The Nomadic Alternative – Page 20

informs the whole content of this book, and before pushing the comparison further I feel I must generalize on the degrees of human mobility. I exclude the forced settlement of prison or arbitrary confinement, and assume that the traveller or settler moves or stays of his or her own free will.

The most immobile human being is the Anchorite or recluse. He sits in a hermitage or cell in anti-social rejection of the world and its values, alone or in a community of like-minded associates.

The anchorite renounces wandering in this world, and concentrates on voyages to the Otherworld. His activity we may call ‘internalized wandering for God’. His vehicles to the world of blessed visionary experience include the techniques of yoga – fasting, mortifications of the flesh, gymnastic and breathing exercises. Failing these he may take to narcotics or the other ritual rigamarole that Philippe de Félice called “les formes inférieurs de la mystique“. These vehicles allow the anchorite to escape from his confinement and avert mental disintegration.

The Peasant is anchored to the soil. He propagates his own food supply and can rarely leave his village. The seasonal cycle determines a predictable ritual of work. He passes through at least one lean period in the year. In a hot climate this coincides with the end of the dry season, in a cold one the end of winter. At this time he may suffer vitamin deficiency, only to feel renewed and reborn with the onset of plenty. The peasant may be fiercely conservative, yet always committed to increase. If he is lucky he is self-sufficient, and will use his surplus to better his place in the world.

The City is the nursery of the Adventurer who”wanders for loot“. Urban civilization divorces its children from their proper coordination to the seasonal cycle and accustoms them to a feverish need for stimulation. During its history of five and a half millennia the City has committed itself to a programme of limitless accumulation.

The City eats wealth. For as it defends them from the outside danger, it must distribute excitements to its citizens to dispel their illusion of being locked up in a prison. No city has ever