Today, September 26, is Johnny Appleseed Day. I've been reading a biography about him by Robert Price: Johnny Appleseed: Man & Myth. The book is really about the Old Northwest around 1800. John Chapman is one of the rare people who tried to actually live the life of a free and just man, which often takes the form of living as a "first man", or a primitive life.
Civilization is man made, obviously. Civilized man is really not a man. He doesn't have any existence of his own. He's a minion, or a cog in a vast machine. Richard Proenneke went to Alaska to escape that and live a whole life which he experienced in the context of living in the natural world. Christians return again and again to the roots of the church to redefine their religion as the institutions that build up around it turn into a sewer over and over again.
The civilization man, the corporate man, the empire man, is like the Agent Smith character in The Matrix or the Stormtrooper clones in Star Wars or Number 2 in The Prisoner. He's everyone and nobody. He's entirely a creature of the toy model version of reality and the symbol world.
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