"Are you happy, Richard?" she asked as they walked along the beach under the moonlight. Only this time it wasn't anything like the film. There was no secret anarcho-primitivist society in some beautiful hidden beach paradise. In fact, there was no beach. There was just reality: responsibilities, priorities, plans, ambitions.
Yes, The Beach, an entirely voluntary society, peaceful, with sustainable resources, but if you get bitten by a shark then you will die. There will be no hospital, no healthcare and no technology. Then there will be that realization that Françoise is not real. That she is a concept, an archetype, a collage of ideal qualities embodied in one's consciousness.
Françoise is freedom. Françoise is betrayal. She is the unraveling of the inherent evils in human desire and interaction. She is scarcity. She is love.
The hesitations in running away or going Into the Wild is a sustainability issue. For how long can it be sustained? What is the fallback when it fails? What if you just don't want it anymore? The same goes with falling in love or with the fear of being rejected or even the fear of failure in general.
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
Maslow had a pretty good idea of what people "need" and that's something that correlates with happiness, I guess (referring again to Françoise's question). Well, I have shelter, clothing, food, I live in a pretty safe community so that's like the basics. If you have that then society would consider you "stable". It's much like people who make kids and yet have not enough of the physiological and safety part of the chart (it's a personal responsibility issue). There's a need for stability first.
Françoise is a paradox of stability, never satisfied or contented, full of that unquenchable thirst for the unfamiliar, for something new. Everything about her is short-lived and ever-changing. The never ending desire to be away.
What I figured out is that it's dangerous to skip parts of the chart and how it could drastically influence one's ideologies. For instance, if you don't have the needs in the physiological part and you "philosophize" your ideas will be influenced by hunger, homelessness, survival. Those who skip love and belonging will tend to have anti-social thoughts, mistrust, individualistic ideas. Those who skip esteem are those whose philosophies are of despair, nothingness, and meaninglessness. I'm neither favoring nor rejecting any of these philosophical views but merely trying to point out how one's environment and circumstances can influence his/her beliefs and ideologies. Still, it all boils down to basic economics.
Could Marx have been right about one's social being determining one's consciousness? (it's always healthy to play devil's advocate).
I guess at the end of it all, all philosophizing is basically just trying to differentiate whether the glass is half full or half empty. A constant pursuit for Françoise (or the ontology thereof).
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