Hermits and Happiness #139

The long tradition of leaving it all behind

Chasing utopia

Of all the ways humans have devised to pursue happiness, shutting oneself off from the company of others and embracing a life of poverty and stark deprivation must be one of the strangest. And yet, many have tried it, over and over again, all over the world, in every culture and throughout the ages: from the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes, famously depicted as living in a barrel, to today’s Hikikomori, young people who choose to retreat to the isolation of their bedrooms for years at a time.

It is easy to find flaws in the way human societies are organised. All real human societies have and always have had hierarchical structures; all are based on competition, on power, on the accumulation of wealth and status; all have perpetuated injustice and suffering for too many of their members. There has been no shortage of utopias, dreamy landscapes where happy, well-fed and well-educated children would play in the sun. But the reality of life has never been as easy as that for the vast majority of human beings on Earth.