Neo-Nomadism

In 2007, for the first time in history, the majority of the world were living in cities. This was announced by the United Nations as a significant shift from the predominantly rural living that characterised human history up until this point — and while this was a significant milestone, it obscures an even more important shift in human habitation which occurred without any announcement; it was not from one form of stationary living (rural) to another (urban), but from nomadic living to any of these other sedentary alternatives. You see, contrary to what the UN announcement implies, urban migration is not disrupting some timeless human practice of rural agriculture — agriculture was the disruption. For the majority of human history, we were nomadic hunter-gatherers, and later, nomadic pastoralists. Sedentary agriculture has only been practised the past 10,000 years — a mere 4% of human history — and even during these 10,000 years, it was by no means the only viable lifestyle. We have become so accustomed to stationary living that we have forgotten that we are at our root rootless. Nomadism has been relegated to the post-apocalyptic imaginary — a terrifying, almost unfathomable alternative to the settled way of life. As we will see, settlers have always vilified the ‘savage’ nomads, just as the nomads have always had contempt for the ‘soft’ settlers. In what follows, I’ve set myself the difficult task of explaining why a superior lifestyle…