The funny thing is that when you point out places that are very much still the Wild West, some even more so than they were a century ago, the response is always some version of “yuck”. They don’t want adventure, they want a curated adventure experience. They want a video game.

You could join a Chinese fishing fleet, an illegal fossil-hunting crew in Siberia, work security for a mine in Papua, join the kind of Christian mission that’s maybe kinda legitimately characterized by the govt of its mission field as supporting separatist militias.

@pythonrocksnake “I’m not going amongst the third worlders” Brother. William Thesiger traveled around the Middle East with local tribesmen before there was oil money in the gulf.

@pythonrocksnake The gates of suburbia are locked from the inside.

@pythonrocksnake They want a script and there isn't one. I think it feels like there was a script for frontiersmen or people headed to the new world, but it only feels that way in retrospect since it's neatly packaged up history now

@pythonrocksnake I do not actually want an adventure - sodbusting might be about the extent of my real adventure desiring. But being an illegal fossil fuel extractor does sound fascinating, as does the "missionary supporting separatist militia." I think I might have funded one of those, once...

@pythonrocksnake “Fortunes can be easily made” that would surprise the pioneers! 1 in 3 employees of the British east India company didn’t make it to 30

@pythonrocksnake Could be one of those things where you don't want to do it, but it would be chosen in hindsight (doesn't this characterize most coming-of-age ceremonies?). Past generations of men were typically forced into these experiences by social pressure or (in war) national survival