In 1974, a man disappeared somewhere in the Siskiyou Mountains, never to be heard of again. He wasn’t a tourist lost in the forests - he’s been living in the region for years. He wasn’t a rookie camper overwhelmed by wilderness - he had written several articles on camping and survivalism, based on his own experience of practising these skills. So what happened to Tom Marshall? Letting Go Isn't Free A basic and well-known tenet of stoicism is to stop trying to act on (and worrying about) things that aren't really in your control, or that can't at least be significantly influenced by you. Some of this is obvious and easy: the weather, traffic, the economy, chance. A lot of it is much harder: what other people think of you, bad things happening in other places, the ideas of your friends, politics. I think everybody wants to worry less - it's a massive energy drain, and it really crushes quality of life. Following this thinking does indeed deliver a lot of tranquillity - the actual reward promised by the Stoics. But it sure seems like you have to sacrifice a lot in the process! Depending on what your core needs are, one or both of these concerns quickly arise even when just thinking about stoicism: What about my impact on the world? I don't want to curl up in my bed and die in Stoic tranquillity, oblivious to what I've left behind. How can I provide safety to myself and my family if I choose to spend less in time on the news, withdraw from politics, stop studying the economy, and stop worrying about what others think of me? How will I know if there's some larger problem, and how will I make sure I'm not harmed in the process? It was the first question that Shane Radliff set out to answer, but in the process, he discovered the solution to the second one. Become Invulnerable Shane was fed up with the political means - the Sisyphusian task of betting the fulfilment of your personal needs on the whims of millions of other people. He wanted to find ways of direct action instead: creating freedom in his own life, without the permission of others. It was in this search that he found an obscure, out of print book collecting the works of an obscure man from the late sixties. To say that this book has had an impact on him is an understatement - he has since not only seen to it that it is transcribed and narrated but has even created a whole standalone podcast about it. The book was Tom Marshall's work, the man who was to completely disappear in the Siskiyou Mountains in a few years, written under his better-known pen name: Rayo. Though a few decades apart, Shane and Rayo have pretty similar perspectives: both are concerned with personal freedom and autonomy and prefer private solutions to government action. Similar to Shane's Direct Action Series, Rayo's strategies were developed after disappointment with mass action - he tried to establish a libertarian island nation before moving on to van nomadism and later wilderness camping. As the few written accounts that exist about him show, he was a very safety-conscious man, and his quest to dissociate with most of a society he didn't like, he encountered the same problem that we did at the beginning of this article: How do you stay safe without being plugged in all the time? As an engineer, he wasn't interested in half-measures, so he developed a radical concept that turned the idea of safety on its head: invulnerability to coercion. He called his strategy Vonu (voluntary, not vulnerable). This approach is worth considering even if coercion (a favourite libertarian word) is not one's main concern - there are very few of us in personal development who aren't dissatisfied with some aspects of society and wouldn't like to be able to avoid that influence. Vonu Tactics A vonuan seeks to meet her need for safety not by changing what others do, but by becoming as resistant as possible herself. Rather than convince others to create social structures that would reduce crime (under which he included many government actions) Rayo decided to become immune to crime instead. He practised what he preached - which in his case meant living a very private life in the mountains with his "free mate". Most of his communication with the outside world was secretive, he had a van for mobility and lived in polyethene tents he designed, he stored a considerable amount of food - according to an account, he would even duck when aeroplanes flew above him to maintain his location a secret. Not only that, but he created a number of alternative strategies that may not have appealed to him directly, but were regardless valid means of achieving invulnerability to coercion: sailboating, financial independence, country shopping, intentional communities, free ports etc. Shane and I discussed these strategies in the podcast episode in more detail (which has a longer, more thorough version on his Vonu website). Safety AND Impact? How about impact - do you have to give up on the world if you stop ...
