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The Utopia Experiment
The story of an experiment in human psychology that goes horribly wrong
Imagine you have survived an apocalypse. Civilization as you knew it is no more. What will life be like and how will you cope?
In 2006, Dylan Evans set out to answer these questions. He left his job in a high-tech robotics lab, moved to the Scottish Highlands and founded a community called The Utopia Experiment. There, together with an eclectic assortment of volunteers, he tried to live out a scenario of global collapse, free from modern technology and comforts.
Within a year, Evans found himself detained in a psychiatric hospital, shattered and depressed, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. In The Utopia Experiment he tells his own extraordinary story: his frenzied early enthusiasm for this unusual project, the many challenges of post-apocalyptic living, his descent into madness and his gradual recovery. In the process, he learns some hard lessons about himself and about life, and comes to see the modern world he abandoned in a new light.
Imagine you have survived an apocalypse. Civilization as you knew it is no more. What will life be like and how will you cope?
In 2006, Dylan Evans set out to answer these questions. He left his job in a high-tech robotics lab, moved to the Scottish Highlands and founded a community called The Utopia Experiment. There, together with an eclectic assortment of volunteers, he tried to live out a scenario of global collapse, free from modern technology and comforts.
Within a year, Evans found himself detained in a psychiatric hospital, shattered and depressed, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. In The Utopia Experiment he tells his own extraordinary story: his frenzied early enthusiasm for this unusual project, the many challenges of post-apocalyptic living, his descent into madness and his gradual recovery. In the process, he learns some hard lessons about himself and about life, and comes to see the modern world he abandoned in a new light.
225 pages, Paperback
First published February 12, 2015
42 people are currently reading
1051 people want to read
About the author
Dylan Evans
38 books78 followersDylan Evans is the founder of Projection Point, the global leader in risk intelligence solutions. He has written several popular science books, including Risk Intelligence: How to Live with Uncertainty (2012), Emotion: The Science of Sentiment (2001) and Placebo: The Belief Effect (2003), and in 2001 he was voted one of the twenty best young writers in Britain by the Independent on Sunday. He received a PhD in Philosophy from the London School of Economics in 2000, and has held academic appointments at King's College London, the University of Bath, the University of the West of England, and University College Cork, and the American University of Beirut.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 106 reviews
April 24, 2018
Mostly authors of memoirs like telling us what great people they are with really awesome ideas and achievements that they are sure we want to read about. This book is different, the author is writing a book to tell us just how wrong he was, albeit by reason of madness. If this sounds boring, jump to the juicy bit by searching for 'oral sex'.
From the very beginning of his Utopia Experiment - a group of people going back to nature and to self-sufficiency in case the dystopian nightmare he envisaged came to pass - people told him he was wrong, told him he had a God complex, but he wouldn't listen. Choosing the north of Scotland with its extremely miserable climate was kind of mad too. Why not be self-sufficient in the Caribbean? Lying on a beach under a coconut tree contemplating the infinity of the Milky Way beats huddling in a sleeping bag in a leaky yurt on a freezing winter's night.
The people who were enthusiastic about the author's Utopian Experiment were quite mad, and the author saw that. He just didn't see his own was as bad as the guy, divorced from society, who wanted to build an ark to sail on the rising waters from global warming (he only wanted pigs though, not two of everything. After all, as he put it, "the pigs will show the way",)
The author couldn't quite commit to his own project. He brought his girlfriend (whom he marries) and her child to a nearby rented cottage and spent lascivious nights topped off by a hot shower and cooked breakfast away from the rigors of home-made toothpaste and a communal toilet that was a bucket with layers of sawdust.
The wife gets fed up and finishes with him and the author loses his marbles completely and is committed to the local mental hospital. He has some understanding of this as he had been a psychoanalyst himself until he gave it up unsure if it was more damaging to his patients than healing. Quite a while later he emerges from the hospital with instructions to live a conventional life and not get involved with anyone for three years.
The author returns to the site of his Utopia, aware of his own insufficiencies but not his own unimportance in the scheme of things. He wants to tell people he doesn't believe in the Experiment any more and everyone must go home. But the place and the people have made a success of it without him. They don't need him any more, bye bye Dylan, you can slink away without guilt or anyone really even noticing you've gone. The experiment had been renamed Phoenix, a thriving commune of considerable self-sufficiency and apparently is still going today.
The author returned to his profession of artificial intelligence in robotics and risk intelligence but got into trouble. A female colleague brought a case of sexual harassment against him after he showed her (don't laugh, be pc about this please) an article on oral sex between (you are going to laugh) fruit bats! Some bats have really interesting sex lives, one male, lots of females and everyone going at it for what looks more like fun than breeding alone. Seriously, sexual harassment? He eventually got the courts to dismiss the university's harsh sanctions and condemn him only of the very mildest of minor sexual harassment.
But the life of a lecturer in various behavioural disciplines didn't take away from his yearning for the simpler life and he now lives on a ranch with his wife and horses in balmy Guatemala.
The author is definitely 5 star interesting, the book is 3 star, good but not great. but what a viewpoint! So that's an average of 4 stars.
From the very beginning of his Utopia Experiment - a group of people going back to nature and to self-sufficiency in case the dystopian nightmare he envisaged came to pass - people told him he was wrong, told him he had a God complex, but he wouldn't listen. Choosing the north of Scotland with its extremely miserable climate was kind of mad too. Why not be self-sufficient in the Caribbean? Lying on a beach under a coconut tree contemplating the infinity of the Milky Way beats huddling in a sleeping bag in a leaky yurt on a freezing winter's night.
The people who were enthusiastic about the author's Utopian Experiment were quite mad, and the author saw that. He just didn't see his own was as bad as the guy, divorced from society, who wanted to build an ark to sail on the rising waters from global warming (he only wanted pigs though, not two of everything. After all, as he put it, "the pigs will show the way",)
The author couldn't quite commit to his own project. He brought his girlfriend (whom he marries) and her child to a nearby rented cottage and spent lascivious nights topped off by a hot shower and cooked breakfast away from the rigors of home-made toothpaste and a communal toilet that was a bucket with layers of sawdust.
The wife gets fed up and finishes with him and the author loses his marbles completely and is committed to the local mental hospital. He has some understanding of this as he had been a psychoanalyst himself until he gave it up unsure if it was more damaging to his patients than healing. Quite a while later he emerges from the hospital with instructions to live a conventional life and not get involved with anyone for three years.
The author returns to the site of his Utopia, aware of his own insufficiencies but not his own unimportance in the scheme of things. He wants to tell people he doesn't believe in the Experiment any more and everyone must go home. But the place and the people have made a success of it without him. They don't need him any more, bye bye Dylan, you can slink away without guilt or anyone really even noticing you've gone. The experiment had been renamed Phoenix, a thriving commune of considerable self-sufficiency and apparently is still going today.
The author returned to his profession of artificial intelligence in robotics and risk intelligence but got into trouble. A female colleague brought a case of sexual harassment against him after he showed her (don't laugh, be pc about this please) an article on oral sex between (you are going to laugh) fruit bats! Some bats have really interesting sex lives, one male, lots of females and everyone going at it for what looks more like fun than breeding alone. Seriously, sexual harassment? He eventually got the courts to dismiss the university's harsh sanctions and condemn him only of the very mildest of minor sexual harassment.
But the life of a lecturer in various behavioural disciplines didn't take away from his yearning for the simpler life and he now lives on a ranch with his wife and horses in balmy Guatemala.
The author is definitely 5 star interesting, the book is 3 star, good but not great. but what a viewpoint! So that's an average of 4 stars.
April 26, 2015
I was going to say that this is the book which contains the most mentions of YURTS ever, but of course there’s always
I’m sure that one clocks up an even more impressive reading on the yurtometer. BUT THIS BOOK IS SECOND! It was one of those things like when you notice someone has a funny way of blinking or compulsively pulls at their left earlobe. Every two seconds…YURT! We built a YURT. Then we built another YURT. I intended to spend the winter in my YURT. I became concerned about the sogginess of my YURT. Your YURT looks so beautiful in the Scottish gloaming.
THE SONG OF DYLAN EVANS
I was never meant
To live in a tent
I do not care a damn
About your grotty wigwam
The idea of a teepee
Makes me kind of weepy
So pardon me for being curt
I intend to live in a Mongolian YURT!
YURTOPIA
So… Dylan Evans was an academic robotics researcher who decided that he wanted to conduct a real life experiment to see what would happen after civilisation collapsed, no electricity, no manufactured objects, living off the land, old stone age, cool. Like Walking Dead without zombies.
This was just the usual white male middle-class delusional fantasy which has spawned a million science fiction novels. Its half-heartedness and ambivalence mirrored that of its creator and the mild grimness of its grungy no-toilet-paper leaking-yurt daily-vegetable grind send Dylan into a mental tailspin which ended with a few weeks in a psychiatric institution, bemoaning the wreckage of his life.
I didn’t really have to sell my house to fund the experiment. I could have rented it out and moved back in after… with less money to blow on ill thought-out acquisitions that quickly fell into disuse I could probably have done the experiment for a fraction of what I eventually spent. Nor did I have to give up my job….
The concept was to inhabit a couple of acres of the Scottish highlands (one of the wettest parts of the globe) for 18 months only and advertise for temporary residents to come and participate.
He started off in a bipolar high:
More yurts would eventually spring up, and woodpiles, and rows of vegetables… our bodies would grow strong from the physical labour and our minds refreshed by the natural surroundings, far away from the cities we’d left behind.
Yes, more yurts! Yurts stretching all the way to the horizon!
Dylan seems not to have factored into his idyllic bliss-out the stress of vegetables. Anyway, a couple of gnarled ur-hippies join him in his yurtopia. One calls himself (no really!) Adam. One day he sits down with Adam
to figure out some basic rules for Utopia. But all I succeeded in doing was to open a can of worms.
One rule was about what to do about outside purchases.
We can’t just buy a crate of wine every week and tell ourselves that we keep finding well-stocked cellars in the abandoned farmhouses nearby.
This is of course the Walking Dead method of staying stylish – have you ever noticed their clothes? It’s like Rick and Daryl keep stumbling across Alexander McQueen and Paul Smith branches in the abandoned malls of rural Georgia.
OFF THE PIG
Now here’s a sentence you could have predicted:
It felt strange to be eating the animal we had cared for those past few months, and fed that very morning, but it was delicious, and the crackling melted in my mouth.
GOOD GOD, MAN, LOOK AT YOURSELF IN THE MIRROR!
In fact Dylan was a morass of psychological conflict from the get-go – some time after the beginning of the experiment he got his girlfriend to live in a nearby house so he could live both kinds of life at the same time – hot shower on Tuesdays and Sundays, cold yurts the rest of the time. At least, until they broke up. Dylan doesn’t say exactly what precipitated this, but it may have been something to do with his obsession with yurt-know-whats.
THE WORLD SHOWED NO SIGN OF ENDING THAT YEAR
Even though the year this all happened in was the year of the Great Capitalist Shitstorm (2007) Dylan gradually lost faith in the end of the world as we know it. He became able to see it for what it was:
Now, almost a year into the experiment, every trip to the supermarket felt like a betrayal. How valuable a simulation of life after the collapse of civilisation could it be, if we were still popping down to Tesco every week? … The whole experiment began to seem like a sham, an extended camping trip, a bunch of soft-skinned Westerners kidding themselves that they were hardy backwoodsmen
Oddly enough, as Dylan loses faith, his fellow utopians get more committed to the project. Beginning with three people, after a year there were usually between eight and twelve people working away at the vegetable gardens. The horror of Dylan’s self imposed situation became ever more palpable – what was he going to do after the 18 months? Now he has no job, no house, no girlfriend, no prospects. He's spent ALL his money from the house on funding this ridiculous excursion. He gets suicidal and checks himself in to the mental hospital.
RECOVERING FROM UTOPIA
He got better, slowly. More optimistic thoughts arose in his mind :
Given that everything will come to an end eventually, does it really matter if humanity lasts another million years rather than just another thousand? Since civilization is bound to collapse sooner or later, does it matter when?
Hmm, you don’t think that sounds like a man in recovery, gradually rebuilding his shattered life? Okay, try this :
Even if humans discover how to prolong their lives the universe will eventually unravel and freeze. And then there will be nothingness for ever and ever, and permanent darkness.
So, you know, cheer up! Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we go to Scotland and live in a yurt.
I’m sure that one clocks up an even more impressive reading on the yurtometer. BUT THIS BOOK IS SECOND! It was one of those things like when you notice someone has a funny way of blinking or compulsively pulls at their left earlobe. Every two seconds…YURT! We built a YURT. Then we built another YURT. I intended to spend the winter in my YURT. I became concerned about the sogginess of my YURT. Your YURT looks so beautiful in the Scottish gloaming.
THE SONG OF DYLAN EVANS
I was never meant
To live in a tent
I do not care a damn
About your grotty wigwam
The idea of a teepee
Makes me kind of weepy
So pardon me for being curt
I intend to live in a Mongolian YURT!
YURTOPIA
So… Dylan Evans was an academic robotics researcher who decided that he wanted to conduct a real life experiment to see what would happen after civilisation collapsed, no electricity, no manufactured objects, living off the land, old stone age, cool. Like Walking Dead without zombies.
This was just the usual white male middle-class delusional fantasy which has spawned a million science fiction novels. Its half-heartedness and ambivalence mirrored that of its creator and the mild grimness of its grungy no-toilet-paper leaking-yurt daily-vegetable grind send Dylan into a mental tailspin which ended with a few weeks in a psychiatric institution, bemoaning the wreckage of his life.
I didn’t really have to sell my house to fund the experiment. I could have rented it out and moved back in after… with less money to blow on ill thought-out acquisitions that quickly fell into disuse I could probably have done the experiment for a fraction of what I eventually spent. Nor did I have to give up my job….
The concept was to inhabit a couple of acres of the Scottish highlands (one of the wettest parts of the globe) for 18 months only and advertise for temporary residents to come and participate.
He started off in a bipolar high:
More yurts would eventually spring up, and woodpiles, and rows of vegetables… our bodies would grow strong from the physical labour and our minds refreshed by the natural surroundings, far away from the cities we’d left behind.
Yes, more yurts! Yurts stretching all the way to the horizon!
Dylan seems not to have factored into his idyllic bliss-out the stress of vegetables. Anyway, a couple of gnarled ur-hippies join him in his yurtopia. One calls himself (no really!) Adam. One day he sits down with Adam
to figure out some basic rules for Utopia. But all I succeeded in doing was to open a can of worms.
One rule was about what to do about outside purchases.
We can’t just buy a crate of wine every week and tell ourselves that we keep finding well-stocked cellars in the abandoned farmhouses nearby.
This is of course the Walking Dead method of staying stylish – have you ever noticed their clothes? It’s like Rick and Daryl keep stumbling across Alexander McQueen and Paul Smith branches in the abandoned malls of rural Georgia.
OFF THE PIG
Now here’s a sentence you could have predicted:
It felt strange to be eating the animal we had cared for those past few months, and fed that very morning, but it was delicious, and the crackling melted in my mouth.
GOOD GOD, MAN, LOOK AT YOURSELF IN THE MIRROR!
In fact Dylan was a morass of psychological conflict from the get-go – some time after the beginning of the experiment he got his girlfriend to live in a nearby house so he could live both kinds of life at the same time – hot shower on Tuesdays and Sundays, cold yurts the rest of the time. At least, until they broke up. Dylan doesn’t say exactly what precipitated this, but it may have been something to do with his obsession with yurt-know-whats.
THE WORLD SHOWED NO SIGN OF ENDING THAT YEAR
Even though the year this all happened in was the year of the Great Capitalist Shitstorm (2007) Dylan gradually lost faith in the end of the world as we know it. He became able to see it for what it was:
Now, almost a year into the experiment, every trip to the supermarket felt like a betrayal. How valuable a simulation of life after the collapse of civilisation could it be, if we were still popping down to Tesco every week? … The whole experiment began to seem like a sham, an extended camping trip, a bunch of soft-skinned Westerners kidding themselves that they were hardy backwoodsmen
Oddly enough, as Dylan loses faith, his fellow utopians get more committed to the project. Beginning with three people, after a year there were usually between eight and twelve people working away at the vegetable gardens. The horror of Dylan’s self imposed situation became ever more palpable – what was he going to do after the 18 months? Now he has no job, no house, no girlfriend, no prospects. He's spent ALL his money from the house on funding this ridiculous excursion. He gets suicidal and checks himself in to the mental hospital.
RECOVERING FROM UTOPIA
He got better, slowly. More optimistic thoughts arose in his mind :
Given that everything will come to an end eventually, does it really matter if humanity lasts another million years rather than just another thousand? Since civilization is bound to collapse sooner or later, does it matter when?
Hmm, you don’t think that sounds like a man in recovery, gradually rebuilding his shattered life? Okay, try this :
Even if humans discover how to prolong their lives the universe will eventually unravel and freeze. And then there will be nothingness for ever and ever, and permanent darkness.
So, you know, cheer up! Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we go to Scotland and live in a yurt.
April 24, 2018
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
A robotics expert leaves his job and sells his house to fund a project called 'The Utopia Experiment' (TUE). TUE is supposed to be a self-sufficient community after an imagined collapse of society.
The author seems quite surprised that it mostly attracts survivalist idiots and hippies, most of whom think that end of the civilization is imminent. What was he expecting?
It didn't help that the author was suffering from depression which was getting worse as he was realising the futility of his experiment when they were still buying products from a supermarket a year into the farce, instead of being self-reliant as he had envisioned before starting the commune.
Nothing much happens throughout the book. In the end, the author seeks psychiatric help - which he should have done instead of starting TUE in the first place- gets better, takes a new job, assimilates himself again with the society, and after a few years, writes this book.
A robotics expert leaves his job and sells his house to fund a project called 'The Utopia Experiment' (TUE). TUE is supposed to be a self-sufficient community after an imagined collapse of society.
The author seems quite surprised that it mostly attracts survivalist idiots and hippies, most of whom think that end of the civilization is imminent. What was he expecting?
It didn't help that the author was suffering from depression which was getting worse as he was realising the futility of his experiment when they were still buying products from a supermarket a year into the farce, instead of being self-reliant as he had envisioned before starting the commune.
Nothing much happens throughout the book. In the end, the author seeks psychiatric help - which he should have done instead of starting TUE in the first place- gets better, takes a new job, assimilates himself again with the society, and after a few years, writes this book.
March 18, 2015
BOTW
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b059crs2Description: A true story that you couldn't make up - one man's attempt to survive a global catastrophe by setting up a commune in Scotland. While lecturing in robotics, academic Dylan Evans became increasingly concerned by the visible impacts of global warming, population increase, terrorism - and by our inability to cope with a doomsday scenario in a world engineered to just-in-time living.
The concern became an obsession and Evans left his post to run an experiment. He set up a camp that would create the conditions for a post-apocalyptic world. It was established in the Scottish Highlands with a collection of people chosen for talents and skills necessary in a life without technology or comforts. The resulting story is a Lord of the Flies for the modern day, treating serious and normally sombre topics with dark humour. At its heart, however, is one man's well-intentioned dream and the price he paid for trying to do something good.
Written and read by Dylan Evans
Abridged by Barry Johnston
Produced by David Roper
A Heavy Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4.
Why is it that folk who are so scared of a dystopian future start trying to live it long before that is necessary. Mr Evans comes over as rather a controller, and narcissism makes an appearance whe he reveals he wouldn't mind being thought of as a guru.
Not for me at this time. NEXT!
1: Evans left his post to run an experiment. He set up a camp that would create the conditions for a post-apocalyptic world. It was established in the Scottish Highlands with a collection of people chosen for talents and skills necessary in a life without technology or comforts.4.5* Introducing Evolutionary Psychology (I marked all the Introducing series 5*)
CR The Utopia Experiment
December 18, 2021
Very disappointed by this book. Was hoping for the experiment failing because of factors with regards to the commons, but it was merely because the author did not have any sense to prepare for the experiment, all ideas and no proper planning. The author lacks leadership in creating the society as well, and the way he recruited people was lacklustre at best. Every chapter just narrates how incompetent the author is at handling the experiment, and this incompetence resulted in such a bias that the experiment should effectively be voided. Really really disappointing.
March 22, 2015
unfortunately, it's a crappy book.
in a nutshell: a desk-jockey dreams up his own utopia in the wild and sets out to realize the project with a few buddies (he calls them volunteers). his psyche couldnt take it and he ended up in a mental institution before returning to the "real" world.
in the beginning, I looked forward to hear what motivated him to give up civilization to explore the beginnings of men without electricity and machines and just use his hands to sustain himself in the woods, as well as a day to day or weekly report about the successes and failures his team gets confronted with. no such luck, it dragged to no end and it was excruciatingly painful to think this ever got published when there are other field works that are so much better.
there was a scene in the winter when they were weakened by the seasons in the wild already (no preparation!!), where one of his buddy's butchered one of the pigs they brought to utopia and I could not miss that he could not watch it !! nor commit to the process of making food (e.g. sausages) !! of the natural resources they brought with them. It seemed to me that he was standing at the sidelines and just watched the utopia project go down the gully.
Why would someone like that go back to the beginning of it all? someone with no skills for survival, not even trained for this project or so it seems, ending up with health issues because he could not take it anymore ...
in a nutshell: a desk-jockey dreams up his own utopia in the wild and sets out to realize the project with a few buddies (he calls them volunteers). his psyche couldnt take it and he ended up in a mental institution before returning to the "real" world.
in the beginning, I looked forward to hear what motivated him to give up civilization to explore the beginnings of men without electricity and machines and just use his hands to sustain himself in the woods, as well as a day to day or weekly report about the successes and failures his team gets confronted with. no such luck, it dragged to no end and it was excruciatingly painful to think this ever got published when there are other field works that are so much better.
there was a scene in the winter when they were weakened by the seasons in the wild already (no preparation!!), where one of his buddy's butchered one of the pigs they brought to utopia and I could not miss that he could not watch it !! nor commit to the process of making food (e.g. sausages) !! of the natural resources they brought with them. It seemed to me that he was standing at the sidelines and just watched the utopia project go down the gully.
Why would someone like that go back to the beginning of it all? someone with no skills for survival, not even trained for this project or so it seems, ending up with health issues because he could not take it anymore ...
October 9, 2015
A podcast led me to this book. The story is fascinating, bizarre, and compelling. Extremely readable, I quickly became obsessed and plowed through the book quickly, enjoying it a great deal.
I tried to tell friends about the book.
"Sounds depressing," said one.
"Why would you read that?" asked another.
Yes, it's a dark tale about mental illness and the end of the world, about beliefs and realizing those beliefs are crazy. But that's part of the appeal. And it's all so nicely written.
It is honest, harsh, plays on a lot of our distorted political ideologies. Yes, we must respect the environment, but must we do so because we think the world is going to end? Must we believe in that cataclysmic end of everything? Can't we admit our technology really has improved things?
A good book. Mental hospitals and yurts. What more could you want?
I tried to tell friends about the book.
"Sounds depressing," said one.
"Why would you read that?" asked another.
Yes, it's a dark tale about mental illness and the end of the world, about beliefs and realizing those beliefs are crazy. But that's part of the appeal. And it's all so nicely written.
It is honest, harsh, plays on a lot of our distorted political ideologies. Yes, we must respect the environment, but must we do so because we think the world is going to end? Must we believe in that cataclysmic end of everything? Can't we admit our technology really has improved things?
A good book. Mental hospitals and yurts. What more could you want?
February 2, 2017
Das Ende der Zivilisation und das Überleben der Menschheit ist ein Thema, das schon viele Autoren und Künstler zu grossen Leistungen animiert hat. Auch in der Forschung stellt man sich immer wieder der Frage, wie wir Menschen wohl ohne den heutigen Luxus und ohne die technologischen Mittel überleben könnten. Dylan Evans wollte es genauer wissen und brach auf um mit Freiwilligen ein utopisches Dorf in Schottland aufzubauen.
"The Utopia Experiment" ist die Auf- und Verarbeitung dieser Ereignisse - allerdings ist es nicht, wie ich zuerst vermutet habe, ein wissenschaftlicher Bericht. Hier geht es nicht darum, wie das Experiment genau ausgeführt wurde und wo die Erfolge und Fehler liegen. Das Buch ist vielmehr ein Einblick in das Leben von Evans und seinen Kampf gegen die Depression. Viel Platz nehmen Betrachtungen zu seinem Klinikaufenthalt und den privaten Momenten ein. Utopia ist dabei vor allem eines: Auslöser und Misserfolg.
Das Buch ist aber deswegen nicht schlecht, sondern einfach etwas zu oberflächlich. Dylan Evans gelingt es auf emotionaler Ebene nicht, den Leser zu packen. Mir persönliche wäre es lieber gewesen, das Buch hätte mehr Umfang oder der Autor sich auf einen Aspekt der Geschichte beschränkt. Sicherlich ist es eine unterhaltsame Lektüre, grosse Erkenntnisse bietet es aber nicht.
"The Utopia Experiment" ist die Auf- und Verarbeitung dieser Ereignisse - allerdings ist es nicht, wie ich zuerst vermutet habe, ein wissenschaftlicher Bericht. Hier geht es nicht darum, wie das Experiment genau ausgeführt wurde und wo die Erfolge und Fehler liegen. Das Buch ist vielmehr ein Einblick in das Leben von Evans und seinen Kampf gegen die Depression. Viel Platz nehmen Betrachtungen zu seinem Klinikaufenthalt und den privaten Momenten ein. Utopia ist dabei vor allem eines: Auslöser und Misserfolg.
Das Buch ist aber deswegen nicht schlecht, sondern einfach etwas zu oberflächlich. Dylan Evans gelingt es auf emotionaler Ebene nicht, den Leser zu packen. Mir persönliche wäre es lieber gewesen, das Buch hätte mehr Umfang oder der Autor sich auf einen Aspekt der Geschichte beschränkt. Sicherlich ist es eine unterhaltsame Lektüre, grosse Erkenntnisse bietet es aber nicht.
November 30, 2016
I read ‘The Utopia Experiment’ in two sessions, during the first of which I got nearly fifty pages in. I was pretty horrified by these initial few chapters. The book is an autobiographical account of a guy who decided, in effect, to immersively role play a post-apocalyptic scenario with a bunch of strangers. Within a year he found himself in a psychiatric hospital. This seems unsurprising when he explains that this idea came to him after he, a) visited Mayan ruins and got obsessed with the collapse of civilisation, b) became clinically depressed, and c) read the Unabomber Manifesto and thought it made a lot of sense. At first I couldn’t help wondering why none of his friends or family noticed these massive warning signs and tried to talk to him about perhaps not chucking away his entire life to play apocalypses. When I read the remaining 220 pages in one go, however, it emerged that friends and family did try to advise Evans against this course of action and he ‘brushed them aside’.
This book is not about post-apocalyptic life, it is an account of a nervous breakdown. Evans is brutally honest with the reader, making it clear that he was deluded throughout the so-called experiment. As he admits, it wasn’t any sort of real experiment, with only the vaguest of hypotheses and justifications. Instead, it was an effort to physically flee his deteriorating mental health, fed by an obsession with the collapse of civilisation. Generally, yearning for a simpler, prelapsarian way of life is pretty suspect when combined with the absence of self-awareness (or, indeed, awareness of what you think civilisation is exactly). It is absolutely fascinating, albeit concerning, to see how awareness dawns on Evans, both of his state and of what civilisation means to him.
The motto of the so-called Utopia Experiment community is evidently, “How hard can it be?” Evans assumed, with extraordinary arrogance in hindsight, that his academic career meant he could pick up any skills and knowledge to survive in a simulated post-apocalyptic environment quickly and easily. This obviously did not turn out to be the case. A major message of the book is that doing without the comforts of civilisation seems awfully easy to those who have always had them. True post-apocalyptic survival skills can be found amongst those who have survived failed states, wars, and utter economic collapse, not middle class Britons. In fact, it should surely be obvious what happens when civilisations collapse from what is happening right now in Syria: the population flees somewhere safer and more stable. I have always found the simultaneity assumed by doom-sayers very hard to justify; if civilisation (however defined) collapsed, there is no reason to believe that deterioration would occur at the same rate across the globe. The economy may be heavily globalised, but different continents, countries, and localities have vastly differing levels of resilience. Evans does admit that survivalists tend to downplay and underestimate the complexity of civilisation.
I myself am pessimistic about the damage climate change will inflict in the next hundred years. However, I find the survivalist mindset frightening because it is implicitly comfortable with genocide. As Evans notes, some of those living in his Utopian Experiment seemed to eagerly await the coming collapse, as it would rid the world of those tiresome billions that clutter it up. I think this perspective both feeds and is fed by the myriad depictions of post-apocalyptic scenarios in fiction, on TV, and in films. As Rushkoff puts it in Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now:
What Evans makes clear is that this catastrophising can also be symptomatic of mental illness. In the final chapters of ‘The Utopia Experiment’, he discusses his recovery and coming to terms with civilisation’s perhaps not impending collapse. He also seeks to reconceptualise his breakdown as a learning experience, a way of developing his own beliefs and creed. This seems to be a laudable means of avoiding dwelling on regret, which is pointless as time cannot be turned back. I was surprised, though, that he returned to the same area of academic research (robotics and AI) as he’d sought to escape in the first place. I suppose familiarity was reassuring after the unmooring of his disastrous experiment. The memoir is a compelling, deeply interesting read, especially if you have a particular interest in post-apocalyptic scenarios (as I have). It is also an addition to the wide, deep, and contradictory literature on the definition and nature of utopia and utopian living, which I never tire of. Perhaps the moral of the story is to remain curious about utopia, but be wary of trying to start your own. After all, how hard can it be? Very hard indeed.
This book is not about post-apocalyptic life, it is an account of a nervous breakdown. Evans is brutally honest with the reader, making it clear that he was deluded throughout the so-called experiment. As he admits, it wasn’t any sort of real experiment, with only the vaguest of hypotheses and justifications. Instead, it was an effort to physically flee his deteriorating mental health, fed by an obsession with the collapse of civilisation. Generally, yearning for a simpler, prelapsarian way of life is pretty suspect when combined with the absence of self-awareness (or, indeed, awareness of what you think civilisation is exactly). It is absolutely fascinating, albeit concerning, to see how awareness dawns on Evans, both of his state and of what civilisation means to him.
The motto of the so-called Utopia Experiment community is evidently, “How hard can it be?” Evans assumed, with extraordinary arrogance in hindsight, that his academic career meant he could pick up any skills and knowledge to survive in a simulated post-apocalyptic environment quickly and easily. This obviously did not turn out to be the case. A major message of the book is that doing without the comforts of civilisation seems awfully easy to those who have always had them. True post-apocalyptic survival skills can be found amongst those who have survived failed states, wars, and utter economic collapse, not middle class Britons. In fact, it should surely be obvious what happens when civilisations collapse from what is happening right now in Syria: the population flees somewhere safer and more stable. I have always found the simultaneity assumed by doom-sayers very hard to justify; if civilisation (however defined) collapsed, there is no reason to believe that deterioration would occur at the same rate across the globe. The economy may be heavily globalised, but different continents, countries, and localities have vastly differing levels of resilience. Evans does admit that survivalists tend to downplay and underestimate the complexity of civilisation.
I myself am pessimistic about the damage climate change will inflict in the next hundred years. However, I find the survivalist mindset frightening because it is implicitly comfortable with genocide. As Evans notes, some of those living in his Utopian Experiment seemed to eagerly await the coming collapse, as it would rid the world of those tiresome billions that clutter it up. I think this perspective both feeds and is fed by the myriad depictions of post-apocalyptic scenarios in fiction, on TV, and in films. As Rushkoff puts it in Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now:
At least the annihilation of the human race - or its transmogrification into silicon - resolves the precarious uncertainty of present shock. [...] Apocalypto gives us a way out. A line in the sand. An us and a them. And, more important, a before and after.
That’s why it’s important that we distinguish between valid concerns about the survival of our species and these more fantastic wishes for reversal and recognition - the story elements at the end of all heroic journeys. If anything, the common conflation of so many apocalypse scenarios - bird flu, asteroid, terrorist attack - camouflages ones that may already be in progress, such as climate change or the slow poisoning of the oceans. [...]
To many, it’s easier, or at least more comforting, to approach these problems as intractable. [...] The hardest part of living in present shock is that there’s no end and, for that matter, no beginning. It’s a chronic plateau of interminable stresses that seem to have always been there. There’s no original source to blame and no end in sight. This is why the return to simplicity offered by the most extreme scenarios is proving so alluring to so many of us.
What Evans makes clear is that this catastrophising can also be symptomatic of mental illness. In the final chapters of ‘The Utopia Experiment’, he discusses his recovery and coming to terms with civilisation’s perhaps not impending collapse. He also seeks to reconceptualise his breakdown as a learning experience, a way of developing his own beliefs and creed. This seems to be a laudable means of avoiding dwelling on regret, which is pointless as time cannot be turned back. I was surprised, though, that he returned to the same area of academic research (robotics and AI) as he’d sought to escape in the first place. I suppose familiarity was reassuring after the unmooring of his disastrous experiment. The memoir is a compelling, deeply interesting read, especially if you have a particular interest in post-apocalyptic scenarios (as I have). It is also an addition to the wide, deep, and contradictory literature on the definition and nature of utopia and utopian living, which I never tire of. Perhaps the moral of the story is to remain curious about utopia, but be wary of trying to start your own. After all, how hard can it be? Very hard indeed.
February 17, 2015
This was an unexpected page turner - an interesting and quirky book that explores the author's descent into depression and eventual recovery whilst detailing the mundanity and depravation of commune living that mirror the state of his mind. There are also discussions of psycholgiacla and philiosphical theory such as Dabrowski's theory of "Positive Disintegration" which I found really interesting. Evans is a good writer and the story is very easy to read and flows well.
Evans had had episodes of the depression in the past but did not recognise that his disassociation with his work ( in a robotics teaching lab, where he felt out of his depth as a philosophy/ emotions expert) and growing fascination with wanting to explore how humans could be happier with a simpler mode of living combined with an unhealthy interest in the Unabomber's manifesto was actually a manifestation of his descent into a serious bout of depression.
He sells his beautiful home and ploughs the money into renting a slice of land in the Scottish Highlands and on Yurt's and seeds to enable a one year experiment in survivalist living. He also embarks on a disastrous love affair. The story details the experiment from its outset and describes the various colourful volunteers that come to stay at the project and their attempts at self sufficiency battling with the harsh Scottish climate. The mud and cramped living conditions mirror the disintegrating state of Dylan's mind. His comittment to the project is called into question early on as he spends less than half his time there and stays at his girlfriend's cottage - in a story that is not fully explored or developed although it had a massive impact on him. Evans is eventually sectioned and slowly rebuilds his life.
The experiment itself is a success and is still ongoing (under a different name) although for Evan's it was a personal disaster. The story is a really good exploration of how we deceive ourselves, even though many around us can see our distress and how sometimes we need to reach rock bottom before we can recover.
Evans had had episodes of the depression in the past but did not recognise that his disassociation with his work ( in a robotics teaching lab, where he felt out of his depth as a philosophy/ emotions expert) and growing fascination with wanting to explore how humans could be happier with a simpler mode of living combined with an unhealthy interest in the Unabomber's manifesto was actually a manifestation of his descent into a serious bout of depression.
He sells his beautiful home and ploughs the money into renting a slice of land in the Scottish Highlands and on Yurt's and seeds to enable a one year experiment in survivalist living. He also embarks on a disastrous love affair. The story details the experiment from its outset and describes the various colourful volunteers that come to stay at the project and their attempts at self sufficiency battling with the harsh Scottish climate. The mud and cramped living conditions mirror the disintegrating state of Dylan's mind. His comittment to the project is called into question early on as he spends less than half his time there and stays at his girlfriend's cottage - in a story that is not fully explored or developed although it had a massive impact on him. Evans is eventually sectioned and slowly rebuilds his life.
The experiment itself is a success and is still ongoing (under a different name) although for Evan's it was a personal disaster. The story is a really good exploration of how we deceive ourselves, even though many around us can see our distress and how sometimes we need to reach rock bottom before we can recover.
April 1, 2016
Setting out on his Utopia Experiment, Dylan Evans had a fantasy which i'm sure many people (myself included) often share - to escape our environmentally destructive technological civilisation and live a sustainable and fulfilling life off the land. So, after leaving behind his academic life studying robotics and selling his house to pay for the venture, Evans founded a small community of like-minded individuals in the North of Scotland to explore a fictional scenario in which civilisation has collapsed and attempt to live a virtuous life with minimal effect on our landbase. Needless to say, not everything went according to plan.
Focusing more on Evans' relationship with the varied characters that turn up in Utopia and his subsequent mental deterioration, the book avoids becoming a Walden-esque recording of Utopia's daily workings. Evans writes clearly and unpretentiously, taking time to examine his own shortcomings and critiquing the choices he made during the experiment and the mindset which led to its creation. The result is an engaging, highly readable and often brutally honest account of failed idealism.
Disclaimer: I received an advance copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair review.
Focusing more on Evans' relationship with the varied characters that turn up in Utopia and his subsequent mental deterioration, the book avoids becoming a Walden-esque recording of Utopia's daily workings. Evans writes clearly and unpretentiously, taking time to examine his own shortcomings and critiquing the choices he made during the experiment and the mindset which led to its creation. The result is an engaging, highly readable and often brutally honest account of failed idealism.
Disclaimer: I received an advance copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair review.
March 3, 2016
What a disappointing read. The story at the heart of The Utopia Experiment is so genuinely compelling -- an academic sells all of his possessions and moves to a remote part of Scotland to create what he imagines a post-apocalyptic community might look like, only to lose his grip on sanity -- that it's strange how hollow the whole thing feels when rendered in this memoir.
Dylan Evans certainly has an aspiring novelist's quirks (overzealous synonyms for 'said' abound; almost every person mentioned has eyes that 'sparkle'), but there's nothing novelistic about Utopia. It's a long slog through a narrative filled with two-dimensional characters and scenes that lack tension or even verisimilitude. It reads more like someone's unedited diary than a memoir that's been shaped and reimagined for a reader.
It's clear that this experience was deeply scarring for the author, but the resulting book suggests to me that he was unwilling or unable to delve deep into his feelings during the experiment. For a book that spills over with self-psychoanalysis, it's also notably missing any real emotion.
Dylan Evans certainly has an aspiring novelist's quirks (overzealous synonyms for 'said' abound; almost every person mentioned has eyes that 'sparkle'), but there's nothing novelistic about Utopia. It's a long slog through a narrative filled with two-dimensional characters and scenes that lack tension or even verisimilitude. It reads more like someone's unedited diary than a memoir that's been shaped and reimagined for a reader.
It's clear that this experience was deeply scarring for the author, but the resulting book suggests to me that he was unwilling or unable to delve deep into his feelings during the experiment. For a book that spills over with self-psychoanalysis, it's also notably missing any real emotion.
April 14, 2015
Inspired by Alex Garland’s ‘The Beach’, British academic Dylan Evans sells his house, his car and quits his job, cutting loose all safety nets, to instigate a social experiment involving a post-apocalyptic simulation. He sets up camp with his volunteers in the remote Scottish countryside, where they have been denied electricity, and must live off the land to sustain all food and comfort. With thoughts of doubt and regret filling his mind, Evans abandons the experiment half way through after being committed to a psychiatric hospital.
This gripping retelling reads like a ‘Lord of the Flies’ re-enactment, full of hostility and hierarchy complications among the campers. The result is a fascinating, honest account on human behaviour and how we perceive ourselves to act under intricate circumstances.
This gripping retelling reads like a ‘Lord of the Flies’ re-enactment, full of hostility and hierarchy complications among the campers. The result is a fascinating, honest account on human behaviour and how we perceive ourselves to act under intricate circumstances.
January 14, 2016
Right, so things I learnt from this book:
1. Dylan Evans is a pretentious, full of himself prick. He is such an unlikable person in this book. He drones on about how he finds it hard to get on with the other volunteers. Take a look at yourself mate.
2. Yurts and Scotland are not a good mix.
3. If I ever start thinking self sufficiency would be fun, this is the book to have on hand. It'll put me right off the idea.
Despite all the moaning, it was an interesting, quick read. I wanted more information on the day to day stuff of the project though.
1. Dylan Evans is a pretentious, full of himself prick. He is such an unlikable person in this book. He drones on about how he finds it hard to get on with the other volunteers. Take a look at yourself mate.
2. Yurts and Scotland are not a good mix.
3. If I ever start thinking self sufficiency would be fun, this is the book to have on hand. It'll put me right off the idea.
Despite all the moaning, it was an interesting, quick read. I wanted more information on the day to day stuff of the project though.
March 18, 2017
Dylan Evans is a highly qualified and specialised scientist who becomes obsessed with how the technological progress of the modern world will affect human life on the planet. He considers how life on earth might continue after the collapse of civilisation caused by the alleged climate crises and the future scarcity of fuel. Deciding on an experiment to see if people born of the mechanical age could survive after the apocalypse, he sets up a website to advertise for others to take part. The plan is to live in a Scottish island community within a fictional scenario, which takes place a few years after civilisation has crashed.
Before going to live in 'Utopia', Evans sells his house and gives up his job. The book starts in the hospital, after the experiment is over, when he is being treated for a psychological collapse. The account of the life of Utopia is interspersed with his experiences in the hospital, and the various philosophies of others from which he created the idea of the new community.
For all his intelligence, Evans seems to have little common sense, and ignores the advice of many. The two people with whom he chooses to start off the project are an eccentric 'doomer' (someone who is convinced that civilisation is about to crash, and looks forward to it), and an ageing hippie freeloader/nutcase. Those who join the project seem to have thought it through as little as he has, which is perhaps why it attracted similar idealists, though some gained more from the experience than he did.
The whole scenario is riddled with inconsistencies ~ if the collapse of civilisation is only a few years old, wouldn't a group such as this a choose to live in all those empty houses, where there would be beds, sofas, and many items that would make their life a lot easier? He worries about what they will wear when their clothes wear out, and sets up a trap to catch a deer so they can skin it ~ but will there not be houses, shops and warehouses still filled with clothes? On the other hand, if fabric is so scarce that they need to trap animals for their skins just to clothe themselves, where will the canvas for their yurts come from? I could go on...
Evans's research consists of visiting hippie communes who have chosen to live without the conveniences of the modern world, rather than being forced to. The failure of the project appears to be lack of planning, all the way through; he does not consider how dangerous the fictional world might be, until someone brings up the subject; he has not thought about how he might defend his settlement. Most disappointing of all, he never commits fully to Utopia, spending several nights a week in his girlfriend's cottage in a nearby village, and nipping off to spend a few days here, a few days there, with friends, whenever the going gets a bit too rough ~ this, to me, negates the authenticity of whole thing.
I felt that, in this book, he was trying to give the project a purpose by drawing parallels with the Standford prison experiment, and others, but Utopia did not seem to have any real purpose, other than bringing together a group of idealists who wanted to escape from the 21st century for a while. As for his nervous breakdown, I felt that even that was dressed up; reading between the lines, I thought that the real reasons for his growing sense of isolation were his girlfriend ending their relationship, the fact that he'd given up his job and sold his house to finance this ill-thought out project that was going nowhere, and that he felt a bit of a twit for making such a mess of it all. Which would be enough to make anyone feel depressed and not like talking to anyone.
The book was interesting, though frustrating, and I would have liked to know more about the project itself, on a day to day basis, and less about Evans's mental state. I don't think it was the 'experiment' that sent him spiralling into a black hole, I think it was the awareness of his own foolhardiness. A shame, indeed. I applaud the amount of honesty that was present in the book, though.
Before going to live in 'Utopia', Evans sells his house and gives up his job. The book starts in the hospital, after the experiment is over, when he is being treated for a psychological collapse. The account of the life of Utopia is interspersed with his experiences in the hospital, and the various philosophies of others from which he created the idea of the new community.
For all his intelligence, Evans seems to have little common sense, and ignores the advice of many. The two people with whom he chooses to start off the project are an eccentric 'doomer' (someone who is convinced that civilisation is about to crash, and looks forward to it), and an ageing hippie freeloader/nutcase. Those who join the project seem to have thought it through as little as he has, which is perhaps why it attracted similar idealists, though some gained more from the experience than he did.
The whole scenario is riddled with inconsistencies ~ if the collapse of civilisation is only a few years old, wouldn't a group such as this a choose to live in all those empty houses, where there would be beds, sofas, and many items that would make their life a lot easier? He worries about what they will wear when their clothes wear out, and sets up a trap to catch a deer so they can skin it ~ but will there not be houses, shops and warehouses still filled with clothes? On the other hand, if fabric is so scarce that they need to trap animals for their skins just to clothe themselves, where will the canvas for their yurts come from? I could go on...
Evans's research consists of visiting hippie communes who have chosen to live without the conveniences of the modern world, rather than being forced to. The failure of the project appears to be lack of planning, all the way through; he does not consider how dangerous the fictional world might be, until someone brings up the subject; he has not thought about how he might defend his settlement. Most disappointing of all, he never commits fully to Utopia, spending several nights a week in his girlfriend's cottage in a nearby village, and nipping off to spend a few days here, a few days there, with friends, whenever the going gets a bit too rough ~ this, to me, negates the authenticity of whole thing.
I felt that, in this book, he was trying to give the project a purpose by drawing parallels with the Standford prison experiment, and others, but Utopia did not seem to have any real purpose, other than bringing together a group of idealists who wanted to escape from the 21st century for a while. As for his nervous breakdown, I felt that even that was dressed up; reading between the lines, I thought that the real reasons for his growing sense of isolation were his girlfriend ending their relationship, the fact that he'd given up his job and sold his house to finance this ill-thought out project that was going nowhere, and that he felt a bit of a twit for making such a mess of it all. Which would be enough to make anyone feel depressed and not like talking to anyone.
The book was interesting, though frustrating, and I would have liked to know more about the project itself, on a day to day basis, and less about Evans's mental state. I don't think it was the 'experiment' that sent him spiralling into a black hole, I think it was the awareness of his own foolhardiness. A shame, indeed. I applaud the amount of honesty that was present in the book, though.
April 20, 2016
“In any case, I clearly wasn’t cut out to be a cult leader”
For me, this book in itself was an experiment: can I enjoy a book despite really disliking the narrator?
When I was studying psychology, I came across the notion of letting people with delusional illnesses to indulge their wishes (within a safe space) and eventually they kind of come out the other side. This book is essentially the story of a person who did this, but didn't really couldn't make it out the other side, and brought himself to physical and mental collapse.
I don't feel like, "He wound up in mental health care" is a spoiler, as this is actually how Evans starts his memoir. Evans wanted to escape from his life in designing artificial intelligence to live "off the grid" - specifically, to see how people could live should society collapse. However, this also became a belief in the destruction of modern society as an inevitability.
Hint: if you're reading a terrorist's manifesto and thinking, "You know, he has a point" there might be a few issues to iron out.
The problem with establishing a fully sustaining, post-cataclysm community is that it attracts the kind of people who want to be part of a fully sustaining, post-cataclysm community. While there were people who I feel were in it for good reasons (students wanting to gain knowledge and training) there were also those who in many ways contributed to Evans' inevitable demise (anyone who played flute or believed in the Great Spirit.) As for Evans, I felt he was pretty half-hearted about the whole thing - which is fair enough, but he dragged other people into it, which I'm less impressed about.
For a memoir, I felt that it was somehow both self-indulgent and not very self-exploratory. Even with the distance and hindsight, I seemed to have pegged more about what was happening for Evans than even the older/wiser/healthier narrator of this story does.
Amazingly, Evans goes into great detail about the great sacrifices of this living arrangement - the rough conditions in the yurt, trying to keep warm and fed - and yet he'd bunk off to his girlfriend's place for a warm shower and comfy bed. And while there were benefits of the terrible, inauthentic modern world they were right to take advantage of (such as getting medical help when a young volunteer hurt himself) popping off to the supermarket when they didn't have the skills or foresight to provide something wasn't easily reasoned away.
What amazed me was the support and patience shown to Evans by the other participants in his experiment - who went along with it, despite its leader finding it increasingly difficult to even speak to new people. Likewise he had so many supportive people in his life - people who let him just set this stuff up on their property, who would let him stay with them when things got tough, who would come fetch him and make arrangements for him to get help - and yet he didn't really seem appreciative of what they did.
The book made me think of "Into the Wild" and the story of Christopher McCandless - it's okay to perceive the modern world as inauthentic and toxic, and to go live from your own means, however it's important to do your homework, plan and really be clear about what you're doing - because often the very reasons that make you want to do this will follow you out there.
Otherwise you wind up putting your loved ones through hell and someone has to come retrieve you.
I think what might be interesting is to know the accounts of other people who lived in the experimental community -I want to know what brought them there, I want to know an account from someone who didn't keep leaving and how they kept the community together after Evans left.
He wasn't the messiah. He was just a very naughty boy.
For me, this book in itself was an experiment: can I enjoy a book despite really disliking the narrator?
When I was studying psychology, I came across the notion of letting people with delusional illnesses to indulge their wishes (within a safe space) and eventually they kind of come out the other side. This book is essentially the story of a person who did this, but didn't really couldn't make it out the other side, and brought himself to physical and mental collapse.
I don't feel like, "He wound up in mental health care" is a spoiler, as this is actually how Evans starts his memoir. Evans wanted to escape from his life in designing artificial intelligence to live "off the grid" - specifically, to see how people could live should society collapse. However, this also became a belief in the destruction of modern society as an inevitability.
Hint: if you're reading a terrorist's manifesto and thinking, "You know, he has a point" there might be a few issues to iron out.
The problem with establishing a fully sustaining, post-cataclysm community is that it attracts the kind of people who want to be part of a fully sustaining, post-cataclysm community. While there were people who I feel were in it for good reasons (students wanting to gain knowledge and training) there were also those who in many ways contributed to Evans' inevitable demise (anyone who played flute or believed in the Great Spirit.) As for Evans, I felt he was pretty half-hearted about the whole thing - which is fair enough, but he dragged other people into it, which I'm less impressed about.
For a memoir, I felt that it was somehow both self-indulgent and not very self-exploratory. Even with the distance and hindsight, I seemed to have pegged more about what was happening for Evans than even the older/wiser/healthier narrator of this story does.
Amazingly, Evans goes into great detail about the great sacrifices of this living arrangement - the rough conditions in the yurt, trying to keep warm and fed - and yet he'd bunk off to his girlfriend's place for a warm shower and comfy bed. And while there were benefits of the terrible, inauthentic modern world they were right to take advantage of (such as getting medical help when a young volunteer hurt himself) popping off to the supermarket when they didn't have the skills or foresight to provide something wasn't easily reasoned away.
What amazed me was the support and patience shown to Evans by the other participants in his experiment - who went along with it, despite its leader finding it increasingly difficult to even speak to new people. Likewise he had so many supportive people in his life - people who let him just set this stuff up on their property, who would let him stay with them when things got tough, who would come fetch him and make arrangements for him to get help - and yet he didn't really seem appreciative of what they did.
The book made me think of "Into the Wild" and the story of Christopher McCandless - it's okay to perceive the modern world as inauthentic and toxic, and to go live from your own means, however it's important to do your homework, plan and really be clear about what you're doing - because often the very reasons that make you want to do this will follow you out there.
Otherwise you wind up putting your loved ones through hell and someone has to come retrieve you.
I think what might be interesting is to know the accounts of other people who lived in the experimental community -I want to know what brought them there, I want to know an account from someone who didn't keep leaving and how they kept the community together after Evans left.
He wasn't the messiah. He was just a very naughty boy.
September 10, 2016
So I often put myself mentally in an end of the world scenario, it's good to be prepared. However this guy actually did to great detriment to his mental health. Having suffered from depression myself I could empathise greatly with his downward spiral. Failure to look at the bigger picture and where this experiment would lead, crippling himself financially and living in adverse conditions with people who did not agree with his ideas are all factors to his demise. At the same time a great need to succeed and be selfsufficent whilst dealing with nomads in a controlled environment shows great strength of character. An insight into how quickly we would rapidly decline within isolation when our basic living standards are taken away.
March 5, 2015
An easy book to read, and I was hopeful of a story about leaving academia for a creative sustainable independent life, but alas it all turned out to be a product of mental disorder. A bit stifling in that sense - surely there was something to it besides dis-ease? And a little too much of its-all-about-me. I can see why utopia is mostly a boys club. I'm still hopeful of a story about leaving academia for a creative sustaining independent life.
January 4, 2022
작가 Dylan Evans 는 현대 문명 사회에 심각한 회의를 느끼고 스코틀랜드 숲 속 자신만의 유토피아를 건설하는 실험을 실천에 옮긴다 (그리고 실험은 실패한다). 제목과 서문만 읽어 보면 이 책이 사회과학적 관점에서 인류 문명을 다룰 것이라 착각하기 쉽다. 그러나 본문은 작가 본인이 겪은 정신 질환에 대한 자전적 회고록에 가깝게 느껴진다. 가방끈이 길고 사회/경제적 능력이 어느정도 받쳐주는 한 개인이 심각한 정신 질활을 앓으면 어떤 일이 벌어질 수 있는지 보여주는 하나의 예가 아닐까? 그럼에도 유토피아적 사회는 어떤 모습일지를 상상해 보는 시간은 즐거웠다. 책을 읽고 북클럽에서 토론하며 내 나름 생각해본 유토피아적 사회는 다음과 같다.
1) 다양성이 존재한다. (국가적, 인종적, 문화적, 종교적, 젠더, 학문적 등등 ..)
2) 다양한 집단들이 힘의 균형을 이루며 평화적 방식으로 공존한다.
3) 서로 견제하고 경쟁하는 다양한 집단들의 힘의 균형속에서 인류 문명은 지속 가능한 방식으로 진보한다.
4) 사회-문화-과학적 진보의 혜택 들은 다시 다양한 집단 들에게 돌아가며, 이들에게 삶에 대한 의욕 (희망) 을 불어 넣어 준다.
5) 항목 1 ~ 4이 순환한다.
1) 다양성이 존재한다. (국가적, 인종적, 문화적, 종교적, 젠더, 학문적 등등 ..)
2) 다양한 집단들이 힘의 균형을 이루며 평화적 방식으로 공존한다.
3) 서로 견제하고 경쟁하는 다양한 집단들의 힘의 균형속에서 인류 문명은 지속 가능한 방식으로 진보한다.
4) 사회-문화-과학적 진보의 혜택 들은 다시 다양한 집단 들에게 돌아가며, 이들에게 삶에 대한 의욕 (희망) 을 불어 넣어 준다.
5) 항목 1 ~ 4이 순환한다.
January 9, 2020
Listened. Abridged version. BBC Sounds. 3.5 Slightly mad man goes slightly madder. In a yurt.
February 7, 2023
im not too sure about this book, random and just didnt really enjoy the writing.
May 1, 2024
Interesting concept and wild story. Still not sure of the point of the book. It feels like it's part of a story, and not the start to finish.
April 8, 2015
Huge disappointment! The description of the book sounded solid and interesting but it turned out to be an haste of time. When a philosopher tries to set up a psychology experiment things won't work out nicely. In this case the author struggles to make sense of his experiment. He either loves it or hates it. It's paradoxical. He was diagnosed with depression but before the experiment it looks like he was in a maniacal state of mind. Only that could explain why he sold practically all his possessions to create this post apocalyptic experiment. It seems like he is struggling to make sense of his life. Desperately he tries to escape from everything to live like a nobody but being a nobody won't give him the satisfaction with life that he is searching. Anyway, what really pissed me off about this book is the constant premise of "what will go wrong". When he writes those expressions at the end of each chapter, I tough that people would go mad or something like that. Oh dear I was really wrong! The only one who went mad was the author. The others lived peacefully and he struggled to make ends meet. It's a shame because if he wrote the book in a different way, it could have been interesting. I haven't read any other books by Dylan, and certainly won't read another one. His writing style is confusing (always jumping back and forth and delivering random philosophical insights) and boring. He surely talks a lot about himself and delivers some random references to the experience. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone.
March 22, 2017
it's hard to get this book if you don't know about the current "system" we live in and if you aren't able to question it.
although the author was a horrible planner and his motivations where effed up, you CAN get some things worth saving.
- "But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines, nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ decisions".
-‘It feels perfectly natural to me.’
‘That’s because it is all you’ve ever known,’ replies the baboon.
-"I learned that I’m not invincible, but also that I’m stronger than I thought".
although the author was a horrible planner and his motivations where effed up, you CAN get some things worth saving.
- "But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines, nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ decisions".
-‘It feels perfectly natural to me.’
‘That’s because it is all you’ve ever known,’ replies the baboon.
-"I learned that I’m not invincible, but also that I’m stronger than I thought".
December 31, 2023
I have no idea why I decided to read this book and mostly thought it was oddly structured fiction until I was about three-quarters of the way through and realized this was actually nonfiction. So, my rating may have been a bit higher if I'd actually realized that sooner.
Basically, Dylan Evans set out to create a settlement that would utilize all the skills needed once the world ends. Except it really didn't and knowing you can pick up a bottle of wine or sleep in clean sheets at your girlfriend's bungalow sort of spoils the mood of the things. Evans learned he really wasn't cut out for that sort of life anyway. Overall, this was a somewhat interesting story of a backwoods life that went awry.
Basically, Dylan Evans set out to create a settlement that would utilize all the skills needed once the world ends. Except it really didn't and knowing you can pick up a bottle of wine or sleep in clean sheets at your girlfriend's bungalow sort of spoils the mood of the things. Evans learned he really wasn't cut out for that sort of life anyway. Overall, this was a somewhat interesting story of a backwoods life that went awry.
January 21, 2019
I am interested in Dylan Evans because he was once a Lacan scholar who wrote a well-researched (but questionably useful) resource titled An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. I am even more interested in Evans because he later renounced Lacan entirely and became a champion of evolutionary psychology, a journey he details in an essay titled "From Lacan to Darwin" (collected in The Literary Animal: Evolution and the Nature of Narrative).
For me, Evans bears a psychological resemblance to Stuart Schneiderman, another former disciple of Lacan's who has also since renounced that allegiance. While both men come across in their writings as narcissistic wankers, Evans at least has the ability to recognize that his need for discipleship is part of a vicious circle. He writes:
"This had happened on several previous occasions in my life. When I was nineteen I spent a year training to be a priest, only to discover that, unlike my fellow seminarians, I didn't really believe in God. Ten years later I thought I had discovered the ultimate truth in the writings of Jacques Lacan, only to recoil in horror when I had surrounded myself with his most ardent disciples. I was like a foolish bird that kept alighting on sticky twigs, all coated in birdlime to trap him." (p.237)
The Utopia Experiment describes Evans's latest quixotic entry into this sorry pattern, only this time instead of God or Lacan his main inspirations are a bizarre mixture of Mayan prophecies, Alex Garland's novel The Beach, and the Unabomber's manifesto. In a fit of madness, Evans decides that technology is destroying the world and that civilization is about to collapse, so he quits his academic job, sells his beautiful home in the Cotswolds, and uses the resultant cash to fund what was meant to be an eighteen-month survivalist experiment in the Highlands of Scotland.
Evans's approach to this project is so poorly thought out and planned that it is no surprise it when it begins to fall apart. He gives no realistic thought to things like security or leadership, for instance, and then is surprised when people in the camp don't do the job assigned to them. The most laughable aspect is the halfhearted commitment he shows to the project - half the time he is living down the road at a hotel with his girlfriend (later wife) or spending time outside the camp. By the end of the project, Evans is committed to a mental hospital, the project volunteers spurn him, and self-sufficiency is never actually attained.
Evans sprinkles his commentary with moments of self-critique that are about as convincing as the utterances of an Ishiguro narrator. He insists throughout the book that he has learned an important life lesson from this experience, but all signs point to the opposite. Like Schneiderman, Evans is a lifelong disciple in search of a master, and this stands out particularly in his ominous references to Steven Pinker.
While he was recovering in hospital, Evans recounts, he reread Pinker's book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. As he was reading, a passage stood out to him, in which Pinker writes:
"...many intellectuals have embraced the image of peaceable, egalitarian, and ecology-loving natives. But in the past two decades anthropologists have gathered data on life and death in pre-state societies rather than accepting the warm and fuzzy stereotypes. What did they find? In a nutshell: Hobbes was right, Rousseau was wrong." (Pinker on p.143)
This Manichean division of human nature along the lines of good v. evil human nature is not only simplistic, but it foreshadows the return of the master/disciple dynamic to which Evans repeatedly returns with obsessive repetitiveness. The Utopia Project, after all, places him in the position of a disavowed master - he insists that he is just another volunteer, yet he is providing all the funds and, as both the founder and patron, gives him the authority to make all the decisions. "Of course I would inevitably play some kind of leading role," he ponders disingenuously. "But I didn't want to be a charismatic figure, let alone a dictator. I wanted to blend into the background, and watch what happened. Or did I? Was there perhaps some secret desire to be a kind of guru or cult leader, some unacknowledged form of megalomania?" (pp.81-82). To me, the unstated answer is a pretty obvious "yes."
In an argument with one of the volunteers after he has left the experiment, Evans claims that the volunteers were "yearning for a strong leader to take control" (p.263) - something that he immediately disavows with unconvincing ardor. Yet his interlocutor, James, agrees "that the absence of leadership was an issue. 'The lack of any organizing figurehead played the biggest role' in explaining why things didn't work out the way I wanted them to, he observed." (p.263)
This mindset plays right back into Evans's fantasy of a master to whose desires he can submit. Thus, at the very end of the book, he returns to Pinker:
"Pinker is right to say that Hobbes was a better anthropologist than Rousseau, but that does not mean he was a better philosopher. Hobbes was right in thinking that our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived lives that were nasty, brutish and short, but he thought there was a way to remedy this. By submitting to a strong sovereign, we can at least live in relative peace. It won't be Utopia, but it will be better than the continual war of all against all." (p.269)
Evans thinks he has broken the cycle, that in returning to the comforts of civilization he has submitted to the most rational of all solutions, the sovereignty of the Hobbesian Leviathan. If you look closely at this conclusion, however, it quickly becomes clear that it is more of the same old obsessive pattern of mastery and discipleship, another "sticky twig" to which Evans has gotten himself stuck. It's not that Evans has finally seen through and broken the cycle of mastery, it is just that he has reconciled himself to the comforts and security of modern slavery, the very trap from which Lacan, if we know how to read him, teaches us how to escape.
Dylan Evans, meet the new boss, same as the old boss. You've been fooled again.
For me, Evans bears a psychological resemblance to Stuart Schneiderman, another former disciple of Lacan's who has also since renounced that allegiance. While both men come across in their writings as narcissistic wankers, Evans at least has the ability to recognize that his need for discipleship is part of a vicious circle. He writes:
"This had happened on several previous occasions in my life. When I was nineteen I spent a year training to be a priest, only to discover that, unlike my fellow seminarians, I didn't really believe in God. Ten years later I thought I had discovered the ultimate truth in the writings of Jacques Lacan, only to recoil in horror when I had surrounded myself with his most ardent disciples. I was like a foolish bird that kept alighting on sticky twigs, all coated in birdlime to trap him." (p.237)
The Utopia Experiment describes Evans's latest quixotic entry into this sorry pattern, only this time instead of God or Lacan his main inspirations are a bizarre mixture of Mayan prophecies, Alex Garland's novel The Beach, and the Unabomber's manifesto. In a fit of madness, Evans decides that technology is destroying the world and that civilization is about to collapse, so he quits his academic job, sells his beautiful home in the Cotswolds, and uses the resultant cash to fund what was meant to be an eighteen-month survivalist experiment in the Highlands of Scotland.
Evans's approach to this project is so poorly thought out and planned that it is no surprise it when it begins to fall apart. He gives no realistic thought to things like security or leadership, for instance, and then is surprised when people in the camp don't do the job assigned to them. The most laughable aspect is the halfhearted commitment he shows to the project - half the time he is living down the road at a hotel with his girlfriend (later wife) or spending time outside the camp. By the end of the project, Evans is committed to a mental hospital, the project volunteers spurn him, and self-sufficiency is never actually attained.
Evans sprinkles his commentary with moments of self-critique that are about as convincing as the utterances of an Ishiguro narrator. He insists throughout the book that he has learned an important life lesson from this experience, but all signs point to the opposite. Like Schneiderman, Evans is a lifelong disciple in search of a master, and this stands out particularly in his ominous references to Steven Pinker.
While he was recovering in hospital, Evans recounts, he reread Pinker's book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. As he was reading, a passage stood out to him, in which Pinker writes:
"...many intellectuals have embraced the image of peaceable, egalitarian, and ecology-loving natives. But in the past two decades anthropologists have gathered data on life and death in pre-state societies rather than accepting the warm and fuzzy stereotypes. What did they find? In a nutshell: Hobbes was right, Rousseau was wrong." (Pinker on p.143)
This Manichean division of human nature along the lines of good v. evil human nature is not only simplistic, but it foreshadows the return of the master/disciple dynamic to which Evans repeatedly returns with obsessive repetitiveness. The Utopia Project, after all, places him in the position of a disavowed master - he insists that he is just another volunteer, yet he is providing all the funds and, as both the founder and patron, gives him the authority to make all the decisions. "Of course I would inevitably play some kind of leading role," he ponders disingenuously. "But I didn't want to be a charismatic figure, let alone a dictator. I wanted to blend into the background, and watch what happened. Or did I? Was there perhaps some secret desire to be a kind of guru or cult leader, some unacknowledged form of megalomania?" (pp.81-82). To me, the unstated answer is a pretty obvious "yes."
In an argument with one of the volunteers after he has left the experiment, Evans claims that the volunteers were "yearning for a strong leader to take control" (p.263) - something that he immediately disavows with unconvincing ardor. Yet his interlocutor, James, agrees "that the absence of leadership was an issue. 'The lack of any organizing figurehead played the biggest role' in explaining why things didn't work out the way I wanted them to, he observed." (p.263)
This mindset plays right back into Evans's fantasy of a master to whose desires he can submit. Thus, at the very end of the book, he returns to Pinker:
"Pinker is right to say that Hobbes was a better anthropologist than Rousseau, but that does not mean he was a better philosopher. Hobbes was right in thinking that our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived lives that were nasty, brutish and short, but he thought there was a way to remedy this. By submitting to a strong sovereign, we can at least live in relative peace. It won't be Utopia, but it will be better than the continual war of all against all." (p.269)
Evans thinks he has broken the cycle, that in returning to the comforts of civilization he has submitted to the most rational of all solutions, the sovereignty of the Hobbesian Leviathan. If you look closely at this conclusion, however, it quickly becomes clear that it is more of the same old obsessive pattern of mastery and discipleship, another "sticky twig" to which Evans has gotten himself stuck. It's not that Evans has finally seen through and broken the cycle of mastery, it is just that he has reconciled himself to the comforts and security of modern slavery, the very trap from which Lacan, if we know how to read him, teaches us how to escape.
Dylan Evans, meet the new boss, same as the old boss. You've been fooled again.
June 27, 2019
I started to read this book because I'm writing a novel about the future and I thought that it might inform me about what the future might look like. But it didn't.
What it did do is tell me about the author and his state of mind at the time of this Utopia Experiment. But it didn't really tell me why he got so upset. I mean, according to what he said, the experiment was going quite well while he was sitting in a mental hospital plucking his chin hairs out, clicking his heels together and observing the other inmates stabbing each other with forks.
I read this book within 24 hours, which is a reflection of how simple the vocabulary, structure and concepts are. There's nothing challenging here.
I expected the book to be about the technical aspects of how to survive the apocalypse (whatever form that takes) but it's actually more about how the author survived the experimental scenario related to surviving the end of the world (as we know it). It's a bit of a selfish book when you look at it like that. Maybe I need to a survivalist manual instead.
The best part of the book is the last two pages, which is to say, the Glossary. This gives some hand definitions of the kinds of people who are interested in the end of the world. Included are things like boomers and doomers; survivalists and transhumanists; and declinism and primitivism. Some are about optimistic views of the future and others are more pessimistic.
I, personally, am a boomer and a transhumanist, which means that I think tech will save us all - yay! Which also means that I think the premise of the book (90% of the population dying out in the next decade) is absolute tosh.
Read it if you're a believer, or you want to see how the other half lives.
What it did do is tell me about the author and his state of mind at the time of this Utopia Experiment. But it didn't really tell me why he got so upset. I mean, according to what he said, the experiment was going quite well while he was sitting in a mental hospital plucking his chin hairs out, clicking his heels together and observing the other inmates stabbing each other with forks.
I read this book within 24 hours, which is a reflection of how simple the vocabulary, structure and concepts are. There's nothing challenging here.
I expected the book to be about the technical aspects of how to survive the apocalypse (whatever form that takes) but it's actually more about how the author survived the experimental scenario related to surviving the end of the world (as we know it). It's a bit of a selfish book when you look at it like that. Maybe I need to a survivalist manual instead.
The best part of the book is the last two pages, which is to say, the Glossary. This gives some hand definitions of the kinds of people who are interested in the end of the world. Included are things like boomers and doomers; survivalists and transhumanists; and declinism and primitivism. Some are about optimistic views of the future and others are more pessimistic.
I, personally, am a boomer and a transhumanist, which means that I think tech will save us all - yay! Which also means that I think the premise of the book (90% of the population dying out in the next decade) is absolute tosh.
Read it if you're a believer, or you want to see how the other half lives.
March 27, 2019
If you’re looking for a convincing survivalist story, you won’t find it here. Rather I found a reflective journey into Evans deeply personal, internal breakdown.
His depression existed before the experiment and likely spurred his dissension with the modern world. He saw his misery as a result of external forces, leading him to believe that a return to pre-industrial living would be the cure. He explained in a moment of lovely prose, “My mood darkened so slowly that by the time night had fallen, I couldn’t remember how things looked in the daylight.”
Anyone with a rural tinge will find this painful. Actually, anyone who spends any length of time outdoors will be scratching their heads at the seer lack of planning and, perhaps share a chuckle at the rosy view of “simple”, outdoor living. This alone spoke to his mental state. What came next was his terrible realisation of how difficult living this way is. Evans is wonderfully candid about it all. He's so truthful that I cringed along in vicarious embarrassment as he laid out his regrets and his failures. This story is witness to a fascinating experience where he was buried in depression but others around him where in the midst of a positive, life changing shift in thinking.
Dive in with an open mind and you’ll be rewarded with an understanding of other people’s motives and experiences. If you want a step-by-step account of people trying to survive the collapse of society – don’t bother.
His depression existed before the experiment and likely spurred his dissension with the modern world. He saw his misery as a result of external forces, leading him to believe that a return to pre-industrial living would be the cure. He explained in a moment of lovely prose, “My mood darkened so slowly that by the time night had fallen, I couldn’t remember how things looked in the daylight.”
Anyone with a rural tinge will find this painful. Actually, anyone who spends any length of time outdoors will be scratching their heads at the seer lack of planning and, perhaps share a chuckle at the rosy view of “simple”, outdoor living. This alone spoke to his mental state. What came next was his terrible realisation of how difficult living this way is. Evans is wonderfully candid about it all. He's so truthful that I cringed along in vicarious embarrassment as he laid out his regrets and his failures. This story is witness to a fascinating experience where he was buried in depression but others around him where in the midst of a positive, life changing shift in thinking.
Dive in with an open mind and you’ll be rewarded with an understanding of other people’s motives and experiences. If you want a step-by-step account of people trying to survive the collapse of society – don’t bother.
November 16, 2023
The book is sort of a Hegelian triad played out in real life. Evans starts with a view point that primitive societies are better, the thesis. He starts a commune to embrace it and eventually breaks down, mentally. He realizes the advantage of accumulated knowledge that forms the bedrock of civilization, the antithesis. The book is a memoir that details the process of synthesis.
Evans is quite a polymath. He refers to many concepts,books, papers and movies which I found to be interesting. The most important one was the Dabrowski's theory of positive disintegration.
Others are:
David Rosenhan(Paper) - 'On being sane in insane places'
Alex Garland - The beach
Charles Mackay in his book(?) uses 'Madness of crowd'
Kurzweil - Age of Spiritual Machines
Unabomber manifesto
Jared Diamond - Collapse
Martin Rees - Our Final Century
James Lovelock - Revenge of Gaia
Nathaneil Hawthorne - Blithedale Romance
Dabrowski - Theory of positive disintegration
Steven Pinker - Blank Slate
Freud (paper) - Those wrecked by success
Ernest Callenbach (short) - Chocco
The postman - movie
Cormac Mccarthy - The road
William Morris - News from Nowhere
Philip Zimbardo's experiment
Leonard Reed(Essay) - 'I, Pencil'
Edmund Burke - A philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful
Bronnie Ware - The top five regrets of the dying
Evans is quite a polymath. He refers to many concepts,books, papers and movies which I found to be interesting. The most important one was the Dabrowski's theory of positive disintegration.
Others are:
David Rosenhan(Paper) - 'On being sane in insane places'
Alex Garland - The beach
Charles Mackay in his book(?) uses 'Madness of crowd'
Kurzweil - Age of Spiritual Machines
Unabomber manifesto
Jared Diamond - Collapse
Martin Rees - Our Final Century
James Lovelock - Revenge of Gaia
Nathaneil Hawthorne - Blithedale Romance
Dabrowski - Theory of positive disintegration
Steven Pinker - Blank Slate
Freud (paper) - Those wrecked by success
Ernest Callenbach (short) - Chocco
The postman - movie
Cormac Mccarthy - The road
William Morris - News from Nowhere
Philip Zimbardo's experiment
Leonard Reed(Essay) - 'I, Pencil'
Edmund Burke - A philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful
Bronnie Ware - The top five regrets of the dying
June 11, 2019
I love this book, and quite out of character for me, I have read it more than once. Maybe it is the morbid fascination in watching someone's life unravel with every page turn, or maybe I just see elements of Dylan's obsessive behaviour in myself, either way, I find the characters in this book compelling and frustrating in equal measure.
Ultimately, I would say this book is a book about the decline of a man's mental health rather than self-sufficiency which is what I thought it would be when I started reading, however I soon discovered that it was like driving past a road accident, you don't want to look, but you can't help yourself. With every increasingly self-harming decision, Dylan makes I found myself wanting to shout at him to stop and go home before it is too late!
I am pleased that this story has a positive ending and that Dylan was able to look back and write this book. I dare say, this book wouldn't be for everyone and some might think it is dull or just plain weird, but for me, I found it a really compelling read.
Ultimately, I would say this book is a book about the decline of a man's mental health rather than self-sufficiency which is what I thought it would be when I started reading, however I soon discovered that it was like driving past a road accident, you don't want to look, but you can't help yourself. With every increasingly self-harming decision, Dylan makes I found myself wanting to shout at him to stop and go home before it is too late!
I am pleased that this story has a positive ending and that Dylan was able to look back and write this book. I dare say, this book wouldn't be for everyone and some might think it is dull or just plain weird, but for me, I found it a really compelling read.
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