...so I'm gonna tell you something here instead.

I think a future communist society would have more nomads. For the bulk of humanity's existence, nomadic life was the norm. Property and contractual obligation has made settled life mandatory in most of the imperial core, with a slim handful of exceptions.

Here in the states, the contradiction is mind-boggling. We're told the settlement of America was necessary to the establishment of freedoms, that nobody else enjoys as much liberties as we do today. And yet, for those "liberties", we had to stop people from leading nomadic lives. Corralled and marched people miles, so they could be free. Stole babes from families, so they could be free. Free to do what, exactly?

Centuries ago, nomadic life was a fundamental freedom for millions. Maybe it could be again...

~

...not that I know what that nomadic life would look like, or how it would interplay with settled life... just that it seems like something that should be striven for

  • Quizzes [none/use name]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Nomadic life sucks. Humans need a place to call home. We grow into the earth like trees, we need to stay in one place among people like us and live stable lives. There's nothing quite like having friends that you've had for 20 years. Going through shit together, letting your kids play with each other, going to each other's weddings and funerals. This is what is good in life.

    Nomads always live on marginal land. They keep moving around because the land is so bad that they can't live in one place for long before exhausting it.

    • Ideology [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Hisorically people who did move a lot moved their whole culture with them. Sometimes they had a home range with a capital city and people could leave and rejoin the capital or local villages as they pleased. Sometimes the capital moved if climate conditions changed. Some cultures moved entire cities on a relatively frequent basis. It's not like a "all ancient people were vagrants". They formed relationships with people in neighboring tribes and cultures by travelling and intermixing, forming large trail/road and boat networks, and by sharing hunting or herding ranges. Some of these people even shared borders with bronze age city states and feudal kingdoms. More modern itinerant and vagrant people, as a concept, exist explicitly in contrast to the sedentary feudal lifestyle.