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Title: Yuppies With Spears (Beating around the Blackbush)
Author: Gerald Edmonson
Date: April 2007
Language: en
Topics: fiction, satire, anarcho-primitivism, technology, anti-civ, post-civ
Source: Retrieved on 2021-08-14 from [[https://tangledwilderness.org/pdfs/yuppieswithspears-web.pdf]]
Notes: Article from “Dot Bit” Magazine, originally titled “Beating

Gerald Edmonson

Yuppies With Spears (Beating around the Blackbush)

We found this magazine article in some weird tech-rag we found in

Seattle. It was under creative commons licensing, so we think it’s okay

to republish. From what we can gather, the magazine isn’t around anymore

anyhow. Obviously, we do not support the views of this article. We don’t

know that anyone does. We found it as attractive as a car-wreck,

however. Maybe it’s satire. That would be nice. Yeah, it’s probably

satire.

— strangers

Beating around the Blackbush

“Humanity took a wrong turn with agriculture. Everything was pretty good

up until then.” My host—a thirty-something white man with a

close-cropped reddish-brown beard and rather un-striking

features—informed me as we rode along a thin asphalt path, perched on

our Segway motor-scooters. His brown tie flapped over his shoulder in

the slight summer breeze, his button-down shirt was rolled up to his

biceps. “Yup, we really dropped the ball on that one.”

Mike Redding, the speaker, is part of Blackbush Tribe, LLC. He and

forty-eight others live nomadically on a privately owned, 50,000-acre

nature reserve in New England, living the life of modern

hunter/gatherers. The median income of his “tribe” is $250,000.

Curiously blending the latest in technology, digital-age spirituality,

and a back-to-the-land ethic, the men and women (mostly men) of

Blackbush Tribe are the ultimate telecommuters. “We’re as much a product

of Web 2.0 as we are of our primitive roots,” Mike explained, “we’re

really finding a new symbiosis, a new way of being.” A wide grin of

perfect teeth crept across his face, “We’re the best of both worlds.”

Mike, about to follow up on this thought, was interrupted by a beeping

from the SmartPhone on his belt. He un-holstered and studied the device

for a moment before looking up at me, the grin still plastered to his

face. “Looks like a bird fell into one of our traps. C’mon, let’s go

find it and eat it!”

---

I first heard of the Tribe’s ongoing two-year experiment last winter, by

word of mouth. Their existence was a rumor in the web-development

circles that my brother partook in, and it was a rumor he passed on with

glee. After slogging through archive.org, I eventually uncovered blog

posts from the start of the project, before all the details were taken

offline.

From there, a few emails led me to Mike Redding, Project Manager of

Interspecies Carnivorous Relations for Blackbush. Soon I was on a plane

to Providence, Rhode Island, flying coach from my own pocket since my

usual paper declined to finance the trip.

I had no idea what to expect, and I admit I was a bit disappointed when

I saw my name written on a greeting sign at the airport—the man who held

it was clean, sharply dressed, and unequivocally plain. We took a

shuttle to his car, an electric van, and drove out toward their land.

But as soon as we pulled onto the freeway, Mike offered me strips of elk

jerky from a Ziploc bag, and I knew my curiosity would not be

disappointed.

---

From the GPS set into the handlebars of his electric scooter, Mike led

us down winding dirt paths through the second-growth forest and onto a

pristine field. The grass might never have seen a mower and the summer

sky was clear and blue. Somewhere in the distance was a trace of

bird-song, and the day felt peaceful. “We’ll have to walk,” Mike

apologized as he dismounted and switched on the anti-theft device on his

Segway, “but it’s only about fifty meters.”

We traipsed through the field in our work-boots and blue jeans and soon

I saw a few dozen wooden birdhouses set onto aluminum poles ahead of us.

“Not all of them are trapped, of course,” Mike explained as he

un-velcroed a synthetic one-shoulder backpack and unzipped the main

compartment, “or the birds would never nest here. And we don’t leave

these bird-gathering solutions armed when we leave for the year. That

would be cruel.” There was no trace of irony in his voice.

Approaching the base of one of the supports, which extended some three

feet above our heads, Mike depressed a button and the pole slid in on

itself until the birdhouse was at chest level. With a practiced hand, he

opened a door set into the base of the birdhouse and pulled out a

sparrow. “Passeridae Domesticus,” Mike announced happily, “or some such.

Lunch, anyways, right?” Mike looked at me, gave me the knowing laugh I

recognized painfully from my miserable days working in my paper’s

office, and broke the bird’s neck. It went into his pack and we returned

to our Segways.

I stood on mine too quickly, it seemed, because a shrill car alarm burst

out and shattered the calm of the field. Mike grinned and pressed a

button on his keychain, and the alarm gave a noise of acknowledgement

before going silent. Mike laughed his grating laugh and mounted his

scooter himself. Soon we were whizzing back through the forest to the

encampment.

---

“Thousands of years ago, all humans used to live like this,” Mike told

me that night as we sat in his spacious one-room log-cabin summer house,

“and we better understood our connection to nature. We, humanity, we’re

hunters, I tell you. We’re not tillers of the land. What’s more, we’re

best of breed in the animal kingdom, thanks to this,” Mike held up one

hand and pointed to its thumb with a forefinger. “The opposable thumb.

It all starts there.”

“And what about all of this?” I asked, “The Blackbush Tribe. How did it

start?”

Mike stood and opened one of the storm-resistant windows set into the

wall, letting the fresh night air in. When he retook his seat, he told a

story for me and my eager tape recorder.

“I’ve always thought different. I’m an independent thinker, a natural

entrepreneur. A go-getter type. Everyone here is like that. We all give

110%. But when you work hard, you play hard, you’ve got to understand.

“Me and some of the guys, we used to all live in Seattle together and

work for some of the better dot-coms. This was back when we weren’t

doing as well financially, after the bottom fell out of the industry and

we were lucky to scrape together 80, 90 grand a year. We took a sort of

rebellious, youthful pride in our high-risk, high-gain lifestyle, you

know, and we formed a Segway gang.

“Every Friday night we’d get together, about twenty of us, and Segway

from bar to bar, getting pretty hammered. After a few months we got our

ducks in a row; we had jackets made—sportscoats with “Seattle Segway

Gang, LLC.” across the back—and we had a short run of luck doing

consulting work for hip companies who wanted to give their team-members

a chance to blow off some steam. But once we had picked all the

low-hanging fruit, our business model just didn’t carry-through, and it

was back to drinking at the bars.

“Anyway, the industry picked up and we rode that wave, surfing our way

to the big bucks. Suddenly we were no longer struggling to pay off our

second cars, and even the rising gas prices didn’t scare us. It was

around this time that [Blackbush Tribe Executive Manager] Scott picked

up a book called Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. And if that book didn’t change

our lives—”

I poured myself another glass of homemade wine as Mike continued his

story.

“We knew that despite our money, we weren’t happy. When I was younger,

of course, I thought that it was simply because I wasn’t making enough

money. But then I realized that this whole culture, this sedentary life,

is actually ill-suited to the human temperament. I mean, 500,000 years

of evolution can’t be wrong, right?

“So the lot of us, it was still about 20 at that point, looked into our

options. Most of us were telecommuters by that point anyhow, which made

it easier for us to work multiple jobs. A couple of the Seattle gang

were real-estate brokers, and we figured that if we bought a large

enough swath of land... well, the rest is history, isn’t it?

“Oh sure, it took us a hot minute to figure out exactly how to

incorporate, and it caused a bit of problems in the home-life for some

of the family types... You a family type? You got a wife, kids?”

I was caught off-guard by the question, so I merely shook my head.

“Yeah, me neither. I say, ‘playing the game gets boring when you’ve got

the same opponent every inning,’ right? I mean, I’m not sexist or

anything, right? So anyhow, a few guys got cut from the team, but we got

a few wives on board. We bought the land, we got contractors to build

our different homes, set up cell towers, and now we work from wherever

we lay our heads at night!”

Since it was summer, where Mike lay his head at night was a queen-sized

luxury mattress in a mahogany poster bed. Come fall, the tribe would

roll southwards to their brick autumn homes. During the winter they

rested in hobbit-hole mansions set into the south face of a hill on

their property. In spring it was back north to tree houses, and the

circle would continue another year.

“I’ve got a few things left on my action list for the night, but I’m

glad we got to dialogue,” Mike dismissed me politely, “and remember,

tomorrow we go hunting.”

I left my host and walked through the warm night to the guest-lodge, a

spacious one-room house that dwarfs my small-town Oregon apartment.

---

Blackbush Tribe, LLC is genius in its way. They’ve figured out most

everything for themselves. Since they space out their foraging, their

game never goes scarce. Elk, wolves, turkeys, bears, badgers and even

gazelles have been introduced to their land and are all doing quite well

in the wild. A few team-members (a euphemism for the tribespeople here)

had argued in favor of more exotic animals: Mike had vetoed all zebras,

elephants and wild cats after he had requested compatibility reports

from private biologists.

They travel light from town to town, but they do not live ‘simply’ by

any stretch of the phrase. For the most part, they own four of

everything: four TVs, four refrigerators, four microwaves, four copies

of every book, movie, and CD. Four electric cars, for when they need to

drive to the airport to have ‘facetime’ with their employers. Four

electric razors, four sets of golf clubs. Four forges, four

drill-presses, four lathes. Four spears, four compound bows. Four of

near everything.

Each team-member owns five Segway scooters, however. They have an

on-road scooter that they used for migration and four “x2” off-road

scooters for foraging.

Each of their four seasonal villages generates electricity in a number

of ingenious methods, from wind and solar to small water-wheels and even

human-manure methane off-gassing—all installed and maintained by hired

help. By the time the tribe arrives to each village, the bank of

batteries is charged enough to last the season.

By use of cellular modems and their Blackberry SmartPhones, the tribe

continues to work full-time jobs for companies—including Google, Viacom,

Apple, and Microsoft as well as a myriad of small, behind-the-scenes

tech companies. A few hold properties throughout the country, most trade

stock. They all log between 40 and 60 hours of work a week.

---

The next morning I woke up with the sun, as is custom among tribepeople

here. I stretched out, threw off my buckskin blanket and got dressed.

When I walked outside, part of the tribe was gathered at the dining

pavilion.

A large non-stick pot was suspended over the cook-fire, attended by one

of the few women present. She was in her late twenties, stocky and

handsome with a strong jaw and a stronger gaze. Three toddlers clung to

her jeans. Sue Donaldson was her name, and she came here unmarried,

though she was currently engaged to a fellow Tribesperson. None of the

children were hers, I soon learned as I struck up a conversation.

“We’ve got five married couples here, and three of them have children,

one kid each. We want a second generation, sure, but no inflation.”

I asked her why she felt that so few women had joined the tribe, and Sue

sighed. “It’s this glass ceiling bit. The women out there with drive,

with initiative, are busy trying to tear that down. But what they don’t

realize is that the glass ceiling, now that it’s been raised up

somewhat, can actually be useful. I mean, who wants the stress of being

a CEO? I hit upper-middle-management, and I’m happy as a PM for the LS

department of my firm. I think that men have an easier time of it,

realizing that they would rather live more naturally.”

Sue took a sip of the wild-oat porridge from her heavy wooden spoon and

smiled a bit. “But I think that more women are catching on. Women are

naturally smarter than men, and when our culture catches up, it’ll

show.”

I asked her if she was going on the hunt. She laughed.

“Oh heaven’s no. The boys would be all kinds of huffy about it, and I’ve

got too much on my plate as it is. I’m behind on a human resources

funding request that I need to have in by five pacific time, and I’ve

got these kids to watch over. And when the boys get back from the hunt,

they’ll be hungry.”

Slightly baffled, I walked back to Mike’s hut to see how the day would

go.

I found him standing over a bucket sink that was mounted to one log

wall, shaving in the mirror. He seemed happy to see me.

“There you are! I was thinking a bit this morning about our conversation

last night.” Our eyes met in the mirror and he spoke as he ran the

cordless electric razor over the section of his neck that he kept

shaved. “I was thinking about tools.”

My host went on to explain how tools had been slandered quite unduly by

environmentalists. The real villain, he said, was an inflation of people

that expanded beyond the inflation of the economy.

“But, tools, tools are productivity-enhancers. And what’s more, they can

be more energy-efficient. You may have noticed, for example, that we

migrate by way of scooter, rather than walking or riding bicycles.”

I nodded at this, for indeed I had been curious.

“It’s a matter of efficiency,” Mike explained to me, “the efficiency of

one set of solutions over another. Let’s say you’re walking somewhere,

or bicycling. That uses calories. And those calories have to come from

somewhere. Now, for a sedentary people, slave to their agriculture,

those calories can be taken from the earth by force. The more work one

does as a farmer, the greater yield, right? But not so for our

lifestyle. If we hunt more, the elk thin out. We have a limited ability

to generate calories in a sustainable fashion from our landbase, so we

need to control the amount that we hunt.

“Electricity, on the other-hand, we don’t need to work as hard for. The

Segway is quite an efficient machine, the Human a less efficient one.

The Segway is far more adapted to our lifestyle. What’s more, since we

don’t need to spend as much of our time hunting, we have increased

productivity in the economic sphere. You see that, don’t you?” Mike’s

eyes were glazed a bit, and I was unsure if he had gotten soap in them

or if I was speaking to a madman.

I nodded weakly.

“Now, before we go hunting, you’re going to have to sign this

non-disclosure agreement.”

---

Thanks to the fine print of that agreement, I can’t tell you much of how

the Blackbush Tribe hunts. I can tell you only this: there is warpaint,

there are spears, there are laser-beacons, and there is quite a bit of

blood. I found myself in awe at the transformation of Mike and the

others, and even a bit at myself.

---

I stayed another night in the guest lodge and Mike drove me to the

airport in the morning. The ride was mostly quiet, both of us

contemplative, until I asked my final question as a journalist: “What

about the future?” “I’ve learned a lot during my two years here. And the

most important thing is—money can’t buy you happiness. If you��re doing

alright, comfortable, say 200,000 a year? Who needs any more? “And I

figure, people need to figure this out on their own. If I go out and set

up a franchise community, it doesn’t help those people very much. It’s

like charity: if you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. But if you

just show him that you know how to fish, he’ll sink or swim.” Attempting

to play along with the painfully mixed metaphor, I asked, “That’s an

interesting point about what you’re doing here. Do you think that there

are too many people in the world for everyone to live more naturally,

like you do? How do you propose that other people might be able to

follow your footsteps, without over-fishing the waters?”

Mike looked at me seriously. “I’m not going to answer that. I think we

all know what needs to happen, which is that people need to shit or get

off the pot.”

A week later I exchanged emails with a tribesperson who spoke with me

candidly on condition of anonymity. “Forced sterilization after one

child. Maybe, with an IQ test, you could be trusted to bear two. And I

don’t want to hear about how it’s cruel to the poor. If there were less

people, there wouldn’t be any poor. We could all live this way. It’s a

simple question of resource allotment.”

---

Never have I met a stranger group of people. As I write this, I still

feel the warmth of the gazelle soup, spiced with wild herbs. I still

remember the precarious feeling of perching on the back of a Segway

before I learned to trust its dynamic instability. And at night,

sometimes, I still dream of the hunt. Of bow and spear, the hum of

electric motor, the death cries of a wounded animal, of blood.