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I've been pondering on modern-day survival lately. And minimalism. Whereas our primal ancestors had to risk getting eaten by some carnivore in the Savannah or contract some horrid disease from contact with mosquitoes, we must network and intern, climbing the - not always corporate - ladder. Could one argue that this is an improvement, as well as a higher standard of living which we have accomplished after scores of thousands of years? Yes, definitely. We are no longer competing for the necessities. But wait, aren't we? After all, money and social connections are a medium between the necessities - food, drink, shelter, etc. This is not a new argument

For some odd reason, I'd prefer foraging and hunting to networking, interviewing, and interning. Yesterday, I made a nearly embarrassing faux paz when updating my Facebook status with the last stanza of Robert Frost's "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening". I interpreted the woods and the village to represent nature and society, respectively. The popular interpretation, supported by the dismal esteem of Mr. Frost during his tragic lifetime (and those around him) seem to suggest that he contemplated one of the darkest human acts: suicide - as revealed to me by some college friends. Having never read a biography of the famed American Pulitzer prize-winning poet, I always thought his disposition to be somewhat less like his contemporaries; more like his predecessors really - the transcendentalists. I was wrong - my genes sure make it hard for me to admit this, but my mind humbles my genes. Anyway, the woods/village metaphor that I interpreted differently... (perhaps we love to interpret things in such a way that we truly relate to the great minds of the past?) I connect with it now in such a fantastical way. I am at a loss for a solution toward this new form of survival that we were all thrown into. They call today the 'Information Age'. They call us crappy textbook terms like netizens. Alas, there is nothing we can do but update Twitter or steal bandwidth in Pete's. I am apart from this networking behavior in spirit but in body, I seem to act the exact opposite -

I need to give up my dreams in order to eat, drink, and at least have a 2-person apartment. Now, I'm not teetering on the edge of anarchy like Tyler Durden or Jack what's-his-name from Fight Club. Nor am I trying to go romantic and fantasizing living a purposeful life like Neo's, Morpheus', or Trinity's in The Matrix (godammn philosophy. Now I'm using a movie as a metaphor). But wait, correction: I've been conditioned to believe that I need to risk giving up my dreams in order to continuously eat, drink and at least have compromising living situation until what most people agree would be a "ripe old age". And some people used to say I thought too much. Well, the best and most humane writers did. Mother used to tell me to "pretend" and go along with the masquerade. Dance along. After all the ceremony, you're in a comfortable, structured living and working situation that's self-sustainable (with daily ceremony). We live in a strange, wonderful, painful, stimulating, and funny time. I'd laugh, but it's late and I laughed a lot today.