an introspective quality in the human persona, for one can only rely on his own perspective to develop an opinion or mindset. With this nomadic lifestyle also comes the ability to form an internal locus of control because there are no set surroundings that one can fault for the disastrous and ruinous events in their life. However with these numerous advantages come disadvantages. One cannot truly appreciate the cultures that have been experienced because one cannot watch cultures evolve over an extended period of time. In addition, as one continues to move throughout the land one cannot form deep, meaningful, and lasting relationships, for the relationship will disintegrate as soon as the two acquaintances are separated by distance.
Although the sedentary lifestyle does not allow one to experience first hand numerous cultures without making a decision to travel to another part of the world. The unsurpassed advantage of this lifestyle is the ability to form lasting relationships with those in one’s immediate vicinity. Due to the closer living quarters people will interact with each other more readily. Those living a sedentary life also can accumulate more material possessions, which has evolved due to the change from hunting and gathering to farming.
Here are my thoughts on the subject:
This change from a nomadic to a sedentary lifestyle occurred due to the change from a focus on hunting and gathering to farming. Since people must monitor the crops for a long period of time, this caused them to form communities, which eventually evolved into modern-day cities. Since we have become increasingly specialized in careers it is impossible for us to transition back to a nomadic lifestyle, for it would no longer be applicable to our lifestyle, where people live in cities for necessity and long-term jobs.
We can infer from the fact that the nomadic lifestyle was present during the most primitive stages of history that human instinct at one point was to stay as close as possible to the necessities for survival: food and water. Nomads would follow herds of animals to ensure their survival in a time when that survival was less than assured. Eventually, however, humans began to settle down and found ways to provide themselves with food, and thus survival, without having to follow the typical behavior patterns of other, less complex species. Once this method advanced, the focus of human behavior became less concerned with the need for survival and more centered on a familial lifestyle. The advent of farming, domestication, etc. as results of this new sedentary lifestyle essentially created a new set of standards for humankind. As this sedentary lifestyle developed further to modern day, these standards have gone from one extreme to another. Humans over the course of thousands of years have gone from nomadic tribes to city dwellers.
More and more specialization has replaced the need for personal sustenance, which affords modern society more freedom to remain in one place and travel for leisure rather than necessity. This high degree of specialization is a distinct characteristic of humankind, and is one of the main reasons society has developed so far in such a short span of modern history as compared to the thousands upon thousands of static years spent as nomads. Humans rely on others just as much as themselves for survival, although most don’t realize this, and that is why the city lifestyle has become the norm. While the nomad lifestyle certainly sufficed for the earliest humans, it is easy to see from the extremely rapid growth and high complexity of modern society that a sedentary lifestyle is more advantageous for the human race.
Just to begin by commenting on something that caught my attention from the other blogs, I disagree with the comparison of a nomadic lifestyle to the desire we feel in today’s world to travel or study abroad. Yes, it is a way that we see more places and it is movement and exploration, but the difference is that I feel that culture was lacking when nomadic life was dominant. I believe that one of the greatest advantages of sedentary life is that people now have the time and the relations to establish a culture. A small tribe would have a culture of its own, you could argue, yet it the way of life of what is essentially a family-type group really a culture? I think a culture would be a greater concept and would apply to a larger group. So experiencing different cultures, one reason for our travels today, would not have been entirely possible as the cultures were not so distinct.
Aside from that, in my original writing, I concentrated primarily on the similarities between a biological evolution and this evolution of lifestyle. To one of the proposed questions, “How was this grand transformation effected so thoroughly that we have gone from hunter-gatherers to city dwellers with scarcely a memory of the history that brought us here?” I responded that the sedentary lifestyle has many more advantages compared to nomadic lifestyle so much that the nomadic lifestyle is obsolete. The change spread as sustenance became more easily attained. Similar to the evolution of species over time, when a being or in this case way of life is so superior (in terms of evolutionary fitness) to the former, it essentially takes over, eliminating or severely diminishing the other. This was the case, the new lifestyle allowed the people to survive more easily and to develop lives that went beyond survival alone. They could develop new skills to improve their quality of life. This left no reason for the nomadic life to continue. Now technology develops at a faster rate than ever as we live in a constant state of change.
The key to the change, in my opinion, was specialization. Just as individual cells in the most complex systems specialize rather than performing all of the functions as in a unicellular body, the more advanced societies rely on specialization for efficiency. A more complex and developed organism dominates a unicellular body in most cases. Evolution moves forward; we will not return to unicellular bodies, nor will we revert to nomadic life.
I agree with Hannah's comment that although existing technologies are being improved at an astounding rate,our society has become resistant to new ideas. Instead of inventing new things we simply improve on what we already have; therefore, no significant "progress" is being made.
Nomadic life was a necessity for the earliest human ancestors in order to fulfill their basic needs. It also required a certain amount of faith, because people had to journey into the unknown. But for them there was also the promise of greener pastures somewhere further down the road. While that may not be as literally true today as it once was, the opportunity to leave your problems in the distance is still an alluring one for many people encountering troubling times in their lives. One must also consider the reality of death. Like the cited Indian proverb implies, nothing in this life is permanent, so attempting to create permanent ties to the world around a person goes against the natural order of things. As human beings we are on a constant journey that is always changing.
However, very little nomadic history still exists today because modern human memory is a product of having settled down. A life lived forever on the road does not create landmarks for future travelers. Only after people built monuments to commemorate historical events was the continuity of history insured. As humanity progresses our memories only become more and more accurate. Writing manuscripts led to printing then to photography and then into the modern day of YouTube videos and blogging.
Memory in turn with increased leisure time allowed for the technologies that make today’s sedentary life possible. With the dawn of agriculture, not every man had to find his own, which led to the rise of various arts and crafts. And because of recorded history, the vast human memory, people were able to build on the discoveries of others to provide more technology and leisure time, in a cycle that led to the increasingly rapid technological progress of the last few hundred years.
To paraphrase the above arguments, a nomadic lifestyle and a sedentary one shouldn’t be compared and contrasted as different choices but as an evolution of the human history. It would be hard to argue that returning to a nomadic lifestyle wouldn’t require giving up many technological advantages people enjoy today. It would seem like a step backward in our progression. As the Moorish proverb says, a man cannot know his value if he does not understand his nomadic origins.
One of the main developments separating nomadic and sedentary life was the resources to create technologies. Newer technologies and weaponry were used to conquer less developed civilizations. This removal lead to the destruction of much of the information of these earlier forms of life (due to the fact that sedentary societies were the only ones to create a written language). However, the basic instinct of a natural, nomadic way of life is still present in today’s society (i.e. vacations, high value of houses near lakes or other aesthetically pleasing “wilderness-like” setting). This eradication of the most obvious nomadic presences on the earth, along with the lingering nomadic instincts, matter a great deal to present-day society. We must learn that although staying completely sedentary seems very stable, our basic instincts still drive us to improve and invent new technologies that continually propel our lives.
Many aspects of our lives are becoming almost too stationary, such as some governmental policies. In The End of Oil, Paul Roberts shows us that something must be done to the current energy policies of the world or else the damage done by current fuels will be nearly irreversible. Combining this idea with the idea of basic pioneering instincts gives us great reasoning for the expanded research of bigger and better fuels and energy policies. All in all, sedentary life has become the more prevalent physical society, but nomadic ways of life continue to guide us along the pathway of development.
I think we have to examine our own perceptions of "good" and "progress" and realize that they are not necessarily 'mutually inclusive' so to speak. It is easy to take for granted that our life is better or superior now because we live in an advanced industrial society. But we automatically prejudice ourselves against nomadic lifestyles when we judge their 'goodness' by the same criteria we use to describe modern 'goodness' i.e. luxuries, the desire for "bigger and better," property, etc. If one were to judge by a different--more objective, perhaps--set of criteria, the outcome of the judgement might be quite different. The 'freedoms' which modern technology affords us with might seem as tethers to a nomadic observer who sees us all but unable to function without cell phones, internet, etc. In addition, many modern marvels of technology are only, shall we say, necessary, becuase of previous development. The excellent picture of HDTVs and the innovation of hybrid cars, while admirable technical achievements, would seem inconsequential to one who had no particular need for them.
I agree with Brendan; judging our style of life to be superior to 'their' style of life, and basing that judgement on our own set of criteria, is unfair and a bit arrogant. It's enough to say that nomadic life and sedentary life are two separate developments, born of circumstance or of concious choice, both of which are valid. And thus comparing and contrasting these lifestyles based on their respective advantages and disadvantages becomes an important, even necessary method for better understanding the qualities of each.
The quote that was most meaningful to me was the Moorish proverb, “He who does not travel does not know the value of men.” The quote demonstrates the benefits of both a nomadic and a sedentary existence. The nomad has a unique opportunity to learn “the value of men.” Because he is constantly on the move, the nomad encounters many diverse cultures and ways of life. He has the opportunity to learn from both others and his surroundings and to see all of man’s valuable accomplishments. Yet while a nomadic life may offer one more opportunities to learn, this advantage comes at a considerable cost. The life of a nomad is inherently lonely. Because a nomad travels constantly, he does not have the opportunity to form the lasting bonds that make lives fulfilling.
While nomads may enjoy much more freedom than those who live sedentary lives, they lack the sense of belonging that comes with stationary life. There are no familiar routines for nomads, no enduring relationships. A sedentary life offers a person stability and a sense of community. The quotation hints that it is this sense of familiarity and comfort that is really the most valuable achievement of man. While people may not always be conscious of how important their stationary life is to them, life’s routines – having a home, working a steady job, knowing one has a family to return to – are what transform life from a lonely struggle into a real thing of value.
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