posted September 01, 2013 04:18 PM            

Thank you Mockingbird, for a stalwart reminder.

posted September 01, 2013 07:16 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Randall:
*sniffle*

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posted September 01, 2013 07:23 PM            

I (randomly!) found the quote you were talking about:

quote:

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For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.

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posted September 07, 2013 01:09 PM            

"I love it when people use the word "sheeple".
It lets me know not to take them seriously."

I'm quoting your sig, because isn't this whole cartoon just another version of referring to the majority of people as "sheeple"?

posted September 07, 2013 01:12 PM            

Great point

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Passion, Lust, Desire. Check out my journal

posted September 07, 2013 03:59 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by page one:
Originally posted by mockingbird:

"I love it when people use the word "sheeple".
It lets me know not to take them seriously."

I'm quoting your sig, because isn't this whole cartoon just another version of referring to the majority of people as "sheeple"?

It's easy to dehumanise people that are different from yourself. It's also bad art and lazy thinking.

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I don't think so.
(Although I do agree with your analysis of the word "sheeple" - it's precisely why I dislike it so.)

To me, this cartoon is more about self perception and analysis, how one allows others' expectations to affect their actions and internal voice, than it is about external judgement.

If someone truly wants to, say, make art work for an advertising company (as did the creator of Calvin and Hobbes before he quit, as you can read if you visit the link) then they are not "selling out". Climbing the corporate ladder is not necessarily a bad thing - it may very well be one's path. However, for that person, living on a farm just like good old Mom and Dad might be te easiest, most pressed course of action - and exactly the wrong thing to do.
They would feel dead inside, numb, no matter how much their friends, family, and society insisted that it's the best and most fulfilling way.

Was going to write more, but gtg. Perhaps later.

posted September 07, 2013 09:07 PM            

This cartoon (not drawn by Watterson, but inked in a similar style to go along with a quote of his - the Zen Pencils series is really pretty neat) spoke to me because I'm currently living in a way contrary to my upbringing and somewhat unusual (even frowned upon) in my social circle, but it makes me and mine happy - and that's my central concern at the moment, not "tsks", the "shoulds", and the "ought to's".

When I was a good deal younger, something came to me whole and self-contained, as if it had been whispered in my ear:

I am in in the womb of the world.
I must give birth to myself.

I'm not sure if that makes sense to anyone but me, but (to me) that is the essence of this quote - this is your life to make, no one else's.

posted October 13, 2013 11:02 PM            

quote:

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Living on $5,000 a year, on purpose: Meet America's 'intentional poor'

More than two decades ago, then-33-year-old Dan Price had a wife, two small children, a high-interest mortgage, and a stressful job as a photojournalist in Kentucky. He worried daily about money and the workaday grind.

“I told myself, ‘buck up and pay the bills,’” said Price. “This is just the way normal life is.”

Then he learned about what he calls “the simple life.” Price read Payne Hollow, a 1974 book about author Harlan Hubbard’s rejection of modernity and his primitive home on the shore of the Ohio River. Price’s marriage dissolved soon after, and the whole family moved to Oregon, where he grew up. Price opted to move alone into a tiny cabin in the woods, then a flophouse, then a teepee, and finally into an underground “Hobbit hole” on a horse pasture near a river, where he still lives. During the winter, he decamps to Hawaii to surf and avoid the harsh weather.

Price’s version of the simple life costs $5,000 a year, which he earns from publishing a wilderness zine and doing odd jobs around Joseph, his eastern Oregon town. “I like being able to do what I want to do,” said Price, who pays $100 a year for his land. “I don’t believe in houses or mortgages. Who in their right mind would spend their lifetime paying for a building they never get to spend time in because they are always working?”

Price is part of a long tradition of eschewing the American dream of a house with a white-picket fence, from 1920s hobos to 1960s hippies. Nowadays, groups going back-to-basics are just as diverse, such as live-off-the-land types like Price, punky street kids, and twentysomethings living in modest group homes known as intentional communities. But they all have something in common: They’ve chosen poverty.

Some, like Price, have lived this way for decades. For others, it’s a decision spurred by the recession and its exposure of economic precarity. Either way, it’s often a political choice, one that questions a consumerist, deeply stratified society. The intentional poor are “looking for something real that goes beyond commodity,” said Karen Halnon, a sociology professor at Pennsylvania State University and author of "Consumption of Inequality."

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I was around people who did that, it was mostly sweet. In that area cob homes were popular among this crowd which one could build a home (even without power tools if you went about it the right way) with just a few thousand dollars (that includes carpentry, roofing, etc) and no mortgage, and some took the effort to build a "psychic vibe" as they shaped their cob home to their liking, too. Alternative power even had some wired while at the same time off the grid, a lot of these people thinkers & writers (I knew 1 household that had published authors living there who even made their own glass stained windows, and heard of other published authors in the area living the same way). Many had computers but not televisions (a conscious choice). And at least one family I met not only generated their own power (I think he said it took a few thousand to set up) but sold excess power to the local power company which helped them pay property taxes and living expenses.

posted October 14, 2013 09:02 AM            

I love that. I've spent a lot of time dreaming of building a straw bale house, living of grid, etc...even dreaming of being homeless.

When my kids grow up I'd like to live on a boat in the Caribbean, living off of fish I catch and coconuts. The freedom of it appeals to me so much.

posted October 14, 2013 03:37 PM            

And I know about all kinds of alternative communities and lifestyles.

posted October 14, 2013 04:55 PM            

We also watched the Jesse Martin story about another teen who sailed around the world. Interestingly, while my husband was looking for boats to buy, he bumped into Jesse Martin online, who was selling a boat.

'Don't know if I want to sail around the world. Somali pirates are a major deterrent, for one thing.

But we have a 30' sailboat and I think, if it were just me and my husband, we could live on it comfortably. I know what you mean about the Caribbean and the way people blow money there, but there are also countless deserted islands where people just anchor their boats, catch fish that they roast over an open fire on the beach...

This girl (I think she's 19?) makes total sense to me:

Liveaboard life: minimalism in a tiny home at sea