Ooh, I had to get Wikipedia to tell me about that one. I'm thoroughly disturbed by dumpster diving and feel it is for people who (if they subscribe to this "freegan" thing) are too lazy to compost what they find in the dumpster and farm with it. Otherwise, I think I lean in that direction.
I get tempted to add to that the idea of escaping traditional society and living as a farmer as an alternative, but you still need to cover the start-up costs somehow and at least trade for items you simply can't provide for yourself.
Unless you're a thief or incredibly charming.
And those people who eschew work proper need to figure out about how much time they spend "foraging" to support themselves...and then somehow relate it to the number of showers they take per week.
I actually thought about going to school for agriculture, once upon a time.
I think these guys would probably argue the point about eating, but anyway what I really meant to say was that you don't need an abundance of money to be happy.
I know that sounds like "duh" but when you live in NYC for a while it's easy to lose sight of that. There is such a huge emphasis on conspicuous consumption and everyone is moving so fast that nobody stops to ask whether this constant posturing and this huge proliferation of consumer goods is actually making them happy.
I think the honest answer would be a very loud "No," but most people are too brainwashed or simply too afraid to ask. So they will go on identifying as little more than consumers until they find themselves picking out a nice tasteful gravestone and a nice little plot of land to rot in.
Yeah, it's a phrase you tend to want to force people to look at literally when you've got twelve cents in the bank and still have three years of college/grad school to go.
Even the communes have membership fees and start-up costs. Furthermore, we're humans - pack animals - we'll establish a hierarchy and create an economy of something no matter what sort of society we try to create for ourselves. The problem is when one stops understanding the difference between working for what he or she needs (don't get me wrong, I'm counting fun as a need) and hoarding to appear richer/better than someone else.
And you'd never get an honest answer out of most of those people because they have convinced themselves that having the newest toys fulfills them as a human being; they probably don't even know how to look deep enough inside to see how they really feel about it all anymore.
Ahh, generalizing about hypothetical strangers. Keeps me busy at work, I guess.
It's still necessary if you want to eat. You can't be happy if you're starving.
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I get tempted to add to that the idea of escaping traditional society and living as a farmer as an alternative, but you still need to cover the start-up costs somehow and at least trade for items you simply can't provide for yourself.
Unless you're a thief or incredibly charming.
And those people who eschew work proper need to figure out about how much time they spend "foraging" to support themselves...and then somehow relate it to the number of showers they take per week.
I actually thought about going to school for agriculture, once upon a time.
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I know that sounds like "duh" but when you live in NYC for a while it's easy to lose sight of that. There is such a huge emphasis on conspicuous consumption and everyone is moving so fast that nobody stops to ask whether this constant posturing and this huge proliferation of consumer goods is actually making them happy.
I think the honest answer would be a very loud "No," but most people are too brainwashed or simply too afraid to ask. So they will go on identifying as little more than consumers until they find themselves picking out a nice tasteful gravestone and a nice little plot of land to rot in.
Not for me.
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...or just indifferent.
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Even the communes have membership fees and start-up costs. Furthermore, we're humans - pack animals - we'll establish a hierarchy and create an economy of something no matter what sort of society we try to create for ourselves. The problem is when one stops understanding the difference between working for what he or she needs (don't get me wrong, I'm counting fun as a need) and hoarding to appear richer/better than someone else.
And you'd never get an honest answer out of most of those people because they have convinced themselves that having the newest toys fulfills them as a human being; they probably don't even know how to look deep enough inside to see how they really feel about it all anymore.
Ahh, generalizing about hypothetical strangers. Keeps me busy at work, I guess.
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it's been a while.
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