This story... doesn't really strike me as that worthy of contemplating for too long. Really, how is this guy really particularly different from someone who is basically just homeless? I mean, instead of living on the outskirts of summer resort towns in Maine, he could be homeless living on the outskirts of Bayonne, New Jersey, sifting through trash or breaking into 7-11s at night. The whole "into the woods" thing is sort of almost beside the point here. The guy didn't actually live as some sort of pre-Columbian hunter-gatherer. He was just basically a homeless guy who robbed houses. I'm not sure why anyone thinks we can learn something from him... other than, perhaps, how to break into houses.
I stopped reading when I got to the bit where he starts stealing stuff to survive. He's just a homeless guy who lived in the bush instead of under a bridge. There's actually a lot of them that live in the bush on the outskirts of towns/cities. I've run into a few south of Sydney when I used to live there and hike/camp lots.
The title made it sound like he's a survivalist-type who sustained himself naturally. That would have been way more interesting.
Yeah, really. This is a shallow guy with a philosophy that amounts to a shrug and a "whatever" who would have starved if not for people with philosophies that actually produce useful results, from whom he simply stole.
There are countless people who could work but prefer to "survive" by just taking from others instead. It's called "welfare" (not talking about people who need it, for whom it is intended, but people who don't but just take it anyway), and even they don't usually endanger others by breaking and entering, but this guy, well, shrug & "whatever, I'd rather just take people's stuff".
Of course, maybe he was mentally ill. If so, this might not have been his fault, but even in that case, there usually isn't that much to learn from people whose definition of "totally turn their back on society" is to go on being a part of society every single day as takers but totally turning their backs on helping others in return.
I find it obnoxious that you act like this is a philosophical issue. Philosophy I think is by and large just meaningless grandstanding. We're all out here to survive (comfortably) and anyone who says otherwise is lying (although probably not intentionally.)
Whatever you believe your philosophical purpose is, I guarentee if you take an honest critical look at it, and what actions you actually take in reality (rather than just promote) to further that goal, you'll find that its nonsense.
True. He did live in social isolation though. And the theft fits with the cat burgler/jewel thief stories, perennially popular here on "hacker" news. Where "hacker" doesn't mean hacking into systems, but it does mean not doing things in the conventional manner.
In a previous story on him, there was some nice phrasing on his freedom, moon and season:
> Chris became surprisingly introspective. "I did examine myself," he said. "Solitude did increase my perception. But here’s the tricky thing—when I applied my increased perception to myself, I lost my identity. With no audience, no one to perform for, I was just there. There was no need to define myself; I became irrelevant. The moon was the minute hand, the seasons the hour hand. I didn’t even have a name. I never felt lonely. To put it romantically: I was completely free." http://www.gq.com/story/the-last-true-hermit?printable=true
It changes the story from "man in the wild beyond civilization for 27 years" that you would imagine from the headline to "reclusive homeless man breaks into homes without talking to the people he spots weekly."
What really struck me was his ability to build a house, survive on his own set of tools and his contributions to science by keeping accurate logs on local climate and wildlife
Yeah the headline caught me but the article disappointed. I don't think there is any honor in being homeless and stealing from others. Had he been self-sufficient that would have been interesting to me; however if you've read Into the Wild you know how that ends.
I've read similar stories of people setting up semi-permanent homes in hidden urban spaces.
It's the hacking aspect that makes it interesting. Living within a community off the books. If his stealing hurt people, then his bad, but I kinda feel like it didn't. The urban legend itself had a value to the community.
There have been billions of 'pre-Columbian hunter-gatherers', this is different.
All theft hurts someone. People have this conception that home/store owners are millionaires. That is more often than not incorrect. The margins on products sold can be as low as 1 - 3%. Thus you have to sell 34 to recoup the cost of a single stolen item. The business owner would likely increase prices in order to respond to the theft, thus hurting the community as a whole. Now imagine you are a single mother attempting to feed your child, are you happy to pay higher prices so this guy can live " off the grid"?
In more primitive society this person would have simply been killed for this transgression of the social contract. This isn't a hack, its sociopathy.
This isn't that different from what many other homeless people on the fringes of cities/towns accomplish. They setup some kind of make-shift shelter, and subsist via varying degrees of cleverness, begging or charity. The only difference with this guy is he never begged (he just stole), and the setting was slightly more rustic than usual. But for some reason people read this story and desperately try to make it more than it is, by awkwardly infusing this "wilderness survivalist" aspect into it, which really doesn't reflect what actually happened at all.
I'm sure that after the first 100 burglaries it became evident to him that it wasn't possible to live/survive without help from other human beings.
In that case I'm wondering why not take the more legal approach of resupplying at a local church / shelter from time to time rather than continue stealing.
More than 1000 burglaries over 27 years is still a frequency of nearly 1/week. Stealing is the hacking equivalent of breaking someone's fingers to tell you the password, or getting lucky and finding their sticky note under the desk.
There's the story of Daniel Shellabarger[1], aka Daniel Suelo, who while not a complete hermit, has lived off the grid in the Gila wilderness among other places.
It depends on your perspective on property. When a hunter kills and eats a deer does he not steal from the deer family? Id bet that a bear doesnt think kindly of some human showing up to pick all those berries that the bear has been waiting to rippen. This man decided to step out of society, so much so that our rules were no longer his.
Remember also that not too long ago "hunting and gathering", poaching, was a hanging crime far greater than petty theft. Our rules change regularly. I wouldn't applaud this man's behavior, but i do respect his thought process. A tweek here and there and i might call him some sort of artist. His story, which i have read about many times, broadens our perspective. That's art. Good art breaks rules. The best art denies them entirely.
Exactly. And you don't "survive" anywhere 20 years. You live there. After some period of time, it's not some miracle you've somehow managed it, it's your way of life.
