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Fat Rabbit Iron's avatar

What a sad story. The thing that depresses me is that this is both *normal* and *expected* now. We are actively encouraging people to have this lifestyle, beginning when they are young.

I work for a standardized test prep company. In one of my recent online classes, I was an “off camera” teacher (essentially doing tech support) while the “on camera” teacher led the class. Everyday he asked a bunch of 16 - 17 year old kids what shows they were binge watching, what video games they were playing, what movies they were excited about, and what fandom they were into. I understand that he was trying to build rapport, but it seems to me like we should be encouraging teenagers to *do something with their lives*, not try to escape them. We’re just setting the stage for passivity and dependence later in life.

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Soyelcaminodelfuturo's avatar

Wow, DH. Your personal story re a family member really resonates with me/partner. And it reminds me of something I saw a while ago and have kept close to me since.

“A bird sitting in a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because her trust is not on the branch but on her own wings. Always believe in yourself”

Last year we stopped working, at least stopped in the sense of continuing to generate wealth. We have both worked for 35 years. We moved from a beautiful but expensive comfortable house in a comfortable part of a comfortable country. To a house that had no utilities but about 300X more land (we have been here for more than a year and got lost three times already in the garden).

We are ten years older than we were ten years ago but we feel ten years younger. We do everything for ourselves now, there are zero services out here. But we have integrated into a community of like minded people. People nothing like us, except that on reflection we seem to be exactly like them. We’re more like them than the local people in our newly adopted country. All of them strong, healthy, fit, self sufficient and mentally prepared to take care of themselves and their friends. In every way.

We have our own water, electricity, heating, boar, deer, chickens, eggs, vegetables, fruit, herbs, dogs, security. And people who share without an expectation of a return but an implicit certainty that they will receive in the future.

We have no contracts, we have trust and cash (for now, but this is not going to be a CBDC haven) and bartering and sharing and cooperation. Nobody cheats anyone because that simply would not work. Win-win, “todos ganan”.

We don’t have TV and have stepped away from MSM, except online to see what the state is planning for us mere mortals. We see people when we want to see people on our own terms, and when we do we realise how small and artificial our previous social group was. People here have a joy in the ordinary that we never had in our previous ‘sophisticated’ life.

We’re not special. We’re not especially strong or talented or wealthy or lucky. But we have done what we have done early enough to make it work. It’s hard but so rewarding.

Of course one day age will catch up with us. I prefer it did that here than in a care-home or an apartment with sirens outside. Don’t wait for life to happen and certainly never believe in a benevolent state. Doing everything for yourself is a thousand times more rewarding and, it turns out, secure than believing that society has bought into the same rules you’re playing by. I guarantee that not everyone is.

DH, you are so right with these sentiments. Thank you.

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