Why do some of us want to be nomads, and is it a better life?

Agriculture.

Reply to unenlightened Definitely relevant, but not an answer. Could you elaborate?

There is a tropical agriculture known as 'slash and burn' where one clears a patch of jungle, grows crops for a few years and then abandons it when the soil is exhausted and moves on to clear a new patch. This is a slow migratory system, that will only be sustainable for a very small tribal population.

To support an urban population requires a more intense use of land involving crop rotation, irrigation, domesticated livestock, and so on, including mining for lime and phosphates to maintain soil fertility. This is what 99% of the population relies on for food, and therefore it takes up all the most convenient land which of necessity is permanently settled. Nomads foraging for food in the fields cultivated by others leads to conflict, so generally nomads these days are confined to marginal land - mountains, deserts, and remote jungles. And they probably don't have great internet access, or health insurance.

Reply to Ø implies everything

I would think a nomadic lifestyle is similar to travelling/backpacking. While I enjoyed the experience, I eventually missed the comforts and security of home, and it felt like a relief to come back.

I still haven't answered the question, I notice. The attraction of nomadic life is an imagined escape from social responsibility. The reality is that social dependence and the accompanying responsibility are inescapable and nomads are far more dependent and vulnerable than the settled.

Quoting Ø implies everything

So, why do some of us want to be nomads, and is it a better life (interpret better how you want)?

When I was in school and didnt hand in assignments on time, or deviated in any other respect from the demands of the conventional structure, my teachers would say “In the real world, you can’t get away with shirking your responsibilities.” It was always about this alleged ‘real world’. Even then, I never bought into the idea of a ‘real world’. I’ve lived a nomadic life ever since college. Not in the sense of constant physical travel, which can end up just as conventional and constraining as not travelling. My nomadism is a creative wandering. I think we all want to be nomads in this sense. We all want to expand and enrich our sense of value and meaning. Physical travel can achieve this, but only if done in the right way.

We all want to be Peter Pan, if that means retaining from childhood the passion for enchantment and adventure. But each of us must do it in our own way. How aggressively we are able to wander is a function of a balance between structure and novelty. If we try to wander into new territory that isnt structured enough, that is so alien to our previous experience that we can’t find any familiar landmarks to navigate by, then our experience will not be one of magical delight and wonder, but of fear and confusion. That’s why most of us need the familiar structure of externally imposed conventions and institutions (social, corporate, legal, educational, governmental).

Quoting Ø implies everything

Settling down means accepting the good and bad of your environment; settling down means taking responsibility for your interaction with the environment. You settle down based on static premises, yet you yourself are not. Why not leave when you feel like it? Why not bask in the boundless potential of anywhere? Why not always search? Why not always discover?

I am lazy. I don't often enjoy travel. I have little interest in discovery or searching. I'm not looking for anything. I do a road trip every now and then and drive hundreds of miles into the Australian outback, but I am always glad to come home to my familiar city. I enjoy predictability. I live in the centre of a big city and a few meters from by building there is constant chaos and activity. I think a craving for novelty is probably down to disposition.

Reply to Tom Storm Quoting Tom Storm

. I have little interest in discovery or searching

And yet you’ve been active on this site quite a while, asking searching questions, especially of those who opt for bedrock truths in science, philosophy or religion. I suspect at heart you’re a Bilbo Baggins, and if a wizard and band of dwarves came knocking at the door of your hobbit hole , you’d find yourself off on an adventure.

Quoting Joshs

We all want to be Peter Pan, if that means retaining from childhood the passion for enchantment and adventure.

:up:
At least some of us do.

Quoting Ø implies everything

So, why do some of us want to be nomads, and is it a better life (interpret better how you want)?

In middle school, everyone dreams of some form of escape - running away with the circus, joining the merchant marine, camping out in the north woods and living off the land - some variation of the independent loner fantasy. It is an age when fledglings long o fly and feel that adults are both constraining them and demanding too much. And it's true: in the real world, society sets limits to personal freedom and imposes obligations on its members.

Most people grow out of that adolescent rebellion, either because there are things they desire and want to accomplish, or because circumstance forces them onto a path not of their own choosing. But some do run away with a circus of one sort or another or take off on their to see the world.
The nomadic life is a hand-to-mouth existence. One can busk, beg or take odd jobs where he finds them. Since almost nobody will hire an unkempt (no washing facilities on the street) person with no address or phone number (you don't earn enough to subscribe), these would poor, brief jobs. If you could make yourself presentable enough, you could rent out your body, I suppose. It's not exactly a life of adventure.

There are some real world alternatives: seasonal work in landscaping, construction, snow removal, fruit picking, marine shipping. You could go from place to place, rent a room, take a low-paid temporary job, save up for a ticket, then move on. Some people do live that way - but again, it's short intervals of movement between longer intervals of tedium; not exactly adventure. Another possibility is to work long enough to buy a van to live in, but you would still need fresh sources of income. Unless you really did carry a backpack into the north woods. The catch is, it's too cold to survive there without a shelter, which you would have to build... and then you're settled, after all, only a whole lot harder.

Ideally, if you're of a nomadic disposition, you should train for a mobile occupation: join the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders; be a surveyor, salesman or long-distance trucker.

Reply to Vera Mont

Quoting Vera Mont

in the real world, society sets limits to personal freedom and imposes obligations on its members.

What is this ‘real world’ you speak of? I’ve never encountered it, only a popular conception that there is such a singular thing, and a multitude of notions of what this universal reality consists of.

Quoting Vera Mont

Most people grow out of that adolescent rebellion, either because there are things they desire and want to accomplish, or because circumstance forces them onto a path not of their own choosing

Only the person who orders their life in terms of many special and inflexible convictions about temporary matters
makes themselves the victim of circumstances.

Quoting Vera Mont

Ideally, if you're of a nomadic disposition, you should train for a mobile occupation: join the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders; be a surveyor, salesman or long-distance trucker.

Or any job involving remote work that can be done from a laptop anywhere in the world where there’s a cell or wifi signal.

I should add that what constitutes travel is not just a function of where and how far you travel in a geographic sense, but HOW you travel. I hike 5 miles every day, mostly in the same woods, but the trees, flowers and wildlife are constantly changingd. I am also writing while I am walking, and my changing ideas meld with the changes in the environment. One has to learn how to look. Anyone living in a large cosmopolitan city has inexhaustible worlds within worlds at their disposal, if they learn how to see them. This is the most effective sort of nomadism, the kind that can be achieved by staying in place.

Quoting Joshs

What is this ‘real world’ you speak of? I’ve never encountered it

So, you've been living in Narnia or Oz maybe? I'm pretty sure the societies there also place limits on individual freedom and obligations on their members. Unless you're a witch?

Quoting Joshs

Only the person who orders their life in terms of many special and inflexible convictions about temporary matters makes themselves the victim of circumstances.

Yeah, like I said, most people. Not ascetic hermits, yogis on the verge of Nirvana or Ayn Rand.

Quoting Joshs

Or any job involving remote work that can be done from a laptop anywhere in the world where there’s a cell or wifi signal.

Good example. of a mobile occupation. I'm sure there are others. The biggest problem is, you have to stay put and pay tuition while training, and then you have to persuade some employer to hire you. IOW, you can't start your peregrinations straight out of middle-school. And during that early adulthood, you have to avoid romantic and other entanglements that might serve as anchors.

Reply to Vera Mont

Quoting Vera Mont

What is this ‘real world’ you speak of? I’ve never encountered it
— Joshs
So, you've been living in Narnia or Oz maybe? I'm pretty sure the societies there also place limits on individual freedom and obligations on their members.

No one can place limits on the freedom of thought, especially when it comes to creative thought that is invisible to conventional society. You can’t limit what doesn’t exist to you. You can put only put limits on bodies. I know the OP puts the issue of freedom from convention in terms of physical travel, because they see physical escape as the only way not to become sucked into conformity. I’m pointing out that one doesn’t need to flee one’s physical environment to do this.

Quoting Vera Mont

Only the person who orders their life in terms of many special and inflexible convictions about temporary matters makes themselves the victim of circumstances.
— Joshs
Yeah, like I said, most people. Not ascetic hermits, yogis on the verge of Nirvana or Ayn Rand

I think Spinoza and Kant are better examples, or anyone in any creative endeavor who manages to see things differently from the status quo. Kant apparently never travelled outside of his hometown, and yet defied the conventional thinking of his time and place. Are these people hermits? Well they certainly have to be comfortable with endless hours of solitary thought.

Quoting Joshs

No one can place limits on the freedom of thought, especially when it comes to creative thought that is invisible to conventional society.

Quite so. Every adolescent can dream all they want about the places they'll go and the adventures they'll have. And if they lack imagination, they can watch movies and read books. They can hitch a ride on Sagan's ship of the imagination and visit other galaxies, or Wells' time machine and wander in other eras. Jack London's star rover did it very well.

Not quite the same as a nomadic life in the real - actual, physical, material; place where the body needs sustenance, protection from extreme temperatures and disease, sleep and waste-relief - world.

Quoting Joshs

I think Spinoza and Kant are better examples, or anyone in any creative endeavor who manages to see things differently from the status quo.

No, they're not examples at all. They don't ditch school at 14 and go off whistling down the road. But private tutor is another occupation that will provide travel if you manage to latch on to a family that gets posted to various places around the world. The real world, mind - you can't go wandering, willy-nilly in somebody else's kid's imagination.

Reply to Vera Mont

Quoting Vera Mont

Not quite the same as a nomadic life in the real - actual, physical, material; place where the body needs sustenance, protection from extreme temperatures and disease, sleep and waste-relief - world.

My original response to your comment about the real world was focused on your emphasis on social convention. You wrote:

“In the real world, society sets limits to personal freedom and imposes obligations on its members.”

When I said there was no one real world, I meant that even within the status quo of societal rules and conventions, there are multiple realities at work, in the sense that individuals must interpret rules and conventions as they apply them, even when they believe that everyone in their community is following the ‘same’ legal and moral
code. The person who is aware of this can use this to their advantage. If one bureaucrat on the phone says no, hang up and try the next one. There are all sorts of ways to maneuver one’s way within and manipulate a system by remembering that the system doesn’t exist until it is put into practice by individuals, who all have a slightly different take on what it is, how it is supposed to function, what their role is, and what motivates them to particulate in it. Yes, there are real limits and constraints that one must contend with, but these are mobile constraints that respond to the ways we learn to engage with them.

Reply to unenlightened
I think that's right. Good posts. :up:

Reply to Vera Mont Quoting Vera Mont

No, they're not examples at all. They don't ditch school at 14 and go off whistling down the road. But private tutor is another occupation that will provide travel if you manage to latch on to a family that gets posted to various places around the world. The real world, mind - you can't go wandering, willy-nilly in somebody else's kid's imagination

I think the distinction here is between a notion of the real as bolted down , recalcitrant facts that one must abide by, and real constraints on one’s wandering that are responsive to one’s interpretive frame of reference. I think the concept of travel implies that one will be affected , shaped, surprised and constrained by what one encounters on one’s travels. After all , if surprise and discovery were not intrinsic to what it means to take a journey, there would be no point to it. The OP wants to outrun reality , seen as the bolted down facts of conventional society, by constantly changing locations. In other words, it would be a matter of continually swapping out one set of bolted down conventional redirections for another.

The problem with trying to outrun social entanglements is that it becomes very lonely , not to mention that one deprives oneself of the creature comforts of modem life.

Quoting Joshs

When I said there was no one real world, I meant that even within the status quo of societal rules and conventions, there are multiple realities at work, in the sense that individuals must interpret rules and conventions as they apply them, even when they believe that everyone in their community is following the ‘same’ legal and moral code.

I guess they'll know when the police show up at their door. The justice system doesn't accept everyone's personal interpretation of the rules. Once you're locked up, that's a circumstance you can't easily ignore - but as you say, you can escape - to some degree - through fantasy. Interpretation doesn't much alter the need to abide by laws and earn a living.
Quoting Joshs

If one bureaucrat on the phone says no, hang up and try the next one.

Yes, in theory, you could waste your life manoeuvring around the rules, but it wouldn't make you any more mobile and it wouldn't feed your (should you have fallen into the life-trap most people do) children.
And, of course, you'd have to count on never getting kidney cysts if you've spurned the constraint of health insurance premiums.

Quoting Joshs

I think the distinction here is between a notion of the real as bolted down , recalcitrant facts that one must abide by, and real constraints on one’s wandering that are responsive to one’s interpretive frame of reference

Yes. Imagination vs reality. Quoting Joshs

The OP wants to outrun reality , seen as the bolted down facts of conventional society, by constantly changing locations. In other words, it would be a matter of continually swapping out one set of bolted down conventional redirections for another

Yes. It was that question to which I responded, not one about an alternate universe.

Reply to Vera Mont Quoting Vera Mont

I think the distinction here is between a notion of the real as bolted down , recalcitrant facts that one must abide by, and real constraints on one’s wandering that are responsive to one’s interpretive frame of reference
— Joshs
Yes. Imagination vs reality

No, a moldy philosophical model of what reality is (bolted down facts) vs a more contemporary way of thinking about the real (intra-action that creates material phenomena rather than interaction between pre-existing objects) that has made its way from philosophy into the social sciences.

Quoting Joshs

a more contemporary way of thinking about the real (intra-action that creates material phenomena rather than interaction between pre-existing objects) that has made its way from philosophy into the social sciences.

I hope that will satisfy an adolescent's wanderlust.

Quoting Vera Mont

a more contemporary way of thinking about the real (intra-action that creates material phenomena rather than interaction between pre-existing objects) that has made its way from philosophy into the social sciences. — Joshs

I hope that will satisfy an adolescent's wanderlust.

:clap: :rofl:

If you want to go off on your own and be a nomad, either on the road with the physical thrills thereupon, or in your apartment thinking great thoughts, be sure you can support yourself. As an ancient on this forum I've seen it all, especially in the world of mountain and rock climbing, where being a "dirtbag" is revered in some quarters - a little like a divine incarnation.

And then something happens and you run up a hospital bill in six figures and need a GoFundMe to survive.

And I have seen the twists and turns life makes, in one instance a friend who lived on fifty cents a day in 1960 and is a billionaire today. And another who started the same and died in a run-down shack, poverty stricken. So, if you want to be a nomad, don't expect society (while it's busy adjusting to intra-action excitement) to come to your rescue.

Reply to Ø implies everything I think you just posted some arguments to claim that you don't want to be responsible with yourself either the State you live in.

Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole

I would think a nomadic lifestyle is similar to travelling/backpacking. While I enjoyed the experience, I eventually missed the comforts and security of home, and it felt like a relief to come back.

Good point! :up:

I've always liked travelling. I still like the smell of diesel fumes because they always meant riding on a bus to me. I love wandering around cities looking at buildings. On the other hand, like @Tom Storm, I'm lazy. I like my lounge chair, books, iced coffee, and my computer. I think my wanderlust decreased when I had children. Travel with family can't be as easy and free.

I did have to spend time on the road some when I was working. The longest period was for about 6 months living in residential motels and eating out every night. It's fun for about two weeks. After a while it gets really depressing, at least for me.

Like most things in life, I think it comes down to a matter of temperament. My fantasy of travel takes into account my pleasure in seeing new places and my sedentary nature. That involves hiring a driver and riding all over the country in a limousine, RV, or private bus. Stopping on a regular basis to stay in nice hotels. Booking with a travel agent who can plan my itineraries and take care of any details, e.g. reservations, local guides, ideas for activities. As a less expensive alternative, I'll just keep sitting here on my ass, reading, talking philosophy.

And watching videos about exotic places while eating my lunch.

To most travel means: vacation. Which implies your normal life is work, family and home. Nomadic "travel" is not that, and frankly most are not suited to it.

Nomads in America

@Joshs I like your theory, though we may disagree as to what degree one might exercise this freedom, at least in the bureaucratic, legal and occupational domains of life. In the social domain however, this freedom is far larger, and I have exercised it myself. Though, in the vein of what @Vera Mont says, this theory doesn't change the fact that the next day, I've got to go to a soulless job. Nor does it change the fact that I am surrounded by people who I am almost as lonely with than not.

This video explains one kind of travelling; one that appeals to me and would be the one I'd employ. Just the opening segment gives one a very good idea.

Reply to LuckyR Why are most not suited for it, and to what degree are they not suited for it?

Reply to Ø implies everything Sounds like you're trying to shed the responsibility of earning sufficient money to pay rent, furnish the place, pay utilitities, and otherwise burden yourself with those commitments so that you can be you, outside, free, and able to pursue your passions.

My advice is to do that. Run free. See what happens. Life is all about picking your adventure.

Might not work out like you expected, but who am I to know.

Why are most not suited for it, and to what degree are they not suited for it?

Reply to Ø implies everything

Because most value family, home and stability (at least some of the time) more than freedom, excitement and adventure.

Young folks are on average more drawn to freedom etc since they're developing their persona, separate from their family's.

Reply to Hanover I think that would be good too. I am creating a foundation to come back to, yet I haven't committed to anything that needs maintenance, so I'm at the optimal place in my life to do something like this.

What do you think about the question however? Why do some people want to do this, and is it a better life?

My guess is that it is a better life, but not forever. I do wonder how long it takes before most people start demanding the other things of life that require them to settle down.

Reply to LuckyR I agree. I think a bit part of the appeal of running away is the escape from the social limitations, especially in that they restrict (to some degree) the evolution of the self. I don't think it leads to underdeveloped selves, but it removes more of the person's agency in guiding the evolution of the self.

So then the question becomes; are we usually better of with more or less external guidance over the evolution of our selves?

Quoting Joshs

One has to learn how to look. Anyone living in a large cosmopolitan city has inexhaustible worlds within worlds at their disposal, if they learn how to see them. This is the most effective sort of nomadism, the kind that can be achieved by staying in place.

Very nice. I missed this when you posted it. I have often said this too. I can take a walk in my city or get on public transport and just by adjusting how I choose to regard things, I am suddenly in a new city, an unfamiliar one - even if I have been through this way hundreds of times before.

There's a richness to this encounter if you (and I am struggling to articulate this) are open to seeing and set aside your preconceptions and anticipations and bring a different form of curiosity to the experience. So much of travel to me seems to be an imaginative act that takes place within us. Maybe you can tidy up the wording for me?

Quoting Hanover

My advice is to do that. Run free. See what happens. Life is all about picking your adventure.

If you do this, please have health insurance. Don't expect society to give you a free ride. If you have an expensive medical procedure and can't pay, the rest of us have to pick up the tab one way or another.

Quoting jgill

Don't expect society to give you a free ride. If you have an expensive medical procedure and can't pay, the rest of us have to pick up the tab one way or another.

I have health insurance, and even if I didn't, you'd probably not have to pay a dime, unless you happen to come from the same country as me.

Quoting Ø implies everything

you'd probably not have to pay a dime

Not directly, of course. But the money has to come from somewhere. Income taxes, etc. or if you happen to have a group medical policy, its spread out over many. Good to know you are thinking ahead.

Otherwise, how will you finance your odyssey?