People who were not in agreement with the reality of the world they found and suffered from it have always gone underground. People flee from their present, from the course of time, from crazy or dangerous fellow human beings, from natural catastrophes, boredom, poverty. The concrete places of their flight is always diverse and complex, like people themselves. One time it is the “exodus” of an entire people, another time just the “retreat” of an individual into the private sphere. Sometimes it is about “emigration” to “the foreign”, sometimes it is about “inner emigration” to “the familiar”. Sometimes it’s about absolute “anonymity”, sometimes it’s about the forced public “hippie commune”.

Thus, in a strange way, valuable individuals of a community disappear to a hidden place that lies somehow “under the ground,” that is, “below the ground,” “below reality,” “below the surface,” “below normality” of society. When we deal with them, we usually stare involuntarily at the fled people themselves, hoping to learn something about them and their new whereabouts in the “Under”. After all, this place must be something downright exotic, at any rate quite different from the solid “ground” on which we ourselves stand.

But what is this “reason” anyway, the mirror image of which the refugees and expellees discover on our behalf?

Find or create your own travel style. Mine (after years of reading, thinking, exploring, trying, failing, failing, failing, and trying again) is:

– Most of the time I use a bike for locomotion. I tried cars, vans, trains, hitchhiking, etc. but didn´t like any of it too much.
– Sometimes – especially in mountainous terrain – I prefer hiking.
– I almost always use side roads that lead me through villages. I avoid main roads as much as cities.
– I seek out for nature, forests, lakes and seaside whenever and whereever I can.
– I want remoteness almost all of the time. In fact, I do seek and enjoy encounters with other people in remote settings and natural surroundings.
– I avoid touristic facilities and rely on local hospitality instead.
– I alternate hiking and staying in one place (AirBnB), cf. my “Stage & Station” strategy.
– I do camping whenever possible.
– I carry out in depth research of the history and social issues of any visited area…
– …and write about that, as well as about my encounters with local people.

People have gone mad. Everyone needs a goal, everyone is striving for something, everyone is in the optimization trap. What to do, when human society no longer offers refuge? How to cope with a vicious economic system that deranges human society? (Isn´t it ironic, that our FREE market society in its later stages tastes like a centrally planned communist dystoia, where your´re not allowed to act against the nomenclatura?)

How to protest against the technocratic treadmill, but doing so cheerfully, with purpose, in search of a deeper meaning, in an endeavor to reconnect with nature and the planet and a sane personal and communal life?

Well, there are plenty of possibilities. Meditative walking, the practice of Zen, riding your bike like it´s an equivalent to Zazen, any repetitive physical activities, pilgrimage.

Whom to turn to for advice and inspiration?

Thales, Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and others.
Peripatetic philosophers
Goethe (Escape) – Italian Journey (“Wer sich den Gesetzen nicht fügen will, muss die Gegend verlassen, wo sie gelten.”)
Wordsworth, Gary Snyder, Rousseau
Thomas Bernhard – Walking
Florian Werner – The path of least resistance
Werner Herzog – From walking on ice
Rebecca Solnit: Wanderlust
Lucius Burchhardt: Why is Landscape Beautiful?

https://www.zeit.de/kultur/2018-06/wandern-gehen-pilgern-philosophie-geist-soziale-kontakte

https://www.srf.ch/sendungen/sternstunde-philosophie/florian-werner-laesst-sich-gehen-zur-philosophie-des-wanderns

Always treat traveling as an art form.

All the great teachers of mankind have treated life as an art form. All great travelers have treated traveling as an art form. So why shouldn´t you?

Creating art with anything that manifests/appears during and because of travels – from emotions, over places and people, to …

I´m creating artworks with travels just like others do with paper & pencil, steel, wood, music instruments.

Therefore, I´m not a travelling artist, because I don´t see myself as an artist in general. The only way I´m identifying as an artist is through and by my travels. Think Alexander Supertramp, HD Thoreau, Jack Kerouac, etc.

Escape Art