Captain Fantastic (2006)

youtube.com/watch?v=D1kH4OMIOMc

spoilertv.com/2016/07/movies … eview.html

I’d imagine if Christopher McCandles survived the Alaskan wilderness and started a family, it would be something like this. To me, this movie highlights the hypocrisy and short-sightedness of hippy life style. Hypocrisy because the modern world and what it has is despised, UNTIL things get really serious. So you get to cherry-pick what to accept and what to reject. If you don’t believe in technological advancement, then why use hospitals? Go to a shaman or find some herbs or pray to fate -go the natural way - all the way - even if it means death. I mean, it’s not like hospitals are not part of capitalistic profit-making system. And why would a hippie even need to know about things like string theory and literary classics? What for? Will the string theory make their crops grow faster?

Short-sighted because the father did not consider the children’s needs. How are they supposed to continue in adulthood, find a mate, raise a family, and continue the lifestyle? What are the chances of that even happening? These children are growing up in a completely different world, with a completely different (and radical) worldviews. The whole thing is like a social experiment, destined for a sterile dead-end (and so much for action). But maybe it is the fact that the modern world EXISTS (in whichever form) that threatens the off-the grid lifestyle. It may be different, but it IS - out there.

This also reminds me of social problems experienced by Native Americans living on reservations who are plagued with high rates of depression, alcoholism, drug use and domestic violence. What gives? Many blame modern society for their ills - don’t want to lose their hunter-gatherer identity and be integrated into the modern society, and yet, can’t live quite like their ancestors - so they get stuck in the self-destructive twilight zone. I guess the point is, modern society cannot be ignored; and I recon in the future, it will be true even more so.

My problem with this lifestyle is that the hippies want the benefits of modern society (in terms of knowledge, scientific or theoretical, or literary, or whatever book knowledge they accept), but not its problems. Even in modern society (with all its messed-up problems) it took years, if not decades, of testing, and funding too, to get the results. Just taking the results while rejecting the source of the results is hypocritical. Choosing to live a Neolithic lifestyle and still use the benefits (knowledge) of modern internet age is contradictory. All in all, they’d still end up as an experimental offshoot of modern society; that is, they are still a part/product of modern society. So, they shouldn’t delude themselves that they are in harmony with nature or whatnot, like their ancestors were, because now they have modern knowledge with them-and that just makes them a part of a modern society.

We’ve always had these “offshoots”, they are a much higher part of our population than you think. It’s a aspect of our larger society to break off and found smaller ones on abstractions, just gotta accept the phenomena so long as it doesn’t turn violent. If they gain enough families to spawn a next generation or two, they tend to chuck the original ideas and stick more to mainstream lifestyles, if just a family or two they ditch it even sooner.

Indians have drinking problems because they like drinking as much as anyone else does, but lack the ability to hold it, they didn’t evolve in a atmosphere of liqour, my German ancestors were just as miserable drunks, every single last one according to Tacitus. They get just as depressed as whites do, just the bottle does them even more harm. Similar to the drug genocide happening now.

We can’t really stop wacky ideas, especially in the Pacific Northwest of all places. I’m of the opinion if your reproducing, your kids need mainstream exposure to society at a early age. They gotta fit in to adapt knowledgeable to the world, one way or another it will find them. I don’t mind a Spartan lifestyle, trained to exercise and hunt and intellectual learning (better philosophers than Marx out there)… but they really need to be part of the larger civilization too. Even Amish get schooling up to at least 8th grade, their community has a very strict and traditional lifestyle, but they also have a large burnout rate… Not all Amish kids decide to stay Amish, or find they even have that option realistically. They are given a option, and that option is only a sensible choice if you have some idea of the outside world.