I am currently in the midst of a persuasion, and this persuasion involves some pseudo discoveries about myself and my planned future. I finished reading Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond about a month ago and have been massively excited about the implications its had on eventually affecting my life. I think it already is affecting my life. After reading this and a small collective of other related ones, I am completely and utterly enthralled by culture. I am being 100% serious when I say this train of influence has been leading my daydreams into becoming an antrhopologist and traveling the world to live with and study remote tribal villages territory. I think I totally want to do something like this with my life.

The more I think about it, the more it seems to make considerable sense. My entire life has revolved around a burning, unfettered desire for independence, for exploration, and especially encountering new and unforseen obstacles. My earliest memories stem from being in places that are regarded as ideals of established civilization. I grew up in a semi-transplanted American culture, filtered and inevitably influenced by the conditions and peoples surrounding it. The most sedentary part of my life was absolutely the most anxious. My desire to set out on my own far away from home, isolated in the metropolis, was not something I had ever ever second guessed. Chicago filled that void until it became clear I was ready to move on. Given my situation, I was certainly fortunate enough to do it. I had the support system to enable my ambitions and am and have been exceedingly grateful for it. Now, I am hitting a new ceiling that is itself being lifted to reveal a level of potential reality. This is my excursion into my true passions. What I'm discovering is fixating itself within my conscious as an awareness I've never experienced before. Something that repeals all preceding daydreams and entertains newer, more exciting ones into a realm of "Holy crap, I really could actually do that."

So it is here that I come to announce if not for anyone that reads this then for the sheer excitement of making an 'announcement' on my blog. And here it is:

I would like to travel the world and periodically live among the most remote tribal villages I can, learning and growing as I develop a new understanding and appreciation for life unattainable in the comforts of my situation now.

I'm well aware of the naivete that comes along with this announcement, but I do really believe it is something I have to experience in my lifetime. Divorcing myself from every comfort I've ever had the implicit opportunity to take advantage of has always been appealing to me. I've been extremely fortunate in my life, but I've always wanted to experience that other side I've never been able to have direct access to. It's a somewhat delusional desire to be humbled beyond all means experienced so far. I want to live in a mud hut with no electricity or running water. I want to forage for food with experienced New Guinea tribesmen leading the way through a rain forest. I want to take a blind eye to my origins and immerse myself as an observer and enthusiast among peoples that represent everything foreign to me.

This is not a biased desire to reject my foundations and culture as a person, and I'm well aware of it potentially coming off that way. Please set all negative connotations aside. What this is is something so much deeper than that. It's a mind-altering possibility that is learning the constructs of human society at the most intimate level conceivable. It is about reverting to a position of vulnerability and ultimately recognizing the stakes of a prize through it. The prize isn't within some realm of cultural empowerment, but rather through personal integration into a system that is completely foreign to me. A system that will humble me to my core.



I mean look at that picture. How cool is that? The way these girls are decorated represents, to me, an entire aspect of cultural significance that is in the process of dying out. Call it 'primal' or 'under-developed' or whatever, the fact is that it is as foreign as foreign can get to someone living in a 'modernized' culture. I can glimpse and learn about these things through the internet, but I want to be there experiencing it all firsthand.

There is just something irresistibly appealing about the whole thing. I can't say that it will happen right away, but it is absolutely going into the "life goals" section of my brain. Even just a summer living within this type of setting would be incredible.