THE OBSERVER'S UTOPIA

Sometime or other I wrote here about how if I were to build a 
doomsday bunker, it would not only be out of fear, but to some 
degree also a slight attraction to the idea of living in a world 
where most of the human population has been killed off by some 
calamity or other. In practice I live far enough away from any 
population centres that an actual 'bunker' would probably be a 
little excessive, just some well-built building with a degree of 
natural temperature regulation, in which to store supplies, should 
be sufficient.

I don't really forsee such a calamity in the immediate future, and 
I've got lots of other projects in the works which promise an 
immediate reward, so I don't really plan to go down the 'prepper' 
path. Maybe one day if I've got nothing better to do...

But I have been thinking deeper about what really attracts me to 
the post-appocalypstic lifestyle. It's really quite a deep question 
which probably touches on how I'm a bit different to most people. I 
really like empty spaces. Just being alone in a space, especially a 
building, there's a feeling of posession. Better yet, uncontested 
posession, where it becomes your own. In this regard it may be a 
power thing - I'm eternally a subserviant being waiting for his 
chance to rule the world - but it's also about observation.

Observation might seem the opposite of power, because to observe 
means that one doesn't influence events. But in human society the 
power to observe how things work is often very strictly guarded, as 
a method by which others retain power. Skills are guarded so that 
only an admitted few may learn or practice them, technology is 
guarded so that few can reproduce it, and organisations are guarded 
so that people can't cast judgement their internal operations. 
Observation in this world actually requires a great deal of power.

But the defence against observation is an active thing, whether 
it's a dusty "no entry" sign or a bank vault hiding a trove of 
documents, protection from the onlooking world must be sustained by 
the people with an interest in it. History is told by the gradual 
uncovering of truths as they are abandoned by their keepers, its 
scope always broadening as events become more distant and their 
implications in modern society become less significant for people 
to defend.

To stop the present is to begin history, and in an empty world 
everything is there to be seen, with nobody there to whome one must 
account for taking the time and resources to see it. So perhaps the 
appocalypse is the observer's utopia, and that's the real power 
that I seek simply through surviving it.

Yet already there is more to observe in history than anyone could 
care to see, and it is more accessible than ever. Already I'm 
addicted to starring into this this observer's window pointed at 
the past. Already I do little more to interact with society than I 
can get away with.

My free time is spent away from people, emails unchecked, mobile 
phone turned off, and just the noise of surrounding animals seeping 
inside my home. There I read, watch, and listen about the world. As 
it is today, last year, last century, whenever, however, it is 
there to observe.

What more would it take to live much as I might in my 
post-appocalyptic observer's utopia? If I were to give up on making 
money, spend most of what I already have on a prepper's diet of 
preserved food, keep the rest to placate the government's thirst 
for taxes, and live off that while trying to set myself up for 
complete self sufficiency?

It's only really a sudden jump into a lifestyle that is quite 
popular already, although by nature the people who live it don't 
stand out much. In fact as a socially awkward male with unusual 
facial hair and a bit of a distinctive voice, I'm noticably well 
fit for the Australian stereotype of that sort of person.

On the other hand I am also tempted by the power and security of 
diving the other way and trying to make much more money, at the 
expense of getting much more entangled in society. Plus that vague 
old desire to meet women. Maybe I've already found about my best 
compromise between the observer's utopia and the virtues of 
participation (skewed quite a lot towards to former)? Aspirations 
are such a distraction. Are the dreams that I most desire all the 
ones that I've already sought?

I think everyone wonders this. I just happen to have some odd 
dreams.

 - The Free Thinker.