A free life, wandering with one's family and friends, with no needs but the barest and a life where people sing and death means nothing.
I think you have the gypsies confused with the Indians. And there was no more revelry then usual and as for the disregard for pain, get real. No one likes to be hurt. Things like the sun dance were meant to remove the weak and useless from the tribe because one non-producing person could mean the death of all. Death did not mean nothing.
I wonder if you would find it so appealing the first time you had a child born with a handicap and you had to take him out into the forest to die?
Life it what you make of it. If you are "stultifying in urbanity" it is by your choice and you would soon do the same in the wild. If you find moments of happiness and joy now then you would out there too. And moments are all we have.
I would bet however that you are a guy and so your viewpoint of this lifestyle is going to be a lot rosier then mine. Also you haven't seen and lived a subsistence lifestyle.
a.cricket
LOL, they used to torture themselves to restore the land! I call the Sun Dance disregard for pain; and I'd be curious as to the numbers on the deaths at the Dance. I'm under the impression that the strongest and bravest young men underwent the ritual torture, not the old and weak.
you haven't seen and lived a subsistence lifestyle
Well, you don't know that. But not for long, anyhow.
I wonder if you would find it so appealing the first time you had a child born with a handicap and you had to take him out into the forest to die?
Was that common? I know the Spartans did that, but I've never heard of a tribe that did. I have heard of Hopi that had cripples live to fifty, and an Australian aboriginal tribe that carried a legless woman for her entire life.
You must be a mother. Yeah, I'm a young man. Must be wanderlust.