Living on the Outside

[MachineGhost]

[quote=http://blog.ted.com/2014/05/30/kitra-ca ... om-within/]There’s a whole range of value systems that emerge from the traveling scene, but largely the community leans towards anti-capitalist/anarchist principles. Sometimes those ideologies surface after deep readings of political texts, but often they arise because the traveling life accommodates certain political worldviews better than others. For example, within traveling groups there’s a very firm belief that squatter’s rights should be ubiquitous, and that housing and shelter—especially abandoned spaces—should be used by those who require it. A lot of travelers espouse the belief that food be free — that it’s a human right and that it’s wrong that 40% of food ends up in trash cans. Dumpster diving then becomes not only a survival mechanism, but a moral, political decision as well.

Ultimately I don’t think it’s fair to try to nitpick for ideological consistency. The road exists as a space away from society. It’s a space that creates a mental wedge between the traveler and all they took for granted before taking to the road. It’s a space where re-evaluation is possible. In many ways the traveling lifestyle sets the intellectual landscape for an entire life of mental movements, of searching for freedoms or Temporary Autonomous Zones, in the words of Hakim Bey. To me that’s an invaluable space, especially for a young person. Of course traveling can also become a shackling agent. It can become routine and stagnant, and I think it does for many travelers as well. It’s really no one thing.

Some elements of the community are more political than others, but to me, there’s something inherently  political about taking to the road and being the nomad. Sometimes it’s a conscious political act, and sometimes it’s not. But the political nature of the nomad has less to do with nomadism in and of itself and more to do with the nation-state context within which the nomad lives. When you’re nomadic or homeless, you are basically an illegal body. It’s difficult to exist in any space without trespassing. Law enforcement has certain biases against that community. Within societies as we know them today, for the most part — and also throughout most of history — nomads have been ostracized and their bodies made illegal, sometimes in a more bureaucratic fashion, and sometimes just socially, with ostracism.[/quote]