After the summer Ancient Savo sales have been slowly diminishing, so that for the autumn it has not made any meaningful income for me. That is how it often goes, with indie developments. I have a whole bunch of ideas I still want to implement in the game, and it remains to be seen if any of the future improvements will affect the sales. But at this stage of the development the money doesn't matter that much, I will anyway work on updating the project, just because I find those planned features interesting coding challenges, so the joy of coding is a value in itself. Yet, to avoid going back to the strain of "chronically earning less than the monthly bills", I've been open to any odd jobs to earn instant income. And it has been lucky with that, for at the milling company they have needed a whole bunch of updates, which means extra work for me. The downside is slower progress with Ancient Savo - and the infrequent blog updates. The following story took place already a month ago, but only today I feel like taking the time to sit down and write a blog post.

As most of the Finnish countryside, the local villages have been on slow decline. A bit simplified, it looks like a self-fueling spiral of "population going down because of less babies born, students and young adults moving to cities, businesses quitting because of not enough customers, less job opportunities because of businesses quitting, more people moving away due to lack of local jobs" and so on. But of course that is not the full story. For example they started a brand new film festival at the village. New things happening! I'd guess that it isn't quite anything creating paid jobs, but still it is something which brings more interesting content for the local population to enjoy - and if they continue to do it, maybe it can grow to something to bring more guests visiting the village. I was vaguely thinking that the film festival might be something I'd like to volunteer myself - maybe, some year, if my income and schedules ever get a bit more stable and settled =)

This year I had time to see only one film at the festival, at Friday evening. It was Dersu Uzala, directed by Akira Kurosawa, on a physical 16mm reel. There was about a dozen people watching. Before the film there was a short speech by a curator who had chosen the film as a part of "Forest" theme. The curator was a professor in ecological sciences, reflecting on some themes to be seen in the film, mentioning some of his personal memories and experiences, and also comparing some aspects of Dersu Uzala to the other hand-picked films of the "Forest" theme. That made me realize all the benefits of going to a film festival - in addition to the film itself you get food for thought (and no commercials before the film itself).

Well, I try not to spoil the movie for I highly recommend watching it if possible! If I understand correctly, the movie is based on a book, which in turn is based on real-life experience of the author. Which also makes me want to read the book. The film is set in early years of 1900, and there is a Russian expedition charting a sparsely populated territory in the taiga of far east Siberia. They accidentally meet a local indigenous hunter, a self-sustained vagabond hunter whose name is Dersu Uzala. They make friends with Dersu, and he joins the expedition as a local guide. His skills and knowledge soon prove invaluable.

Of course, the film in itself could easily make several blog posts, if I'd go into details commenting about all the thoughts and feelings it sparked in my mind. But for now I will just mention three themes, more or less briefly;

Dersu has an animistic view of the world - for him all the animals, wind, water and fire are personalities, with their emotions and intentions. For him some animals are sacred and should not be harmed, and generally speaking Dersu seems to see the human - environment relationship as one of co-operation. Often when leaving a campsite he leaves some food and other resources there, just so that if a hungry human or an animal happens to be in need they will be relieved by what they find. He often evaluates people to be "good" or "bad" based on if they show traits of mutual respect, or if they are plainly greedy and selfish. The captain of the expedition has a more materialistic and scientific view, but he grows to respect Dersu's wisdom. This made me think of a more general theme - I think it is easy to see how many of the indigenous belief systems helped to regulate human behavior so that they didn't overuse local resources but maintained a healthy respect towards Mother Nature. But if those beliefs appear as superstitious and untrue to the scientific mind, does it mean that the rational mind is not constrained by the moral rules of the superstition? Once people no more believe in supernatural entities judging them as "bad people", they can just go on selfishly taking all they need? In the era of 21st century ecological catastrophe looming, does the humanity need to go back to the supernatural beliefs to avoid disturbing the balance of the global and local ecosystems? I don't think so - for even when thinking in purely rational and materialistic manner it should be clear that we humans, as a species, depend on the biosphere, and that if critical natural systems fail (or, even if they just go dramatically turbulent) it means serious trouble for all of us. So, if the global human activity threatens the balance of biosphere, it is not just "bad behavior" in a supernatural belief system, for it is also counterproductive and self-destructive behavior if evaluated with cold hard rationality. What I try to say is that I don't see rationality or scientific thinking as problems in itself; it is more like the contemporary human culture seems to be in a some kind of transitional period - we are no more fully restricted by age old supernatural animism, but we haven't yet fully adopted rational and critical thinking. It is this short-sighted only-partly-rational thinking which brews trouble. I don't know but I have a feeling that the more scientific and rational thinking develops, the more it aligns with many of the core insights of ancient animistic and shamanistic beliefs; we just find a new way of understanding how we depend on powers beyond our control. Back to the film; just like in classic Western movies, the modernity is brought by the railroad, and the old-fashioned self-sustained lifestyle has to withdraw or to get overridden. I wonder if that modernism of the railroads is going to get replaced by yet further steps of cultural developments...

My second comment is more closely connected to the movie itself. There is a scene where Dersu and The Captain of the expedition accidentally find themselves in a situation where they are likely to freeze to death. The only resource available is dry stalks of grass, but luckily there is an abundance of them. Dersu instructs the captain to harvest the dry grass, and that is what they do. And they cut, collect, carry, stack, cut, collect, carry, stack, cut, collect, carry and stack the hay. I have no idea how many minutes Kurosawa shows that repetitive work - certainly a lot longer than one would expect to see in a Hollywood movie. But Kurosawa clearly wanted to deliver the sense of this being hard work taking a long time. So the audience feels almost like being there; the light grows dimmer, the captain grows fatigued, the cold harsh wind blows and whispers like Death itself. I really liked the daring decision to spend a lot of time for this scene. Later on I was visiting Sami, and told about the film festival. Sami said that he remembers seeing the film on TV in his childhood or early teenage years - and all that he can remember is Dersu's face, and that there was a dim winter night scene of cutting dry grass. So, clearly, the scene left a lasting impression on Sami's mind as well. (I do wonder if that somehow subconsciously has affected UnReal World development, for I think some aspects of the game have a similar kind of atmosphere. That sometimes survival is a question of managing to collect enough dry branches to start a fire, before your hands get all frost-bitten.)

I hope this won't spoil too much of the movie, but towards the end there is the contrast between urban living in a city, and the solitude freedom of a hunter in the wilderness. Yes, Dersu needs to stay with the Captain's family in their city residence. Sure, food and warmth are more secured there, but Dersu quickly feels himself like a duck in a cage, having nothing to do but to stare at the fire in the fireplace. Living in the countryside myself, my first thought was that many of the problems would've been solved if they were in a rural village instead of an early 20th century Russian city. For even today the life in the countryside still allows many of the activities Dersu was longing for - you are free to chop down trees to make your firewood, you can carry water, and if you want to you can live in a tent on the yard. But maybe the Captain and his family didn't have a datcha in the countryside, nor any rural relatives who could've hosted Dersu. So, let us just assume that life in the countryside was not an option. It still leaves a lot of room to wonder why and how the urban life is. When on the expedition in the wilderness we often see captain and his men singing together, sitting together by the fire telling and listening to stories - we see none of that in the urban setting. I can understand why people can't just go on chopping down trees in the city; but surely the city doesn't prevent people from gathering to sing together? Or, maybe that is something which only happens in a tavern, where you pay to consume alcohol? Somehow the urban scenes left me with a feeling that in the cities we have a lot of people densely packed in a small area, but somehow those people are more separated, disconnected and alone compared to the social life we saw in the wilderness. (This also reminds me of some scenes in Tarkovsky's Solaris.) Oh well - I have a feeling that on some very deep level this is connected to the theme of "the transition period of human culture" - most of us have already left behind the old-fashioned hunter-gatherer life-style, but maybe the replacement is still heavily under development? Maybe the urban life is still under-developed, waiting to find new shapes and forms, something which would better favor and encourage people having both emotional and rational connection to nature, to themselves, to their fellow beings? I wonder what will be the next railroad, bringing along the new way of life ...

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Oh, so - where was I? Yes, it was that particular Friday evening in mid-October. After seeing Dersu Uzala I drove back home and started to cook a variety of foods, with most of the ingredients either home-grown or gathered from the nearby woods. I have been living here for 17 years, and in that time I have seen many of the neighboring houses having their inhabitants die, move away or live in a elders' care home. And some of the nearby houses have got new inhabitants, people in their 30's who do arts and crafts and prefer to live in the countryside. That brings a nice balance to my otherwise semi-hermit way of life, for meeting friends doesn't always mean traveling for an hour or four. I can just walk a forest trail to meet friends. And occasionally we gather at someone's house to eat together, telling stories and laughing, and occasionally also singing together. For me this is pretty close to the ideal way of life, a good combination of solitude and social life, traditional and modern elements. But I also feel that I don't want to write that much about the social life with the neighbors, for I haven't asked their explicit permission; for myself I can choose how much of my personal life I'll expose to the wide open internet, but I certainly don't want anyone to feel that visiting my house means appearing in a blog story. (This has a lot to do with the way my own mind works - when I have social life with the neighbors, it feels more honest just to be fully present in the moment, not "documenting life as it happens". Maybe on some occasion I could especially ask if some of the neighbors feel comfortable with a blog visit.)