Hi Stoner,
I am proud of you that you are able to discuss this the way you have. I think you are doing well overall. I know it pisses you off, and exacts an emotional response but it is vital that you learn to answer questions like this, if you are to forward your cause.
It is the same with any belief and those who hold a belief have to be able to explain it while keeping their cool. I know it is hard. It is very difficult to talk about our beliefs and leave them open to critique, but with yours as unusual as it is, you do need to learn to explain it, and not only explain it but also find a way to live with it. You will have to learn how to live in a way that you are personally satisfied with, and which affords you at least a way to exist without compromising the core points of it. So far you have been unable to do that, and it has resulted in feelings of guilt.
I once read an article by a psychologist, which said that if you feel guilty about something you should either stop doing it or stop feeling guilty about it. Your morals make it hard to be normal, or successful or have fun. At the same time even the most base of necessities are impossible to obtain without compromise of the impossible system you have set up for yourself. Your problem isn't without parallel. Religious people everywhere have similar ethical problems. Some Baptists would like to work in convienence stores, but feel they can't sell cigarettes, or beer, or that they can't work on Sunday. Muslim women feel it is wrong to go out uncovered, but who realize it is a risk to their safety to go out in a burka since 9/11. Teen christians who find that they can't fit in with their friends, without commiting numerous "sins." There are a lot of people caught in moral quandries, but the difference is that you suffer in yours alone, because your beliefs are different. They aren't religious, and yet your passion for them is similar. It is as if you see a vision that the rest of us don't see.
I don't see it, and it makes no sense to me at all, at least not to the extreme you take it, but I try hard to respect your beliefs... Yet, due to my natural dislike for religious legalism, I do feel your beliefs are too restrictive, and are ruining your life, just as if you were turning down a promotion you wanted because you couldn't work on Sunday, or if you were loosing all your friends cause you couldn't go to movies or go rollerskating with them... but actually what you are giving up is even more seriously handicapping. Honestly your hearing loss is nothing compared to the way your belief against money coupled with your inablity to find a way to work around it is holding you back.
It upsets me to think that you might never have a normal life, or establish that independence you crave. Everyone should be able to take care of themselves... and while your idea of freedom is vastly different than mine, you deserve freedom in whatever way you want to have it. I hope that someday you manage to find others like yourself, perhaps a girl, and figure out a way to survive without benefit of money.
Also Stoner, I heard about a guy who lived in a tee pee for years, asking people if he could pitch his tent for a while. He was a blacksmith, as one of his trades, and he shoed horses for people in the community. He did this while he was in college, and then later he bought a farm... I guess he was using currency, but he was still living on the land, in a way similar to what you describe. Maybe there is a way for you to do what you want, if you try. I do not know how, because it is not my dream, but if you could do it, then perhaps you would inspire others. If you have a working plan, and make it work for you... prove it possible, then others would follow that plan.
In case you haven't figured it out, I am debating you on this to draw out your opinion, and solidify it. I want to understand it, so yes I am going to ask hard questions. Not saying that some of the stuff I say isn't my honest opinion, or question, but I am trying to stimulate you to think and research your topic so that you can learn to be persuasive, or at least be able to explain your strange POV to those of us who cannot imagine it. I sware you are the first person I ever met who doesn't like money. I admit I do not understand it, and that is partly because I have not been exposed to the idea anywhere else, and partly because you get upset and don't explain it well when I ask. Your idea is like an unborn baby, half in and half out, and we need to pull it out, clean it up, and have a look at it. You need to put it in words all neat and concise, and sensible. Not upset and stressed out and defensive, but clear, along with a plan of how someone could make that work within today's circumstances. Maybe if we really look at this thing we can figure out a way for you to actually live like this.
Could be... on the other hand it could be that it has gotten bad enough that even they realize we have to fix it. They thought it was just fine when they closed the mills, and factories. They thought it was just fine when the banks forclosed on people's houses, but then they couldn't understand why they couldn't sell all their merchandise, and why the banks couldn't liquidate that huge surplus of homes, and why people weren't paying their credit cards, morgages, and personal loans anymore.
I don't think they reallized the trickle up effect of poverty... for some reason the economists think that money trickles down, and that prosparity trickles down, but really if you pull the rug out from under the bottom layer, which is the base of everything, then the rest will topple eventually. The economy is shaped like a pyramid, with the poor on the bottom, and they are many, the ones at the top are few. IF you knock the base of a pyramid out from under the top, then the top can hardly float in the air, but that is what they expected. For some reason they didn't know that without the continued spending of the working class their world would also come crashing down.
I could have told them the same 8 years ago, before their experiment in idiocy. In order for our currency based economy to work, money had to make a cycle, which starts with money being paid to the poorest people first. If this doesn't happen eventually no one else gets any. Money flows up the economic food chain, not down it. Rich people keep their money and that is the problem. It doesn't work that way. The good news is, you will see a different economy under Obama than under Bush. You might see the pleasant side of money for once. Bush has been in for 8 years... and Regan and Bush Sr. WEre no different. Clinton was better, and that economy wasn't bad considering it was an island between to catastrophic economies, but I hope we get genuine recovery.
Congradulations on getting me to have to google the term Straw man to make sure I understood the term. Nothing makes me more proud than to find things in your posts that I have to look up. It means you are doing your homework, and learning stuff... interesting use of the term by the way. Stretching the use of the term, but not breaching the definition at all.
How does one kill their strawman... just ruin your credit, and say screw it... if so good advice? Credit is a bad thing for most people. I can't quite agree with you on all your currency issues, but I do admit that credit has become an uncontrolable monster, which is destroying our society. If you don't have the money now, chances are you won't have it later either. People should live within their means.
I expect that the executives will take all they can of the 700 billion dollar government bail out, and put it in their own bank accounts, still forclose on people right and left, and not give anything back that helps the economy. I figure the FDIC will possibly bail out a few banks but that most will just merge with other banks. I expect that merging will continue till there are only three major banks in the United States... and maybe there will be only one. Mergers are bad, they interfere with competition.
I disagree, there is a plan. Part of it is to break down the family unit, and community spirit... and move to a world economy, and world system of gorvenment. Another BIG part is population control... Another part is to scare the conservatives into a knee jerk political reaction to prop up the morals... and the same people sponsoring the "LIBERAL media" are the conservative rich who will profit from the republican administrations, elected out of fear of it. The stuff talked about by the liberal media wasn't REAL until they created it. They caused the divorce rate to soar, and they caused more people to think they are gay than actually are. They caused more sex, violence, and overall weirdness than anyone ever would have thought of without them to guide us, but it isn't the liberals who are bank rolling this atrocious behavior, it is the conservative business men. They don't care about morals, but they want those who pretend to be moral in office, because they know who they can pay off and get what they want, and it isn't the democrats. So they create a conform or rebel senerio... another example of a straw man, however this straw man doesn't even look like them. They set up talk show straw gays, and straw divorced people, and straw marital problems to provoke people one way or the other. They say it is OK to divorce your wife, to become trans gender, and to abandon your kids, in favor of your own selfish desires. The people who agree serve to horrify the people who don't, and the people who don't will run not walk to their polling place to vote republican. They will protest... boycott, and behave irrationally, and make the people who agreed with the so called liberal agenda angry. Neither side of this mess the media owners made is true rebellion. They are both conforming to this conform or rebel brainwashing. Brainwashing with opposite values every twenty years, causes all kinds of strife and stress among the people. It causes some to rebel and some to conform, to whatever is new, but if one chooses to rebel against the current thought it is only because you were successfully brainwashed by the previous thought. That is what I was talking about when I said that the brainwashing was inescapable. As long as we conform or rebel... as long as we pick one side of the other of violently clashing opposites we aren't rebelling at all. We are conforming. It is only when we think freely, and come up with a solution that works for us, regardless of the hype, on either side, that we are truely acting sanely.
The knee jerk reaction to fear of liberals, wasn't strong enough this election because economics proved to be more important than morals. The people did speak this election, and they made a wise choice of the choices they had.
Obviously the agenda also includes divorce, and more divorce, a deliberately weakened younger generation, and forced dependence on a system which provides little, but doesn't allow people to take care of their own problems. For example, don't own a gun, call 911 in situations where you need a gun, and wait two hours for a response. Overall they are trying to kill us off.
What is the way out of the roach hotel? How are you going to get out of it. Just taking a smaller cheeper room, and then refusing to pay, isn't getting out. What is the plan?
I was saying as I restated above that they have given us ideas, which are not our own, and that those ideas are ruling our subconscious minds. It is possible that money is one of them, but there are others. I still say there is an enormous, artificial creation of homosexuals and homophobes, and a fight being picked between them. The religious right vs the rest of us, is also a huge conflict. Overall they are pitting traditional values against some new morality which was artificially created a few years ago, and is way to extreme to work... it's only purpose is to drive a wedge between the people. It isn't real. There have always been gay people, and there has always been divorce. The difference is that before this nonsense, people got divorced for real reasons, not on a whim. It wasn't expected and it wasn't average or normal. it just happened sometimes. Now most people are divorced. Gay people existed, but people didn't sit around and wonder if they were gay. While Gay people deserve their rights, everyone has a right not to have their view of sexuality so turned around they get parinoid about it. These people on TV aren't for real, or if they are they are just a few extreme and somewhat nutty examples, carefully selected for shock value. These people are on TV for one reason and one reason only, and that is to CREATE homophobes.
Then do it. Come up with a plan, and then live without currency, or someone using currency on your behalf for six months... three months even. I admit I don't know how, but then I don't have any desire to. This is your dream, so where there is a will there is a way. Use your will and make it happen. If you find what you are talking about is actually possible, then you will be a true pioneer in the field. If you fail the worst that could happen is that you have to go back to your dad's. You are there now, so nothing ventured nothing gained... maybe you could try one of those communes, or go stay with the Dakota people.
They are few, and they live in the rainforests. Admitedly people can live in rain forests... if they know how, but if they encounter white people they will die of our diseases which they have no immunity to. In addition white people trying to live in the rain forests, only equals destroying the rain forest, and killing ourselves, because we don't know how to do it.
In general living on the land would be possible if one knew how, and if there was enough room for it. It requires a lot of skills though, and instincts which have gone dormant in modern man. Think of it this way. Foxes live in the woods. Pomeranians live in the house. They might look similar, but they aren't the same thing. Pomeranians have been fed, brushed and pampered for generations. Foxes have been living independently for hundreds of thousands of years. Poms are used to home heating, and Foxes know how to build dens. Still each year thousands of foxes experience a premature death. It isn't just man who causes it either, they get sick or they have accidents... just think though how many more pomeranians would die under the same circumstances.
The same is true of tribal people. Most tribal people die young. Life expectancy is less than 40 years old in some cases. Children especially are prone to disease. In the years before medical science, simple things like appendicitis was deadly, and children died in huge numbers of diptheria, and in third world countries, just a simple case of diareha can turn deadly for an infant or small child. Many tribal people have babies almost yearly, and yet they are lucky if half a dozen survive to adult hood. Then childbirth in women and warrior and hunter behaviors in males result in death for many young adults. Sickness takes many people of all ages.
What happens when human pomeranians, meet human foxes? Read this.
www.cotf.edu/ete/modules/troppois/tpcolonization.htmlHere is a nice article on some rainforest tribal people. IT says life expectancy is short, and that one in four males die violent deaths.
206.204.3.133/dir_nii/nii_dat_yanoma.htmlHere is a discussion on tribal warfare, and the prevailing idea among them that murderers have more children... there is tremendous status for killers, among the Yanomamo. They kill for status.
74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:ciE9PGbFH-IJ:anthro.fullerton.edu/patton/2%2520Yanomamo%2520Question.doc+Yanomamo+%22Life+expectancy%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us Yes, and you made me so curious I just had to look that up on line. There are people who were recently discovered... and there were people discovered during WWII, in New Guinia. I was aware they found them, but knew very little about them. I did some reading, and believe me their lives aren't perfect. People have their problems no matter where they come from. The rainforest climate provides much more generously than a regular climate, and so they only work a few hours a day... farming. However they use their spare time to kill each other... sometimes over material possessions, and to improve their chances of reproducing.
I'm only saying that I have tried. I live out here on the farm, and I've tried gardening... I had to buy seeds, and fertilizer, and then one time the seeds weren't any good, and it didn't rain, and I got two radishes when it was all said and done. I've also had successful gardens, but it really isn't something you could call worth it. In the same time I spent gardening, if I had spent that working, I could have bought twice as much food with the money I would have made. Really if I had just bought canned vegis at the store with the same money I spent on seed and fertilizer, I would have come out with more stuff, already in cans, and ready to store or eat.
The good thing about our economy is that stuff is produced in mass quantities. It takes much less time effort and money per pound of food, to grow many huge fields full of peas, plant and pick them with machines, and truck them to a cannery and have them canned, than it is for one person to plant enough peas, corn, beans, and etc. for their family. This allows for people to be specialists. People don't have to grow 1 row of ten different things, keep up acres of orchards and vinyards, and have cows, pigs, and chickens, and yet they can have a wide variety of different foods, from all over the world. They can have citris fruits from tropical climates when... well Oranges do not grow in North Carolina or Oregon.
In the same way, during the renasaunce craftsmen took years to carve an ornate door, and even a simple door cut by a modern craftsman could take at least a day, with one guy working on it, a company hiring maybe five guys could make dozens of doors in an 9 hour work day. A bigger company with more employees could make hundreds of doors in the same time.
In this way one person doesn't have to be a farmer, a carpenter, a crafts person, and dozens of other skills, just to survive. Instead they can just do one thing, for 8 hours, and then go home and live their life, enjoy their families, and relax. People can be artists, musicians, or other creative professions if they choose, and have the ability. People can be doctors and lawiers, and other brainy professions if they like. There are a lot of choices in our society, where as breaking down to self sufficiency would just be a lot of work, and very little reward for most.
I've considered survival a lot, and I know how if I had to, though I am sure I'd make some mistakes in practice. However thinking about it, I know I wouldn't like it as well as what I am doing now, and I especially wouldn't like it as well as when I was working in my career field. I felt like housewife and part time business owner, was a huge come down from what I was doing, as far as emotional satisfaction, and from what I read about self sufficiency it would be just more of the same kind of hard thankless work I am supposed to do already. I've cleared land, I've gardened, and I have built little buildings in the back yard. I liked building the play house, and mixing concrete for a floor in the grainery. I felt good about it because it was creative. It was hard physical work though, and I am not sure I could hold up to it now. I always hated gardening though, and while if I feel good I don't mind clearing brush, it is hard assed work, and usually gets you good and sore. Blisters, scratches, sore hands, sore muscles... other than that it is OK though. I still wouldn't want to do that kind of stuff every day.
That is what I am saying what you want isn't simple. It is much more complex and inefficient. Simplicity is working an 8 hour job and coming home to a nice home, with indoor plumbing, heat and air conditioning. There is nothing simple about figuring out how to survive day by day without money. There is nothing simple about living off the grid. There is nothing simple about farming, or even gardening. There is nothing simple about constructing a log home with a working fireplace, that won't burn down the log home and everything in it, for example. All these things are complex and difficult.
No the conditions of the physical realm make things complex. Money is not complex at all. It makes things easier for most of us. It is only doing without it, or with only small amounts of it that is hard.
Are you saying that money isn't fair, because everyone doesn't have the same amount? and that some people have none? or Are you saying that it is incorrect to say that having no money makes you unable to function in this world?
True enough, it is called supply and demand, and supply and demand do determine the price of things usually.
So should food be cheep for fat people and expensive for poor people? Somehow that seems backwards. In areas where food is scarce though it costs more than in areas where it is plentiful. I think that no one should be hungry and until the last 8 years hunger wasn't common in America. It happened sometimes, even to people who were usually secure... we've had some hard times, but overall hunger is still less common than it was in pioneer days, when people did live off the land.
Poor people need more of everything I guess, so the least thing they get they appreciate... at least in theory. I have seen some very ungrateful poor people though, when they were finally not poor they didn't appreciate any of it, and I wondered if maybe that is why karma allowed them to be poor. Most poor people are very grateful for every little thing they get though.
HMMM... interesting. So you are saying that people buy things they don't need or want, only because they can afford them? And why do they do that?
It is the same without the money. We all need to eat, and not everyone can grow food, make food, find food, buy food, steal food, hunt for food. Even if the system had no currency, people would still be hungry... probably more so, because most people don't know how to farm, and a lot of people have no place to farm. What would people in NYC do? How could they grow enough food to live, in their apartment? The city dwellers would suffer under your plan.
I did have an idea though, maybe people would let you garden on their land, if you split the produce with them... you could have several clients... at least with your energy you could handle three, but at the same time, how would that help. Food is only part of the equation of what people need. Still it would be part of the equation.
That isn't very nice. I am trying to draw you out and get you to explain your system. I understand very little of it because you get this attitude whenever you try to explain it. I've known you for years, and you have yet to explain it adaquately enough so that you don't sound retarded when you talk about it... especially in person. You get all irate and it makes you look crazy.
These are not ideas that make sense to me. I can see living off the land if you have to, like some post appocalyptic senerio, where some catestrophic event destroyed our current culture, but by choice... no thanks. Maybe when I was younger. Nah, and I feel like I know you well enough to know you'd hate it in practice. If you ever got it you'd regret wishing for it. If I understand what you are saying. At the very least you should try, or something close to it, before you go advocating it all over the place. You have never done any of this so how do you know it is what you really want?
No Stoner, squirrels plant trees all the time, but if the people who own the land choose they can cut them down, or even mow them off with a mower and never know they did. They could let them grow for a while, and then sawmill the land and cut off all the big trees. This might advantage our tree, as big trees around it are thinned out, or it might cut this tree down depending on when it happens. Money buys the land, and money determines its use.
You can plant all the seeds you want, anywhere you want, but if the owner of the land wants to cut down your plants, or harvest them, themselves they are free to do so. If you get permission first though, perhaps a mutually advantageous ageement could be reached. In general though the plants on a piece of land belong to the owner of the land, regardless of where they came from.
Money only buys what we choose to purchase. It doesn't valadate us as human beings, any more than buying useless items helps to make us more important, but it does enable us to fill our belly, it allows us to buy whatever we need, by working earning money, and then trading the money which really represents our labor, to someone who maybe didn't need our labor, but needs what they want to buy with the money we trade to them.
So the little seashells, seeds and beads of primative people were evil too? I didn't understand that part. I thought it was only the dollar and the euro that were the problem.
In the event of an economic crash I am far more prepared than you are, due to my use of cash to prepare with, and my life experience. I will be thankful for the head start I have, and what little I do know about survival. I will wish that I would have bought more when I had the chance, and that I had not thrown away the items I have tossed, even though common sense says I hang on to too much already. I will be fine however, and I do know how to survive... I just hope those seeds in the freezer come up though, or I will have problems. I doubt you have seeds in the freezer though, cause you didn't buy them cause they cost money. I will hate to give up the good life, but I do have the resources and experience to fair better than most. IF an economic crash does come, the way I see it your lack of preparedness will leave you ill positioned to do anything more than you are doing now, which isn't much.
Start expressing what you think in an inteligible way that makes sense. I have been listening to this stuff for years now, and your plan has more holes than swiss cheese. I want you to tighten it up that is all. I want you to practice what you preach, and take some kind of action. I want you to realize what you are saying by trying some little part of it. I'd have more respect for your opinion of farming for example if you would grow a few tomato plants, and a potato barrel like I told you how to do.
Here is a plan that wouldn't cost a dime. Dumpster dive for a container. metal or plastic it doesn't matter, but it has to be large. 55 gallons is perfect, but smaller would work. A barrel, plastic trash can... a big jug... whatever. If they are somewhat small then use more than one. fill with dirt and cut three inch by three inch square door shaped slits in it. cut them so that the "hinge" of the door is down and the flap sticks out at an angle slightly towards up. Take some potatoes that have gone wrong, perhaps started sprouting, cut the eyes so that a couple of inches of potato is attached, and stuff them in the dirt down in the little openings you cut. Water it daily, and in a few months you will have lots of potatos. Do that at least. It is easy.
How much respect would you have on Kim's guide to housekeeping? None I would hope. LOL How much respect would you have for Kim's guide to neuclear fision? Even less I would think. Tell me about something you have tried to do. tell me how you can eat well for a month without money, and without infringing on the rights of others, and I will listen.
This day in age it is a skill to live at all. You don't live apart from them. You aren't making your way at all. You could. You could try to live in alternative ways, but you don't.
You are right, you can do what you want... so what are you going to do? People don't have to do what is expected of them. People don't have to live in the prescribed ways. I am not a conformist who lives like everyone else. I do what I want. I just don't want to live without money. I don't see the boogie man in every dollar bill. I like money. I really do. It doesn't control me, I use it to live.
You don't like money and I see it as a tremendous handicap to over come not using it... honestly it seems arbetrary to pick money as the problem, out of all the evils in the world, but if you put your mind to it, I am sure you can find a way to live without it. YOu could move to one of those communes in your state or Washington. There are many, and I am sure that if you worked hard, they'd feed you and house you. You could go to Dakota. You can stay where you are, and grow vegis for your family and housemates in pots. You could try survivalist techniques on a hike on government land. If Abortion bombers can do it, so can you.
Now David that makes more sense than anything you have said, but it isn't the money. Money is just a thing. "It doesn't take us anywhere that we don't already know how to go." It isn't the green paper, it is people's green hearts that are the problem. Green with jealousy, competitive spirit, and greed... all these things come out of insecurity. Secure people aren't greedy, they aren't overly competitive, and they don't feel covetous of other people's things. It is only that insecurity that is the real problem, not the money. It all boils down to fear, insecurity, and all the nasty emotions that come from that. These emotions would happen with or without the actual greenbacks. If it was food people would hoard it, and if it was carved items, then people would collect them, and take pride in it. If it was sex and it often is even in today's society, people measure their worth by conquest as well as money, and they use and hurt people with that much more than they do with money. Insecurity makes people nasty, and while I agree that nothing makes people stinky faster than feeling insecure about their finances, if it were not for money they would feel that way about other material items.
Materialism isn't just money. It is loving the litteral, the tangible, and the carnal. It is loving this world, more than the spiritual side of things. It is spending too much thought on this world, and not enough on the next or on higher principles. Materialism is being obcessed either positivly or negatively with material goods, and inanimate objects, including money. I have heard it explained that an obcession with obstaining from physical things is also a form of materialism. Basically being anti-materalistic would be not concerning yourself with the physical any more than is necessary to survive. This could be done simply in a monestary, but I think you'd have to be catholic or buddhist to apply. Maybe you could join an eastern cult... IDK.
Like I said with the fox and the pomeranian. Fox, wolf, and dingo, are the ancestors of the Pom. However selective breeding, as opposed to natural selection, environment and generations of environment have created the cute little lap dog... and we are the cute little lap dogs of the human race. Still primative man didn't survive in great numbers, or for long years, in most cases. WE live a long time, and our mortality rate is a lot lower than primative man, or the tribal people of our time.
Have you ever thought of it this way though? The modern millionare is the result of evolution and survival of the fitest. It was not only by brawn that individuals survived, to pass on their genetics, but also brains, and random genetic adaptions to the environment. Many animals survived extinction because they were smart, or because they were able to blend in, and not attract attention from preditors. White rabbits are barely visable in the snow. They survive because preditors don't see them. Just like those white bunnies in the snow, quiet people who doggedly make their way to middle management by hard work, will survive to reproduce. The fox is smart and creative. He isn't the strongest preditor in the forest, but he has survived on his brains. Life even threat of death is a game to a fox. He never looses his cool or gets so stressed he can't come up with a plan. Likewise the self made millionare who started out with no more than an average life, but somehow made millions with his creativity, and intuition is just like that fox.
It is one of the premisis of evolution that creatures adapt to their environment, and that is what has happened to mankind. Strength of body is no longer what makes you survive here. It is all brains and how to handle money. How to provide for a wife and family is what enables you to find a mate, reproduce, and insure the survival of your offspring. It may be cruel that poor guys won't find it as easy to find a mate as rich ones, or that stupid guys don't stand as much chance with the ladies as well educated ones, but it is no more unfair than figuring that small unhealthy males in cave man days, died because there was no doctor. Mankind evolved doctors to care for our sickness, and we insured their survival as a sub species by paying them well. Money may be artificial, but what it represents isn't. Money isn't always something you are born with. Often it is something people gain or develop because of their brains. The two richest Americans, Warren Buffet, and Bill Gates, were neither one born rich, or even close. They both made that money themselves, because they were smart. Now there are plenty of people who inherited money as well, who are high up on the chain, but if a man makes money with his brain, he passes on not only his money but his genetics. Whether the trait carried through or not is debateable, but one thing is certain, in order to hang on to that money and grow it, they too will have to be smart, or they will loose it all anyway.
Now really I can't believe I just made that argument, because I of all people oppose extreme wealth, but it is the truth. I am uncomfortable with survival of the fittest in general, as a concept... it is just too harsh but it is still true. Today survival is based largely on brains and the ability to make money. Women are given instincts which tell them to pick a strong male who can protect them. In the days of caveman the woman looked for a hulking male, with quick explosive energy who could bring down a mamoth to feed and protect her, but today that hulking male with that volitile cave man mentality will likely end up in prison. She no longer requires physical protection, or being provided for by a brawny male. Instead her survival, and that of her offspring depend on the male's ability to provide cash. Of course she could provide her own cash, but if that is the case, then what does she need him or his genetics for? No the modern female will select a male who can produce the one thing needed for assured survival, and that is money. In better times that may have been less of an issue, since most people would survive during the sixties and seventies, but now the future is uncertain so now more than ever women seek security, and security equals cash.
You are an adult you have a choice, and you still choose to live in a house and play video games. You spend a chunk of time every day on them, and it is hard to pry you away from them. You do request access to games, and you want games to play. You like to play games and there is nothing wrong with that. A lot of people do, but admit it, given a choice you like playing games. You would rather do that than a number of activities that would be more in line with your cause.
I am not saying that to make you feel guilty, I am saying that to point out that you do like certain elements of our society. You do prefer a warm bed to a damp shack. You do prefer a video game to a good book. You do enjoy chatting on line, with people over talking to them face to face. I admit you don't mind hard work, and that you are energetic, but like the rest of us there is a time when you want to sit down and relax, and when you are tired. These aren't bad things, they are just the comforts of what our society provides. When given a choice you choose comfort. So do most people.
umm maybe it is. If you research hard enough. There are colonies in the rain forest. I understand they have not been overly successful, but they look for volunteers. There are missionary posts, and medical personel posts in africa, and other third world countries, where you could perhaps live in a situation like that. There is the peace corps, and there are communes, and proably other things you could do. You could look into any number of tribes, groups, cults, obscure religions, communes, volunteer organizations, and god only knows whatelse might be out there.
Well that is the logical train of thought. Money makes it a heck of a lot easier, to be sure. It is always easier to do things the way other people do, but smart people do look at other methods as well. I have always been one to look for a creative solution. I just never wanted to live entirely without using money. I have been in situations where I had to though. I found those times grossly unpleasant, but I still survived. I've spent a large percentage of my life with a lot less money than I needed. I remember well when I was using microsoft money to figure out our budget, many years ago, and the program told me it was impossible for us to live on our income, with the stated bills, and expenses. I'd been doing it for years though. LOL I didn't know it was impossible. It was difficult but not impossible. I just overrode the message and kept using microsoft money.
it came up quite a few times before I managed to figure out how to make it stop doing that.
I know how to economize, and I know how to live on next to nothing, but I do not know how to live on the zero income level. I will say it is hard to have a family without plenty of money, and kids feel most secure under circumstances that can at least pass for normal. My kids hate it when we do things in non standard... er... substandard ways. Being single and nearly broke is fairly easy. You can usually stay with parents, or friends or relatives. Any number of people are willing to take in a single friend temporarily. When you are dragging a few kids along hospitality would quickly dry up I am sure. When you are single you have one mouth to feed, and if you have to go without you can. When you have kids, you HAVE to feed them. If they cut off your electricity and you have kids the state can take them away from you, if you don't get the power back up in a couple of days. Even a dog has a legal right to be fed, and they will take starving dogs to be euthanized, and put you in jail if you don't feed your dog.
In general you would have to come up with a plan to become very self sustaining, unless you wanted to hook up with a group who understood your odd dislike for money. However I think there might be someone out there who would take a slave in. Someone who would work in exchange for being taken care of. Still I don't see how that is freedom...
so what do you want in exchange for your labor. I know you said that trade and barter were good. Barter is good as long as the other guy has something you want, but what if the guy you are bartering with makes lace doilies, and that is all he has? How are you going to eat, use, build a house out of those?
People can always barter, and often do, but it is hard to get everything you want on barter. Still there are some alternatives if you are willing to look for them.
You could hire yourself out for room and board.
You could join a monestary... though that would require religious conversion of some kind. Overall it would help if you were religious. People are accustomed to religious people having weird restrictions, and even though the distaste for money is a somewhat unusual one, it isn't unheard of. Priests take a vow of poverty... of course they take a vot of chastity too, so that may not be the right religion for you, but still... if you were religious your restrictions might be easier for people to understand.
You could get one of those signs, I will work for food, and really mean it rather than take the five bucks people offer, and buy a fourty ounce with it, like the others who have those signs do.
You could join a commune, the peace corps, a missionary trip, or some kind of volunteer work that would feed and house you. There are such things going on in New Orleans as we speak. If you volunteer they put you up in a home, and proably would feed you. there are many volunteer positions that offer free food for example.
I have no idea why you oppose currency, in the vast number of things you could oppose, I just don't see where you singled out money as the whole problem.
As for children, there are many laws that would make your plan even more difficult if you involved children. Without inacting freedom of religion I don't see how you would stand a chance against social services unless you had a plan that would insure their proper care, even though you didn't have money. I don't honestly know how you would do that.
Probably, and cats tend to hunt even without training. Some cats won't hunt though, and others lack skill to be consistently successful.
My point exactly, but wanting not to use currency is currently interfering with your ability to take responsibility for yourself.
Anyone who ever tried to do anything different was critizised, consistently until they either made it work for them, or gave up. EVentually you, like they will have to do one or the other. It is not enough to say I want to do the impossible. Everyone wants to do at least one thing that is impossible... or nearly impossible. Inventors get laughed at alot. It is a lot harder to do something that hasn't been done a lot before. It is much easier to just do as others have.
People don't understand your POV easily. I mean people are used to Baptists not being allowed to dance, and they are accustomed to the idea Jews can't eat pork. Everyone's grandma tells them not to have sex before marriage... and there are many restrictions that can be explained in just a few words, but this one is so obscure and foreign to most people that it requires a lot of explaination.
If a Baptist starts condemning you for drinking a beer, you might not agree with him, but at least you know what he is talking about. The idea that some people say it is a sin to drink is not new. However, when you start out of the hole telling us all that we are somehow wrong for doing what we were raised thinking is the right thing, and tend to be fairly self righteous about, well... of course we get out raged right back. I personally feel very strongly that it is my duty to earn money and it would be even more so if my husband didn't earn enough of it. I would feel horribly guilty if my children went hungry because I wouldn't work and earn money to feed them. I would feel horribly guilty if they cut off the electricity because I couldn't' pay the bill, and my kids were cold and in the dark. I would be miserable if I let ANY moral restriction interfere with the well being of my children, or any other person for that matter. The whole purpose for rules is to aleviate suffering of others, and I don't see how refusing to use money does anything but cause suffering.
Your family and friends chalenge your desire, because it is ruining your life. It interferes with your REAL independence, as in your ability to move out from your dad's place. It interferes with your ability to find a mate, and have children. It interferes with your social life I am sure. It interferes with any other goals or ambitions you might have. It interferes with any thing you might want to do with your life. It is really something that is going to keep you confined to some bedroom for the rest of your life unless you make it work, and that is what we are all afraid of.
But earning money is an almost inseperable part of having any sort of independence. It seems to me it is the only responsible thing to do.
Ok... so you make some valid points, and I will give you that. I've always said that money won't buy happiness, but it will sure buy off unhappiness.
It is true that people can't eat money, but at the same time people need food, clothing, shelter and transportation. This day in age shelter also includes electricity, and running water, which infer utilities. Utilities charge money. Living with someone else, and bumming a ride when you need to go somewhere isn't the solution. You need to be able to get these things for yourself, or find a situation where you can barter for room and board. Sometimes maintenance men in appartment buildings get a free apartment for taking care of the others. That would work, if you knew how to do that, and provided utilities were included, and provided you had some source of food in addition to that. Really that would take care of it pretty well.
There are ways Stoner, even to do the impossible, but not if you give up and hide in your room, saying it is impossible, but you are called to suffer in this way. Feeling guilty for what little food you eat, and what little space you take up, because the food and space is bought with other people's money isn't the answer either. Guilt is an evil thing... much worse than money. It eats people up. Guilt and guilt born restrictions are not healthy... but at the same time if you are sure you aren't supposed to do this, then God should provide a way for you to exist this way. I really don't see how any of this is worth the inconvenience, but if it is to you, then in order to be effective you have to find a way to work around it, and still make a way for yourself, or you really aren't doing what you think is so imparitive anyway. You are still using money, just someone else's money. You are still using modern conveniences, and all the things modern society has to offer, and you are still not proving that your way will work. Only when you come up with a workable plan for your cause... something that can be done one person at a time, will you ever be able to convince people you know what you are talking about. Without proof of experience, in actually making something work, other than our society, you are an armchair critic. Without providing an example, you are just talking and all this is just words... words that distract from your cause, more than they add to it, because of the two words "I can't" No one wants to hear that they are supposed to do something that can't be done. No one wants to hear someone preach to them about how they are supposed to follow rules that so far no one has been able to follow. People want to hear how to do something, not that it can't be done, but I am going to say it is a moral responsibility and lecture you about it anyway. It's as bad as the catholics saying people aren't supposed to masturbate.
I said early on that it was impossible, but please prove me wrong. I have thought about it and looked into it, and maybe if you talk to the right people, and make some arrangements it could be done.