·vagari·

 

The heart of the problem is the discovery of a person who lives in present times but nevertheless is not part of modern life due to its otherness. ·vagari· is not present in pictures. The beholder only discovers him by chance and won’t be able to see his face. He lives in the present but does not belong to it.

He is lonesome and no hero.

A quote from Josef H. Reichholf’s book “Why mankind got settled”:
By nature we are nomads. […] At least nine-tenth of the time human beings exist as biological species surviving was guaranteed by hunting and collecting. […] However something special happened 10.000 years ago. In the Middle East farming was invented. […] It is now that man produces not only nature. […] and with the increase of humans productivity went up accordingly. Productivity led to ownership. Humans and ownership unite to power. Human thinking changed from nature driven to culturally driven forces.

People set their hearts on objects, they let us be what we want to be. They give us a feeling of home and protection against our environment, even beyond death. But death is the end of all comprehension and of all illusions. Who is ·vagari·? Everything is formed by our spirit. ·vagari· is the one who pretends to be of his own making. The sociologist Georg Simmel remarks that the stranger learns the art of conformity rather more self-conscious and with more pain than people who claim affiliation and who live in peace with their environment. In Simmel’s opinion the stranger holds up a mirror to the society into which he steps, since he cannot perceive it as given and natural as do the natives. The necessary changes in the dealings of humans with their physical environment are so immense that only such a feeling of uprooting and alienation can change today’s practice and reduce our desire to consume.

Is ·vagari· distrusting himself and his behaviour as soon as he steps amongst people? Is he distrusting the human-made order? Is he only prowling aroung here because he cannot escape from this planet?