Abstract

A visitor from a technologically advance Western culture travels to a distant land seeking something that is missing in his culture. Perhaps he feels it us an entirely new culture that he us seeking, or simply an escape from the rigid, mechanized reality of his Western existence.

How old is this quest? The desire for the simple life, some kind of Eden or a return to the beauty of nature and a natural lifestyle, has ancient roots. Some two millennia ago, Pliny the Younger wrote what fondness of country living (his ancestral home was the rural are of Lake Como, Italy), away from the duties and politics of the city of Rome.