And so it begins. I usually make a serious relocation only when it is time to “age out” of an extant identity- this prevents, at least to some degree, the difficulty of encountering old acquaintances in my new guise. Up until the last twenty years or so this has not been a terribly difficult process; however, the advent of computer and travel technology has made me face the reality that to continue operating as I have over the past thirty-five centuries I may be required to relocate to some less-developed part of the world, a prospect I do not greet with joy.

I am not afraid of hard living. I spent most of the first half of my life in bondage of one kind or another, often in situations where mere survival required serious efforts from all involved. Even in the later centuries the standard of living I enjoyed, while above average at the time, was usually something most modern westerners would find intolerable. It is not that humanity has gone soft; rather it is that the underlying expectations have changed. There are many people who would truly relish a return to hand-to-mouth existence. Most everybody else would die fairly quickly.

It is my experience that people resist change just enough in aggregate to keep from being overwhelmed while not causing stagnation. True Luddites seldom succeed for long ? a society that turns inward and refuses to move forward is doomed to be overtaken by more dynamic peoples. Eventually they are absorbed, destroyed, or moved along by force. So, to move to some place still locked in the previous century (or even millennium) is something to be avoided. I prefer to live amongst those who delight in the future, rather than those mired in the past.

Posted on January 1st, 2003 by Zsallia
Filed under: Philosophy, The Past, The Present