"The Strange & Curious Tale of the Last True Hermit"

[morongobill]

First heard about this guy over at Sixbear's blog. As a young man in his 20's, Christopher Knight drove away from society leaving the keys in his car at the end of a trail, and lived for a quarter century in the Maine woods, eking out an existence stealing from his neighbors, surviving the brutal sub -zero winters barely with no heat source.

This is a good read, I recommend reading Sixbear's take on the situation first.

http://sixbearsinthewoods.blogspot.com/2014/08/lessons-from-maine-hermit.html

http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201409/the-last-true-hermit?printable=true

 

[Lucky mike]

unfortunately he was caught,sentenced...put on parole and now forced to live in society......he's not doing so well now

 

[jeanontheroad]

So, how was basically a parasite. His neighbor's are probably happy he was caught.

 

[Prisoner Of Knowledge]

Ouch, Jean. Yes, stealing is wrong. Yes, he needed to be punished.

But don't we all kind of shun our society by choosing our mobile lifestyle? Can you imagine being that "abnormal"? I must say, I've looked around at "normal" for awhile now...I find it revolting sometimes.

Two things define us as healthy humans: language and empathy. I posess both.

Be well Jean.

 

[jeanontheroad]

You possess language and empathy. He possessed 27 years worth of someone else's food and expensive, high end gear and clothing. He did it by being parasitic on the same people he doesn't like, damaging their property and making them fearful in their own homes. For nearly 3 decades. He even stole a kid's Halloween candy!

Oh, and another thing. That guy probably had parents and siblings and friends who thought he'd been murdered. I'm guessing that the police wasted a lot of time searching for him or his body. Sometimes a person forgets that life is not all about him/her.

 

[Prisoner Of Knowledge]

All very good points, and also correct.

I just can't get past the non-violent part. He isn't violent by nature, mostly because he desires no human contact, and that is a form of mental illness.

Don't get me wrong, if I'd caught him stealing from me he would've had a real bad day. Thievery is wrong, period.

I don't know...I just don't know.

 

[mconlonx]

You possess language and empathy. He possessed 27 years worth of someone else's food and expensive, high end gear and clothing. He did it by being parasitic on the same people he doesn't like, damaging their property and making them fearful in their own homes. For nearly 3 decades. He even stole a kid's Halloween candy!

Oh, and another thing. That guy probably had parents and siblings and friends who thought he'd been murdered. I'm guessing that the police wasted a lot of time searching for him or his body. Sometimes a person forgets that life is not all about him/her.

Jean, the GQ link posted above gives a pretty good account of his history. He was not living high on the hog; his relatives apparently were not too worried; I'm not sure police were even bothered to search for him.

It doesn't excuse his actions, which were illegal and did cause consternation for victims of his burglary. I suspect mental illness is involved, but I don't really know for sure.

 

[akrvbob]

Having flirted around the edges of mental illness myself, and having a son who lost his battle with mental illness and went over the edge, I am much more sympathetic toward them.

This entire site is dedicated to them and helping a few of them who can still be helped. All you "normal" people are here by accident!

No question society has to protect itself from them when they become dangerous, but it MUST always be done with concern and compassion in my opinion.

Hating them is beyond contemptible to me. That's one reason I won't tolerate threads hating on the homeless for very long.
Bob
Bob

 

[jeanontheroad]

No one is hating on this man. But he is obviously sharp enough to know what he is doing or he would not have gotten away with it for 27 years. He was aware that he was doing other people harm.

As for being mentally ill, yes, I suspect that he is. But why would society let someone who is mentally ill do whatever their illness makes them want to do or go without treatment? Would you let someone lay in the street with a broken leg without getting treatment? Would you have let Typhoid Mary do what she wanted?

On a more interesting note, at what point should someone be allowed to refuse treatment for a mental illness (or a physical one, for that matter - think homeless people with resistant strains of TB)? This guy may or may not have been a danger to himself or others, but he was doing property and psychological damage to others. Forty break ins a year for 27 years put the whole community on edge and cost them tens of thousands of dollars in security measures, property damage, and stolen goods.

I think they did handle him humanely. He's not in jail. He is not happy, but what else was the community supposed to do?

 

[akrvbob]

I think we are all in 100% agreement that society has an obligation to protect itself from the mentally ill. This man needed to be dealt with and probably sooner than he was.

We are all on the same page.
Bob

 

[Donedirtcheap]

I read both links and cant see where anything determined he is mentally ill. They speculated about some syndrome because of his not looking directly or flinching or something. He said himself that after being away from people he wasn't comfortable looking at the guy who came to visit. He also spoke of his family and how they dont have contact with many people.

He himself said that he is not mentally ill and said he realized full well what he was doing. He admitted that it was wrong. He has the same normal feelings and attitude that any sane person would have. In fact he is more sane then many who post about wanting to use situational ethics to justify wrong doing. He or Me or Bob or anyone else is not insane if we dont want to have contact with people ever again. Who is the one who says things like that? A supposed DOCTOR? Our government? Who? Because you or I dont want to live like that does not make us right if we claimed he was crazy.

If one of us wanted to spend a lot of time alone but not as much as he did wouldn't it make us insane too but to a lesser degree? He even remembered the time frame of when he decided to do it. It was during the Chernobyl incident and he probably wasn't the only person who had it cross his mind that the goofballs may have screwed up so bad that maybe it was going to lead to even more horrific trouble so he said to heck with it. He even acknowledged that he screwed his brother on the cosigned car.

He made the choice to drop out and that's fine. Where he went wrong is he decided to do it on someone else dime. That makes him a thief as Jean said. He cause hundreds of thousands of dollars of expense to innocent people. How about the amount of fear that he instilled in people, the expense of alarm systems, properties sold because of being sick of being broke into. He's just a lazy dirt bag thief who should have gotten what he wants. Put him in a cell all alone and leave him there. He would be alone, people wouldn't be fearful, it would be more cost effective for society, and better for the environment.

If one of us did a B&E and got caught what would happen? Maybe probation and community service? What about if we got caught the second and third and forth times? We would end up doing 15 years. So no, it's not cool, it's not romantic, it's not getting over on the system. It's wrong.

No one bashed the homeless or the insane, they just told the truth about a thief and dirt bag. It isn't ouch, it isn't harsh, it's true.

 

[Donedirtcheap]

From reading both texts of him, i didnt think he was mentally ill at all either. The local community seemed, to me, to be very understanding of the whole situation. I mean, he stole for almost 30 years and didnt even serve a year in prison.
Animals live off of the land naturally like the native americans did before the land was even named america. Animals can still do this, as long as it stays out of sight, but humans cant anymore. Humans are forced into living off of the market. Forced into playing a game of living off of each other. Animals spend some of their energy to gain a meal. Humans convert their energy into money to buy a meal. I think the hermit was trying to go back to the before market ways. Stuck in between the new and old worlds. The new world being owned and controlled which he felt he wanted to be free from. He wanted to live off of the land but the land is now owned and controlled by people. So he lived off of other peoples land and property which is breaking the rules of this new world game. I think i kind of understand but i could be just mentally ill.

Even in the "old world" I would imagine that if you took it upon yourself to sneak into the other cave mans area and help yourself you would find out what a Fred Flintstone club felt like. The market back then was join in the hunt and eat with the other hunters or sit there and do nothing and you went hungry and the strong well fed caveman drug YOUR cave woman into his cave and banged her and reproduced other strong hunter cavemen.

I dont think it was ever done for free as some think it may have been. People have lived in many ways but in one way or the other they made an exchange of labor or knowledge to carry themselves. No matter what each individual had to sustain his own life. He had to do something even in it's crudest form. He had to get up everyday and do the things that were necessary for survival or he perished and others who tried harder and learned better, flourished. Some are smarter, some are just plain luckier, but it doesn't mean that anyone gets to take it on themselves to take from others. In the old world he would have been left to die if he didn't want to get up and do something.

Today there are various forms of assistance that are forcibly taken from others to help the ones who legitimately cant help themselves or the ones who are faking it and sucking off the system. So, today we are very compassionate compared to the old world.

People were probably even less tolerant of that behavior back then. If I was in that area and the guy needed something to eat and was trying to survive I would help him out but I wouldn't tolerate him deciding what he would take. I guess that's not much different than beggars in a city. People can choose to give to them if they want but if they take from people they may end up in jail or hurt.

No matter what we are responsible for ourselves and have to provide for ourselves. If we steal from others to do it we belong in jail so we stop hurting society. If a person wants to drop out, they can do it but they have no right to steal from others. To think it's ok is certainly insane and asking for total anarchy.

 

[Prisoner Of Knowledge]

If you can read both articles and not see mental illness, then may the deity that you bow to bless you.

Like my father says, "There's a fool born every day".

 

[Donedirtcheap]

If you can read both articles and not see mental illness, then may the deity that you bow to bless you.

Like my father says, "There's a fool born every day".

lol. No one to bow to here. I've seen the charlatans doin blow and banging whores while their dogs were relaxing in air conditioned dog houses. A is A and B is B.
Just his words and I guess everyone hears them differently. There are many who could work but just dont want to. He's one of them and to me it does not make him mentally ill.

There may be someone left in here who remembers a guy called 3dogs or something like that. I found a story about him years back and he had dropped out to lived in his Dodge van for 28 years in Arizona. Now that guy was right on as far as I could tell. He liked photograph and gold collecting. He would sell gold at flea markets and worked every now and then in his buddies welding shop. He did it on his own and wasn't ripping anyone. He wasn't a total recluse but he came as close as you probably could.

Any time I mentioned him in conversations with people they would always cringe and say he must be mentally ill. I didn't think he was but I try to not stereotype people.
Anyone know 3dogs?

 

[jeanontheroad]

Bob: all you "normal people here"

Me: I was stunned and flattered recently by someone on the forum telling me he thought I was normal.So many of my old social circle and many family members think DH and I are crazy, while we don't think we are crazy at all.

Just wondering, how many others on the forum think they are normal people or not normal people?

 

[akrvbob]

I can't speak for anyone else, but I am certain I am not "normal."

For me, the key to a good life has been accepting and embracing that. And then coming to believe that this is a profoundly sick society and that being abnormal was a good thing.
Bob

"It is no measure of health
to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
Jiddu Krishnamurti​

 

[Prisoner Of Knowledge]

I adore that quote Bob.

I believe I've been taken to task on the subject of mental illness. When I posted that I thought he mentally ill I was speaking directly from the article. However, I see clearly how it was misunderstood. Yes, simply doing things that most don't do is no cause to label someone as "mentally ill". I've learned much from this exchange, and it does my heart good to be able to see things from other perspectives.

Here is a quote for you, Bob: "Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake, the grave will supply plenty of time for silence." - Christopher Hitchens.

 

[akrvbob]

Obviously I don't think living in a van is any sign of mental illness. With all my being I believe it is a much healthier choice than the traditional "American Being."

Having said that, I also have to say that in my many years and travels I have run into a lot of mentally ill people who live in vans. Some who really did scare me. In my experience, as a percentage, there are many more mentally ill people in vans than in houses.

I actually know quite a few people who had mental health counselors recommend they live i vans and it turned out they were right, vandwelling made their life much, much better.

I have very strong sympathies toward the mentally ill, and they are a group that this website is specifically aiming for, with the hope to make their lives better.
Bob

 

[LeeRevell]

If anyone is thinking of van living, they should join the Navy and spend three years aboard a smaller ship...... after that kind of living and the berthing accommodations, van living should be a cinch! Ship beds aren't called 'racks' for nothing...... ;-)