First contact…human style…
by CJ | Jan 29, 2013 | Journal | 23 comments
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amazing that in this seeming small, ultra-connected world, there are still nooks and crannies that are truly isolated
What a strange story that is. Fascinating and troubling and yet…understandable.
So, so stubborn. If only they could’ve found others to join with, instead of becoming more isolated. Yet they made do. …And fleeing persecution to remain alive and free…only makes sens. Still, such isolation and limits!
Thank you for a fine, strange tale.
I have known people who refuse television or sometimes medical care or other things they see as sinful. (They think faith should bring healing, for example.) fundamentalist evangelicals of one kind or another.
My dad and my maternal grandmother’s brothers had to talk to the other brother, who needed to see a doctor, to persuade him that if he would get a veterinarian for his cows, why would he refuse a doctor for himself? My great uncle was very strict and followed another denomination. After much debate, my great uncle did see a doctor and got treatment, along with prayer and laying on of hands and anointing with oil by the elders of their church. Yes, sigh, really. He and my great aunt were sweet people, but both too strict. She, by the way, went to a different church.
I can more easily understand about television, but it seems so needless to forbid something because you think some things it shows are tempting…and if radio is not also forbidden.
And those are among various city-dwelling, modern people, including, in two cases, classmates, childhood friends. Not Amish, either. Some much more recognizable and common.
One of the girls I asked to senior prom declined. I hadn’t known her denomination couldn’t dance or have instrumental music. Again, a very common enough group. I talked with friends in college who made the distinction there between music for church and for everyday secular things, more liberal, barely.
It just shows how people can get very caught up in belief. They are serious and do it in good faith, but it seems to me so limiting.
Then again, it did not even occur to me as a high school student to think of asking a boy to the prom. Oh my. I had a pretty good idea about me by then, but it just was “not done.” If I had been able then to accept myself, and thought to or been brave enough to ask, and have a friend actually accept — it would have been forbidden by unwritten school policy. It was so unthinkable, it was not even written in the student handbook against it. — And I fully realize many people still don’t believe it’s right. That’s their right, and I respect that. After all, I grew up that way myself.
So I suppose everyone has odd incongruities of personal belief. — And some of those, like an insistence on personal freedom to live and believe as we see fit, I agree are essential and good common sense. — Yet people need a community, support, friends and family of some kind.
People are so different and strange at times, yet always people.
Thanks again. Very thought provoking.
I just want to say thank you for the link. An amazing story. I think I will have the mental image of Agafia, watching the geologists leave for the last time, in my mind for a long, long time. Incidentally, where I’m from in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, there is a community of Old Believers.
Did you know that it was the Old Believers who brought Tumbleweeds to the US? The seeds were mixed in with the Winter Wheat crop seed they brought with them.
I truly feel for Agafia, and wonder how much longer she ‘held out’ before she was gone too.
She’s still alive.
The article says, “A quarter of a century later, now in her seventies herself, this child of the taiga lives on alone, high above the Abakan.”
And Russopedia says, “Agafya, although left alone, keeps living the life she is accustomed to, surviving off agriculture and fishing. She greets every day with a prayer and goes to sleep with one. However, her everyday life is exhausting. She is surrounded by wolves in winter and bears in summer. Agafya has refused to move to civilization or receive a pension, spending her time on household chores and prayers. Local authorities take care of the hermit bringing her firewood, foodstuffs and chickens and organizing volunteer trips to help her run the house and garden.”
This article describes a gift pack given to Agafya just a few weeks back.
http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=10192
The Smithsonian article was fascinating and I am so glad the link was posted here.
Hermitry is sacred in places where Greek Orthodoxy is a major influence: the Byzantines had strong associations in the Black Sea and upward…alphabet, religion, etc. The notion of gaining religious merit by walling oneself into a cell or living on some remote height and thinking of nothing but religious matters (while depending on others for food) has left old ‘holy places’ all over southern Greece and Asia Minor. The transaction seems to run like this: that the hermit becomes sacred and close to God, and gets his religious merit by his misery, which can involve things like horsehair shirts, fasting, etc, which bring him sainthood…and the ‘followers’ of the ‘saint’ get their merit by bringing him food, water, and clothing, which is a sacrifice for them, amid their being out in the world earning a living.
So Agafya may, in her own mind, have acquired ‘followers’, and perhaps ‘sainthood.’ I think she is as happy as she knows how to be, and better off materially than she ever has been, though one wishes she could enjoy a larger slice of life.
This notion of seeking sainthood is not confined entirely to Greek Orthodoxy: Merovingian Europe went at it a bit more comfortably, however: notable people who retired from the world might endow a convent or monastery (which was their way of officially removing themselves from the world and avoiding assassination by their families or successors) and they’d spend their remaining days (often quite a few of them, since some fairly young people did this) praying and doing good works, like caring for the poor, etc. Celibacy was not required before sainthood; and probably wasn’t required after. The Franks adopted the same practice, and found the church a good way to dispose of spare relatives.
Siddartha found a life of deprivation didn’t bring enlightenment with it.
I’m not sure if you mean the Buddha (whose original name was Siddhartha), or the character in Hermann Hesse’s novel, but both of them did achieve enlightenment after choosing an ascetic life.
Indeed I also rememeber Siddhartha achieving enlightenment. I was confused by paul’s comment.
He did; after discovering that ascetism wasn’t the path to enlightenment. Buddhists do not lead an ascetic life. Enlightenment is found, well, with different aids depending on one’s tradition, but basically on it’s own terms, it’s own path, not as a consequence of some other practice. If you want enlightenment, seek enlightenment, don’t reject the world around you.
Thank you for the clarification. But isn’t it true that isolation from the world around you may indeed be the path to enlightenment, for some. That might be just the ‘aid’ needed. For someone whose sole tradition is rooted in a solitary life, I think it’s probably the only possible road.
It’s certainly true that distractions are distracting. But many Buddhists are “every-day people”, living every-day lives standing next to you on a Tokyo commuter train.
The Buddha achieved enlightenment when he gave up the ascetism, came back to the world (they call it “The Middle Way”), and decided he was going to just sit under the bodhi tree and think through all the distractions, false paths, follow the truth. In short, the path to enlightenment is to pursue enlightenment, but not to the point that it itself becomes a distraction! (It is sometimes said among Buddhists, “He stinks of enlightenment.”) There is a bit of the Greek “all things in moderation” in Buddhism.
There are what might be called “cultural differences” in how Buddhists engage in the persuit. Some use monasticism, but it’s not necessary. It’s also said that before he died the Buddha told his followers, “Don’t follow me!”, by which it has come to be understood he meant that each of us must find his/her own path to enlightenment. We might share “traveller’s notes”, that’s the main purpose of a good roshi, but ultimately we must find our own way.
There are those who say Buddhism isn’t so much a religion as it is a philosophy, perhaps a psychology.
Is this a case of there being many paths to enlightenment? Some people are natural loners. Others are naturally gregarious. So one might need time alone to find the sacred, while another needs to be with people. Likewise on material things versus a very sparse amount of stuff.
I have strong loner tendencies, but I also need some degree of company to be at my best…and too much isolation or loneliness, especially without friends or family or yes, a romantic partner, can be a troubling need. Other times, it’s not a problem.
Plenty of pioneer men and women lived largely isolated and found company when they came to a camp or town for supplies and trade and to be sociable (or carouse or find someone for a night or more). — So Agafya’s family’s choices aren’t so alien, perhaps. — just not where my feelings/needs are these days. But I understand and can admire her choice, though it wouldn’t be mine.
All the different ways people group together, their ideas on community or intimacy or companion ability or family…very interesting.
For some reason, the idea of communes has been on my mind lately. Not probably my ultimate choice, I’d think a modified version would be better. But it suited or suits some. I think there are still one or two in central Texas, conservative (but independent) as my state is. Never visited though. Lol, I didn’t grow up a flower child, despite my mom’s artist ways. But that’s where I get both my conservative and liberal bents from, family, plus schoolmates. Amazing how much you absorb without knowing it.
Heaven only knows that I’ve had days where I’ve been tempted to take up the hermit’s life.
That is still a wonderful article. Earlier, I wanted to say there was a beauty to it, but that didn’t feel quite right. Maybe an ascetic beauty.
It reminded me of relatives on both sides of my family, all with different denominations. (My parents were conservative to moderate, with a few liberal touches. I’ve tended a little more liberal as I go.)
It also reminded me of the Appalachian mountain people near Cumberland Gap. My dad’s family were from around there. So I’ve seen and heard the speech ways and folkways and folklore from around there. Very independent-minded folks! And very modern mixed with very old fashioned.
Agafya’s (Agathea’s) story is really something. Still thinking about it through the day.
If she is happy—I am so glad she has her animals—then all is well. I’m sure she’s very happy with the gift from the Metropolitan. That’s, to her, got to be very special. Apparently all sorts of people have adopted her, so in that sense, she’s no longer alone, just distant, and for a girl growing up not knowing anything about the outside world, she’s clearly touched a lot of people and moved them to assess what they really need to be happy—which is a good thing.
Consider what it will be for Earth’s first starfarers—we’ll know them at similar distance, and a distance that constantly gets greater; and we’ll become different cultures: hard to have it otherwise. What do you need to be happy? Food and drink, a good library, stars to watch, a kitteh or puppeh, and messages from a far shore?
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness — Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
Omar, the tentmaker
What a fascinating story! Very glad to know that Agafya has some links to the outside world and people concerned about her well-being. The article brought some of Jean Craighead George’s novels to mind (“My Side of the Mountain” and “Julie of the Wolves”), but in the novels, the character’s isolation from society was temporary. The characters took comfort (and help) from the company of animals, most definitely.
Sometimes the people who are most isolated are those who live in the middle of a thriving community.
Of course I jump to the thought of humans in AU – what if a bunch ventured off to an out of the way star, scrabbling their own way against the universe? Maybe the survivors of Beta Station?
Interesting thought…I’d buy that short-story!
this sounds fascinating, not least as the basis for some sci-fi! http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Earth_like_planets_are_right_next_door_999.html