Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood (2009)(nybooks.com)
nybooks.com
Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood (2009)
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2009/07/16/manhood-for-amateurs-the-wilderness-of-childhood/
53 comments
>They wandered virtual worlds.
That's fairly insightful right there. I'm juust old enough that my childhood contained some of the last years of "the woods" and juust young enough that when I started WOW, I recognized the feeling. Logging on in those early days had the same essential flavor as grabbing the bike and heading out.
That's fairly insightful right there. I'm juust old enough that my childhood contained some of the last years of "the woods" and juust young enough that when I started WOW, I recognized the feeling. Logging on in those early days had the same essential flavor as grabbing the bike and heading out.
Seconded. A very insightful comment. Your comment rings true as well. I spent quite a bit of time in "the woods" as a boy but also plenty of time in front of computer screens. You're right - the feeling is the same whether it's outdoors, a virtual world, or even the inner world of my thoughts when I would read a book with a fully realized world.
I love virtual worlds and don't fetishize nature, but there seems something essentially different between a world created by physics and a world created by humans. It would be a shame to miss out on either.
Remember when the internet allowed you to have multiple identities on message boards and so on? It was a really unique time.
I ran a Minecraft server with myself and friends about two years ago. They were most interested in exploring (and finding neat treasures), so I added mods for new lands, spontaneous adventures, rarer treasures and other places to go.
OTOH, I enjoyed building factories and ever more complicated toys and one friend created art pieces everywhere (we gave him creative mode and some other tools and sent him off).
One girl loved to farm almost exclusively for whatever reason; maybe I should have done something to make it more engaging somehow?
And now I've forgotten my point, but I'm reminded just how different everybody is!
OTOH, I enjoyed building factories and ever more complicated toys and one friend created art pieces everywhere (we gave him creative mode and some other tools and sent him off).
One girl loved to farm almost exclusively for whatever reason; maybe I should have done something to make it more engaging somehow?
And now I've forgotten my point, but I'm reminded just how different everybody is!
Awesome way to put things into perspective. Nothing is "lost"... it is only changing. Everything will change. Embrace fate, control what you can control, and live.
I did things my kids will not do, as it is simply not possible to take a train from Nogales to Puerto Vallarta anymore, for example. They will do things that are not possible for their kids to do... and so on. Don't harken back to days gone by as if they (kids) are somehow going to be deficient due to these perceived losses. They are not.
I did things my kids will not do, as it is simply not possible to take a train from Nogales to Puerto Vallarta anymore, for example. They will do things that are not possible for their kids to do... and so on. Don't harken back to days gone by as if they (kids) are somehow going to be deficient due to these perceived losses. They are not.
And hopefully their children will roam the stars.
Yeah, the cold, distant stars. Super!
Seriously, can we get over the idea that life in space is going to be better? The stars are too distant to visit. Elon Musk doesn't have the nous to fix our political problems, just to competently execute engineering tasks.
If freedom and self-determination are the goals, it's surely best to conserve the liberties and territories that already exist or have only recently been lost. Keep the space travel agenda to mining asteroids.
Seriously, can we get over the idea that life in space is going to be better? The stars are too distant to visit. Elon Musk doesn't have the nous to fix our political problems, just to competently execute engineering tasks.
If freedom and self-determination are the goals, it's surely best to conserve the liberties and territories that already exist or have only recently been lost. Keep the space travel agenda to mining asteroids.
Really? SpaceX made it over 90℅ cheaper to launch a rocket into space. That changes economic forces significantly already. Ancient humans walked continents and spread to the whole earth for no clear individual advantage (although perhaps a species advantage). Wanderlust and exploration appears ingrained in our species. It doesn't have to make (short term) sense for us to colonize other planets and stars, we are going to do it anyway. Politics change, technology grows at faster rates and culture will eventually support it. Why not?
We still have to fix our own planet's problems, but we can still colonize others. Some people will work on one and others will work on the other.
We still have to fix our own planet's problems, but we can still colonize others. Some people will work on one and others will work on the other.
There's nothing wrong with dreaming.
There is if you spend your life aiming for something that is unattainable then missing something worth while that was right under your nose.
Seriously, can we get over the idea that life across the sea is going to be better? There are no lands there, the ocean is too large and too dangerous to cross. Perhaps our ancestors said this.
It's in our DNA. We won't stop. We can't stop. A virus can't consider it's host "enough", nor can we consider a valley, a continent, or a planet enough. That's my opinion.
I also think it is both fascinating and noble to attempt to out-live the Sun, and maybe even the Universe as we know it.
It's in our DNA. We won't stop. We can't stop. A virus can't consider it's host "enough", nor can we consider a valley, a continent, or a planet enough. That's my opinion.
I also think it is both fascinating and noble to attempt to out-live the Sun, and maybe even the Universe as we know it.
An even more relevant and striking article 7 years later. I truly worry for the kind of world my children may grow up in, filled with manufactured fears and helicopter parents buzzing about trying to prevent the world from getting in.
At 25, I grew up in one of the last unadulterated times to be young in our history. No cell phone, not much supervision, just a couple of friends and a forest that felt the size of the world. I wonder how long until true childhood adventure is lost for good - marginalized to after-school curriculums and playdates planned on "Tinder for Tots".
Go outside, get cuts and scrapes, and you'll turn out all the stronger and more knowledgable from it.
At 25, I grew up in one of the last unadulterated times to be young in our history. No cell phone, not much supervision, just a couple of friends and a forest that felt the size of the world. I wonder how long until true childhood adventure is lost for good - marginalized to after-school curriculums and playdates planned on "Tinder for Tots".
Go outside, get cuts and scrapes, and you'll turn out all the stronger and more knowledgable from it.
I've architected my life so that adventure in the woods is still a quick bike ride to the trailhead.If I have more time acailable, There's the National Forest, Wilderness and a National Park, all a few hours by bike. I can bring along a sleeping back and stay out indefinetly.
Without this access, yeah I'd feel a little dead inside.
"Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." - E. Abbey
Without this access, yeah I'd feel a little dead inside.
"Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." - E. Abbey
"The wilderness once offered a plausible way of life. Now it functions as a psychological refuge. Soon there will be no more wilderness. Then the madness becomes universal. And the universe goes mad." - E. Abbey
While we're on Abbey quotes...
"The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.” - EA
This quote has always been a source of debate for me. Does the idea of wilderness need no defense? Must we create heavily managed spaces simply to prevent the tragedy of the commons from occurring? Does the fact that wilderness is a political designation mean that it is not truly "wild"?
I'm of the mind that because societal negligence of our natural world leads to its destruction in one form or another almost certainly, then yes, the idea of wilderness needs no defense, but one can argue that the designation itself leads to a place losing its "wildness"...
"The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.” - EA
This quote has always been a source of debate for me. Does the idea of wilderness need no defense? Must we create heavily managed spaces simply to prevent the tragedy of the commons from occurring? Does the fact that wilderness is a political designation mean that it is not truly "wild"?
I'm of the mind that because societal negligence of our natural world leads to its destruction in one form or another almost certainly, then yes, the idea of wilderness needs no defense, but one can argue that the designation itself leads to a place losing its "wildness"...
There could be a good argument that nothing is Wilderness, and that Wilderness itself - in the US at least, is a 18th-sh century construct, created by a European-leaning philosophy that didn't understand the relationship between the land and the people that were there before them, but were instead bound by the God and Relgion on the idea of almost a second Eden and a Manifest Destiny to take the land which belonged to on one.
In reality all those forests that the original author writes so daringly about were manicured and well-cared for woods, engineered to provide food in the form of nuts and berries, as well as prime hunting ground for big game, say nothing for easily passageway between villages for trade and seasonal migration.
In this perspective man has for a very long time held the spot of curator of so-called, "Wild Lands". It's my opinion that we continue to do so. Not for monetary gain (although there is - the Outdoor Industry isn't that small), but because without it, we all commit suicide, in a very real way.
In reality all those forests that the original author writes so daringly about were manicured and well-cared for woods, engineered to provide food in the form of nuts and berries, as well as prime hunting ground for big game, say nothing for easily passageway between villages for trade and seasonal migration.
In this perspective man has for a very long time held the spot of curator of so-called, "Wild Lands". It's my opinion that we continue to do so. Not for monetary gain (although there is - the Outdoor Industry isn't that small), but because without it, we all commit suicide, in a very real way.
There's no evidence Native Americans managed the land to this degree. In fact it's clear there weren't enough of them to do so.
The population in all of the Americas, from Alaska to Patagonia, was somewhere around 50 million. All of Canada had about 500,000 people. Do you know how much forest there is in Canada?
There's a theory that early man had widespread effects on the environment using purposeful burning, but even if that's true (it's hard to tell the difference between lightning strikes and purposeful burns), it hardly amounts to "manicured and well cared for woods". Unless you are willing to give beavers an equal designation.
The population in all of the Americas, from Alaska to Patagonia, was somewhere around 50 million. All of Canada had about 500,000 people. Do you know how much forest there is in Canada?
There's a theory that early man had widespread effects on the environment using purposeful burning, but even if that's true (it's hard to tell the difference between lightning strikes and purposeful burns), it hardly amounts to "manicured and well cared for woods". Unless you are willing to give beavers an equal designation.
There's a lot of compelling theories in the book, 1491 [0] about how forests were modified in ways in which I elude to, and how the population of the Americas was much, much higher than just 50 million, and how the were civilization much earlier than what we had first thought.
If we just take east coast of Maryland, where the author grew up, the first explorers talk about villages that interconnected across the coastline, Chestnut and walnut trees everywhere, and established hunting grounds. Burning was an immensely useful tool to do this. Everyone had a fire starter.
Later on, early settlers saw something drastically different - a dying off population from diseases brought by Europeans that they had no defense towards. And that is why our estimates on the population of the Americas, and the level of which they modified the land could be really off.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Colu...
If we just take east coast of Maryland, where the author grew up, the first explorers talk about villages that interconnected across the coastline, Chestnut and walnut trees everywhere, and established hunting grounds. Burning was an immensely useful tool to do this. Everyone had a fire starter.
Later on, early settlers saw something drastically different - a dying off population from diseases brought by Europeans that they had no defense towards. And that is why our estimates on the population of the Americas, and the level of which they modified the land could be really off.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Colu...
"much, much higher"? In that book Mann argues that the higher counts are more likely to be right. 50 million is among the higher counts. The highest count reasonably argued for being just double that, so we're not talking about orders of magnitude difference.
The Americas were a vast, mostly empty (of humans) land. Except near the coasts.
The Americas were a vast, mostly empty (of humans) land. Except near the coasts.
Unfortunately, there is so much antagonism between the conservationists and the sports(eh, people...), when, really, they should be allies. Ultimately, their goals are actually aligned, although they don't seem to realize it. A healthy ecosystem provides healthy populations for hunting, with good ratios of trophy animals, and likewise, an animal population needs predators or else you end up with the sad and disgusting spectre I have seen in too many mid-Atlantic and southern states, where the animals are emaciated, undersized, and disproportionately succumbing to vehicle hits.
> one can argue that the designation itself leads to a place losing its "wildness"...
There are always more people on the hiking trails and in the campgrounds in places designated "wilderness" on maps than places not so described.
These days the best places don't have a lot of publicity, manicured trails, designated camping areas, forest rangers, or puff pieces in glossy magazines. No, I'm not going to share, sorry. Use your imagination and buy some old-fashioned topo maps. (Your phone won't work there, so Google won't be of any use.)
There are always more people on the hiking trails and in the campgrounds in places designated "wilderness" on maps than places not so described.
These days the best places don't have a lot of publicity, manicured trails, designated camping areas, forest rangers, or puff pieces in glossy magazines. No, I'm not going to share, sorry. Use your imagination and buy some old-fashioned topo maps. (Your phone won't work there, so Google won't be of any use.)
Oh man, I used to love running around outside, finding a good stick and carving it into a spear.
I built "forts" throughout what felt like miles and miles of empty woods. Leave the house in the morning, get back sometime later that day.
I'd want the same for my future children, but my greatest fear is a nosy neighbor calling CPS due to my seemingly negligent parenting style. (As inferred from my children having copious amounts of free time, bereft of adult supervision.)
I'd want the same for my future children, but my greatest fear is a nosy neighbor calling CPS due to my seemingly negligent parenting style. (As inferred from my children having copious amounts of free time, bereft of adult supervision.)
> my greatest fear is a nosy neighbor calling CPS
Ditto. My kids are now old enough that they can both ride a bike, so I let them circle around the block on their own. Every time they go, my heart is gripped by terror that some neighbour will report "feral" children.
I grew up in a block of small "working class" flats with large communal gardens and a small park; I could safely ride and play with other kids, and most of them were going to the same school as me. Now I live in middle-class suburbia, in a larger house with a nice private garden; but my kids cannot wander around without risking to be hit by a car, their "parks" are just playgrounds with lawns, and because they attend a "better" school a bit further away, don't really know anyone in the area.
This is the product of an individualist culture, of which I am a prime representative. I don't like conflict, not even the occasional low-intensity friction which is inevitable when you share anything (a block, a garden, a parking lot); so I bought a house where People Shall Leave Me Alone and where Kids Shall Be Safe. This makes it much more difficult for my kids to be social and "explore the wilderness". And no, virtual realities are not a replacement.
Ditto. My kids are now old enough that they can both ride a bike, so I let them circle around the block on their own. Every time they go, my heart is gripped by terror that some neighbour will report "feral" children.
I grew up in a block of small "working class" flats with large communal gardens and a small park; I could safely ride and play with other kids, and most of them were going to the same school as me. Now I live in middle-class suburbia, in a larger house with a nice private garden; but my kids cannot wander around without risking to be hit by a car, their "parks" are just playgrounds with lawns, and because they attend a "better" school a bit further away, don't really know anyone in the area.
This is the product of an individualist culture, of which I am a prime representative. I don't like conflict, not even the occasional low-intensity friction which is inevitable when you share anything (a block, a garden, a parking lot); so I bought a house where People Shall Leave Me Alone and where Kids Shall Be Safe. This makes it much more difficult for my kids to be social and "explore the wilderness". And no, virtual realities are not a replacement.
> At 25, I grew up in one of the last unadulterated times to be young in our history. (...) I wonder how long until true childhood adventure is lost for good
Perhaps whenever something is lost, something else has been gained. And this even when we not able to spot it from each of our unique, and no less important, vantage points.
Perhaps whenever something is lost, something else has been gained. And this even when we not able to spot it from each of our unique, and no less important, vantage points.
The essential question at the end, for parents caught in the bind: "Even if I do send them out, will there be anyone to play with?"
Free-range children are just rare these days.
Free-range children are just rare these days.
In many places you can be charged with a crime and possibly get social services called on you for letting kids just run around. These are often not high crime areas. The irony is that kids were allowed to run around back when crime rates were far higher.
My kids are like the Census Bureau: they go down the street knocking on doors, asking if there are any kids there. But, as much as I encourage them to do it, there's never anyone home even at the places where we know the kids live. Their schedules are structured and they spend all their time somewhere else.
My kids don't have any real friends except each other which I find a little sad.
My kids don't have any real friends except each other which I find a little sad.
There has been a lot of commentary about us being more paranoid about children's safety.
I think there are couple of factors that are responsible for this.
1) Couples in general have fewer children than we had in the past. If you have 1 child - a loss leaves you completely childless. If you have 5 children - a loss leaves with with 4 children.
2) There has been a remarkable drop in childhood disease mortality. In the past, when it was very likely that one or more of your children would die with a childhood disease, the 1 in a million chance of abduction is not that big of a deal. Now, we generally don't expect any of our children to die of infection or disease in childhood, and so the chance of abduction (while still the same or smaller than before) becomes comparatively larger.
I think there are couple of factors that are responsible for this.
1) Couples in general have fewer children than we had in the past. If you have 1 child - a loss leaves you completely childless. If you have 5 children - a loss leaves with with 4 children.
2) There has been a remarkable drop in childhood disease mortality. In the past, when it was very likely that one or more of your children would die with a childhood disease, the 1 in a million chance of abduction is not that big of a deal. Now, we generally don't expect any of our children to die of infection or disease in childhood, and so the chance of abduction (while still the same or smaller than before) becomes comparatively larger.
It's not just children's safety. Even as crime rates and violence rates have decreased monotonically since at least the 1980s, people grow more and more clamorous about "safety" from essentially negligible causes of death like terrorism or assault rifles. We've spent billions of dollars on the TSA, which by all indicators doesn't even do much to prevent (the negligible amount of) terrorist activity. Similarly, in 2015, only 248 people were killed with rifles (no idea which percentage of those were homicides, and which percentage of those were assault rifles). Yet how much legislative time was wasted arguing about trying to ban them?
"Safety" has become somewhat of a "semantic stopsign" in political discourse.
"Safety" has become somewhat of a "semantic stopsign" in political discourse.
I'm curious, where did you get the gun data? Most places I look at don't differentiate by gun type. (Which is strange, considering how much regulations differ by gun type.)
Anyway, usually it's roughly 60% suicide, 10% defense, 25% homicide, 5% accidental.
Anyway, usually it's roughly 60% suicide, 10% defense, 25% homicide, 5% accidental.
FBI. https://www.quandl.com/data/FBI/WEAPONS11-US-Murders-by-Weap...
The FBI and BJS usually have pretty good criminology data.
The FBI and BJS usually have pretty good criminology data.
Wow, Quandl is AWESOME! Graphs, data export, programming language bindings...
It's also worth mentioning the unmentionable[1]: the authors childhood was in a much more culturally homogenous environment.
[1] https://books.google.com/books/about/E_Pluribus_Unum.html?id...
[1] https://books.google.com/books/about/E_Pluribus_Unum.html?id...
It sounds like you've got a point to make. Why quail at the thought of making it?
The author of that paper studied the breakdown of community and found (to his dismay, and among other findings) that social trust diminished with increased ethnic diversity.
I seriously doubt this theory simply because in many countries there was no increase in ethnic diversity (in ex-Yugoslavia, where I live, there was even a decrees), and still exactly the same thing happened. It's the consequence of increased urbanisation of our lives and environment. In many truly rural areas kids are still as free-range as always.
In many rural areas, children are in effect pseudo-adults as soon as they can be put to work. If you can be trusted to drive the tractor with the mowing machine hitched on, or run the woodsplitter, then you can probably be trusted to play in the backyard with your BB guns, .22s, knives and lighters without an adult sitting on your shoulder every second.
That it happens isn't so hard to believe. The question is if it is a permanent or unavoidable effect.
I admit I was skeptical about the universality of such a result right away, but I didn't look for an opposing view specifically when digging around. In fact, I was actually trying to find the complete text somewhere.
So instead I found this, and now just to provide another view:
"Does ethnic diversity erode trust?: Putnam’s ‘hunkering-down’ thesis reconsidered"
From the conclusion (page 40):
[0] http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/15382/2/Sturgis(2011)%20Does%20eth...
So instead I found this, and now just to provide another view:
"Does ethnic diversity erode trust?: Putnam’s ‘hunkering-down’ thesis reconsidered"
From the conclusion (page 40):
> Our findings and conclusions contradict the view that the increasing ethnic heterogeneity
> of community life in the 21st Century represents a worrying and corrosive influence on
> trust between citizens. An important limitation to this generalization is that our
> conclusions relate to Britain in the mid-2000s. Failure to corroborate the pattern of
> results that has been observed in the United States does not negate those findings but
> does, we contend, pose a strong challenge to claims of their universalistic nature
[0] http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/15382/2/Sturgis(2011)%20Does%20eth...
why is this unmentionable? I don't understand what you're implying. Could you sketch it out?
Not OP, but the current sociopolitical environment puts strong proscriptions on believing that cultural or ethnic homogeneity can be beneficial.
More specifically, that it can't ever be anything other than beneficial, to the extent that there's a certain degree of courage in publishing results that might suggest otherwise.
At 24, kids are a long way off for me. But when they do come to pass, my hope is that I can give them a childhood like the one I had: full of rocks, sticks, mud, and band-aids. Thank you for the reminder of how important that is to strive for.
just teach them safety, and figure out when you can trust them to keep safe.
Even 25 years ago, weirdos existed. As a ~10 year old, walking home one day, a stranger stopped his car, leaned out, and asked me to go get coffee with him.
Even 25 years ago, weirdos existed. As a ~10 year old, walking home one day, a stranger stopped his car, leaned out, and asked me to go get coffee with him.
Is it that today's children don't value outside activities because it is too enjoyable to be indoors ? Which leads to obesity that makes outdoor play less fun and more dangerous. The danger coming from weight variance (e.g., it's risky for a 60lb 12 year old to play with a 200lb 12 year old).
The streets throughout NYC were depressing and violent when I was growing up. But those working class homes were even more depressing and there were only a handful of TV channels. So we had to go outside to keep our sanity. Even if I wanted to play a video game, I'd have to ride my bike to get a pirated copy or to commute to a friend's house. So you'd see kids outside at the very least because they had somewhere to go. Even having a job was common.
Now all those homes have been comfortably remodeled with air-conditioning, high-speed internet, and countless TV channels.
Coincidentally, the first household to get cable television and a video game console on my block also had the first notably obese child.
The streets throughout NYC were depressing and violent when I was growing up. But those working class homes were even more depressing and there were only a handful of TV channels. So we had to go outside to keep our sanity. Even if I wanted to play a video game, I'd have to ride my bike to get a pirated copy or to commute to a friend's house. So you'd see kids outside at the very least because they had somewhere to go. Even having a job was common.
Now all those homes have been comfortably remodeled with air-conditioning, high-speed internet, and countless TV channels.
Coincidentally, the first household to get cable television and a video game console on my block also had the first notably obese child.
It's true that life indoors in the 60s was hopelessly boring. TV was 3 channels with bad reception showing soap operas or Jack Lalane exercise shows.
For something to do, you had to go outside and meet up with the other kids outside, then go looking for trouble (!).
For something to do, you had to go outside and meet up with the other kids outside, then go looking for trouble (!).
Yes, I remember when being sent to your bedroom was a punishment, now you can't get your children out of their rooms.
The trains were gone by the time my father was a child and he wandered as far as a bike could take him and back in a day. He would play at Army Dumps that dotted the landscape in the 50's.
When I was a kid the freeways and major thoroughfares created islands that couldn't be crossed by a kid on a bike. The farmland and riparian areas around creeks created walking corridors and I would spend time watching tadpoles and building forts.
For my kids the farmland was developed and the creeks tightly fenced off by an interlocking thicket of HOAs. They wandered virtual worlds.