Arbitrary numerical threshold reached; dopamine release granted!

A(nother) brief intermission, personal reflections, and a short recap --- [Estimated reading time: 10 min.]

An anatomically accurate and seriously scientific representation of how the brain’s reward system works.

Let me begin this slight detour from our regular program by stating – for the record – that I’m not a fan of purely mathematical celebrations. My 30th birthday (usually a much-welcomed occasion for big celebrations in the cultural environment I grew up in) was perhaps my most unspectacular one up to date – and I can’t even say that I feel too bad about it! For a long time now, doing the exact opposite of what everyone else does has given me a smug sense of satisfaction.
Over the years, I have started to envy people in traditional societies who don’t remember their birthdays,¹ or even their own age. Life would be a lot easier if we wouldn’t let numbers dictate how we should feel and act. The number on the calendar changes by one digit, you’re pretty much the same person you were yesterday, but suddenly you find yourself stuffed into a whole new category: people view you differently when they learn your age, you’re being compared to those of the same age bracket despite vastly different life journeys & experiences, and there is now a different set of expectations for you and your peers. Despite the old truism that “age is just a number,” it does influence us – the way we feel, the expectations we have – just like so many other numbers do on a daily basis.
My point is: reaching arbitrary arithmetical thresholds has never excited me all that much, in large part thanks to my life-long aversion towards mathematical abstractions of the world – I started hating math literally on my first day of elementary school.

How I feel when the numbers on the calendar change

That being said:

Substack recently informed me that, just as this blog is nearing its three-year anniversary, it has reached 1000 subscribers!

Since I pretty much exclusively write about absolute fringe topics, I’m left somewhat speechless by the sheer number of people who have signed up to receive regular updates. I was already pretty shocked when this blog gained 500 subscribers, and was almost sure I’ve reached everyone in the circle and maxed out my potential audience. But the numbers continued to climb, slowly but steadily.

Additionally, I’ve never seriously tried to promote my writing in any way, except sharing some articles in relevant forums. To this day, my biggest achievement as a writer has been a feature of one of my articles on resilience.org, a page where literally everyone can submit articles – a humble milestone, but nonetheless one that I did not anticipate at the onset of this endeavor.

Another thing that I thought would surely deter most potential readers is the sheer length of my essays, which I state as a ‘preliminary warning’ at the beginning of every piece. This also means that the relevance of my writing is trapped in a doomed race against the rapidly shrinking average attention span. Apparently, I’m unable to reach the next level of writing skill, and remain forever damned to produce long-form content only – which, to my surprise, some people actually appreciate!

To be fair, I suspect that many of my subscribers could be bots, some of which (according to a new conspiracy theory I’m working on) might be deployed on behalf of Substack to inflate member numbers, motivate writers and thus increase “engagement.” In a time when people can pay for the “service” of artificially inflating their social media followers, nothing surprises me anymore – and there is of course always a certain hollow- and shallowness to metrics like this.
As everywhere on the internet, there’s plenty of accounts with seemingly randomized word-number combinations as moniker, but increasingly often they look like the mass-produced output of some bot farm or another. (No offense to anyone who actually uses an email address like that.)

Probably half of the subscribers to this blog

Each time I write anything about Anarcho-Primitivism, I actually lose a few subscribers, but the objective of this blog has never been to reach as many people as possible. So much of the contemporary internet has been designed to simply “maximize engagement,” and a whole industry has sprung up around “search engine optimization” (SEO) and related tasks, all in a bit to increase the number of “clicks.”²
Together with the increasing amount of bot traffic and AI-generated content of increasingly dubious quality, it sure seems like the Dead Internet Theory is slowly becoming reality.

Just how detrimental this myopic focus on high numbers is towards metrics that actually matter – like, I don’t know, quality? – is hopefully self-evident for anyone who has been online lately.

My initial objective with this blog was to provide me with an outlet for things that bothered me, annoyed me, or otherwise laid heavy on my heart-mind. Its name is self-explanatory, and as a practicing animist there is plenty to ramble about in today’s deeply anthropocentric culture of machine metaphors, reductionism, epidemic levels of cognitive dissonance, extractivism, runaway authoritarianism, and brutally utilitarian cost-benefit calculations. Many times, all I do is say something out aloud that a whole lot of people have been feeling or thinking for a long time already.
But I never expected my rants & ramblings to actually reach this many people!

There are now a few hundred people who regularly engage with my thoughts, and a dedicated readership of a few dozen people whose opinions, ideas, criticism and other input I value highly – on this occasion, once more, a special Thank You to you, dear reader. Moreover, I have met amazing people, both online and in the real world, thanks to this rather haphazard undertaking, and the revenue from paid subscriptions was and is absolutely essential to the continuance of our permaculture & rewilding project.

Writing is not always an easy task. Despite my often presumptuous, arrogant and condescending writing style (and my foul mouth), I’m frequently plagued by uncertainties and a looming sense of my own inadequacy – and by openly talking about your views, beliefs, ideas and personal life you do make yourself vulnerable to dismissive criticism, hostile remarks, ridicule and scorn. Despite what my writing (and talking) style might imply, I tend to be rather humble in person. I am well aware that there is nothing that I am particularly good at (except perhaps climbing trees). This rather shallow generalism also extends to my intellectual capabilities, and to the depth of my knowledge regarding a broad range of topics I nonetheless dare to opine about frequently. There is no doubt about my position in society’s official pecking order, so I don’t kid myself. I never went to University, never wrote a CV, and never did a single job interview.³
But somehow I still managed to acquire a small piece of hillside land with a decent wooden hut among the trees, and I am blessed to share this life with the strongest, kindest, most determined and courageous woman I’ve ever met. I spend more time reading than scrolling, and have done so consistently for the past decade. During this time I’ve worked my way through about one hundred kilograms of books, and we are fairly proud of our little “farm library” by now.⁴
To be clear, I don’t see myself as some sort of leader, visionary, or even a “thinker.” I do think, yes, but mostly I just synthesize the thoughts of others – and occasionally add my two cents. Having been blessed with ample free time and the ability to schedule various tasks however I please, at times I have felt more like something of a “scholarly middle man,” mediating between people who need hundreds of pages to make a point and those who simply don’t have the spare time to engage with such mountains of material.
As of lately, much of my writing has simply been idle reflections on our experiences with trying to rewild ourselves and the land we inhabit, while industrial civilization and the ecosystem are falling apart around us. But I’m clearly no “pioneer” either, as what we’re doing is hardly “new” to anyone still relatively unaffected by PDST.⁵ No, I’m simply a misfit who can’t and won’t bow to any imposing authority, who took a big leap of faith early in life and now has to live with the consequences. It seems people like me (those who fall close to the anarchic extreme of the egalitarian-authoritarian spectrum) struggle to find their place in the current world – unable to adapt, many of us simply end up as street kids and/or drug addicts, self-medicating our way through life in a society whose true cruelty is well hidden behind superficial pleasures, conveniences and luxuries. If I hadn’t discovered gardening, the same fate might have awaited me as well.
In past eras, we would have been those that stirred up resentment, stoked class conflicts and started revolutions – but since the dominant culture is currently still able to maintain its iron grip through pervasive technological surveillance, a totalitarian monopoly on violence, and constant corporate propaganda that creates & maintains mass delusions of truly epic proportions, the best thing we can do is to simply bide our time, try to survive, and hope that opportunity comes sooner rather than later.
I am in no way “special” in this regard. Countless others like me were brutally subdued throughout their childhood & adolescence, to the point of settling into learned helplessness through the biology of defeat. I was merely lucky to avoid any real conflict and carve out a niche on the fringe of civilization for myself.
Neither am I particularly knowledgable, let alone wise – but I’ve learned to pay attention to those that are.
As the years go by, I actually feel like I am becoming less and less sure about what I really know (and what I am even able to know), and I become increasingly aware of my own shortcomings, inherent cognitive biases, and the limitations of my own thinking and worldview.
Maybe I’m just getting older?

Despite all this, I am perpetually perplexed by how many people spend hours of their time reading my thoughts, and by the overwhelmingly positive feedback I get. One thing that continues to give me a surprisingly potent dose of motivation has been this blog, and all the conversations it sparked. In the utter absence of any appreciation whatsoever of our efforts from the (human) community & culture we’re embedded in, the feedback I get here often makes it seem like the way we think (and thus what we’re doing here) actually matters – and my brain’s reward system highly appreciates the artificial stimulation it provides.

From content creation to crypto trading, watching numbers increase on our screens has become one of the main sources of pleasure in this society – oh, sweet, sweet dopamine – and I’d be lying if I said it would be any different for me. I do feel pleasure of some sort when I see how many people interact with my work. Just like with advertising, merely understanding the underlying workings of a phenomenon doesn’t necessarily mean you’re completely safe from it. But if there’s numbers to feel pleasure about, it might be a “lesser evil” if those numbers come from writing & talking about the crucial issues of our time, and not from yet another selfie or yet another pointless 30-second video clip.

But as soon as numbers (followers, clicks, subscribers, likes, views, etc.) become the only metric that matters, every last bit of meaning slips through the cracks of our handheld devices and into the digital abyss. Some months back, visiting friends brought a “Youtuber” along – the first time we met one in the flesh! – an acquaintance who seemed keen to finally meet those “jungle people” whom he’d heard so much about. We must have seemed as alien to him as he did to us.
The first thing our friend told us about him, even before he stepped out of the car, was that “he has, like, 600,000 followers on YouTube!!”
We took in this bit of information without any further reaction, realizing only later that “normal people’s” reactions upon hearing this must be decidedly different: excitement (real or feigned), awe, perhaps even envy.
But why should we be excited about a mere number, without even knowing what kind of videos he produces or what value this content presents to society at large?⁶

I do have to admit that I feel slightly different about writing anything, now that I know how many people I (potentially) reach. There is slightly more pressure, an ever-so-small uncertainty about whether what I’m currently writing actually concerns or interests this many people, or is indeed of any greater value at all – I’m feeling it at this very moment, writing these lines. Nonetheless, I trust myself enough to assure you that the general quality of this blog won’t suffer in the long term, even if I (subconsciously and ever-so-slightly) shift away from just writing about whatever is on my mind, and towards topics that are more appealing to my general readership. That being said, I’ll definitely try my very best to stay true to the original purpose of this blog.

Anyway, allow me let me use this opportunity to once again express my gratitude to you, the many readers of this publication. I’m deeply grateful for every interaction and conversation this little side project of mine has sprouted over the past few years.

And, since I could barely justify the self-congratulatory nature of this post if I wouldn’t be able to follow up with something of actual substance, let me announce that a real essay will be out this weekend:

Climbing is my Meditation

Casual encounters with Trees (and a careful critique of the Mindfulness Hype)

Lastly, because I’m only human (and remain – at least to some extent – a member of this society and thus bound to the cultural expressions it utilizes), here is a brief (but accurate) summary of this blog’s three-year history:

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Please stay tuned, the regular program will resume shortly!

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Previous intermissions:

Frequently Asked Questions (and other illuminating inquiries), Volume I

Ten Guiding Principles

1. Even my wife’s parents, traditional rice farmers, give so little importance to their own birthdays that they often need to be reminded by their children.

2. “Click inflation” might be an appropriate term for this phenomenon, in which, say, a million clicks are worth less and less, as armies of bots descend onto online services that can often barely stem the rising tide of pure artifice and meaninglessness.

3. When I looked for work to finance my trip to Thailand I used a temporary employment agency, mainly to avoid the hassle of writing résumés and lying my way through job interviews. I was always something of a misfit, and job interviews seemed like nothing but a stupid game to test the obedience and the dedication to execute pointless tasks & follow orders of potential employees. One of the most ridiculous aspects is the use of certain “trick questions” – only if you spend enough of your free time researching & preparing for those do you have a chance to prove you’re a “good boy” and get hired.

4. This is not a joke, we do order books pretty much by the kilo – since “real” books would far exceed our budget, we send pirated PDFs to a friendly copy shop in Bangkok that charges a set price per page, amounting to around $3 to $5 per book. The end result looks almost indistinguishable from the original. One of the perks of living in the (copyright-)lawless Global South!

5. “Progress & Development, Science & Technology” – arguably the most dangerous, virulent and ubiquitous form of mental illness in contemporary society. A Native American term for the same ailment is “Wetiko.”

6. The experience was sobering, and in many ways downright scary. The sheer amount those people spend on their phones is staggering (easily more than half their waking hours), and they experience the world passively through their phones more than actively through their actual senses! He walked through our garden with his phone in front of him at all times, firmly grasped in his outstretched hand, eyes glued to the screen – everything is potential “content!” Altogether it was an almost otherworldly experience that reinforced a feeling that has grown stronger and stronger over the years: we increasingly feel like we have nothing in common with the people around us (apart from our most basic biological makeup), almost like we belong to a different species altogether. Also, we must be nearing Peak Alienation. I’m not sure how much worse this can get (or even how long this can continue) without people’s brains melting down.