The desire to explore the older ways of life

By the 1920s planet earth had mostly been explored. For the most part, the blank spots on the map had been filled in. Gone were the days of pioneering voyages of discovery to faraway lands. And yet, amid the unfolding technological advancement and modernity there were still individuals who sought to experience that older world that came before. Way of lives that had not been changed for millennia, dating back deep into the ancient world.

About 90 years later, a female in her mid-twenties felt very well equipped to explore the valleys and mountains of life, backed by a great education and a promising start into professional life. Born and bred in the countryside of an affluent industrial region in West Germany at the beginning of the 1980s, little did she know that she was very well equipped for a life in the geographic region where she had obtained her education, but not so much for the world beyond.

When she started to venture out of her original territory, she started to discover that there was a huge gap between what she thought she knew and what she needed to know to feel confident in the world that came before. It was not the obvious differences of culture and language that presented the biggest challenge. It was the difference of accessibility, availability, and comfort of modern life versus the ways of the older world that came before that presented the biggest challenge.

This challenge was not so obvious at the beginning when she dwelled in urban areas, following a professional life that differed not much from the one back home. The challenge started to become more obvious after she ventured out to rural areas, leaving the urban life behind step-by-step. This is where she realized that there was so much to learn about matters and things that aren’t taught in schools and other institutions of education.

In the context of grocery shopping in the modern era, Yuhal Noah Harari in his book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018, page 105-106) describes it beautifully.

“In the past, humans could not afford such carelessness. Ancient foragers were always alert and attentive. Wandering in the forest in search of mushrooms, they watched the ground for any telltale bulge. They listened to the slightest movement in the grass to learn weather a snake might be lurking there. When they found an edible mushroom, they ate it with the utmost attention to distinguish it from its poisonous cousins. Members of today’s affluent societies don’t need such keen awareness. We can wander between the supermarket aisles while texting messages, and we can buy any kind of a thousand dishes, all supervised by the health authorities. But whatever we choose, we might end up eating it in haste in front of a screen, checking emails or watching television, while hardly paying attention to the actual taste.”

It was her journey to exploring the older ways of life that shaped her to the decision to create locally inspired living places in rather less frequented areas of the world to invite others to start an exploration on their own. For others to start experiencing the world that was before modernity and technology started to transform and numb our age-old senses.