What if the cavemen were happier?

We are three French Scouts and a Polish Scout - Wojtek - sitting around a small wobbly plastic table under the tarpaulin that protects the "terrace" of a modest camper van.

Wojtek doesn't speak a word of English or French, or anything else besides Polish. He has tanned skin, a few wrinkles and lips in a bad state. He might look intimidating, but his face is so radiant, his mere presence makes us happy. Even though I can't understand a word he's saying.

Obviously, since we can't communicate, we can't refuse anything. Hot coffee, gifts... He puts everything in our hands without us having a say. We only have to thank him by trying to give him back his warm smile.

Wojtek creates a soothing atmosphere by his simple presence, and we want to spend our whole life in his camper, listening to his grandchildren's names. Without knowing him you love him, and you feel like you are spending the most important moment of your life, because you are exchanging pure love.

Moments like this are a daily experience at scout camp. We're outside of time, because all we care about are the little details: what the day's schedule will be, if it's going to rain the next day... But the rest of the time doesn't exist: we don't have the notion of months, years, deadlines, delays, unpaid bills, obligations, reminders, appointments...

You spend your days with your fellow Scouts. And even if we have only known each other for a short time, after a few days living together in the mud, laughing and having a hard time... we know each other much better and trust each other much more than we do long-time friends with whom we have a drink every week.

When you get bored, you look for your friends and play a game. Throwing pine cones at a tree can be an exciting activity and you play for hours because you laugh a lot and love each other.

“The desire for comfort assassinates the passionate soul before escorting her, all smiles, to her funeral" said Khalil Girard.

I'm always afraid of sounding like a hippie when I talk about my scout camps, but it's so important that I should not care.

As I write this article, I will be back in the city in a few hours, and I will see dozens and dozens of murdered souls holed up in their cages. And it makes me want to ask the $100,000 question :

Behind this provocative sentence lies an idea by the author Sébastien Junger (see his book). Yes: living in the time of the cavemen must not have been easy, because we didn't have the technology and knowledge we have today. They were surely no happier. But nowadays, living in a small, tightly knit and isolated community is a blessing. It's what Junger calls tribal life, and it's what I experience every summer at Scout camp (you can experience it somewhere else, of course).

Isolated tribal life has many advantages over modern life.

In a small tribe, malicious acts are less common. It is much more difficult to steal an object, embezzle funds, commit adultery... And this is for logistical reasons: isolated in a small group, the person in charge is much easier to identify.

Moreover, reputation plays a huge role in small tribes. Since there is no such thing as anonymity, one is always responsible for one's actions. Therefore, benevolent gestures are more profitable.

In small nomadic tribes, you only own what you can carry on your back. A warrior or hunter may have a larger tent, but he will never own half of the tribe's wealth.

So by default, we get out of materialism, which is a huge source of depression and anxiety in our society.

As I explained earlier, time does not exist. We are in the moment, and the daily pressure is very low.

Of course we have to worry about small logistical problems such as food, fire, lodging... But it's only a small workload. The Kung for example - a tribe living in one of the most hostile deserts in the world (the Kalahari) - only work an average of 12 hours a week to survive!

The rest of the time is spent playing and laughing with his tribe. There is no or very little harmful entertainment (alcohol, social networks, drugs...), so the entertainment is done in sobriety. Like scouts spending an hour throwing pine cones on a tree.

In fact, what I am describing sounds like an anarchist utopia, like those described in Ursula Le Guin's book "Les Dépossédés". This book describes a society that has set itself up on the moon and lives anarchically. I invite anyone who knows nothing about anarchism to read this book.

In a tribe, there is no institution that has a monopoly on violence, as there is in a state or in a company.

This means that there is no boss who pushes his employees to burn-out as one can have in a mediocracy.

These communities must be founded on the principle of non-violence. It is possible, and it limits the risks. According to Le Guin's book, if you educate a person from an early age about the absolute prohibition of violence, then you can make it almost completely disappear.

Of course crimes do occur. But if we find the culprit, which is much simpler on a small scale, we can, by a democratic vote, banish him temporarily or permanently.

I think anyone who hasn't experienced the happiness of living in a small isolated tribe hasn't seen how happy you can be without anything. And once you've seen that it's possible to be happy with nothing, you soon realize how little you care about capitalism.