This is a good read and brings up a number of interesting points. It calls to mind a TV show I watched some of, I believe it was "Life Below Zero," which followed a bunch of folks living in the far North away from most civilization. Many of these folks took great pride in thinking they were somehow "more independent" from the rest of the world--except for the fact that they would have to take a trip in a small plane to stock up on supplies, or employ guns to hunt. I mean, they didn't build the plane from scratch, nor did they obtain and refine the fuel for it, nor did they build the guns from nothing, or obtain the gunpowder...and on and on. If anything, they were more reliant on the products of civilization that your average city dweller. It was farcical, but at least they believed it (and it seemed to make them happy).

I wonder how the idea of individual units comports with Neoplatonic theory, and the interplay of unity and multiplicity. In this schema, there is an inherent tendency to individuation throughout the universe, emanating from The One (the primal unity) and have its instantiation everywhere from the gods (immortal individuals) all the way down to us (mortal individuals). This process of descent, of individuation in the material, however, is part of an eventual apotheosis--as Alan Watts (himself not unfamiliar with Neoplatonism via Pseudo-Dionysius) characterizes it, the secret is the "you" are not really "you," but as an individual engaged in a cosmic game of masks, of emergence and return.

Anyway, good stuff. Axé,

Fra' Lupo