The Bucolic Life

A common thought I keep turning over in my mind since we left Valparaiso is why people would choose to live in Puerto Montt or Punta Arenas or Ushuaia or, now, Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands. I understand the general argument that everybody has to live somewhere and even that some people prefer wide open spaces to urban or even suburban over-crowding, but isn’t man a gregarious beast by nature and doesn’t isolation feel more like punishment than a joyous objective?

As we bob along here in the Southern Atlantic Ocean headed towards the Falkland Islands, a place known mostly to the outside world as a place of a seemingly silly conflict forty years ago. A little over two hundred years ago, in 1832 to be exact, Charles Darwin, an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist who is best known for his contributions to the science of evolution was bobbing around in these same waters. Born on February 12, 1809, in Shrewsbury, England, Darwin revolutionized our understanding of the natural world with his theory of evolution by natural selection. The key aspects of Darwin’s life and work that made him a household name began with his five-year voyage around the world on HMS Beagle (1831-1836), where his observations of plants, animals, and fossils laid the groundwork for his evolutionary theories. His landmark book “On the Origin of Species” (1859), which introduced the concept that species evolve over generations through natural selection was about as controversial as any book since the Bible, specifically because it attacked many of the religiously help beliefs imbedded in the holy scriptures. In his later works, like “The Descent of Man” (1871), which applied evolutionary theory to human beings, he solidified his place as one of the most influential scientists in history, whose work formed the foundation of modern evolutionary biology. Despite the fact that Darwin’s ideas were initially controversial, they gradually gained scientific acceptance, but I consider his work incomplete in that it doesn’t address the balancing act between nature and grace that presumably and to some degree defines the greatest distinction between man and the other living things on earth. In some ways, it is the very controversy with the Bible that makes Darwinian theories so important to man’s ongoing existence.

During this portion of the Beagle voyage, Darwin made significant observations of the geology and natural history of Tierra del Fuego and the surrounding areas and that led him to observe the native population and how it differed culturally from Europeans. The expedition was pivotal in the development of Darwin’s scientific thinking and provided him with many of the observations that would later inform his theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin documented his experiences in his journal, which was later published as part of “The Voyage of the Beagle,” where he describes the challenging conditions and the unique natural features of this remote region. Starting with his visit to Brazil, Darwin described the tropical rainforests’ biodiversity and simultaneously observed slavery’s brutality as it related to European’s dominance of both indigenous people and others from Africa, imported for purposes of slave labor. Darwin’s interactions with indigenous peoples allowed him to document the stark cultural differences that led to his perspective even though they have the cultural biases of his Victorian era. When describing the Fuegians of Tierra del Fuego, Darwin expressed shock at what he perceived as their “primitive” living conditions. He wrote about their minimal clothing despite the harsh climate, simple shelters, and what he considered basic technology. However, he also noted their remarkable adaptation to their environment – abilities that Europeans lacked in those conditions. In Patagonia and other parts of South America, Darwin observed the impacts of European colonization on native populations. He frequently commented on the violence of colonial expansion and documented instances of cruelty against indigenous peoples. He noted how European diseases, alcohol, and cultural practices were changing traditional ways of life. Importantly, Darwin’s journey challenged some of his preconceptions. After meeting Jemmy Button, a Fuegian who had been taken to England and then returned to his homeland, Darwin reflected on how quickly humans could adapt to different cultural environments. While Darwin sometimes employed the hierarchical thinking common to his era, his observations also contained the seeds of a more complex understanding of human diversity. He frequently noted that differences between groups were primarily cultural rather than innate, an important insight that would later influence anthropological thinking.

The indigenous people who inhabited these relatively inhospitable lands were those who could obviously cope with the demands for survival. Whether they felt they thrived in this environment of simply lacked the moxie to move on to better, more accommodative places, is hard to say with certainty. Since migration was more the norm than not, I have to assume its more the former than the later. The original Europeans in these regions were generally explorers who were outcast and therefore one can presume they were less attuned to the cultural ways of Europeans of the time and found that the freedom of the frontier was preferable to the subjugation of the heartland. Today, in an era where mobility, and more important in some ways, near instantaneous awareness of the goings on of the rest of the world, not to mention near perfect communications ability, one is forced to reinforce the conclusion to suggest that people who opt for this remote and bucolic lifestyle must almost certainly prefer it to the more harried pace of civilization.

But just as Darwin noted the pros and cons of European and indigenous life, its clear that adaptability is at a premium for these remote dwellers so perhaps they are better suited to the quickly changing world we live in today than those of us resigned to the mainstream. Of course, the increased importance to technology might suggest otherwise…unless technology is leading us into a dead end branch of evolution as Darwin noted can and does happen all the time (speaking in the continuum of eternity). I think it might be fair to say that people who live the remote and bucolic life are more in tune with nature by necessity. I suspect this empathy extends to their fellow man since collectivism thrives in the harshest conditions…again by necessity.

I lived and traveled in Canada for two years and came away with a theory of why their country is more focused on the collective and common good than individual liberty, particularly compared to the United States. Now Canada is not Tierra Del Fuego or the Falkland Islands, but it is a modicum more remote than most of the U.S.. I learned that where determined individualism won the day in the U.S. when pioneering westward, in Canada, the harsher environment of the great north drove people to gather for collective survival. It is my belief that this led to a kinder, gentler attitude toward their fellow man for the most part. Clearly it did not inure to the benefit of the indigenous tribes in Canada, but that is more of a cultural diversity issue than one of the nature versus grace balance.

What does this all tell me? It makes me want to respect and pay attention to the ways of these remote dwellers as our civilization starts reaching its breaking points due mostly to our eight billion person world. I have no plans to pursue the bucolic life myself, but I may want to learn a lesson or two to apply to the craziness we are facing.