Hermit or thief

Today everybody is asking a question of the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, "Is he a hero/saint or a villain/narcissist?"

I ask a similarly polarizing question of Maine's "North Pond Hermit," Christopher Knight: "Is he a hermit or a thief?"

A bit of a background on Knight: He is a 49 year old resident of Maine and has spent 27 years living in the woods as a hermit. 

He sustains himself by stealing from other people's pantries. Over the last few years, Knight is said to have committed about a 1000 burglaries.

But, as the trooper in the video says, Knight isn't the traditional hermit in that he doesn't live hermetically sealed off from the world. He keeps up with the latest on the Kadarshians and reads People Magazine (how he is able to access these isn't explained).

Residents of North Pond are polarized about Knight's characterization. A portly elderly man calls him a thief because he has stolen other people's property. Knight, he says, steals selectively; peanut butter is his favorite, as are batteries and propane gas tanks. He leaves behind meat that he doesn't like. 

He has never stolen big items or money.

Others hail him as a hermit, who lives a life away from the stink of technology and the industrial bustle. He lives in the midst of nature, though one look at his abode and I could tell he is contaminating nature by bringing in the industrial junk.

A "hermit" is an anomalous label in contemporary America today, as is a "saint". The conditions for the production of hermeticism and saintliness simply don't exist in our society. Besides, what is Mr. Knight doing anyway? He has merely negated an established norm of living and is living off other people's stuff. He should've been a mendicant and instead of stealing, he could've lived off the generosity of other people's spirits. 

I have read of hermits in some of the Indian epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata: They weren't necessarily nice people, but had a disciplined body and mind and throve on the ability of other people to gift food to them. But those were radically different times, before the economy of buying and selling via currencies came into being. The gift of food was given to hermits/mendicants and hermits reciprocated with the gift of good will/blessings. Sometimes, a gift of food was given to a particularly powerful hermit out of a fear of upsetting him and earning a curse. 

The Maine hermit, isn't quite a hermit; he's just a delayed gratification-seeking narcissist who wants publicity, as the portly guy and victim of the hermit's peanut-butter-stealing-spree says.