People refusing civilization. Downshifting – a protest or a conscious choice? Papua New Guinea

For the last seven years, the Tuzhilin family from the Irkutsk region has been living without gas, electricity, telephone, TV and proper housing - their house recently burned down. However, Larisa and Sergey saw a positive aspect in this - they say, they got rid of everything unnecessary.

After checking the time, I realized that I had been walking through the forest for an hour and a half. And according to the assurances of the city acquaintances of the Tuzhilins, the road from the highway to the place of “dislocation” of the hermits usually takes a maximum of an hour. “Took the wrong path!” The hand automatically moved to the mobile phone, but it turned out to be a useless thing - the connection did not work. I didn’t have time to completely panic, because after a quarter of an hour the taiga parted and I found myself... in the Tuzhilins’ kitchen.

For the meeting we drink... suritsa

There was a stove in the open air. A woman was fidgeting nearby. I coughed, expecting to catch a surprised look - no one could tell the Tuzhilins about the visit of the AiF correspondent. But it turned out that the family had its own “sources”. “A jay flew to us this morning and circled around,” said Larisa. “We guessed that guests would come.”
Larisa disappeared behind the trees and returned with a bottle in her hand: “Let’s drink suritsa for the meeting!” Then she poured the liquid into mugs, which foamed like champagne. Noticing how doubtful I was looking at the drink, she added: “It’s non-alcoholic. Made from spring water, honey and forest herbs.” They finished the bottle in half an hour, and Larisa went for the next one, and Sergei asked: “Did it take you a long time to walk?” - “An hour and a half.” “For the first time, the result is excellent. The space accepted you and didn’t lead you astray.”

Tuzhilins firmly believe that the surrounding nature protects them from bad people. The couple is selective in contacts with strangers and opened up with me only thanks to that same jay: “The forest told me that you are not an evil person.”

...the brother of the fascist appeared

However, the couple did not always treat nature so reverently. “We are urban,” said Sergei. - In the early 90s we decided to become farmers. The land, 17 hectares, was allocated in the wilderness. But we managed to turn around. The harvest was transported using KamAZ trucks. True, they used fertilizers. Until we saw the light..."

Their lives were changed by one meeting, or rather, a lecture. The dry old man, through a translator, told in German that in a dream his brother, who died in our country in the war, appeared to him and said: “I feel guilty before the Russian people. Do something good for him." The guest, who turned out to be... the world-famous biodynamic scientist (the science of ecological farming - author's note) Bernad Hack, changed the minds of Sergei and Larisa in two hours.

The next day at the farm, Sergei asked the workers to get ready to work with the land, instilling that they should treat it with reverence. When the “master” forbade swearing, saying that negative energy would cause a bad harvest, the men twirled their fingers at their temples and went to look for another owner.

And the Tuzhilins sold all their equipment. Agricultural activities were curtailed - they decided that the land needed to rest for seven years after all the fertilizers. They continued to grow vegetables only for themselves and even started an apiary. Tuzhilins not only eat honey, but also brush their teeth and wash their hair with it. And clothes are washed only with laundry soap.

Fire - fortunately

The new philosophy of life taught the family to see joy in misfortune. Even in a fire. The winter before last, Larisa and Sergei went to Irkutsk for a meeting of the biodynamics club. When we returned, we saw a pile of ashes on the site of a two-story house.

They didn’t start wailing. They built a round-shaped dwelling from clay and wooden logs, like the ancient Slavs. It safely survived the 40-degree frost this winter. The fire also destroyed the engine that pumped water for the family from a 30-meter well. “And we realized that we don’t need this “unripe” water,” says Larisa. “Now we go to the spring for water, it’s 200 meters from the house.” From there they get water for cooking, washing and watering the garden.

Following the fire, the couple got into a car accident. The car is almost soft-boiled, but they are alive and well. And again the Tuzhilins recognized a special craft in this - they say, the car does not fit very well with the philosophy of ecology.

Not everyone approves of their lifestyle. “People see only material things. But they don’t notice that we have a wonderful family, three daughters who share our views,” says Sergei. - We don’t depend on anyone or anything. Do you remember when the electricity was turned off in Moscow and panic began? And believe me, we are not afraid of any cataclysms.”

Maria Pozdnyakova, Irkutsk region. - Moscow

More and more people are deciding to leave dusty, bustling cities, reconsider their lifestyle and slow down: stop buying what they don’t need, feel the greatness of nature, and do what they love. For what reasons do they choose recluse, and what colors their new life takes on when they move away from consumer society and career hysteria - in our material.

Move to a farm to raise children in an environmentally friendly environment

The most compelling reasons for moving are the products of questionable quality offered in supermarkets; unfavorable environmental conditions that undermine the child’s health. And the main thing they want to protect children from is the values ​​of a consumer society.

Andrei and Alla Tokarev swapped life in the capital for running a peasant farm when they had children. They felt that the atmosphere of the metropolis was harmful for children.

The family decided to move to farm and feed their children healthy food. Young people did not strive for absolute isolation; the lifestyle of rural people would suit them quite well. But I didn’t want the children to see alcoholics, so I had to choose a remote farm.

Here children breathe clean air, eat natural foods, see nature, and are active and take part in household chores. The absence of neighbors nearby allows you not to worry that animals will enter someone else’s territory and trample the garden. The family lives from selling cheese products, and Alla has also maintained a remote job.

The topic of school education remains controversial. There are 2 opinions among downshifters - some believe that children need to learn, and the main reason is the opportunity to choose their own destiny in the future. Their opponents question the idea that education is worth the effort and is beneficial, since the education system draws a person into a cycle of tedious bustle and constant consumption, from which downshifters flee. In any case, it is quite possible to master the school curriculum by settling in a deep forest. Primary school children are taught remotely, while high school students have access to a form of education called external study.

Leave the “anthill” of glass and concrete, but remain in the epicenter of communication

Such an example is the former lawyer Yuri Alekseev, who settled in a dugout near the Yaroslavl highway. Here he reads, listens to audiobooks, receives guests, does book crossing, and creates content for a video blog.

Yuri did not set a goal to distance himself from society - he willingly receives guests who strive to find out what hardships a hermit needs to overcome. How to wash, where to get clothes, food, water, how to provide a wireless Internet connection and charge your laptop? Yuri is not willing to answer technical questions, but does not get annoyed, but speaks with enthusiasm about politics and creative self-realization. And he accepts gifts without hesitation - some will bring beans, some will bring cookies - everything will be useful on the farm. Argues that a person needs very few resources to live a life full of positive experiences and useful activities. To build a dugout you need several weeks and some building materials from the forest, and solar panels that produce 300 watts per hour help charge your gadgets.

Yuri is now not just a hermit, but a media personality with a YouTube channel, shares life hacks of a professional downshifter and does not hide his oppositional political views.

When nature and adventure attract, but people repel

This hardy and dexterous man lived in the Australian jungle for more than half a century - without contact with the outside world, without friends and family, without political convictions or civic position. Mikhail's sporting talents were noted during his school years, when he set 7 new records and was recognized as one of the best athletes in Sydney. But in the team, Mikhail always felt like a stranger, so he preferred life in the jungle to public life. In the remote tropics of Australia, he fought with crocodiles, traveled vast distances, was treated with natural remedies and physical exercises, not knowing a better life for himself.

Only at the age of 85, Mikhail Fomenko felt that he did not have the strength to remain outside civilization, and settled in a nursing home.

Terror in defense of nature. How a hermit became a serial killer

American mathematics teacher Theodore Kaczynski from California (University of Berkeley) moved into a hut because he considered industrialization and technological progress to be processes destructive to nature. Since childhood, this man was distinguished by extremely high intelligence, mathematics was especially easy for him. After finishing school as an external student at the age of 16, he was accepted into Harvard University.

After completing his education, Theodore Kaczynski became the youngest teacher at a prestigious educational institution. To the surprise of those around him, for no apparent reason or prerequisites, Theodore Kaczynski stops teaching and settles in solitude in the mountains of Montana. In reality, it was a protest aimed at consumer lifestyle and technological innovation.

Theodore lived in isolation without electricity, communications, or sewerage for about 6 years before he began working to protect nature.

The scientist created bombs from improvised materials and sent them to scientific centers and universities of the country. So Kaczynski tried to stop progress. Kaczynski's explosive devices hit the University of Michigan, Yale University, on board an American Airlines plane, in computer stores, and in the offices of scientists and officials. In total, there are 16 terrorist attacks, 3 dead, 23 injured in 25 years of life outside civilization.

The radical environmentalist was arrested in 1996 and sentenced to four life sentences, but there was also the possibility of the death penalty. He is currently serving his sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado without the possibility of parole.

Former drug dealer leads a solitary monastic life on a cliff

Previously, there were ruins of a temple here, but thanks to the asceticism of the monk, a functioning church was built - Maximus the Confessor.

He made the decision about such a life after leaving prison. Maxim's youth was far from righteous. Alcohol abuse and drug sales led the young man to prison. When his sentence ended, Maxim got a job as a crane operator, but soon felt that he wanted to serve God. He believes that height brings him closer to the Almighty.

Several decades ago, the world learned about the last of the Lykov family of hermits. Many people are still confused today why Agafya refuses to move from the taiga to people[/GO].

Sometimes civilization and all its benefits can be extremely oppressive... The fast pace of life, the complexity of relationships, political disputes, technological hyperdevelopment - all this is quite enough to make you dream of running away and becoming one with nature. For most of us, this dream results in a weekend spent at a tent camp, but some people - critics of civilization, activists, spiritualists or just free people - take the idea seriously. Some will call them fools or radicals, while others may be incredibly inspired by their example. How to treat them is up to you, and we, in turn, present 6 individuals who exchanged civilization for life in the wild.

Christopher McCandless

Made famous by Jon Krakauer's book Into the Wild and the film of the same name directed by Sean Penn, Christopher McCandless (who called himself Alexander Supertramp) was an American explorer. The young man dreamed of Alaska, where he could live far from civilization. McCandless was well trained: his academic achievements and above-average level of development significantly influenced the development of contempt for the empty materialism of society.

Unfortunately, after living 113 days in the Alaskan desert, Christopher McCandless died of exhaustion - when the man was found, his weight was about 30 kg. His adventure ended at the end of August 1992; the young man was only 24 years old at the time of his death.

Timothy Treadwell

Tim Treadwell was a naturalist, nature lover, eco-warrior, and documentary filmmaker who lived among grizzly bears in Katmai National Park in Alaska. Despite the fact that for many years Tim went to Katmai Park every summer to spend time with grizzly bears without any protection, at the end of the 13th summer his luck ran out. He and his girlfriend Amy Huguenard were killed by bears and their bodies were found partially gnawed.

Although some may consider Treadwell's idealism naive, through his films and his work in general he tried to protect the environment he loved. Timothy Treadwell's story was immortalized in the documentary film Grizzly Man.

Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau was a famous American author, naturalist, philosopher and critic, best known for his book Walden, in which he described his isolated period of life. The man spent about two years in a hut near Walden Pond in Massachusetts (USA).

After Thoreau returned to civilization, his goal was to separate himself from society in order to understand people more objectively.

Thoreau's work is recognized as a personal declaration of independence, a path of spiritual discovery, and instructions for becoming self-reliant.

Theodore Kaczynski

Also commonly known as the Unabomber, Kaczynski is a primitivist who took his criticism of civilization and technology to literally extremes. Although Theodore could have had a distinguished academic career in mathematics, Kaczynski resigned from his professorship at the University of California at Berkeley to start a new life. A man lived in a cabin without running water or electricity in the wilds of Montana.

A short time later, Kaczynski began his “bombing campaign,” mailing a total of 16 bombs to universities and airlines in the United States. Theodore's subversive activities led to the death of 3 people and the injuries of 23 more. Kaczynski outlined the rationale for his actions in his manifesto, which was called “Industrial Society and Its Future”.

Theodore Kaczynski is currently serving a life sentence in a US federal prison.

Noah John Rondo

Rondo is a famous hermit who gave up social life for the high peaks of the Adirondack Mountains in New York. Before retiring to his hermitage at the age of 46, Rondo declared that he was "not satisfied with this world and its trends."

And although most of the time Rondo remained completely isolated, sometimes he still received visitors in his hut and even played the violin for them. Unfortunately, Rondo was forced to move from his home in the mountains, and eventually died in 1967, unable to survive on welfare.

Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin was one of the leaders of the Post-Impressionist movement, an artist and writer known for his primitivist style and philosophy. In 1891, depressed by the low level of recognition at home and the deplorable financial situation, he decided to go to the tropics in order to escape from European civilization and “everything artificial and mediocre.”

Paul Gauguin spent the remaining years of his life in Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands, where he sided with the natives to fight against the colonial forces. His works from this period show exotic images of the inhabitants of Polynesia.

…The town of Utrish near Anapa is one of the youngest resorts on the Black Sea coast. It consists of four lagoons that were once part of a closed state reserve. Now its long sandy beaches and cypress forests are chosen by city dwellers tired of everyday problems who come here on vacation, for the summer or... forever.

Utrish is a clear sea, a rocky beach, juniper forests and mountains. Photos from the personal archive of travelers

Four Freedom Lagoons

Utrish is not just a resort for “savages”, but a unique meeting place for people who have decided to abandon the values ​​of society, career and material wealth and live for themselves. AiF.ru correspondent talked to some of them to find out how their lives really changed?

Painted stones with similar inscriptions can be found on lagoons at almost every step. Photo: AiF/ Yana Toporkova

Eva: “There is no money, and I’m happy!”

Eva is 42 years old. Her hairstyle is dreadlocks. In summer, a woman wears only a loincloth. Eva says that she has already spent 17 winters on Utrish, and claims that she cannot imagine a better life for herself.

— I grew up in St. Petersburg. She graduated from medical university with a degree in pediatric surgeon-oncologist. She worked in a hospital and got married. My husband was a military man. He died during the second Chechen campaign. She was left alone with five children,” Eva sighs heavily, is silent... Then she continues: “Trouble does not come alone... After her husband’s funeral, she was in a serious accident. My car was hit by a truck. She received fractures of both legs, injuries to the pelvis and spine. The doctors put me back together, one might say, piece by piece. But I didn’t want to live after the death of my husband and the health problems that appeared. She was depressed, stopped working, did not take care of the children... I knew about Utrish from stories. For some reason I was drawn here. My brother helped me get there. I was probably crazy because I arrived in late autumn and stayed here to live. It was hard. Very soon I met an elderly woman from the village of Maly Utrish. She knew about herbs and called herself a healer. She took me to her home and treated me with some decoctions and infusions. We talked a lot with her. You could say that after that I returned to normal life. She went back to St. Petersburg and started working. But my heart still remains on Utrish. At first I came here for a while, relaxing during the summer holidays and winter holidays. And when the children finished school, as they say, she gave up on everything and went to live in the juniper forests forever.

Eve's story seems implausible. A successful medical worker, a mother of many children, and suddenly... she left everything and began to live as a “savage.” And she looks much younger than her age, speaks competently, loves children and animals.

“I have few clothes, no cell phone and no food supplies. There is almost never any money. But I’m happy with what I have,” says Eva. — The energy of real nature, the sea, the forest gives me more than all the benefits of the world.

As an old-timer of Utrish, Eva keeps order: she forces vacationers to remove bags of garbage, and creates serious scandals for those who dare to cut down dry branches of the “Red Book” juniper to make a fire.

“You may not believe me,” says Eva, “but I always feel acutely when the local trees are hurt.” My arms and legs ache, my lower back twists, I can get a wild headache simply because one of the vacationers has offended my forest.

Eva claims that the old juniper tree, which is called Lotus in Utrish, gives her peace of mind. Photo: AiF/ Yana Toporkova

From May to mid-October, Eva lives on the seashore. Then he moves to the mountains “for the winter” - this is the name of the huts in which the indigenous “Utrishans” spend the cold months of the year.

— In winter, there are only 10-12 of us left. We all support each other like neighbors,” says Eva. “Once a month I take a backpack, dress warmly and walk along the rocky beach to the village of Bolshoi Utrish, there I take a bus to Anapa and buy everything I need for life at the city market.

Where Eva gets the money remains a mystery. Just like whether she communicates with her children, where they are now, what they are doing, whether they visit her. However, Eva’s words about her age and the number of years she lived in nature can also be questioned. The woman diligently pretends that she does not hear my clarifying questions, and persistently turns the conversation to her favorite juniper-pistachio forests, the deep blue sea and clean air, which made her happy.

Anton: “I feel needed”

We met Anton on the “mainland”, or more precisely, near the village of Bolshoi Utrish, where the young man went to work.

— I myself am from the Tyumen region. I learned about Utrish six months ago. I hitchhiked here and have been living here for two months. I arrived with one backpack on my shoulders. And now I have everything I need to live on the seashore - a tent, dishes. And even some kind of work to make money.

Anton is 25 years old. He was in prison on three counts - for theft, hijacking and robbery. The guy complains that he can’t find a job on the “mainland”. He is a car mechanic by profession, but all his criminal records are directly related to cars, so he won’t be able to work in car repair shops for several more years.

“They don’t take me anywhere else,” the young man throws up his hands. - But on Utrish I help people - I collect applications every morning and go to the village for shopping, help inexperienced tourists light a fire. When I’m in the mood, I sing songs with the boys with a guitar on the village embankment. People give us money for good music.

Every day a large bonfire on the third lagoon gathers local residents. Photos from the personal archive of travelers

Anton says that no one needed him all his life. His parents did not raise him. The wife who gave birth to his son turned out to be a traitor and now does not allow the boy to see his father. Finding a job is difficult.

“Utrish gave me everything I needed for happiness,” says Anton, “in a few months I made friends from many cities in Russia. People are happy to have my help: they invite me to breakfast, lunch and dinner, and ask me to sing for them. I didn’t know before that somewhere in the world there was a place where I could find myself.

There are no wrong lives

The stories of Eva and Anton are unusual. Perhaps someone will admire the strength of their spirit, while others, on the contrary, will consider them irresponsible... Maybe they took the easiest path of abandoning the problems that ordinary people face every day? Psychologist of the Avalon business center Sergey Fedchenko explained why one should not be skeptical about people who have abandoned traditional social values:

— There are no right or wrong lives. Eva and Anton, instead of the worries that daily beset their society, chose life on Utrish. They chose for themselves the existence that made them needed by the world, and therefore happy. Both of them went through a difficult path in life and suffered a lot of hardships and grief. I don’t consider them homeless or broken people. I see in these young men and women an interest in everything that surrounds them, a desire for harmony and a rejection of the modern pace of life.

For each of us, our choice of life path is influenced by our upbringing and circumstances. Some will build a career, start a family and raise children. Others are to meet the sunrise on the seashore, keep the forest clean and teach friends how to make fires. Everyone has their own ideas about happiness, and they are all correct.

Dozens of years in impenetrable jungles, in the remote Taiga and in the mountains of Alaska... Are you weak?

40 years in the Vietnamese jungle

During the Vietnam War, when a bomb killed his wife and his two sons, forty-two-year-old Vietnamese man Ho Van Tann fled into the jungle with his only surviving two-year-old son. Both remained there to live for the next 40 years, and even news from relatives about the end of the war did not force the hermit father to return back to the cruel world of people.

More recently, in August 2013, workers from a neighboring village discovered a forty-two-year-old man and his elderly father in the jungle. They already poorly understood the local language, were exhausted and looked like absolute savages.

All these years they lived in a simple hut and ate mainly only roots, corn and wild fruits.


Since the condition of the old father was alarming, after discovery he was sent to the hospital. Both men now face an attempt at socialization in modern society.

The Lykov family: life in remote Taiga


At one time, this story occupied the front pages of all Soviet newspapers. In 1978, geologists, during one of the expeditions in a remote corner of Taiga, instead of mineral deposits, discovered a family of six people who had been living in the forest for forty years.
Karp Lykov and his family were Old Believers. Even during the revolution, many Old Believers fled to Siberia to escape communist persecution; The Lykovs were one of these refugees. In 1936, a tragedy occurred: Lykov Sr.’s brother was shot. Fleeing from Stalin's repressions, the family fled to the forest...
With their modest belongings, the Lykovs moved further and further from society, stopping only a couple of hundred kilometers from the border with Mongolia. The husband, wife and four of their children (two were born in Taiga) lived only on what they grew or caught in the hunt. They often went hungry; the mother of the family died of exhaustion in 1961 after once again giving her portion of food to the children.

The Lykovs had never even heard of flights to the Moon, or even of the Great Patriotic War. Such little things of the modern world as plastic bags brought them complete delight. Over all these years, the younger children began to speak a dialect in which it was only difficult to recognize the Russian language. After the geologists came into contact with the Lykovs, family members little by little began to trust them, however, being deeply religious, they refused to leave their home, cut off from society.

Over the next few years, three of the four children died. Two died from kidney problems caused by years of malnutrition. The third was killed by pneumonia; he flatly refused medical help. Their father died in 1988.

Agafya Lykova, the last of the family, still lives in the same place, completely alone. Now she is almost seventy years old, and in her entire life she has never left the borders of her native taiga region.

The Japanese partisan who never gave up his position


Back in 1944, the Japanese Army sent Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda and several other troops to the sparsely populated Philippine island of Lubang to wage guerrilla warfare. And, although quite soon after this, World War II was over, neither Onoda nor his people were informed about this, and they remained living and fighting among the jungle for thirty years to come.

In October 1945, the Japanese government tried to announce the end to soldiers hiding in the deep wilderness, but Onoda and his comrades mistook news papers and leaflets dropped from passing aircraft for enemy propaganda. And, although they had read every last word of the news, they decided not to surrender until they received an order from their commander-in-chief. And, although detachments were sent to search for them, the partisans were never found.

Over the years, all of Onoda's comrades died, and one of them decided to give up and went into hiding. Onoda lived alone for the next twenty years, becoming a legend among Japanese and Filipino soldiers who were certain of his death.

In 1974, he was accidentally met by a young traveler, Norio Suzuki. He tried to convince the diehard soldier personally that the war was over, but Onoda never believed him.
Suzuki had to track down Commander-in-Chief Onodo and arrange a meeting between them. When Onodo learned the truth, he was shocked to the core. He was hailed as a hero by Japanese authorities and was forgiven for the murders of Filipinos he committed while on the island. However, Onoda failed to integrate into modern Japanese society. As a result, he moved to live in Brazil, where he leads a secluded, quiet life to this day.

Last of the Tribe in the Amazon Jungle


Almost twenty years ago, a lone Indian was discovered in the Brazilian jungle, who, apparently, was the last representative of his tribe. Attempts by the authorities to contact him ended in failure: the Indian, without hesitation, shot an arrow into the chest of one of the rescuers. It must be said that earlier efforts to integrate Indians into society, as a rule, failed and ended in the early deaths of Amazonian savages.
As a result, the authorities declared a plot of land fifty kilometers around his place of residence inviolable. The man, who must now be in his forties, still lives a lonely, isolated life in the jungle.

30 years in the mountains of Alaska


After many years of service in the navy and working as a mechanic, American Richard Proenneke chose a rather unusual way to relax in retirement. He built a cabin high in the mountains of Alaska, in a picturesque place called Twin Lakes. He lived there for almost thirty years - until his death.
It should be noted that the hermit did not completely cut himself off from the outside world: several times he made a long trip to Iowa, to visit his relatives. However, he spent most of his life completely alone in the wilderness. He hunted, fished and studied nature, discovering the naturalist in himself.
Proenneke recorded episodes of his hermit's life on film, which was later edited into the series of documentaries "Alone in the Wild." His writings have been adapted into several books, and he has also written several important articles in the fields of meteorology and biology.