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Today’s focus is on alternate views of what many people deem ‘poor’ and what that may look like in another culture, as well as some views on what the best version of mankind looks like.
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Ireland to India on a Bicycle: An Immersion into New Culture
The first book I will share some excerpts from will be from Full Tilt, by Dervla Murphy (1965). In Full Tilt Murphy shares her diary entries of her cycle journey across the Middle East. She displays incredible feats of bravery and endurance (both physical and mental), however I’m bringing up her story for a different reason.
Throughout Murphy’s journey she full immerses herself into new culture by staying with locals in Persia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The displays of generosity, kindness and hospitality from the people she meets is shocking to both Murphy and readers.
The first excerpt I’m going to share below is from when she stayed with an Afghan governor, where she describes his home.
This house reveals what some might describe as the poverty of Afghanistan but what I prefer to call its simplicity, since poverty denotes a lack of necessities and simplicity a lack of needs. The Governor is the most important man in the district yet the poorest Irish peasant would have a more elaborate home, though when one examines it every essential comfort is here.
(Page 69)
When I first read this, I sat for a moment to really soak in the words “lack of needs”. Murphy gently hints that we all need to check our needs, and be less judgmental of these simpler ways of life. Often when I return from travels abroad, I find myself frustrated (perhaps in the same way Murphy was) in the way so many things in our Western culture are classified as ‘needs’.
While reading Murphy’s story I often thought back to days I spent volunteering in a small village in Nepal (you can read about that story here).
A worker from the school I was volunteering at invited myself and another volunteer to have dinner at his home.
His home was the equivalent to what my friends in Toronto would consider a shed. Yet, as Murphy so beautifully points out, the shed met their needs. They lived happy enough to be eager and willing to host two foreigners, and were well fed enough to share their food with us.
In places like these, I often feel a strange kind of jealousy. I feel like I have been cheated into thinking that I need so many things—a house, a prestigious job, nice clothes. A mindset of having necessities not met can make any rich person feel poor. Yet if we adjust what we consider to be needs, we are well on the way to live more simply.
Admiring Man at his Best
Murphy continues to share her thoughts on this simpler way of living, and shows her admiration of it.
Here’s another passage from the book.
I’m feeling rather miserable today, having left the Hindu Kush behind, yet the past weeks have given me something that I know will prove permanent. It may sound ridiculous, but I feel I’ve been privileged to see Man at this best—still in possession of the sort of liberty and dignity that we have exchanged for what it pleases us to call ‘progress’. Even a brief glimpse of what we were is valuable to help to understand what we are. Living in the West, it’s now impossible for more of us to envisage our own past by a mere exercise of the imagination, so we’re rather like adults who have forgotten the childhood that shaped them. And that increases the unnaturalness of our lives. So to realise this past through contact with a people like the Afghans should help us to cope better with our present—though it also brings the sadness of knowing what we’re missing. At times during these past weeks I felt so whole and so at peace that I was tempted seriously to consider settling in the Hindu Kush. Nothing is false there, for humans and animals and earth, intimately interdependent, partake together in the rhythmic cycle of nature. To lose one’s petty, sophisticated complexities in that world would be heaven—but impossible, because of the fundamental falsity involved in attempting to abandon our own unhappy heritage. Yet the awareness that one cannot go back is a bitter pill to swallow.
(page 94,95)
Again I bring myself back to thoughts of my stay in the Nepali village and how their culture differed to the one I grew up in.
What I find most interesting is how Murphy says connecting with these people can help us to better cope with our current ways. After thinking of this more, I wonder if thats why I often seek out small remote places like the the one’s Murphy so admires. Being able to immerse myself in this simple way of life is something that also makes me feel alive or ‘whole’ as Murphy puts it.
Idolizing the Modern State in a Foreign Culture
Another interesting topic which Murphy points out, is the way in which abruptly attempting to modernize places such as Afghanistan can affect its people.
And so far we have shown little mercy, if that means anything more than the distribution of vaccines and the building of roads. With our mad lust for Uniformity and a Higher Standard of Living and Expanding Markets, we go to a country like Afghanistan and cruelly try to jerk her forward two thousand years in two decades, giving no thoughts to the profound shock this must be to her national psychology. The present state of our own national psychologies is a good enough advertisement for the need of a far more gradual change. I tried to point out to my friends that once they have created this terrible idol of the Modern State it will enslave them for ever and then it will be too late for them to see that ‘the good old days’ were best; they will be forced to continue worshipping their idol whatever the cost to their humanity. However, they thought I was mad to find more happiness and peace in an Afghan village than in a European industrial city.
(page 98)
I found this an interesting idea to consider. For reasons a historian would better explain than myself, civilizations have been colonizing each other for a very long time, taking over people’s lands and enforcing their views, culture, and traditions upon others. Murphy points out the dangerous fate put upon people once they adopt an idol of a modernized culture.
Of course some aspects of modernization (medicine and certain infrastructure for example) that improve the well being of people may not be such a bad ‘jerk’. But in terms of influencing a change in one’s culture, values, and opinions, the jerk forward becomes much more tricky to accept as fair.
I won’t dig into this too much, but I wanted to leave Murphy’s thoughts here because I think it’s an interesting point of view. How much good do we do by assimilating a modern culture in places that are perhaps ‘behind’ in some ways?
Travelling Without Machinery
There are some parts in Murphy’s memoir where she was unable to cycle. In the instance below she is forced to take a small aircraft through a mountain pass after locals convinced her the way would be impossible by bicycle.
One should win the privilege of looking down on such a scene, and because I had done nothing to earn a glimpse of these remote beauties I felt that I was cheating and that this nasty, noise little impertinence, mechanically transporting me, was an insult to the mountains. You will probably accuse me of a tiresome outburst of romanticism—but I’m not sure you’ll be right. The more I see of unmechanised places and people the more convinced I become that machines have done incalculable damage by unbalancing the relationship between Man and Nature. The mere fact that we think and talk as we do about Nature is symptomatic. For us to refer to Nature as a separate entity—something we admire or avoid or paint—shows how far we’ve removed ourselves from it. Marco Polo saw it as the background to human adventures and endeavours—a healthy reaction possible only when our lives are basically in harmony with it. (Granted that [my bicycle] Roz is a machine and that to be logical I should have walked or ridden from Ireland, but at least one exerts oneself cycling and the speed is not too outrageous and one is constantly exposed to the elements.) I suppose all our scientific advances are a wonderful boost for the superior intellect of the human race but what those advances are doing to us seems to me quite literally tragic. After all, only a handful of people are concerned int he excitement and stimulation of discovering and developing, while millions lead feebler and more synthetic lives because of the achievements of that handful. When Stern toured France and Italy he needed more guts and initiative than the contemporary traveller needs to tour the five continents; people now use less than half their potential forces because ‘Progress’ has deprived them of the incentive to live fully.
(page 143)
I love this part, and though I could share more, this is already getting quite lengthy.
To me, what stands out here is the phrase of us leading ‘synthetic’ lives because of the advancements we use regularly without conscious thought. Would we feel our lives are more full if we lived without some of these advancements? Maybe.
It’s also something to consider the next time we coordinate a whirlwind trip across a few countries (summer Europe trip sound familiar to anyone?).
Obviously, I do travel by plane and other machines, but I find this is a powerful reminder I can relate to in some ways.
In Nepal, when I spent 3 weeks trekking the Annapurna circuit. If I had flown through all the valleys and mountain passes in a day would that have filled me with the same amount of joy that I experienced walking? Definitely not.
I definitely agree with Murphy, that to do any scenery justice, one should sacrifice some comforts and exert some physical force. In many ways I believe taking the most simple form of transport is the most fulfilling way to travel and experience new landscapes.
That’s it for today folks! I hope you found the book excerpts and topics in this blog interesting. Have you had your own experience of immersing into local culture like Murphy?
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Thanks for reading and happy future (potentially cycling?) adventures my friends!
Much love,
Danika
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