So for those who don't know, This is the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.
Something I've felt, and I know others have too, is a complete lack of true novelty in modern living. Every original thought I thought I had, was an old idea or philosophy proven false or unrealistic. There is nowhere truly new in this world, we have fully mapped the surface of our little blue sphere, and the areas where 'Here be dragons' have been filled in. I've isolated it to three distinct but related phrases.
The particular sadness when one realizes the entire world has been discovered.
The particular sadness when one thinks they have an original idea proven to be old, invalid or unworkable.
The particular sadness when one realizes there is no frontier to the world, no wilderness left. (I was born too late to explore the world, too early to explore the stars)
Buck up there, little camper. Lemme tell you a story. Shit, I might tell you two.
So in 2011 I went to a writer's workshop out at Ghost Ranch, more or less. The guys running it had gone in on a big plot of land out past Abiquiu, a chunk that got shaved off the Baca Land Grant. One of the things we had to do was sit out there, away from everyone, and write. Didn't matter about what.
Some perspective - the road was maybe a mile away. There were six or seven other people within a half mile walk. I got where I was going with a canteen of water and no worries - and I've been lost in the woods before and nearly died, so I worry. I had reasonably good cell coverage the entire time.
Some different perspective: By the time the US Government gave the land to the Bacas, the Spanish had been gone for 400 years. By the time King Ferdinand gave it to whoever, the Anasazi had been gone for 400 years. And by the time I wandered up to my little dirt knoll in the middle of nowhere, there hadn't been foot traffic since before the Norman Conquest.
There were little flaked piles of chert and obsidian everywhere - back when the arid valley I occupied was a reasonable place to hunt deer, Anasazi men and boys hung out, flaked arrowheads with deer horn and waited for lunch to wander by. And in the intervening time, there had been nothing and nobody around. Some kid's cast-offs had sat under a tree and experienced 36,000 sunsets.
Until I picked them up.
It's pretty stupid that we rank "discovery" higher than "rediscovery" because you know what? Gutenberg didn't invent the printing press. Jared Diamond points out that there were similar gadgets on Crete in 2000 BC. They didn't catch on, though - the time wasn't right. Know what "slow food" is? A rediscovery of conventional cooking. Gastropubs aren't new-fangled, they're old-fangled. Everything old is new again.
About them dragons. I've hiked logging roads. In the Southwest, wagon ruts that date back to the Western Expansion are still weed-free. In the Northwest, a trail you cut last winter is now overgrown. The last time I got lost in the woods I stumbled across some logging roads that, upon investigation, dated all the way back to 1971. Paved and everything. And lemme tell ya - they might as well have been Angkor Wat. It's deceptively easy to find yourself standing in a place where no one has stood for 30 years and when you get there by accident, it's every bit as thrilling and terrifying as if no one had ever been there before.
I find that people who think all the discoveries have been discovered are the ones who need to get out more. There are vast swaths of the world that are rarely visited, if at all, and your discovery of them should be just as important to you as someone else's discovery the first time. You could start traveling now and would be dead long before you'd seen all the places everyday normal 1st-world people call home. Do you really need to find some lost corner of the Marianas Trench in order to feel like you've done something with your life?
Know how archaelogists discover paleolithic ruins in Saudi Arabia? Google Earth. There are so many places in The Empty Quarter that people haven't been since the dawn of recorded history that satellites are the best way to find them.
Go discover. Don't worry about whether or not you're the first. You're the first among the people you know and that's enough.
To add to this: the most important thing to note here, is that it is you, OftenBen, who discovers it. Let me elaborate on why that's important.
Say you manage to go to Amsterdam. There's a pretty large chance you'll discover the Kalverstraat pictured above. You will definitely not be the first to discover that. Not by a long shot.
But you will be the first you to discover that place. Maybe you are into European architecture, and you see those old buildings above the shops and wonder how old they are. Maybe you recognised some of those brands from ads. Maybe you know something about meteorology and want to know what kind of clouds those are. Maybe it reminds you of that time you went to Germany, or maybe it reminds you of a song.
You can watch the world around you in so many different ways and most of them are really unique to you. There are so many different perspectives to have that most places you go are discovered by you - if you take the time to look closely. The devil's in the details, like ref says. Maybe that's not "real" discovery in the cartographic sense, but it definitely is a discovery to you and I think that is much more important.
There is just far too much stuff we don't know or haven't bothered to think about - to say that there isn't anything left to discover is to underestimate the immensity of details our world has.
- There is just far too much stuff we don't know or haven't bothered to think about - to say that there isn't anything left to discover is to underestimate the immensity of details our world has.
My grandfather used to tell me (When he had still had the patience and memory for meaningful discussion and debate) that a man could spend his whole life studying a square foot of dirt from the garden and die having never discovered everything about it. I understand the idea that perspective is the most important thing in regards to discovery (Personal discovery) but I find myself battling a negative emotion when I 'discover.'
For example, last summer I went on a bit of a road trip with my grandfather, and there was a moment when we were deep in the woods in the Upper Peninsula, staring at a waterfall created where part of an old industrial dam had broken under the root of a tree that had grown in an old post hole. We were a few miles from the nearest road and I thought from most people. We spent maybe twenty minutes around the area, taking pictures and just watching the water when a tour group of senior citizens with a polo-clad state park guide came through, doing just as we had done, taking pictures and oohing and ahhing. I felt instantly put off of the whole experience, because I hadn't 'discovered' anything. I was just another tourist, another voyeur, in the day to day of that place. This is an extension of the feeling of my original post, and since that day I don't take quite the same pleasure in being out in the woods, around ruins, old structures as I once did, because in the back of my mind I still feel like a voyeur, like a tourist.
- My grandfather used to tell me that a man could spend his whole life studying a square foot of dirt from the garden and die having never discovered everything about it.
That's because it's a square foot of dirt, man. Boring as hell, unless you're really into geology. There's a middle ground between looking at a square foot of dirt and at large uncharted areas. And it's where the good stuff's at.
- I felt instantly put off of the whole experience, because I hadn't 'discovered' anything.
I know how you feel: it's nice to know something probably nobody knows. It's the same with music for me. I've often had music I discovered myself be used in a large ad campaign and at first I feel disappointed (it's the hipster hiding inside me), but in the end I know that way more people will then appreciate it. Maybe that's not happening with the tourists as they just go ooh and aah and snap a picture to forget. But is that really something that should make you feel worse about your experience?
- Go discover. Don't worry about whether or not you're the first. You're the first among the people you know and that's enough.
That's the reason I bought a roof rack for my car and a kayak. However I'm somewhat limited in my range, financial and personal (health) constraints. Also the reason I infrequently take psychedelics.
I dunno, mang. I just wrote a poem about "the origin of verse" where I said that I wrote poems by following a process similar to a sourdough starter and which involves reading poems out loud in order to entice little poem-sprouts to my sweet starter (piece of paper, natch). (Because, by the way, when you read a poem out loud, it leaves crumbs, you see?)
Of course, maybe someone has generated this exact same thought/metaphor - can't say they didn't - but I do doubt that I will ever run across another manifestation of such a thought/concept/process.
Also, you know we've only named like, 15% of all the species that we estimate to exist on this planet, right?
I mean, sure, all stories are the same story and all poems are about love or death, and if it's about love then it's about death so all poems are just about death, but that's taking a really, really zoomed-out view. Like if you take the two most drastically different looking humans you can find and look at them from really far out, they're gonna look pretty much the same. Two arms, two legs, one head, torso, (assuming neither is an amputee of any sort), stuff on the head, maybe some hair, nipples and butts. I can reduce any two humans to that, and then yea they're super similar and boring. The devil's in the details.
It's the specifics that you need, mang. It's the specifics that set everything apart. Now I'm gonna go read kb's comment, I'm looking forward to it.
Edit: better source for all stories are the same story but less reductive
- I find that people who think all the discoveries have been discovered are the ones who need to get out more.
Do you have a word for the feeling you're describing? Here's some medical suffixes and prefixes that you might consider.
I make a point to try and 'get out in the world' as much as possible, and not to make excuses (But totally making excuses) I am a full time student, working part time, positively diagnosed with a chronic heart condition that makes all physical activity a struggle, perma-broke, and all of my friends think the outside is scary and to be avoided.
Last summer I got a kayak (Well two) I just got a rack for my car that lets me take it where I want to when I want to, because rowing takes my mind off things and is a physical activity I tolerate well, because I can coast along and still make progress.
I want to get out more, and make a point to try and do so as much as possible, but there are times when it feels like I am being conspired against.
And I don't have a name for it yet, some kind of -algia.