Trumping versus Tramping

America has finally eclipsed Hitler’s appointment as German Chancellor in 1933 by electing an even more toxic leader 83 years later—such is the treachery of democracy—someone even more open about their reactionary and despotic intentions than was the Führer at the time of his election. So much for the march of civilisation, which has now finally gone into reverse. 

In voting to express their frustration and dissatisfaction with the complete failure of the capitalist project, as represented by successive dynasties of corrupt U.S. politicians, business moguls and bankers, what have those folks angry at being denied the American dream decide to replace it with—an even uglier face of capitalism and selfish greed, this time combined with a pathological hatred of anyone who is not ‘white’, Christian, and heterosexual. And as for the latter, certainly in Trump's case, after 100 years of women's struggle to be treated equally to men, a return to the worse kind of open misogyny.

My response to the events of November 8th 2016 is triggered by my last post, the story of a middle aged, white woman who, in the late 1960’s tramped and hitchhiked alone from Britain, through France and Spain to Morocco, onwards through Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, then by boat to Turkey and onwards again to Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Tibet. Kathleen Phelan had tramped for over 30 years, inspired by her personal philosophy that the thrill of life on the road, with only the clothes and few possessions she stood up in, was preferable to a life in the West—straightjacketed by conventional society’s obsession with acquiring money and material possessions—as a means to survive in an increasingly selfish and oppressive world.

Kathleen Phelan took little from the world but gave much. The profession listed on her passport was 'vagabond and storyteller', and she performed for her supper as much as eight hours a day. Kathleen followed an honourable tradition of vagabond philosophers going all the way back to Diogenes the Cynic whose ‘performances’ in Greek cities, such as walking the streets in daylight with a lighted lamp (looking for an honest man), represented his own unique treatise on the bankrupt state of human civilisation in the 4th Century BC. How little really has the human project progressed in over 2000 years.

Reading Kathleen’s story, one is immediately struck by the grim reality that there would be no way a single woman, or even Western male, would be able to make such a trip today. Not just because of the rise of national and international conflicts, religious fundamentalism, and the diaspora of increasing numbers of displaced people, but the corresponding fear and intolerance of the ‘foreigner’ by Western nations as evidenced by Brexit and Trump’s election as US President. 

The idiocy of America’s newly expressed desire to ‘make our country great again’ (expressed by the Brexiteers also) by withdrawing into itself and closing its borders to ‘foreigners’ (particularly Latinos and Muslims), and accompanied by an increasing intolerance of non-white, non-Christian, non-heterosexuals, is that, with the exception of the displaced Native Americans, all Americans are foreigners. The country was built and inhabited by foreigners for christ sake, from every corner of the world, many escaping persecution from elsewhere, and latterly drawn there by the iconic Statue of Liberty and everything she represented in terms of freedom and tolerance of diversity.

And so in what sense do white Christians like Trump—increasingly the minority in America—claim that they have the moral imperative to mould the country into their obscene image? America is already close to a police state, in which its own citizens (mainly Afro-Americans) can be murdered by police officers with impunity. Imagine the scenario once Trump and his lunatic henchmen get their hands on the judiciary, the police and the armed forces. Oh yes, of course he encourages the civil protests currently taking place across America, so much so that when he has his hands firmly on the reigns of power, he will be able to declare a state of emergency, implement martial law, and finish the job he has been gagging to get on with—supported by large swathes of the baying, redneck mob who elected him. Americans must ask themselves exactly what does 'make America great again' actually mean to these white supremacists; a return to segregation, even slavery?

A footnote concerning tramping

It was Trump's new demonic lieutenant, Rudolph Giuliani, who in 1998, passed a law to fine pedestrians $50 for jaywalking and fenced off sidewalks in some of the busiest areas of New York City. But then America has been clamping down on the free movement of pedestrians for decades following an idiotic Los Angeles planning report in the 60's noting that 'The pedestrian remains the largest single obstacle to free traffic movement'—following which over 1,000 pedestrian crossings were removed in California. As Jim Christy puts it in his book, The New Refugees:

'In America the hitchhiker, the drifter, is not regarded as a seeker of freedom or knowledge, as an explorer of his land and the ways and doings of his fellows, but, rather as a breed of criminal, a jobless, shiftless no-count, out to rob and rape and worse. A man on the road meets all the narrow paranoia, the fear and ignorance of that "pettiness that plays so rough".'

Guest Contributor—Raymond Federman

Just came across this poem again, sent me in the first ever email I received from Raymond on 31 October 2002 at 22.27. The last email was dated 13 Sept 2009 at 16:37, shortly before Raymond sadly changed tense on Oct 6 2009. Hope you are still enjoying the philosopher's art wherever you may be.

CULTIVATION

He who practices ononism

is master of all:

Diogenes without any doubt

is the ancestor of the pornosopher--

the pornocrate philosopher

who masturbated on the public square

and who enjoyed whoever

was tortured by sexual desire

to satisfy it immediately in this manner.

The widowed-wrist to the antique sage

begot cynical shoots and for 25 centuries

pornosophic sensitivity (or pornographico-

philonanistic ideology) flourished.

A Philosophy of Tramping — Asceticism

‘IT is a gentle art; know how to tramp and you know how to live. ... Tramping brings one to reality. [...] It is a mistake to take to the wilderness clad in new plus fours, sports jacket, West-End tie, jewelled tie pin, or in gaiters, or carrying a silver-topped cane. One should not carry visiting cards, but try and forget the three-storied house, remembering Diogenes and his tub.’ 

Stephen Graham, The Gentle Art of Tramping

Some of the questions that still elude me about tramping are: when did the tramp first emerge in history? what prompted one to become a tramp? and, if tramps always existed, how has their vocation and relationship to the rest of society changed over time? I intend in this essay to review some of my earlier writings on the origins of asceticism in Western culture—and the Cynic project in particular. I need to better understand, what it is that provokes certain individuals to disassociate themselves from the rest of society's pursuit of money and possessions, as the means to secure success and happiness. The questions that I will address at the end of this post are: 1/ why did Cynicism fail and Christianity succeed? And, 2/ what might have been the legacy for we moderns, of dumping a philosophy of naturalism in favour of a belief in the supernatural? I do not apologise for returning again to the ancient Cynics; it is the raison d'être of this blog to rescue this ancient philosophy from obscurity and misrepresentation. But important to setting out the foundations of a philosophy of tramping, is the need to explore the thesis that, the denigration of cynicism in our post-Christian world may have provided the moral vacuum that today's tramp inhabits—a search for the real in a stressful world of exasperating illusions.

However much we moderns appreciate the convenience of owning a car, a washing machine or a computer, to some degree we are also aware of the potential of such possessions to enslave us. When considering the cost of their purchase, maintenance, insurance (to relieve the anxiety against them getting lost, damaged or stolen), constant upgrading and replacement, and the additional stress of remembering ever more complex passwords to make things work at all, or, accessing unhelpful helplines 'manned' by robots; the burden of owning stuff—apart from those wealthy enough to employ servants to do the worrying for them—increases exponentially in proportion to the paraphernalia and services we employ to manage our lives. Who has not at some point envied the freedom of the tramp and contemplated how their lives might be happier, or at least less stressful, if they just walked away from their job, home, possessions and responsibilities—only to panic at the thought of what they might be giving up, or overwhelmed with guilt at the very thought of such an irresponsible act of selfishness.

And yet, for at least 2,500 years, there have been those who perfectly well understood the folly of seeking to achieve happiness through accumulating money and possessions. One of the principal tenets of Buddhism: if one desires nothing, one lacks nothing, was absorbed into Western thinking by the ancient Greek Cynics only 100 or so years after Buddhism took root in the East. Trade links certainly existed between the Mediterranean and India during the hundred or so years before Cynicism formally emerged. And according to Indian records, the Buddha died in 483 B.C., only 79 years before Diogenes the Cynic was reportedly born in 404 B.C. Further exchanges must have taken place between Greek and Indian sages during the campaigns of Alexander. The Cynics in turn influenced the asceticism of the early Jesus movements (before, that is, the beliefs of Jesus became corrupted by Paul's version of Christianity). The principals of these ancient sects are continued today by those with the courage and independence of spirit to turn their backs on the consumer world that the rest of us find ourselves addicted to—paradoxically, consumerism is now fully embraced and promoted as a virtue by many modern Christians.

Yet, as discussed in the Introduction, unlike the more accepting ancient Mediterranean cultures, the choice to tramp since Christian times (unless in a monastic role) came at the cost of being outcast and outlawed by the rest of society. The reasoning behind any philosophy of tramping must, therefore, consider the history of asceticism as one of its fundamental determinants. This post will now look more closely at the reasoning underlying ancient Greek and Christian asceticism to provide a context for the work that is to follow.

Ancient Greek Asceticism

Most of the Hellenistic philosophies acknowledged, to some degree, the limitations of indulging our desirers as a path to happiness. Even the Hedonist Aristippus, founder of the Cyreniac school, had to acknowledge that extreme self-indulgence could only be acquired at the cost of pain. He recommended that in order to minimise the pain that may accompany pleasure, we should also work at mastering our desires. One of Hedonism’s later followers, Hegesias, became so sceptical of attaining contentment through positive enjoyment that he adopted a philosophy of pessimism, declaring happiness to be unattainable. The Epicureans held that sensual impulses and a rich enjoyment of life was permitted so long as one avoided a dependence on such things. The goal of happiness was to be achieved by balancing the most pleasure with the least pain. This did not necessarily equate to self-indulgence, as pleasure could be achieved as much by altruistic actions as it could by selfish ones—in fact more so. It was the degree to which pain (physical pain and mental anguish) could be removed that was the Epicurean’s main criterion of happiness. Furthermore, happiness itself could not be increased exponentially. A lavish banquet, for instance, would not provide a greater degree of pleasure than a crust of bread and a drink of water, if the measure of happiness is the degree to which thirst or hunger is vanquished. The Stoics took from Cynicism their belief that external things should be eliminated from human life, but, as with Pauline Christianity, this included human passion. In marked contrast to the Cynics, Hedonists and Epicureans, the Stoics claimed that the elimination of passion promised a new basis for political virtue, supporting an ideal which would lead to a just and humane society.

According to the first century Latin writer and Epicurean, Lucretius, the road to happiness is often an elusive one. In seeking fame and fortune—a need which, he tells us, is impelled by a desire for security and contentment in life—the opposite fate is in fact often achieved. The resulting, and more lasting pain (including the pain of guilt, envy, regret, etc.) nullify and circumvent any happiness which may have been achieved. The Cynics were one step ahead of this Epicurean logic, for in attempting to avoid pain and disillusionment, they spent their life training for and subjecting themselves to the worst kind of pain and hardship as an insurance against being cast down. An example of Cynic training (askesis) can be found in reports of Diogenes begging alms of a statue in order to get practice at being refused, and Peregrinus practising Cynic indifference by appearing in public with half his head shaved, his face covered in mud, and an erect penis. A more practical outcome of the Cynic art, is illustrated by Diogenes smashing a cup he carried for water after witnessing a youth drinking from his cupped hands. Living an ascetic life style then, removed the possibility of destitution because the Cynics had already cast themselves down out of a positive choice of lifestyle.

In marked contrast to Stoics and Christians, Cynics did not abstain from sexual pleasure; which was entirely consistent with their belief in modelling the behaviour of lower animals as the most natural way to live. It is reported that Diogenes' lifestyle was inspired by watching a mouse running about: not looking for a place to lie down in, not afraid of the dark, not seeking any of the things which we consider to be dainties. As a further example of learning from animals, Diogenes’ choice of a large earthenware wine vat as a mobile home is said to have been inspired by his observation of a snail. It was this simple lifestyle, deliberately adopted to contrast with civic society’s obsession with luxury and complexity, that distinguished the Cynics and brought them into ridicule. The Cynic regarded all human appetites as equal in nature. To explain his habit of masturbating in public, Diogenes is reported to have said, “I only wish I could be rid of hunger by rubbing my belly.” What emerges as a result of examining these (albeit anecdotal) references, is a clear link between even the basest of a Cynics’ public behaviour and their philosophical and ethical convictions.

     

Like early Christianity, Cynicism offered freedom from unhealthy preoccupations with the material world, but unlike Christianity, it offered immediate peace on earth for the individual rather than the deferred gratification of a reward in heaven. The Cynics did not believe in gods or the notion of an afterlife; an important consideration when it comes to addressing the two questions I posed at the beginning of this post. In the aphoristic style of the chreia (a Cynic invention adopted later by pre-Pauline Christians), when asked if he believed in the gods, Diogenes replied, “How can I help believing in them, when I see a god-forsaken wretch like you?” It was a Cynic slogan that one could lose material possessions, yet wisdom and knowledge could never be taken away. But it would be a mistake to view the Cynics’ life as an easy option. Far from wishing to avoid work and responsibility, most Cynics fully embraced their responsibilities. Many in fact gave away considerable fortunes in order to pursue asceticism as a positive lifestyle. Furthermore, by disseminating their philosophy free to all comers, they arguably contributed far more to society than those who simply chose to sell their wisdom within the exclusivity of schools of learning.

Cynic Influences on Christianity

At the time that Christianity was emerging during the first century A.D., ascetic Jewish and early Christian sects would have had every opportunity to be influenced by Cynics. The main trade route between the Mediterranean coastal town of Ptolemais and Gadara (birthplace of Cynics Menippus, Meleager and Oenomaus) near the south-eastern end of the Sea of Galilee, passed just 8 miles north of Nazareth. The earliest comparison between Christians and Cynics comes from the second century anti-Christian writer Celsus, who made disparaging comments about Christians’ Cynic-like behaviour of preaching to the rabble in the market place rather than engaging in what he considered intelligent debate. This view was challenged by Origen some 60 years later when he commended the practice of bringing philosophy to the mass of uneducated people, and Christian and Cynic street preachers may well have shared the same audiences. Cynicism has been described as the philosophy of the proletariat and also a philosophy of the individual; important when considering it's relevance to tramping. Both sects also shared literary and dialogic genres, such as the chreia mentioned earlier, the diatribe (credited as a prototype of the Christian sermon) and the symposium (or banquet dialogue, as exampled by the Last Supper).

But to return to asceticism, for both the Cynics and the early Christians, the lifestyle of the ascetic was central to their practical philosophy, in which personal hardship and suffering provided the key to the elimination of physical and mental discomfort. The early Christian ascetic culture of poverty provided instructions not to worry about what one eats, to discard home and family ties, to eschew normal standards of cleanliness, and to treasure ourselves rather than our possessions. ‘Go sell all your possessions and give them to the poor,’ it says in Mark (10.21). And also from Mark (10:25), ‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.’ Compare also, the truism in 1 Timothy (6.10) that, ‘the love of money is the root of all evils’, with that attributed to Diogenes the Cynic in the writings of his namesake, Diogenes Laertius (6:50), ‘the love of money is the mother-city of all evils.’ How then does one reconcile the image of fat bishops in their cathedral palaces clad in purple robes and gold chains, with Jesus the ascetic sage entreating his followers to abandon money, possessions and a roof over their head for a life of hardship and prayer.

If suffering is an inevitable part of life, by embracing a culture of poverty in the manner in which they lived, both Cynics and early Christians sought to cheat suffering by making a virtue of it. Their asceticism was the key to a practical philosophy, in which personal hardship and suffering provided the key to happiness. The early Christians trained to endure the harshest circumstances including pain, hunger and the insults of others; and the degree of asceticism described in the parallel references in Matthew, Mark and Luke appears even more severe than that of the Cynics. In addition to only wearing a single tunic and taking no gold, silver or copper in their wallets, the disciples are instructed to wear no sandals and carry no staff. By the time the Desert Fathers made their appearance, four centuries later, we get into Christian asceticism of an entirely different order, such as the holy man who is reported to have lived for thirty years on bread and muddy water, and another who survived in an old well on five dried figs a day. But, as will be discussed later, such practices were based on the fear of hell and damnation, not the Cynic goal of celebrating life, here on earth, with the least pain.

Christian Asceticism and the Demonisation of Woman

Any similarity then between Cynics and Christians, ended when Paul hijacked the early Christian movement and turned Jesus—ascetic sage and one of many Jewish rebels of the time—into a prophet, thundering apocalyptic warnings of doom and destruction. The preposterous narrative tale of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus as a supernatural being, a God himself, was first recorded for others to add to and embellish over the succeeding decades and centuries. No one has better captured Paul's corruption of Jesus' original philosophy, than the modern cynic philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in his penultimate work, The Anti-Christ. Although covered in more detail in an earlier post, 'Nietzsche: Anti-Christ, not anti Jesus', it is worth noting here, just in what way Nietzsche considered that Pauline Christianity had blighted the world for the last 2,000 years—and his surprise also, that in all that time we had not bothered to invent for ourselves a single new god! The paradox is, that if Jesus were to show up in one of our city centre streets today, the perversion that is the modern Christian state would simply regard him as any other down-and-out, an object of fear and suspicion, and either jail him for vagrancy or have him committed for a psychiatric assessment.

Nietzsche understood that the real tragedy of Christianity, was not its corruption by Saint Paul, but that the rise of Christianity itself heralded a long dark period in the history of Western civilisation, one that laid waste to the richness and diversity that was the classical culture of Greek and Roman civilisation. ‘One has but to read Lucretius to know what Epicurus made war upon’. And what Epicurus made war upon, was ‘the corruption of souls by means of the concepts of guilt, punishment and immortality’. For Nietzsche, before Paul appeared, Epicurus had triumphed. Every respectable intellect in Rome was Epicurean. The Hellenistic philosophies promised not eternal life, as did Christianity, but the eternal recurrence of life, a future that was promised and made sacred in the past. True life was collective survival through reproduction and the mysteries of sexuality. The authentic, deep meaning in all ancient piety for the Greeks was the ultimate revered symbol of sexuality. Everything associated with pregnancy, birth, and the act of reproduction, awoke the highest and most festive feelings. ‘It was Christianity, on the basis of its ressentiment against life, that first made something unclean out of sexuality: it threw filth on the beginning, on the prerequisite of our life.’ And it is Saint Paul again who must take the credit for originating the notion of fornication as unclean in his first epistle to the Thessalonians, the earliest of the New Testament texts:  

‘For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from unchastity; that each one of you know how to take a wife for himself in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like heathen who do not know God; that no man transgress, and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we solemnly forewarned you. For God has not called us for uncleanness, but in holiness.’

To return to Christian asceticism in it's most extreme and unhealthy form, it is necessary to contrast Paul's brand of asceticism with that of the Cynics in order to address some of the questions I posed earlier. One legacy of Pauline Christianity was the strict celibacy and mistrust of women (or rather mistrust of men's own desires for women) carried forward into the monastic life of the Middle Ages. Unlike the Cynics, these devout holy men felt that they could no longer practice in cities, seeking out instead the solitude of remote places. The Desert Fathers were the first hermit monks from whom collectives of monks, or monasteries, would start developing across Europe. The third century A.D. found many of these holy men (and some celibate holy women) living in remote parts of the deserts of Egypt, Palestine and Syria. A fuller description of the lives and practices of the Desert Fathers can be found on my post, 'Christian Asceticism and the Demonisation of Woman', from which the following first hand description by Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria from 325-373, is taken as an example. He tells how Anthony, credited as the 'father' of dessert monasticism, was daily set on by the demons to dissuade him from his holy mission. The devil himself warns the monk, “how difficult it is to attain the goal of virtue and the very hard work involved in achieving it”. In Anthony’s case, the devil would nightly appear to him in his small cell in the form of a beautiful woman, ‘omitting no detail that might provoke lascivious thoughts, but Anthony called to the mind the fiery punishment of hell and the torment inflicted by worms: in this way he resisted the onslaught of lust.’

That goddess worship in Ancient Greece and Rome, and the celebration of everything connected with fertility and the mysteries of reproduction, would be replaced in a couple of centuries by fear and loathing of women on such a scale, was an unparalleled triumph of marketing by Paul, that continues to the present day. And to illustrate just how determined and savage were Paul's successors in their mission of demonising women, I provide two further examples. The first of these comes from the early Christian writer Tertullian (circa 160 – 225 A.D.):

‘Do you not realize that Eve is you? The curse God pronounced on your sex weighs still on the world. Guilty, you must bear its hardships. You are the devil’s gateway, you desecrated the fatal tree, you first betrayed the law of God, you who softened up with your cajoling words the man against whom the devil could not prevail by force. The image of God, the man Adam, you broke him, it was child's play to you. You deserved death, and it was the son of God who had to die.’   

Poor Adam! Of course, he had no chance against such devilish cunning. The lust and desire of man is born out of the womb, contaminated by the evil that is woman. ‘Woman is the cause of the Fall, the wicked temptress, the accomplice of Satan, and destroyer of mankind.’ For the sins of Eve, woman is condemned to the pangs of childbirth and the curse of menstruation. And yet, in case man still finds himself too weak to to resist her charms, Saint John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople from 347–407 A.D., provides some additional words of deterrent:

‘The whole of her bodily beauty is nothing less that the phlegm, blood, bile, rheum, and the fluid of digested food . . . If you consider what is stored up behind those lovely eyes, the angle of the nose, the mouth and cheeks you will agree that the well-proportioned body is merely a whitened sepulchre.’

Saint Augustine (354–430 A.D.) completed the causal chain between the sinfulness of sex, the virgin birth, and the good of virginity. The final irony of Christianity’s demonisation of women, was to create a female icon to which no ‘real’ woman could aspire. By means of the immaculate conception, Mary was able to give birth to the infant Christ, free from the contamination of sexual desire, and thus, break the chain of ‘original sin’ which the temptress Eve had effected in the Garden of Eden. The rest of woman kind were left to languish in the shadow of her glory. This hatred of women reached its grizzly climax in the witch hunts that started in 1454 (before the start of the Reformation) and ended in 1782 when the last witch was ‘officially’ executed in Poland. No other culture or civilisation in history had ever set out to systematically torture and murder (in the millions by some accounts) its own women in such a way. 

The virtue of the Desert Fathers was not the virtue sought either by Jesus or the Cynics, whose asceticism was aimed at living a simple life free from unnatural, not natural, desires. In the case of Jesus, there is no evidence that unnatural desires included fornication. If Diogenes preferred masturbation as a way to relieve his sexual appetites, it was because he was in control of when and where to attend to his needs, other Cynics, such as Crates, appear to have had a very active sex life indeed. Not so with these holy men, whose asceticism seems to have been dominated by the need to resist carnal temptations at all costs and avoid eternal damnation. Only one real opportunity has presented itself in the last 2,000 years for a rejection of Christianity and return to glories of the ancient world, but the Renaissance collapsed because alongside the reawakening of the love of life, developed a hedonistic excess of life. Neither did the Enlightenment and the advance of scientific discovery deliver on promises for a better world; quite the contrary. Science has been responsible for as many catastrophes as it has successes, whether military, medical or ecological. 

Conclusion

And so, in answer to one of the questions I posed earlier, it would seem that human beings themselves are the problem. The majority of us would seem to prefer chasing illusions than dealing with the reality of the natural world around us: continually staring skyward for meaning, as did Icarus, rather than at what exists right under our noses. A possible reason that Cynicism did not flourish may be that in addition to it's harsh lifestyle, it reinforced our human limitations, flaws and failures. Essentially, we are an arrogant animal, who rather needs to believe in our virtues, omnipotence and indestructibility, whether the Christian promise of a reward in heaven, or scientists' obsession with understanding, categorising and controlling the natural world. All the while, we humans—through our misguided belief that the world can be shaped to our will—continue to create the very chaos and disorder that we seek to control. That the two candidates for the impending US presidential election in 2012, facing some of the biggest challenges in the world today, both refer to their belief in God as one of their primary credentials for election, should be proof enough that modern politics in the US is bankrupt. 

That over 50% of Americans—the most powerful and fanatically Christian society in the West—oppose universal healthcare in their country because they object to contributing towards a more equal and caring society, is symptomatic of everything that is wrong with the capitalist project—and it would seem, the basest example of the perversion of Christianity. The arrogance and, at the same time, vulnerability of this nation—decaying as it is from the inside out—is it's child-like belief that it represents a model of democracy and assumes a self-appointed role as guardian of the planet. The tragedy is, that what could have been a paragon of cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism in the modern world, a virtual Noah's Ark of the strongest and most resourceful representatives of humans from across the globe, degenerated into Christian mediocrity and a nation divided by greed and selfishness. The tramp scares of the depression eras in America, in which thousands of disenfranchised citizens rejected main stream society and took to tramping as an alternative life style, may yet return to haunt America in an entirely unpredictable form, and on an even more unprecedented scale.

What will it take to convince humankind, that religion, science and capitalism have all failed to deliver on promises of a better world, while the rich and powerful—depending as they do on the existence of an underclass to maintain their advantage—cling desperately to their privileged life styles? The answer is, of course, that human nature is human nature, and has not changed for millennia. We do not carry forward wisdom from one generation to the next, because wisdom dies with each passing generation. The most abused of all adages, that we learn from our mistakes, is the greatest myth of all. For all the posturing and handwringing, greed will always prevail, and the best of belief-systems will always be corrupted to serve selfish and powerful interests. As for the silent majority, they will continue to believe the illusions that priests and politicians peddle—because not to, is an altogether depressing alternative. Cynicism failed for precisely this reason. And Christianity continues to flourish because it offers 'hope'—even if, as Nietzsche observed, it delivers nothing.

But Cynicism cannot, and does not, claim to provide and alternative 'system'. All it can do is hold up a mirror to human arrogance and pretension, inviting us to see the naked truth behind grand deceptions—a truth that most of us would prefer to remain blind and deaf to. Neither is asceticism, of itself, the answer. That we should all live an aesthetic, tramping lifestyle, or go off and live in a barrel like Diogenes, is not an option. That some of us though, cannot, or refuse to, any longer tolerate the stress and disenchantment of mainstream society, and choose instead an ascetic lifestyle, is perfectly understandable. It is certainly preferable to allowing the stress of modern life to pathologise us, leaving us at the mercy of psychiatrists and therapists; those guardians of normal human behaviour. 

In understanding the need to tramp, a reevaluation of the philosophy of Cynicism, and the Cynics brand of asceticism, is a useful starting place—to reconnect with the natural rather than the supernatural world. If nothing else, Cynicism represents a personal strategy for surviving in a hostile world. That is, those periods in history, like our current crisis, when society becomes morally bankrupt, and social and political vacuums leave ordinary people feeling alienated and abandoned. Although I intend to explore many other reasons why people may resort to tramping in future posts, this response to a feeling of abandonment; provoking a search for a simpler more meaningful life, must be at the core of the tramp's determination; and behind whose ragged appearance may well lurk a superior intellect.

I gave the first words, and I leave the last words, to tramp essayist and novelist Stephen Graham, this time from A Tramps Sketches. As though to illustrate just how little we progress civilisation, Graham's comments on 'commercialism', published exactly 100 years ago, could easily have been written yesterday:

‘The question remains, "Who is the tramp?" ... He is necessarily a masked figure; he wears the disguise of one who has escaped, and also of one who is a conspirator. ... He is the walking hermit, the world-forsaker, but he is above all things a rebel and a prophet, and he stands in very distinct relation to the life of his time.

     The great fact of the human world to-day is the tremendous commercial machine which is grinding out at a marvellous acceleration the smaller and meaner sort of man, the middle class, the average man, "the damned, compact, liberal majority," to use the words of Ibsen ... But over and against the commercial machine stand the rebels, the defiers of it, those who wish to limit its power, to redeem some of the slaves ... Commercialism is at present the great enemy of the individual man.’

A Philosophy of Tramping — Introduction

The notes of this post provided background material for the introduction of

The Lives and Extraordinary Adventures of Fifteen

Tramp Writers from the Golden Age of Vagabondage

Published by Feral House February 2020

‘What made the vagabond so terrifying was his apparent freedom to move and so to escape the net of the previously locally based control. Worse than that, the movements of the vagabond were unpredictable; unlike the pilgrim or, for that matter, a nomad, the vagabond has no set destination. You do not know where he will move next, because he himself does not know or care much.’

Zygmunt Bauman, Life in Fragments: Essays in Postmodern Morality

Bauman has identified an age old distrust of tramping, a suspicion that can be traced back centuries to fears of wandering strangers, escaped slaves and runaway servants. The periods in history when numbers of homeless and jobless drifters swelled to epidemic proportions, mirror the enactment of various vagrancy laws in both Europe and the New World; fuelled as they were by a perceived threat of idleness in the population and breakdown of the social order. One of the earliest such laws in Britain dates back to 1349 following the 'black death', others followed prolonged military campaigns, such as the Napoleonic Wars in Europe which gave rise to the 1824 Vagrancy Act in England and Wales, and the ‘tramp scare’ following the American Civil War which triggered 'Tramp Acts' in many states (and also 'Black Codes' in the South to control freed slaves). Former soldiers (used to a harsh outdoor life, long marches and little thought of anything but their immediate needs) joined other economic migrants, and also those who adopted tramping as an alternative lifestyle choice. Parallel crises can be traced back to ancient times. Following a great gathering of Cynics from all parts of the Greek-speaking world at the Olympic games in 167 A.D., it was reported that many of the humbler classes in Rome and Alexandria were ‘turning Cynic’ in such numbers that alarm was expressed at the prospect of work being brought to a standstill.

As part of this project I will be crediting Cynicism (which emerged 600 years before the Cynic scare of 2nd century A.D.) as the first organised 'movement' of tramping as a positive lifestyle choice. But for now, I will stay with the negative portrayal of the tramp, well illustrated by the long list of (mainly) pejorative terms below:

Beggar
Bindlestiff
Boomer
Bum
Derelict

Dingbat
Down-and-out
Drifter

Floater
Flopper
Gonsil

Hobo

Indigent

Itinerant
Jocker
Jungle Buzzard

Landloper

Loafer

Mendicant
Moocher
Padder
Panhandler

Peripatetic

Piker

Plinger
Postman

Punk 

Rambler

Ranger

Roamer

Rover

Scatterling
Shellback
Shuttler
Stewbum

Stiff

Stroller

Tatterdemalion

Tramp

Transient

Traveller

Vagabond

Vagrant

Wanderer

Wandering Willy

Wayfarer
Wheeler

Wobbly

and, less frequently but more affectionately, Gentleman or Knights of the Road, and the British tramps designation for each other, Sons of Rest

Ben Reitman (1879–1943)

Many attempts have been made to classify these terms, most of which, in any case, have several meanings. The most frequently quoted, is the work of former hobo and radical activist Dr. Ben Reitman, husband of the anarchist Emma Goldman—at a time when sociology's obsession with classification had reached absurd proportions. In Reitman's study of women tramps, Sister of the Road: The Autobiography of Box-Car Bertha, he provides an appendix with over 30 pages classifying women tramps alone. Reitman started riding trains as a hobo from the age of 12 after being abandoned by his Jewish immigrant father. He later qualified as a medical doctor but continued to work with Chicago's burgeoning hobo community, and also with the prostitutes enticed there by the parallel local economy (hobos returning to the city from other parts of the Mid-West spent significant sums of money from transient work harvesting, logging, mining, construction, etc.). Reitman was also an early advocate of birth control and abortion for which he received a six month jail sentence. The title of the book from which the passage below is taken, provides adequate testimony to Reitman’s achievements: The Damndest Radical: The Life and World of Ben Reitman, Chicago's Celebrated Social Reformer, Hobo King, and Whorehouse Physician. In his role as a sociologist, Reitman classified vagrancy into three main divisions:

'A tramp is a man who doesn't work, who apparently doesn't want to work, who lives without working and who is constantly travelling. A hobo is a non-skilled, non employed laborer without money, looking for work. A bum is a man who hangs around a low class saloon and begs or earns a few pennies a day in order to obtain drink. He is usually inebriate.'

One time hobo and Chicago sociologist, Nels Anderson, was even more obsessed with classifying tramps. One such study he commissioned (from tramps themselves), included five main divisions, with 30 subdivisions, further subdivided again. Although in this case, women are thrown in as a subdivision of 'Other Classes' along with Cripples, Stew Bums, Spongers, and Old Men; and, unlike Reitman's 30 page appendix of women tramps, only further subdivided into three: prostitutes, dope fiends and drunks, and mental defectives. Fascinating as these studies may be, they are not particularly helpful to the work in progress here. Tramps Reitman and Anderson may have been, but my own definition of tramping defies such narrow definitions, deliberately avoiding 'scientific' explanations of the phenomena. The available literature on tramping, including books written by actual and self-proclaimed tramps, is surprisingly rich and abundant. However, partly due to the coincidence of Chicago becoming a hobo mecca at the turn of the last century, and the birth of the Chicago School of Sociology (responsible for popularising 'urban sociology' as specific research area), most of the non-fictional works on tramping from the time do tend to concentrate on socio-political and historical investigations and 'facts', rather than get underneath the very essence of tramping itself. For this reason, much of this work in progress will revolve around the scores of fascinating characters, real and imagined, that make up the history of tramping from ancient times to the present day.

So who will be included in this study of tramping? I do not rule out the itinerant worker (one definition of the hobo) where this mode of existence is a lifestyle choice rather than purely an economic necessity. Neither is my own definition of tramping confined to walking. The call of the road, the view around the next bend or hill, the need to put distance between one's narrow provincial surroundings and succumb to the lure of the unfamiliar and the exotic, is timeless and compelling. And if the means to satisfy wanderlust involves hitching a ride in an automobile, jumping a train, or stowing away on a ship, one is no less a tramp for that. Then again, we are all familiar with our local wayfarer who pounds the same streets day after day, a creature of habit whose dominion is the local neighbourhood; he or she is just as much a monarch of the road as those who tramp further afield. And, like some of Beckett's tramps, one can even tramp in one's imagination from a bed or other confined space. Also like Beckett, many writers choose to tramp in the pages of books, as I intend to do here. At this stage of my philosophy of tramping then, I reserve the right not to categorise or provide a precise definition of this genus of human; a meaning that will hopefully become clearer as my research progresses.

Radio Times 1958 illustration for Beckett's Malone Dies

We have adapted more than any other animal to survive as a species. It's what makes us human. But our explosion in numbers means that, for most of us at least, we have had to abandon our genetically programmed role as hunter gatherers to live in vast metroplexes, governed by increasingly complex systems of laws and conventions in an attempt to impose order and control out of what should be a natural state of chaos and caprice. In the urban landscapes of North America, the domestication of human life has reached such a state of evolution, that walking in the suburban sprawl, much of it too scattered and dispersed to make public transport viable, has long since given way to the exclusive use of the automobile as the only acceptable means of perambulation. Rebecca Solnit in Wanderlust: A History of Walking describes how more than 1,000 pedestrian crossings were removed in California, quoting an announcement from LA planners in the 1960s that, 'The pedestrian remains the largest single obstacle to free traffic movement'. And in New York, Solnit describes the scenario where then mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, ordered police to start citing jaywalkers and fenced off sidewalks in some of the busiest areas of the city. But it was wannabe hobo and beat poet Jack Kerouac who first observed modern America’s intolerance to tramping in an essay he wrote in the 1950s, The Vanishing American Hobo. He noted that the aggressive implementation of vagrancy laws, backed up by intensive police surveillance, including the use of helicopters, meant that ‘you cant even be alone anymore in the primitive wilderness’:

‘In America camping is considered a healthy sport for Boy Scouts but a crime for mature men who have made it their vocation. — Poverty is considered a virtue among the monks of civilized nations—in America you spend a night in the calaboose if youre caught short without your vagrancy change. […] They pick on lovers on the beach even. They just dont know what to do with themselves in those five thousand dollar police cars with the two-way Dick Tracy radios except pick on anything that moves in the night and in the daytime on anything that seems to be moving independently of gasoline …’

And so in spite of the current hysteria over carbon emissions and damage to the the environment, there is a much deeper panic about tramping; which explains the continued paranoia about the pedestrian in America today—and all this in a nation built by tramps! But if tramping was tough for Kerouac's hobos, how much tougher nowadays for the tramp with the ubiquitous CCTV and electronic databases that analyse even our shopping habits. To remain under the radar today requires no little skill; not just the absence of a registered address but also foregoing welfare payments, health care and brushes with the law. By way of introduction to this philosophy, a useful starting point is to make some further comparisons between the Cynics and the rise and fall of hobohemia in America, before going on to acknowledge the modern cynic philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's contribution to tramping, and my own motives for writing this philosophy.

A chance combination of three major events heralded a golden age of tramping in America (and also in Canada which is less reported): the end of the American Civil War, the development of the railways, and the financial crash of 1873. At the end of the Civil War in 1865, thousands of former soldiers, well used to an outdoor life and tramping, now found themselves homeless and certainly ill prepared for the domestic responsibilities of home and civic life. With the first transcontinental railroad opening in 1869, followed by the first of a series of catastrophic international financial crashes and associated 'depressions' (1873, 1893 and 1930), it is not surprising that, through choice or necessity, large numbers were thrown into, and maintained, a transient life, forced to roam the continent, surviving on whatever resources came to hand. This episode of tramp history alone could occupy several ‘chapters’ of this work but is already comprehensively reported in two major studies (that were published, coincidentally, two years apart): Tim Cresswell's The Tramp in America (2001) and Todd DePastino's Citizen Hobo: how a century of homelessness shaped America (2003). Both DePastino and Cresswell drew from numerous first hand studies and accounts of tramping, many by former hobos.

Between 1870 and America's involvement in World War II at the end of 1941 (which provided a distraction and alternative occupation to many former hobos) tramping developed into a significant parallel culture, one that was about more than simply homelessness and joblessness. From the mainly white male hobos of the late 1800s, through the organised political tramp movements, black, latino and chinese work gangs, 'Okie' migrant families of the dustbowl era, to the 'skid row' bum between the two World Wars, what emerged for thousands of individuals caught up in the depressions (aside from simply meeting the basic need for food and shelter) was a philosophy and way of life for those alienated from, and dispossessed by, the rest of society—a society drunk on the capitalist dream.

DePastino notes that in a 1930s census, Nels Anderson, put the population of those sleeping in public shelters and out of doors in America at 1.5 million, and this excluded the millions more sleeping in cheap boarding houses. Periodically gathering together for relief in the major cities of America, with Chicago as its cultural and entertainment capital, the hobo created urban centres of their own with up to 75,000 in Chicago's 'main stem' (an area centred for half a mile in every direction around West Madison Street). This city within a city included cheap saloons, restaurants, flophouses, whorehouses, gambling dens, clothing, cigar and drug stores, but also bookstores, theatres, missions and meeting halls; providing evidence that the tramp army included those from cultured as well as the labouring classes. Indeed, these tramp cities also became a regular destination for those seeking temporary thrills and escape from mainstream society. Before drawing some parallels between the American hobo and the ancient Cynics, I will mention one further hobo statistic that both stayed with and disturbed me. DePastino reports that during the five year period from 1901 to 1905 alone, nearly 25,000 hobos lost their lives, and many more suffered horrific injuries, riding the trains. Not only from jumping into moving boxcars, but riding on the roofs, couplings and, most dangerously, on the rods beneath the carriages. One such victim, fortunate to escape jumping a train with the loss of only a foot, was the Welsh author of The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, W.H. Davies, who I will discuss in a future post. In spite of the well understood risks of riding the trains without buying a ticket (and Davies actually did have more than sufficient money at the time, which in the event was spent on doctors bills instead), many who rode the trains describe an exhilaration and freedom in tramping that was addictive, even when personal circumstances meant it was no longer a necessity.

Trains aside (although the Cynics would no doubt have ridden trains had they been available) there are clear parallels between hobohemia and ancient Cynicism. As with Chicago's main stem, the Cynosarges, a gymnasium and temple dedicated to the worship of Hercules (proto-cynic and mythical tramp par excellence) just outside the ancient walls of Athens, became a regular gathering place, not only for Cynics but others who felt exiled within their own community. A law passed in the fifth century B.C. prohibited 'bastards' (defined in Athenian law as including anyone with an Athenian father but whose mother was a slave, a prostitute, or a foreigner, as well as those whose parents were not legally married citizens) from exercising in the gymnasiums, but for some reason this law did not extend to the Cynosarges. It thus became a regular gathering place, not only for official bastards, but also 'self-proclaimed bastards', a definition of which (from Luis E. Navia's Classical Cynicism: a critical study) provides a description that could equally apply to the hobo: ‘men and women who were or felt illegitimate and foreign everywhere, and who lived ill at ease within the established civic community’. A major distinction, though, between ancient Greece of 300 B.C. and America of the late 19th century, was the way in which these two different societies regarded the tramp. Both cultures shared some cosmopolitan features and also multi-ethnic populations, yet, unlike America, ancient Greece showed a tolerance to tramping not enjoyed by the hobo. So much so, that Alexander the Great showed a respect and admiration for Diogenes’ lifestyle, even when the Cynic showed contempt for the king’s interest in him by asking him to stand out of his light while sunbathing in a public park.

It is interesting to note that, although both hobos and Cynics distanced themselves ideologically from mainstream society, both claimed the city streets as their natural habitat, scavenging out an existence like stray dogs (see earlier post) on the margins of 'civilised' human activity; a society that the tramp views in turn as imprisoned by their own possessions. The term cynic is derived from the Greek kynicos, adjectival form of the noun for dog, and is a literal reference to the dog-like appearance and behaviour of the followers of this sect: fornicating and defecating in public, scavenging for scraps of food, etc. Where others used it to deride the Cynics, they themselves embraced the term as a positive choice of lifestyle. Unencumbered by what they regard as the trifles of civilised society, hobos and Cynics were free to claim their own sovereignty of the city streets. It might be the cosmopolitan nature of cities that provides the attraction, or it might be the ability to more easily blend into the landscape, or, it might be the greater mobility that cities provide; these are questions to be exported further. Either way, tramps were easy targets on the move between larger centres of population and it would have been natural, even for those who preferred solitude, to occasionally seek out the companionship and security of other tramps, particularly when the need for food, shelter, security or rest became critical. And so although homelessness is a central feature of tramping, the need for habitation, to claim dominion (often illegally) over some dispossessed scrap of terrain, whether it be Diogenes in his barrel, an abandoned doorway, a cardboard box in an underpass, or the hobo 'jungles' and 'main stems' of America at the turn of the last century, remains a fundamental human need, even for the tramp.

How and why those who chose an aesthetic lifestyle became objects of fear and loathing will be explored further in future posts, but it is worth noting that, paradoxically, one such aesthetic, Jesus of Nazareth, remains the spiritual leader to millions of conventional hobophobic Americans who have forgotten his mortal tramping beginnings and worship him today as a deity. The hypochrisy between what Jesus originally stood for and the mischief carried out in his name, was noted by Friedrich Nietzsche (N. as a cynic philosopher) in Germany, at the very same time that hobos were being persecuted across America. Nietzsche well understood the way that morality had been used throughout history as the justification for the tyranny that human inflicted upon human; carried along under the banner of improving and enlightening peoples. And Nietzsche expressed just how much he thought humankind had lost their way when he argued that: ‘As a moral code it [Christianity] produces dull, static and conformist societies that dampen down human potential and achievement.’ It may have been just such a social vacuum in late 19^th and early 20^th century America that the tramp army filled; a demand for a simpler, more meaningful way of life.

Expounding the virtues of tramping and the deceit of Christianity with equal vigour (N. as antichrist), Nietzsche was greatly influenced by the Cynics as his sister Elizabeth confirms: 'There is no doubt that . . . my brother tried a little bit to imitate Diogenes in the tub; he wanted to find out with how little could a philosopher do.' This imitation can be seen in Nietzsche's obsession with self-discipline and testing himself against the elements. Living on his meagre pension, Nietzsche embraced the minimum necessary for life as a strategy for survival. The tiny rented room where he lived and worked in the Swiss alpine village of Sils-Maria, devoid of decoration or comfort, has parallels with Diogenes tub. His typical day would start at five in the morning where he would write in his room until midday before tramping up the surrounding peaks, eventually retiring early to bed after a snack of bread and ham or egg alone in his room. An examination of Nietzsche’s work reveals many examples of this testing himself against the elements, raging against comfort in all its manifestations: physical, intellectual, and moral. But further credentials as a tramp philosopher come from his cosmopolitan convictions and rejection of German culture and religion. The following lines from Thoughts out of Season, Part II, underscore what are a central motif of this blog, and motivation for the true tramping spirit: 'Why cling to your bit of earth, or your little business, or listen to what your neighbour says? It is so provincial to bind oneself to views which are no longer binding a couple of hundred miles away.'

 I must now confess to my own yearnings, and the conflict I've always felt between the pull of the wild and that of the metropolis. Perhaps it was genetically programmed in me long ago. My mother arrived in the UK on the kindertransport; a comfortable middle class life in Vienna cut short by Hitler's dream of creating an empire of übermenschen. My father lied about his age to join the army and escape a harsh rural life in Dorset as son of a farm labourer and servant in a large house. So, I have both the city and the country in my veins, am drawn to both, but still harbour a nostalgia for a place that only exists in my imagination. Although born and raised in the UK, I have never 'felt' or identified myself as British, always yearning for this other place. As a child on my father's small farm, I vividly remember lying in a field on my back staring up at the clouds and wishing myself riding above them to some far off exotic location. By the age of nineteen, I had managed to leave British shores for the first time, staring out of an airplane window in wonder at being above the clouds at last. I was on route to Northern Zambia where I had managed to get myself a job as an agricultural research assistant. Not a choice of destination, just the most alien place to offer itself to me at the time. A typical month would be driving 100 miles or more, setting up a base camp, and then driving each day to a previously determined  spot on a map from where, guided only by a compass, we would walk up to thirty miles a day through largely uninhibited forests and grassland, taking samples of soil for analysis along the way. The pattern was three weeks solid work, Saturdays and Sundays included, and then back to town for a week off and my monthly pay cheque—most of which was spent in the township beer halls—then back to work broke and hungover but glad for another three weeks of tramping in the wilderness. There were many memorable adventures during the two years I spent away, but my fondest memories were those existential moments; such as the time we came across a herd of hippopotamus in a wide stretch of river and sat on the bank for hours enjoying the performance. I remember thinking, if I could come back to earth as any animal, it would have to be a hippo. My first two years abroad were a life affirming experience, one that changed my perspective of the world. The culture shock was not arriving as a teenager in Africa to an explosion of the senses from heat, smells, tastes and vivid colours that surpassed my expectations; it was returning to a grey dismal Britain two years later that I found impossible to adjust to. A further trip to Africa some years later (hitchhiking the 700 miles from Dar-es-salaam to Kasama in Northern Zambia, being arrested on trumped up terrorist charges, saved only by the fact that at the time I was staying in the house of the local mayor's daughter), trips across North America, the Middle East and Europe, then later working in the Honduran Rain forest in Central America, including a trip to the Bay Islands (legendary hideout of Morgan the Pirate), did not quell my wanderlust. But, paradoxically, there has also always been a side of me that appreciates the comforts, privileges and relative security of a comfortable, middle class life in the West; something to take seriously when bringing up a family, as tramping is of necessity an occupation for those with responsibilities only to themself. I still love to travel, and am off shortly with my wife for a nine week spell of recreational tramping and writing in the mountain region North West of Madrid. We have both adopted the life of literary tramps since my retirement and our children's first adult steps into the world.

As discussed in my Preface to this work, unlike writing a conventional book where the thesis is already established and the introduction may well be penned at the end of the work, I intend this blog to follow a journey of discovery (not unlike the journey of the tramp) allowing me to go wherever the fancy takes me, and gain enlightenment and disappointment along the way. Neither will this philosophy of tramping be chronological in time; some posts will concentrate on an individual character, others on a particular theme such as abjection or cosmopolitanism. Maybe every post will be an introduction to an elusive destination, that is a risk I take—I won't know until I get there, wherever there is. I have not even read or purchased most of the books I intend to use for my research and many others will emerge as a result of further reading. Also, given the potentially interactive platform on which I write, I have the hope that others will contribute ideas, suggestions, even their own stories, adding richness and energy to the text.

And, why am I calling this work a philosophy? The branch of knowledge we describe as 'philosophy' in the West, was hijacked by Plato, Aristotle and their successors from the view of the world held by Socrates, and further embraced by the ancient Cynics, over 2,000 ago. Until Plato introduced scientific logic based on first principals (the view that still dominates in the West today), the human world was explained either through gods and other myths, or in the way that ‘lower animals’ experience their world: received, or felt, through the senses rather than intellectual and scientific reasoning. That most genuine tramps and cynics veer towards this more existential view of the world—choose to experience and feel what is important in life, rather than write or read scientific theories on the subject—is why I have chosen to refer to this work in progress as a philosophy; to claim the term back from those who would make the study of the subject something exclusive to academicians. 

Of course, without science I would not be able to write on this website, but would what I write be any different if I penned it on a piece of papyrus? Then there are the claims made of all the lives saved by medical science, but how many lives are lost and ruined by medicine? It is more likely today that the human race will be wiped out by our interference with micro-organisms, enabling them to mutate and cross the species barrier (Lassa, Rift Valley Fever, the Ebola virus, antibiotic resistance, and of course AIDS; of which an estimated fifteen million people had died by the end of the last millennium) than natural disasters, even global warming. The ability of bacteria and viruses to mutate into ever more deadly strains is much faster than the ability of scientists to control them. Such is the arrogance of scientists. End of digression on medical science.

My definition of tramps; what distinguishes them from the rest of human kind, what drives them to abandon 'civilisation', is not helped by the long list of terms provided above, and may never be defined precisely. It is my hope though, that a clearer interpretation will emerge from the writings of this blog. What I can do, is to identify some further questions that need to be asked. Does the tramp, for instance, feel exiled from their own communities or do they feel, as Nietzsche suspected, that it is the rest of us who have lost touch with what it is to be human in our quest for some higher moral purpose? It would not be surprising then, if some of those who chose a tramping lifestyle did so from their own moral sense of purpose, a rejection of wider society's misguided morality, that the tramp finds difficult to reconcile with. But is there also a part of the tramp that perhaps wants to belong? Does he or she feel envy for the metaphysically innocent: those for whom slavery to a tribe, a religion or a state is a source of pride? Or is the tramp above such inconsequential preoccupations? Do they, like the Cynic, regard themselves 'citizens of the world', free to roam wherever they feel the fancy, adopting any customs and habits that suit their needs? Is a tramp born a tramp, through some endogenous but unexplainable sense of 'not belonging'? Or conversely, 'belonging' to the world in a different way to his or her fellows; is it something the tramp actually chooses to feel at all?

Perhaps the tramp, like the Cynic Crates, has a sense of a 'republic', but one not restricted to a geographical place, an ethnic group, religious or cultural traditions, a republic without boundaries or social distinctions. The tramp fully accepts the risks that such a lifestyle brings, but whether or not this is motivated by any external 'cause', especially political, is not at all certain. Nevertheless, the tramp would seem to live out their apparently existential existence, in most cases, without the sermonising or sentimentality one associates with some others who choose 'alternative' lifestyles, such as the hippy or new age traveller. Even the Cynics, who did engage in an exhortation of sorts, practised 'anti-philosophy' rather than an alternative ideology; they stood against what they saw as human arrogance and hypocrisy but offered no alternative belief system to put in its place. Neither did they seek to persuade others to join their 'movement'. One feature of tramping, however, unites all of the disparate characters discussed in this introduction. Asceticism is the lifestyle choice of the tramp, whether hobo, ancient sage, 'son of God', or university professor. It is a position sought in direct contradiction to those who regard the acquisition of money and possessions as the key to a better life. The ascetic's belief that 'freedom from unhappiness' (a more realistic goal than 'happiness') is more attainable through independence from material desires than striving to fulfill them. But I will resist the temptation to expand further on these concepts here and write about them more comprehensively in my next post.

I opened this introduction with Bauman's description of the tramp's impact on the rest of human kind. I close with Beckett's description of just what it means for the tramp to survive the alien world that human's have created—a description that says more in three lines than I have managed to convey here in 11 pages.

And a little less well endowed with strength and courage he too would have abandoned and despaired of ever knowing what manner of being he was, and how he was going to live, and lived vanquished, blindly, in a mad world, in the midst of strangers. (Trilogy, 1994: 193)