New Escapologist : July 2019
Ah, that's better
Welcome back to New Escapologist. In a desire to escape social media in favour of longer-form and more personable writing, I have re-booted this newsletter. It's also a baby step back to the glory days of the magazine. A baby step, mind.
What you can expect here, at least to begin with, is a digest of the blog's best content (tweaked for context), some New Escapologist news, reader correspondence (feel free to send me some), special deals for subscribers only, and the sort of chatty waffle you're reading right now.
I'd like to make these newsletters a monthly occurrence, which is a more frequent event than the one you signed up for (which was, of course, "a very occasional newsletter," usually to announce a new issue of the print mag twice a year). If this is too much and you'd like to unsubscribe using the link at the bottom of this email, I very much understand. Though, obviously, don't do that. The newsletter should be a nice, free, thing to read and we'll try never to mention America's Orange Overlord or other rage-triggering concerns of the day.
Does that sound okay? Then let's do, as they say, it.
Robert Wringham
New Escapologist
Narrow Escapes
There are some neat profiles in this recent Observer article of people (couples and singletons) who live on Canal Boats.
Some of you singled out the brief mention of a narrowboat-dweller in Escape Everything! so perhaps this is of interest to you. Their lives are certainly Escapological.
Cheap:
I’m on an army pension and it does not suffice me to live in a flat or a house. I’ve lived on a boat for seven years. Now my rent is cheap, council tax is cheap, it’s cheap living and I can afford it even if I lose all my benefits.
Minimalist:
What do our wardrobes consist of? About 10 pairs of dungarees. Matt wears a waistcoat with a tiny vest underneath in the summer. Large party dresses with netting underneath are a big no-no on a boat because you’d knock everything over, and if you fell in you’d sink.
Creative:
I use this place to sleep, write, design and then I go to work in my studio. The best bit is being able to have a real fire. It means I can look at the flames and use my imagination to think about what I want to do with the rest of my life, so I don’t need a television.
Green:
Living on a boat forces you to be green. I have two solar panels. Our water is in a thousand-litre stainless steel water tank that we fill up from water points. All the wood we use is reconstituted wood and the electricity is run by batteries – we don’t plug in to the short. I think it’s one of the greenest ways to live.
Independent:
You become aware how much is needed to live and you live a much simpler life. It’s quite liberating.
Doable:
I went on eBay and bought a boat, just like that.
Lanier and Lanier
You, you, you, have the affirmative responsibility to invent and demonstrate new ways to live without the crap that is destroying society. Quitting is the only way, for now, to learn what can replace our grand mistake.
I recently read Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier.
It’s a brilliant book and not your average “abandon social media” tirade. It is filled with unique insight from someone who really understands Silicon Valley and is in fact still a part of it.
I like how he has not abandoned the Internet wholesale and instead urges the social media giants to reform their dark and creepy business plans, encouraging us to delete our accounts at least until it is fixed.
Check it out if you want to. In the meantime, the quotations in this post are the ones I marked in my copy of the book. They make wider Escapological points beyond discussion of the Internet.
This:
What if listening to an inner voice or heeding a passion for ethics or beauty were to lead to more important work in the long term, even if it measured as less successful in the moment? What if deeply reaching a small number of people matters more than reaching everybody with nothing.
and this:
Your character is the most important thing about you. Don’t let it degrade.
and this:
You must solve problems on the basis of evidence you gather on your own, instead of by paying attention to group perception. You take on the qualities of a scientist or an artist. When you’re in a pack, social status and intrigues become more immediate than the larger reality. You become more like an operator, a politician, or a slave.
New Escapologist on Patreon
As well as rebooting this newsletter, I'm rebooting the Patreon essays. These essays were originally going to be the direct successor to the magazine but it fizzled out due to my lack of enthusiasm for the platform's interface and a very low uptake of readers compared to the magazine. A year on, the interface as improved and I'm happier to use it. As for the small readership, well, you can help with that.
Join the Patreon campaign today to read monthly essays of substance, all with an Escapological bent and flavour.
The first new essay (already waiting for you) is concerned with the escape from social media (and there's a bonus essay from Issue 10 of the mag concerning natural history writers for second-tier patrons too).
Do have a look. This is the cost-covering and substantial-essay-writing wing of the project and it costs a mere $1.35 or $2.70 (converted automatically to your own currency) to join. Don't miss out.
Without work, who do we become?
If work were no longer what it used to be, how we would cope? Who would we even be?
Mark Kingwell is a long-serving thinker in the fields of work and leisure. You’ve probably read some of his work already. Among other things, he wrote the introductory essays to Josh Glenn’s Idler’s and Wage Slave’s Glossaries. He’s also a UoT colleague of Joseph Heath whom we interviewed in New Escapologist Issue 9 (we also interviewed Josh in Issue 7).
This quick column of his is over six months old now because I sat on it for too long. Sorry about that. It contains many nice nuggets:
More than two millennia ago, Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, argued a fundamental point: The essence of human life is not work. Work lies in the realm of necessity, not philosophy. Leisure time, understood as the contemplation of the divine, is the true aim of life.
Letters to the Editor: Another Escapee
Hello Robert,
I just wanted to say a huge thank you. I read your book and took the back catalogue of the magazine away on my Summer Holidays last year. Fast-forward ten months and this week is my last in my [civil service] job. I handed my resignation in and have found part-time work with a friend in street food catering.
I am happier, more carefree and have a smile back on my face. And this wouldn’t have happened without your writing.
Thank you for the inspiration to make the great escape.
Kind Regards
C
Green Escapology Anyone?
Worried about the planet dying? I bloody am.
Happily, Escapologists who vowed a long time ago to work less (if at all) are at least on the right side of things.
We’ve intuitively known for a long time that work and consumption are responsible for global warming and plastic soup and all the rest of it. I mean it’s obvious really, isn’t it?
So let’s tell the others: work less, save the planet.
Business writer Andre Spicer puts it thus:
By working less, we produce fewer goods and services that require precious resources to make. We also consume less in the process of getting our job done. Less work means less carbon-intensive commuting, less energy-sucking office space, and less time on power-hungry computer systems. In addition, working less would help to break down the work-spend cycle.
It’s encouraging that people are slowly starting to wake up to this and to take [in]action. There have been studies to investigate the correlation between work and carbon footprint, as reported in Spicer’s piece:
According to a cluster of recent studies, working less is good for the environment.
One analysis found that if we spent 10% less time working, our carbon footprint would be reduced by 14.6%. If we cut the hours we work by 25% – or a day and a quarter each week – our carbon footprint would decline by 36.6%.
Another study found that if people in the US (who work notoriously long hours) worked similar hours to Europeans (who work much less), then they would consume about 20% less energy.
A more recent analysis of US states found a strong positive relationship between the number of hours people worked and their carbon emissions. The more they worked, the more they polluted.
Working a four-day week, rather than, say, taking more holidays or working fewer hours each day, was a great way of reducing your environmental impact. The exact magnitude of that reduction is unclear, but the research seems to point in the same direction: lowering the number of hours we work would help to reduce our impact on the environment.
Actual studies exist now to provide a research basis for what we could call Green Escapology.
Then again, when you remember that “work expends energy” is pretty much the basis of Physics, one wonders how much more science is needed for the message to be taken seriously.
Subscriber Offer
To kick things off in terms of special deals for readers of this newsletter, I'm extending an offer I made on Escape Everything! back in April. I still have some copies left (though not many).
Get the book for just £8.50 with free shipping. Phew! Just click the PayPal button at this handy webpage and the book will be yours in a matter of days.
I realise many of you probably have the book already, so I'll offer something more original in the next newsletter. But it's a good deal, is it not? (It is).
PS: While we're shopping, please remember the Patreon. You can access a nice cache of essays straight away, as well as getting new ones beamed to you every month or so.
That's all for now. I'll be back with another New Escapologist newsletter at the end of August (and, actually, there will be a general Robert Wringham one about books, diary-keeping, squirrels, and the literary life, on or around the 15th if you fancy it).
Now get back to work. (Joke! Joke!)