I am now half-way through Full Tilt by Dervla Murphy, suggested me by my father, which is the travelog of a woman riding her bicycle from Ireland to India. She fell in love with Afghanistan, where the simplicity of life and the generosity of the people impressed her far more than the so-called progress of Western civilization. She even embraces their considerable flaws without excusing or apologizing for them, such as their rampant and oft-cruel sexism. This is interesting to me, for I tend to romanticize such primitive and simple ways of life, such as the hunter-gatherer societies of our past and present, without being able to reconcile with their lack of academics, hygiene, health-care, or science. Must ‘developed’ society necessarily abandon simple happiness to attain these things? And certainly we are far from being free from fear, ignorance, and hatred. I have even heard that hunter-gatherers, at least, led long, healthy, relaxed lives, compared with their agricultural brethren and even their modern urbanized cousins.

So do I now blame farming for starting the slow decline of the human spirit, where before it was industrialization? Certainly agriculture tears developing countries apart just as well as industry, if not more insidiously: poor farmers are far more willing to cut down the rainforest to feed their families (and often ours) than to die so that someone else’s grandchildren might enjoy the trees. Having such a complex world-spanning social system means that people are always stuck in the middle. Is there no elegant solution?

My high standards pressure me to do more to lessen my impact on the environment and reduce my presence in the global Machine of Civilization; but they also impose an uncomfortable distance between myself and those who do or care less, and those who do and care more. I wish I could love my fellow human being more, but it is hard to accept in others the same pile of tiny crimes I feel guilty of myself.

Someone once told me that poverty isn’t really a problem at all. She didn’t mean that the impoverished should suffer, but rather that being poor should not equate to suffering. There are those who are deeply happy with nothing, and any attempt to impose material culture on such people will probably result in all the shallow discontents that plague the rest of the materialized world. There are a finite list of basic human needs and rights — family, shelter, nutrition, entertainment, artistic expression, freedom of opinion, and probably a few more — and while many are in need a more complete set, many are equally in need of cutting back.

It seems that scientific and technological advances should be able to improve human lives. Yet the social environment that makes these advances possible compensates for the improvement with more advanced problems: war, depression, oppression, and real poverty (where even the most basic needs are not met). Do I merely romanticize cultures that lack the ability to destroy the world through their inability to improve it? Is it truly possible to move backward, to live a simple, kind, and elegant life, while still embracing the better half of modern existence?

I believe it must be so. Romanticization lies in what good things we give up when we make a choice. The good things we gave up to be literate, cosmopolitan, and economic, are the things that inspire me to improve my own life without going so so far as to embrace fly-ridden bread and second-class women. And the hardest part of all: I have to do it all without judging those who do not share my path.