Aristocratic ideology of birth: a privileged, primarily hereditary ruling class, or a form of government controlled by such an elite; the knowing, as a result of one's membership in the aristocracy, that one can do and be anything one wishes to do or be, because the (hereditary) money to do so will always be available.
We are a restless species. There is a restlessness in the human spirit. But it’s more than restlessness. We want to be alone and left alone. There seems to be an instinct for atomization. Old people like me like to live alone, contrary to the conventional wisdom. Of course there is an instinct for community also, marriage, family, sociability. But those two instincts are in conflict.
The ties that bind us restrict us. That was the impetus for the peopling of North America. Americans have always been fleers. Flee England, flee other countries later, flee the east coast for the hinterland, keep fleeing all the way to the Pacific. Americans, at least, are always striking out on their own. Fleeing cities for the suburbs, fleeing them for the country. Fleeing flatlands for the hills. We long to be our own masters, "to do and be anything one wishes to do or be." "Every man a king," that was the motto of the new Republic. But we don't desire to lord over anybody but our selves. "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home." We don't have to have a palace, just a place to call our own, nor the money of a king.
We flee other people. That's what we're fleeing. They can be family, they can be the most benevolent kings, it doesn't matter. We want to be alone. Huckleberry Finn and Jim. Thoreau on Walden Pond, the Temple family in The Pioneers, America’s first novel. Natty Bumpo fled the Temples and Templeton deeper into the forest. They didn't miss other people to talk to. They like themselves, would talk to themselves, these earliest fleers. Behavior that is considered sign of mental illness to a community is what they did when they were alone in the woods.
Are other peoples fleers? I don't know. The southeast Asian hill people flee authority, doesn’t matter which authority, Authority. There are gypsy-like peoples in every corner of the globe, people for whom fleeing is the one instinct. They're not fleeing this oppressive regime or that; they’re not fleeing poverty or chasing riches, fleeing is their way of life. I flee therefore I am.
Europeans seems pretty content to be their (comparatively) little community nations. A Frenchman is happy to be a Frenchman and does not wish to become a German and vice versa. They have wanted the other’s territory but not to be them. They didn’t emigrate, they invaded. Americans emigrated, fled. The English who came here wanted, after a while, to be on their own as Americans. The French who came here wanted to be American; the Germans wanted to be American (both are represented in The Pioneers). Italians, Irish, everyone except the Black people of Africa captured into slavery.
I had a breathtaking thought a couple of weeks ago prompted by one of my son’s friends. For all of his young adult life he has lived out of a camper, just driving all over and stopping at campgrounds at night. He’s married now and he and his wife are still living in a camper. I, who have lived alone now for eighteen years, thrilled to the thought. But I would only do it with my son, I cannot be apart from him. We couldn't travel and live in the same trailer, we would each own his own but travel together. When I thought about that I literally gasped, it was thrilling. I have a gypsy spirit I did not realize I had before.
