We have a rare dis­ease. We call it Sat­is­fac­tion. Most of us con­tracted it in our early twen­ties, al­though it ger­mi­nated in many even ear­lier. At the time of pub­li­ca­tion, much un­cer­tainty ex­ists as to our abil­ity to live in close prox­im­ity to nor­mal so­ci­ety on a per­ma­nent basis. Our dis­ease is widely be­lieved to be con­ta­gious and the con­se­quence of God’s great dis­plea­sure be­sides.

Among the in­fected too there is de­bate on the mer­its of var­i­ous colony con­fig­u­ra­tions, but it is now clear to us that we must live to­gether. As for being con­ta­gious (prob­a­bly, hope­fully) and dis­pleas­ing God (cer­tainly we pro­voke wrath in the up­hold­ers of mod­ern so­ci­ety’s main tenets) these fac­tor into our de­ci­sion also, but our cal­cu­la­tion is dif­fer­ent. Our main goal is to in­fect. Don’t be shocked. Let me give a full ac­count of the dis­ease, its symp­toms, di­ag­no­sis, and prog­no­sis and you can judge for your­self.

Sat­is­fac­tion has its roots in mod­ern Amer­i­can com­forts. For the ma­jor­ity basic food and shel­ter were a given, elec­tric­ity and gaso­line did our heavy lift­ing and en­ter­tained too, a large num­ber of our gen­er­a­tion at­tended col­lege, we moved about the world at will. With these com­forts came mod­ern ex­cess — fierce com­pe­ti­tion amongst a pop­u­la­tion un­easy with the idea that there is no longer a fron­tier, the quiet iso­la­tion of sub­urbs cars tele­vi­sion and fear, ubiq­ui­tous pol­lu­tion, ram­pant obe­sity, com­mon cal­lous ex­ploita­tion.

Against this back­drop we set out with the nat­ural goal of every gen­er­a­tion, to have a bet­ter go of it than our par­ents did. The only dif­fer­ence for our gen­er­a­tion is the am­bi­gu­ity of what ex­actly bet­ter means. To at­tain a stan­dard of liv­ing with more ma­te­r­ial com­forts than our par­ent’s gen­er­a­tion we would need to make vast sums of money. It some­times seems that it would be bet­ter to have fewer mod­ern ills — but this line of rea­son­ing is con­tentious.

These ex­cesses are al­ter­nately blamed on ran­dom chance and touted as ab­solutely, sci­en­tif­i­cally (un­for­tu­nately) es­sen­tial to our stan­dard of liv­ing. The sug­ges­tion that com­fort might be weighed on a more ra­tio­nal scale against ex­cess is quickly shouted down. So our gen­er­a­tion set sail under the flag flown by the gen­er­a­tions be­fore us, but was trou­bled by the shadow it cast.

Often the first sign of a change in course, the first sign of in­fec­tion, is a sud­den out­burst of “Fuck it. I’m happy here.” This thought jumped out at me many times. The back­drop could have been one of sev­eral places in the South — the rhodo­den­dron over the rolling moun­tain­tops, the sand­stone bluffs, the rocky creeks they stood high above, or just a patch of sunny grass — but the friends were al­ways dear ones and the set­ting was al­ways beau­ti­ful. The thing you are dis­mis­sively curs­ing is harder to pin down, but in your mind the com­fort side of the scale is be­gin­ning to wob­ble off the ground. If these im­pulses go un­treated, the pro­gres­sion of the dis­ease be­comes sure and swift. Some­thing deep in­side of you shifts and re­set­tles. The scale now bal­ances freely.

Aldo Leopold ex­pe­ri­enced this shift watch­ing the pale green fire die (and re­al­iz­ing the wolf he just killed had an inner life which de­served ex­is­tence), Thoreau by idling while his beans grew be­side Walden Pond (and grow­ing his own inner life like corn in the night), and Abbey by (… well cagey old Ed never told any­one but prob­a­bly…) see­ing his first buz­zard soar over the desert (where he is today, ei­ther under the sand or rein­car­nate in the buz­zard).

The exact cat­a­lyst varies but the dis­ease is now en­trenched. Friends, time, beauty, love, sim­plic­ity, si­lence all take un­ques­tioned prece­dence over riches, so­ci­ety’s ex­pec­ta­tions, mod­ern wants. You take de­sires, dis­till down your needs, and skim off your wants. You lose your pos­ses­sive sense of places and they take up pos­ses­sion of you. You are sat­is­fied.

Our gen­er­a­tion is now ap­proach­ing full adult­hood. Many of them have gar­nered real jobs in en­gi­neer­ing, busi­ness, man­age­ment, fi­nance. They are poised to make the vast sums of money they will re­quire and are mak­ing names for them­selves. We, the in­fected, took sea­sonal out­doors work, in­tern­ships, artist-in-res­i­den­cies, trav­el­ing, jobs at tiny non-prof­its, more ed­u­ca­tion.

We too are mak­ing a name for our­selves, al­though it is too often mis­pro­nounced. Our par­ents have di­ag­nosed a bad econ­omy, wan­der­lust, a re­turn of the six­ties flower chil­dren, even sloth. Pun­dits group us in with the larger mass of ‘twenty-some­things’ or label us ‘green’. Sat­is­fac­tion is often mis­di­ag­nosed. (Fair enough. If it was a med­i­cine rather than a dis­ease the bot­tle might read: “Warn­ing: side ef­fects may in­clude mak­ing art, bi­cy­cling, knowl­edge of east­ern re­li­gious prac­tice, wak­ing up in the woods… ” and so on for at least a page.)

Sat­is­fac­tion doesn’t mean spend­ing our lives med­i­tat­ing in full lotus on a moun­tain­top, on our par­ent’s couch, or shop­ping at trendy or­ganic su­per­mar­kets. The hip­pies of the six­ties were “a gen­er­a­tion search­ing for the bars of the cage.” Fore­warned, we are ready with hack­saws. Lump­ing us with the bulk of our job hunt­ing gen­er­a­tion isn’t cor­rect ei­ther. Seek­ing a (high pay­ing) job or a (long dis­ap­peared) se­cure ca­reer is dif­fer­ent than seek­ing a (sat­is­fy­ing) vo­ca­tion. While the New York Times wor­ries that “so­cial in­sti­tu­tions are miss­ing out on young peo­ple con­tribut­ing to pro­duc­tiv­ity and growth,” we would rather con­tribute to some­thing more worth­while. La­bel­ing all of our ac­tions, mo­ti­va­tions, and thoughts as “green” is per­haps the most com­mon mis­di­ag­no­sis. Aye, we are peo­ple at home in the woods. We’ve read our Muir. We ride bi­cy­cles. We can cook a healthy meal from scratch. But our mo­ti­va­tion is dif­fer­ent than the “green” move­ment as mo­ti­vated by ad­ver­tis­ing-in­duced guilt to try and pro­tect “our” en­vi­ron­ment.

Enough about what Sat­is­fac­tion is not for now. It must be un­der­stood for what it is and where it is going, for in it we see the fu­ture.

With Sat­is­fac­tion comes the need to act. We must learn to set­tle the scale on a bal­ance be­tween the good of com­forts and the harm of ex­cess, to live health­ily with Sat­is­fac­tion. If hu­mankind ever had this knowl­edge we don’t now and des­per­ately need it. We spent so long strug­gling to sur­vive against na­ture that we didn’t re­al­ize we had made it and be­fore our think­ing caught up we had plunged ahead try­ing to con­quer na­ture, to our detri­ment. So it is our gen­er­a­tion’s job to bring hu­man­ity’s way of think­ing up to mod­ern re­al­ity, to put bal­ance to the test, and to teach what works well. Our gauge will be what pro­motes hap­pi­ness, ful­fill­ment, di­rect con­nec­tions to other peo­ple and the nat­ural world, and sim­ple beauty. Our met­ric will be what works not just for our gen­er­a­tion but will work for the fu­ture of the nat­ural com­mu­nity around us and for our grand­chil­dren’s gen­er­a­tion.

We worry, though, that Sat­is­fac­tion may be fleet­ing, that mod­ern so­ci­ety’s at­ti­tudes may spread like its strip malls over our souls be­fore we find our way. That with­out lots of en­cour­age­ment and in­spi­ra­tion from like-minded peo­ple, we will wan­der lost. So we have de­cided to band to­gether and form our own so­ci­ety — where every­one can pur­sue their own vo­ca­tions, un­der­stand their con­nec­tions to each other and the land, walk to see a friend, gather around a com­mon meal, test these wild ideas. We have no il­lu­sions of com­plete self suf­fi­ciency, com­plete iso­la­tion from mod­ern so­ci­ety, or com­plete ease in our world. We merely hope to bring more value to the world than we take from it, sup­port our­selves well, and so be­come con­ta­gious. Some­day we hope to see our chil­dren set off on long walks or bi­cy­cle jour­neys to like minded com­mu­ni­ties scat­tered across the land, and re­turn with sto­ries and ideas and news of how Sat­is­fac­tion is spread­ing.