My New Theory of History and Everything

Cantino Planisphere, 1502 - What the Portuguese knew as of that date.

When adventurers heading to the gold fields during the Yukon gold rush wintered in Athabasca, Alberta, their camp was commonly known as “the Bohemian camp.”

This says something, I think, about the type of people who were drawn west. Robert W. Service spoke of “the men who don’t fit in”--men discontented with life in general, but in particular with social life. They seek freedom, not in the purely political, but in a deep, existential sense. These were not immoral men, mind; those came later. As Bob Dylan once said, “to live outside the law, you must be honest.” There is no profit in robbery until those around you have established themselves in some way. It is when the scoundrels arrive, in the second or third wave of immigration, that government and law and regulation become necessary. The first men off the wagons are, on the whole, unusually intelligent, brave, inventive, curious men.

Bohemian Camp, Bennett Lake, 1898

The reason for this is that the world is tailored, inevitably, to the average man. Not only in a democracy, but anywhere, regulations are mostly made by average men—because, on average, it will always be an average man in charge. This is no different in the universities, or in the professions, than anywhere else; although there are exceptions elsewhere. By their nature, as well, any regulations eliminate not just the substandard, but just as automatically anything very superior to the standard.

As a result, settled life in an established society is more or less constant torture for the highly intelligent. They will always be in the wrong. And, unlike the stupid or lazy, they can never “learn better.”

And so a prime need of the highly intelligent in order to survive, let alone thrive, is to escape in some way from social constraints.

One measure of this need of the highly intelligent is the fact that the greatest writers, artists, philosophers, or scientists commonly choose exile from their homeland. Li Bai; Picasso; Einstein; Joyce; Descartes; Columbus; Voltaire; Yeats; Rumi; Kubrick; Hitchcock; Hemingway; Hesse; Dante; Da Vinci; Aristotle; Plato; Leibniz; Berkeley … it is the usual and expected thing. Other geniuses have accomplished about the same by dropping out of society in place for a reclusive existence: Mendel, Newton, Salinger, Darwin, Kant, Aquinas, St. John of the Cross.

But having a new wilderness to go to is even better, especially for the brilliant who are not either well –educated or born well-off. The ability of America, if only through geography, to offer a free frontier beyond the reach of law for generations was a profoundly important thing. It preserved the most intelligent and adventurous in the population, their creations, and their posterity. Elsewhere, they would have been “mute, inglorious Miltons,” beaten down and then forgotten. In the US, they had the option to move on, and experiment, and if necessary move on again.

New Harmony, Indiana, as proposed, 1838

Reading recently about the “Burnt-Over District” of Western New York, it is striking how much it resembles an earlier version of California. Buffalo and the Erie shore was really the original “West Coast” of America, full like California of crazy new ideas and social experiments like Mormonism, Spiritism, Shakerism, or the Oneida Community. This was the result of the Erie Canal opening up Western New York in the early 19th century to settlement by the most adventurous dreamers living on the Atlantic littoral at the time, with the promise of the vast northwest territories beyond if things did not work out.

In the next generations, the Bohemians headed for the Midwest, the Great Plains, the Great Basin and the Pacific Coast, each time bringing a taste for freedom, a creative ferment and a tendency to try crazy new things. You can track the same path for American folk culture: the Appalachians, the myths, legends, songs, and poetry of the cowboy; Mark Twain’s writing; jazz and blues and gospel along the Mississippi; Zane Grey, Jack London, John Steinbeck, Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis; essentially, America.

To a significant extent, the same thing was also happening in America’s cities on the East Coast. New waves of adventurous and intelligent and creative malcontents were arriving in from Europe each generation, and causing their own famous ferment. But I suspect on balance we overestimate the value of the latter, and underestimate the former. Firstly, up until the 20th century, it was the former, the opening of new lands westwards, that made the latter possible. Secondly, there is a difference between emigrating to another, established society, and emigrating beyond the reach of civilization itself. The latter, obviously, gives more room for raw freedom and experimentation.


We have recently, I think, been predisposed to overestimate the value of cultural mixing; that is the whole idea of "multiculturalism," and fits well with the fall of Constantinople as the origin of the Renaissance. But it may be that escape from one's home culture is the greater inspiration. After all, most of the famous exiled writers we mentioned did not as a result add a major part of their new host culture into their work. Joyce and Yeats are not remarkable for any great injection of French culture into Irish letters. Some assume elements of the new host culture; some ignore it. But both find the expatriate experience preferable.


Is this the true secret of America’s political, social, cultural, and economic success? I suspect it is; why wouldn’t it be?

Growth and Decline of the British Empire

Britain’s earlier success seems built on a similar model: Britain had the sea, and the adventurous and discontented could hope to find a tropical island somewhere or some other outpost of Empire with which to escape the oppression of social conformity. And this, simply, is why the Industrial Revolution began in Britain. Let’s date its start, as Wikipedia does, from 1760. What else was happening at about that time? From 1744-1760, Clive was busily securing India. In 1759, Wolfe took Quebec and Canada, securing as well the American colonies. In 1770, Cooke took Australia. Odd coincidence in timing, that; nor can the Industrial Revolution be credited with the expansion of Empire, which came before it. The causation has to be the other way around: the sudden opportunity to emigrate inspired the burst of technical and scientific innovation. Not to mention the burst of innovation in the arts we now know as the British Romantic period; starting, traditionally, with the publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798.

How about the Western European Renaissance? The most popular explanation for this sudden flowering of inventiveness and cultural progress is the fall of Constantinople, and the flight west of so many Greek scholars. But it is also strikingly coterminous with the first great surge of Western exploration. Some dates: 1402 - Castille begins to colonize the Canary Islands. 1420 – Portuguese discover and colonize the Madeira Islands. 1427 – Portuguese discover and colonize the Azores. 1434 – Portuguese sail past Cape Bojador, traditionally considered the limit of the navigable world. 1441 – Portuguese sail past Cape Blanco. 1444 – Portuguese sail past Cap-Vert and into Sub-Saharan Africa; huge new trade route opened up. 1450 – Gutenberg discovers the printing press. 1453 – Constantinople falls. 1462 - Portuguese trading as far south as Sierra Leone. 1488 – Dias reaches Cape of Good Hope. 1492 – Columbus discovers America. 1495 – Da Vinci, The Last Supper. 1498 – Da Gama reaches India. 1503 – Mona Lisa. 1504 – David. 1509 – Erasmus, In Praise of Folly. 1512 – Sistine Chapel. 1516 – More, Utopia. 1519-1522 – Magellan circumnavigates the globe. 1543 – Copernicus, De Revolutionibus.

Portuguese map of claimed territory, 15th century.

In this timeline, we see three possible triggers for the Renaissance, three early epochal events: the invention of movable type, the fall of Constantinople, and the first striking out westward to trade with the wild unknown lands beyond. The dates are, respectively, 1450, 1453, and 1402. Obviously, an event in 1453 cannot cause one in 1450; only 1402 accounts for all three. Suddenly, the European imagination was unleashed, by the opportunity to pack up everything and head for the open sea. With the discovery of Madeira, the original "desert island" was found--previously uninhabited, virgin land. And there was obvious promise of more in the same direction; every few years after this point, the Portuguese or the Spanish were finding another uninhabited but habitable island group off the coast of Africa or further to the West. When, in 1444, the Portuguese arrived south of the Sahara, a wandering life at sea also suddenly became much more viable, with the new possibilities for trade.

Nor was this opportunity limited in any sense to the Portuguese. Western Europe in general, and Southern Europe in particular, was not yet divided culturally into nation states. Everyone who read or wrote wrote Latin. Italian seamen like Columbus and Cabot could sail just as easily under the flag or in the ships of England or Spain, and the two men who took the Canaries for Castille were French. The early settlers of the Canaries came from all over Europe; as did the early settlers of the Azores.

The westward and southward expansion inspires creativity in those who stay at home as well. Even if they never leave, they know they have this safety valve. They can experiment freely, and escape punishment or ruin if necessary by packing a bag and catching the next ship.

It occurs to me, moreover, that the very same conditions would have held in ancient Greece, explaining the great flowering of that civilization 2,500 or so years ago. The Greeks too had the sea, and were busily setting up colonies all around the Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts. Any individual or group dissatisfied with their polis could easily move out and on.

Might this not be the secret of cultural greatness generally? That is, the possibility of escape for the unusually intelligent to some virgin territory? The period of Western cultural dominance has lasted from the moment the Portuguese rounded Cap-Vert until now, but has shifted within European culture to whichever area had the best immediate prospects for outward migration.

But if this is indeed the secret of cultural growth, we seem to have fallen on bad times. Worldwide, emigration is much more difficult now than it was only a few generations ago. Government and its regulations are becoming stronger and more pervasive everywhere. The creative American cadre that spread west as far as California has hit the inevitable barrier of the sea; the American frontier disappeared officially in about 1890.

And it is not easy to see any new lands to settle. Yes, we can go to the moon and Mars; there is even a fair bit of empty terrain left in places like Canada. But this is not the same. One needs empty terrain on which one can settle as an individual. These remaining places are only possible with huge amounts of organization and government machinery. Once there, it is not obviously possible to make a living without retaining complex relationships with the original society. One cannot simply subsistence farm, or set up a trading post and live by barter.

A generation ago, however, the lingering sons and grandsons of the frontier, in California, created cyberspace. That offered many new opportunities for creative minds. That too is starting to get fenced in and regulated; but there is some hope that new cyberlands will still be found. With new cyberlands, it becomes possible in turn for people to homestead in currently remote areas, and make a living online.

So there is hope for the future of mankind.

And, dare I say it, there is one more possible option for the very bright, in the English speaking world. It is called English teaching.

Laugh if you like. If you do, you have no idea what a stimulating bunch of Bohemians the typical ESL faculty is in any non-English-speaking college or university.

There are strong drives afoot to fence in these fields too, and pass it all on to the drudges. I have hopes, though, that the nature of the life will prevent this; as it has, elsewhere, with circus people or gypsies. Conventional people don’t thrive on culture shock.