“Everywhere is a prison to me.”
This line in Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 film Stalker is eponymous with the current feeling in the West. There is an illusion that you are free to do anything and travel anywhere. Yet the sprawl of globalisation has meant each town has the same aesthetic. Your needs met by the same six or seven global franchises. Even more oppressive are the complex cultural norms that police our behaviour. If your environment affects your chances of success, then this homogenisation is stifling.
This has created a mental health crisis and a growing sense of nihilism. The societal pressure to eliminate risk created our bureaucratic health and safety culture. This is an impossible task which hides risk but can never remove it. Without calculated risk everything stagnates, and innovation drops off. Instead, rollercoasters and online gambling must fill the void. The masses love such things because the endless dopamine acts as a distraction. It supplies the thrill they should get from challenging themselves. After the rush ends, a feeling of emptiness returns.
We must escape this artificial and mechanised environment by spending time in the last bastion of freedom, the wilderness. The cinematography of Stalker encapsulates this, and the possibilities it offers. Set in an unnamed country containing a mysterious demilitarised zone it follows a group in search of a room that grants your deepest wish. The film juxtaposes the drab, claustrophobic cityscape with the colourful and enchanting zone. On release critics saw this as a commentary on the life in the Gulags but there is more to this dichotomy. The zone has a mythical quality where nothing is as it seems, and events are beyond explanation. The journey through the zone is as much internal as external.
"Nevertheless, everything that happens here, depend not on the Zone, but on us! "
It is a place beyond our control where fears and desires manifest, forcing us to confront reality. A place of danger where actions have consequences far from the comfort of the modern world. The plethora of distractions on offer mean we rarely spend time alone. In the zone armed only with their wit they discover more about themselves. Without spoilers it is more about the reasons that led to them seeking the room and the insights it offers.
Reading Julius Evola’s collection "Meditations on the Peaks" draws many parallels. Both concern the untouched physical environment as a place for self-reflection. Running through his essays is the sentiment that the mountains, in a Nietzschean sense offer an escape. A chance to reveal our true self. Far from the motivation of middle-aged women who travel to find themself but a revelation. Only when tested to the limit did Evola think this was possible and the peaks were one of the last places to do this. Far from the safety net of society we can face real danger and rediscover our capabilities.
They also offer new perspective as only when you feel insignificant can you get a sense of your place in the world. For Evola climbing was a metaphysical embodiment of mankind’s urge to strive. A harsh environment that forces you to become sharper or perish. Only the best reach the summit rather than somewhere where everyone gets a medal for showing up. Not about glamourising danger but being able to face it with humility. It teaches you to recognise your limitations with your life on the line. In the high peaks fate decides all. Like Nietzsche’s idea of “Amor Fati” you can prepare all you want, but this is nature’s dominion, and you must submit to fate.
Now is the time to head to the mountains is now before globalisation swallows all. They are not immune to its advance as the places one can be free ever shrinks. Evola lamented that every mountain town had begun to look the same. The streets filled with inhabitants who were climbers in appearance only. In fact, they never left the city but revelled in the status their look provided. The peaks are being commoditised by guided tours masquerading as climbs. Instead, you must look past the most accessible peaks and find those others dare not climb.
This is part of a wider message that to protect freedom you must cultivate habits away from the masses. While they yearn for an easier life, we must instead take on more and more challenges. The wilderness and the mountains are a physical embodiment of this philosophy. Yet this extends to the inner realm as well. The spirit struggles against an ever-narrowing online discourse which stamps out individualism. Slowly we are merging into a hive consciousness where everyone thinks the same. It is reminiscent of the children in John Wyndham’s Midwich Cuckoos. One consciousness split between different bodies. We process more and more information, but they only ever reach the same conclusions. To avoid this slow down to speed up.
Read hard books and use them to create something unique.
Avoid being perpetually online.
Protect your individualism.