perhaps we are all nomads

One of my old bosses used to say, if you keep doing the right thing, things will come right.

The point being that you might be unlucky, and other folk might be lucky, but in the long term consistency and effort will win out over luck.

After a few weeks at work, where things were becoming rather alarming, things are now starting to fall into place, and I can once again see a way forward. I am repeatedly reminded of the value in doing things properly as you go along, rather than just cutting a lot of corners. Cut corners simply come back to haunt you.

Likewise with my voluntary work, things are once again falling into place, after a few alarming developments.

The garden is winding down for the winter, though now that it is too dark in the evenings to spend any time in it, I'll need to concentrate my efforts at the weekends.

Likewise this website is starting to take shape - though it has no clear role, or purpose, beyond giving me a chance to play with RapidWeaver, and the various add-ons that I am building up. Fortunately the structure is pretty simple, and one that I can add to. If it had simply grown like topsy, with mess of pages, it would be more of a worry.


I suppose that now is a time for re-appraisal, to look over things and figure out what my priorities and goals are.

It is too easy to substitute the feeling of buying something, for the effort of doing something. The most lasting benefits we experience are as a result of our efforts, but buying something is the easier option. There was an interesting article somewhere about how we think about our possessions. It makes the point that if you were the only person in the world, then you would not own anything. The idea of owning things is just a construct. Obviously it is quite a useful one, but when you think about it, it is pretty meaningless. Philosophically there is no particular quality that an item possesses that marks out who it belongs to. The object itself has no memory. I suppose that owning things only has meaning to the extent that they are useful or give you pleasure, or even both. Accordingly I derive pleasure from owning good woodwork tools, some I use, some I don't.

However the pleasure of owning things, needs to be differentiated from the momentary pleasure of obtaining them. I suppose as foraging hunter gatherers, we are programmed to enjoy the acquisition, the caveman feels pleasure at killing his mammoth, his family are impressed and grateful that he has brought home this mammoth, and they eat well, though after a few days they would probably be looking for some condiments. We get bothered about a turkey hanging around till New Year. They were probably eating the mammoth for months.

We are target orientated, we fixate, we hunt and chase down, then acquire, and bring home our prey. We are wired to think like this.

But in modern society, this wiring simply does not work. There is no particular skill or ability in spending money, you have money, you spend money, you acquire. If it was food, we would realise that we were buying more than we were eating. But much of the spending is for stuff that meets less obvious needs. You can always find room for more clothes, or books, or records. You do not generally need them in any sense at all. You simply would like to have them.

As in so many other things, our hunter gatherer wiring is poorly suited to modern life.

All that said, my understanding is that the wealthy traditionally saw little need to display their wealth through acquiring things, I suppose when you own a stately home, there is relatively little to be gained from a trip round IKEA. It is not going to make you feel better about yourself, that you now have an extra coffee table.

My argument forks here, I could examine what must motivate the wealthy if they are not prone to simple impulse purchases, or I could examine the desire to collect, or even how we use possessions to define who we are now. We define ourselves, the tribes we feel we belong to, by buying stuff. Even absurdly the desire to green consumerism, when the real green option is to make do and mend.

But I would like to finish this entry by reflecting on my time as a nomad, during the summers I used to go from archaeological dig, to archaeological dig. All you had, you carried. So more was not better. You bought a book, you gave away an old one. In such a situation you look very differently as possessions, you don't stop spending, but you do spend differently. At heart we are all simply nomads, traveling through, and we will take nothing with us when we go, perhaps it is better to travel lightly.

PS wedding anniversary weekend !!