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On December 03 2007 08:25 nA.Inky wrote:Haha Hawk, I appreciate your comment. In general, you are a fucking hilarious dude anyway. Thanks for reading. Yes, the vasectomy decision is very heavy. I encourage it, but more than that, I encourage deep thought about it first. I've been thinking of it daily for months now. As to piss - there is a lot of misunderstanding about urine. Urine is actually quite clean. It is primarily sterile water, probably a lot safer than what you get out of the tap, and some urea (see many women's cosmetic products - some kind of urea or derivative is in there) and vitamins. Urine should not properly be thought of as waste, but rather as just "excess." So it is kind of weird to use gallons of water to flush a tiny bit of piss.  Nick / Inky
I;ve had the misfortune of my toilet near my room goign bad once after a few people had pissed in it. Couldnt get it fixed for 3 days or so, and let me tell you, people can notice .____.
As for vasectomy, why not wait incase you change your mind, as it's kinda permanent =p Do you plan on adopting?
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Revolution: If my blog offends you, you are perfectly welcome to leave. You are also perfectly welcome to remain and discuss at your leisure - I only ask that you be respectful of me and everyone else, just as I have remained respectful of you.
Dknight: I appreciate your contribution. I didn't mention this before, as what I'm about to say tends to capture everyone's attention, and it's not something I would like everyone to focus exclusively upon, but I have a good friend who drinks his urine daily (1 - 5 cups full) as well as bathes with his urine. He is a huge proponent of urine therapy (urophagia), and says that urine therapy goes back 9000 years in India and Mexico. Yes, everyone tends to think this is very strange at first, but this friend of mine - Don Schrader is his name - is 62 and looks much less than that, and is in SUPERB health. It's astounding really. Also, he doesn't smell weird or anything, in case anyone is wondering. I do believe urine is quite safe to consume, but Don says it is best if you do not use any drugs and you eat a raw vegan diet. He also says, however, that it is still good even if you eat meat. But the drug thing is important, as you can be re-consuming drugs through your piss.
Iloseonpurpose: thank you very much for your compliment and comments. I agree with you very much - I think people have always found things to be happy about, just as you say. I think in many situations, a lack of wealth can focus one's attention on the more important things in life. I think it is no coincidence that so many spiritual men and women have advocated a life of poverty. I am glad to see you are also concerned about these things. Do not let your worry make you think you do not have power to make changes in the world. There is always another move, and change can always be made, even if the only thing we can change is ourselves. Peace, brother!
Glad to hear more criticism or comments of any sort. Love to discuss these things with anyone, peacefully.
Nick
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Haha Hawk, your toilet story sounds very unfortunate. True, I am gambling that my toilet will work when I need it to. But seriously, if we flush only shit, we can save many thousands of gallons of water a year, I imagine. The downside to not flushing your piss is that when you DO have to shit, if you make a big splash, you'll get lots of piss on your ass. That is seriously not cool. I often flush before I shit, just for this reason. I also prefer just pissing outside whenever I can.
As to the vasectomy, I'll go into my personal life a bit: I am pretty well set on the vasectomy, except for one thing - I just started dating this absolutely gorgeous blonde girl who is set on having kids some day. I'm afraid of alienating her by getting a vasectomy. She knows my overpopulation politics and I know her personal goal to have children. Strangely, though we knew each other's position before we ever met (we connected via match.com) she decided to go out with me. The first date was just wonderful. So that has me second guessing myself. I know I believe in this procedure, but romance can screw with a man's head. Still, it's best not to lose oneself in a relationship. Argh!!!! I know I could get a million women (I got a late start with romance at 22, but now it's not a problem at all), but this particular one seems so cool! Plus the fact that she is gorgeous is NOT helping my political/environmental integrity. O__o o__O O__O!!!!!! Then again, my lack of showering and my powerful BO will probably make her reconsider the whole dating thing anyway.
But to get more on topic, a vasectomy should be considered permanent, but they are actually reversible with pretty good odds of success (about 2/3 chance of pregnancy with reversal.) However, while a vasectomy is between 300 and 1200 US dollars, a reversal is more along the lines of 9000 to 13000 dollars.
Do I plan to adopt? Not sure. I'm open to it! But at 24 years of age, all I want now is freedom and lack of responsibility. Besides, if I really do manage to live below the poverty line, as I intend to do, I can't afford a kid.
By the way, any of you had a long term relationship where condomless sex was possible? I was was with a fixed woman for a year, and totally worry-free condomless sex was just.... just wonderful. I hate rubbers.
Nick / Inky
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I'm also trying to live the most unpretentious and simple as I can. I've got very few needs. Well, I'm still quite young to live on my own (16) but anyway, I try to live simple by not living a life full of consumption and craving for wealth and reputation.
I think I'm far away of being wise already to say I could live without all the luxuries I have in this modern society. However, I'm trying to be independent from them and see them as what they are... a luxury. I'm happy and thankful that I got them but ain't running after more.
So what is enough for me? Epicurus said all you need is food, something to drink, a place to sleep and something to keep you warm if it's cold, and friendship. And he means very simple food and beverage: bread and water. And that is what I'm thinking about the physical needs.
The Stoics told that all you need is yourself if you're completely wise and stoic. The wise soul could occupy with itself and be satisfied by it. This is what I'm trying to achieve by living the Stoicism philosophy, thus being enough for me in life - just being a humble Stoic, love the nature, pursue my few interests, having some close friends.
PS: Hi Nick Nice articles as always; you know that I like your writings.
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As for the current development of things in the world... Mankind is destroying itself and will suffer from it. And honestly, I dare to say that the humans in total have no right to live if don't they give a fuck on nature. We are too presumptuous.
If we are all dead, the Earth will still exist and resuscitate from all the pollution. For the Earth we humans are only a small period of time compared to the whole time of existence of our planet.
If mankind dies completely out, we were a single failure in the end.
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Asakura, I am really glad to see you are still around! It's good to hear from you, as always.
I am impressed with anyone, especially any 16 year old who has a mindset at all like yours. Just to recognize that material wealth is not everything shows wisdom.
I will say this with regard to your post, and it is not a criticism, just something to think about: While it is probably very possible to be happy with VERY little, there is no need to embrace utter austerity just for the sake of doing so. There is no need to be a purist. It is ok to enjoy some comfort and some luxury. Some people interpret what I've said in this blog to mean we must embrace a life of complete austerity or else keep going with a very materialistic lifestyle. In short, they see things in black and white - they see in digital. In reality, there is a whole continuum of choices. Nothing is ever so simple, and we are condemned to make choices in a complex world. So how much luxury is too much? How much comfort is too much? Well, that is the point of this whole blog - to encourage thought about those questions, without necessarily providing any answers. My personal feeling is that yes, modern affluent societies are consuming far too much. But that doesn't mean we must choose to live in absolute poverty.
But if this stoic lifestyle is something you believe in, I say more power to you. You can be an example to others. I have a very close personal friend here in America that lives on less than 3,700 dollars a year - for TOTAL expenses. He says he lives very well, and wouldn't trade his lifestyle for anything. He wouldn't trade places with a millionaire, he says. He is 62 years old, in wonderful physical shape, and supports many environmental and anti-war causes. Even though I probably will never live quite as extremely as he does, I can say that he is a profound inspiration to me, and so embracing an extreme lifestyle may make you an example and inspiration to others, and we need that right now, Asakura.
But if that lifestyle is too much for you, realize that you can back off and still be a responsible world citizen. Just live lightly. Consume little, waste little, and work little (except on work of your choosing.)
Keep it up, Asakura! I'm proud of you.
Nick / Inky
PS - a diet of just bread and water is a bad, bad idea my friend! However, my friend I mentioned just a minute ago lives on a strictly raw-food vegan diet. It is extremely healthy, consisting of whole wheat kernels, spinach, apricots, apricot kernels, puncture vine, sunflower seeds, flax seed, and lots of fruit. He eats for 2 dollars a day. For the record, to feed a vegan it takes 1/20th the land a meat eater's diet requires. 1/20th!!!
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Asakura, you are right that the future for Earth and humanity is grim. This is why it is so important for us to act now, while we can. We must live with respect and love for each other and the Earth. To do otherwise will bring only great suffering and tragedy. Even doing the best we can, the future looks pretty bleak - we face a choice between bad, more bad, and hell. I choose bad!
And, for the record here, the single greatest thing you can do to help the environment and to promote economic, social, and political justice is to NOT MAKE BABIES. Nothing else you do can compare to this simple choice not to reproduce.
I will have my vasectomy on December 28th, 2007, at 10:15am. I have no children. I plan to do a post about this later.
Nick / Inky
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oh my. you're a scene kid
riding bikes, and veganism?
p.s nature has its own ways in controlling overpopulation
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Belgium6771 Posts
I like you Inky 
I myself am getting a license but vowed to myself to use public transportation or bikes as long as I am able to do so. I actually take a bus, subway and tram to school every day, its pretty chill since I can read/draw during the 45 or so minutes. Going to bed now, havent read half of this topic yet but will tomorrow.
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CultureMisfits: Not sure what you mean, but I do know I'm not a kid. I am 24 years old! I have officially earned the right to be called "dude" or "man." Yep, riding bikes and veganism! Fantastic! Don't you agree? And yes, things will take care of themselves one way or the other, but some ways are preferable to others.
Xeofreestyler: Thanks man! And major kudo's on minimizing your car use. I also have a driver's license and a car, but I try not to drive more than a couple times a week. I aim to be car-less within about 6 months, at which point I will rely 99% on the bike. Sometimes it is a challenge, but mostly it is a lot easier than I thought it would be, and, like you, I notice many benefits to minimizing the use of cars. Keep on with the art, reading, and simple living. Fantastic.
I understand people are a lot smarter about their car use in Europe. Here in the U.S., it is considered a God given right to be able to drive, and it is considered pretty low to not have a car. This is precisely the kind of conventional wisdom that must be challenged.
Peace!
Nick / Inky
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On December 03 2007 04:21 nA.Inky wrote: Present day civilization is wrapped up in the all-consuming quest for more. More technology, more power, more speed, more possessions, more luxury. Fine… Fine… But if we are going to take on some kind of quest, it helps to know when we have succeeded or failed. There are some people who never have a sense of being full when they eat, and they can eat to the point of death. Likewise, if we do not have the ability to judge when we are satisfied, we may consume ours way to death. There is good reason to believe this is happening. So what is enough?
You have to wonder if people that lived 100 or 200 or 10,000 or 20,000 years ago were unhappy. Do you believe that they were? Maybe they were. They didn’t have climate control or flush toilets or running water or gas stoves.
Do you believe that people were unhappy in 1950? 1970? They didn’t have personal computers back then, and they didn’t have cell phones or flat screen televisions. They didn’t have CD’s or the internet. They didn’t have many of the things that even young children take for granted today, in late 2007. Were they miserable because they did not have cell phones?
Today many of us have flat screen TV’s, computers with high speed internet, cell phones with cameras built in, MP3 players, fast cars with many luxuries, and on and on. Are you unhappy today? More specifically, are you unhappy because you don’t have enough stuff? It’s something to consider, because the way things are going, there will undoubtedly be more dazzling technology and luxury in 10 years. That is, if the world can sustain the relentless growth of consumption that is being pursued. If you are unhappy with your material situation today, will you be happy in 10 years? Will you ever be happy? I interpret it as the dominance of a worldview propped up by advertising. Our culture is created by people whose job it is to get us to buy more, and our government is run by people who believe the more we sell and buy the more successful we are. As individuals (the perspective you are taking on it), we have been careless with our habits and have had our assumptions about leisure, entertainment, etc. exploited and let these exploitations change us haphazardly.
Besides, it isn't adults who are being fooled. It's each new generation of young people who adopts the new technologies as their way of life, who demands them as gifts from their parents. In essence if we want to get on the household level, it's bad parenting that is to blame, because children now decide what a household needs. And their culture is even more dominated by advertising-created cultures than the adults. A shift has taken place, from adults deciding which products rule, to the children, and this shift has been exactly what the advertising strategists wanted because kids are the most susceptible to their methods.
Clean water is running out: “More than half of humanity will be living with water shortages, depleted fisheries and polluted coastlines within 50 years because of a worldwide water crisis, warns a United Nations report out Monday” (USA Today). Food is running out. Oil is running out. Various minerals are running out. The air and water and land are contaminated. The forests are disappearing. People are exploited so we can have more, more, and more!
If everyone on Earth lived as a typical American lives, the Earth could sustain 1.6 billion human beings. There are presently 6.6 billion human beings on this Earth. This brings up issues of economic and ecological justice. In the U.S. at least, our ability to promptly solve our own problems, if it ever existed, seems dead and buried. We can't even impeach criminals or run a foreign policy or an economy. So how are we supposed to challenge ourselves to really secure the future in all these obvious ways? Facts don't have much pull in politics. So many of them are not even acknowledged by any of the candidates in the upcoming election (except the ones that are ignored and covered up by the media). This isn't meant to change the subject but to point out that as a group the bigger problem is that we can't address problems like the ones you're mentioning because there is a systemic problem going on with the way we find out and believe what's happening and the way we then do something about it. The very process has been perverted and taken over by money interests and we have yet to take it back, so the weight of all the people unaware of this is what is driving us into the ditch you describe. Moralistic appeals like yours are only going to convert the fringe, who were already ripe for conversion. The goliath remains untouched.
We continue to want more things, more toys, and more luxury. When will it be enough? So many people insist on having more children, yet the Earth is already overpopulated and consumption is already ruining the biosphere. One child added here in America is the equivalent of 20 added in Africa. When will we have enough? What will we do when the forests are gone? What will we do when the air and water are ruined? What will we do when billions of people are starving to death?
American happiness peaked in 1957, and has since declined. Wealth has more than doubled since then. The wealthiest 1/5th of the planet’s population consumes 80 percent of the world’s resources. (See the work of economist Alan Durning.) Research shows that as wealth in a given nation increases, happiness does not increase, yet the baseline level of consumption needed to be content DOES increase. (See the work of economist Richard Easterlin.)
How much is enough? This is a personal question. We can complain that there isn’t enough regulation, that the laws are all mangled up and promote waste, and we can complain about the lack of good leadership. Maybe we should do those things, but far more important is to address your own role in the world’s successes and failures. Every single thing you buy and consume has a cost beyond the price tag. How much is enough FOR YOU? Will you take a stand and declare that you have enough? Will you decide at what point you have enough and vow to not go beyond that? What is enough?
This is not to sound preachy, but just to ask a serious question: What do you need to be happy? How much is enough? Me personally, I don't believe in happiness. I don't have a television. I have a SanDisc mp3 player, a computer from 8 years ago, cars handed down to me that my parents bought 10+ years ago. I work 40 hours a week and this helps me pay the rent. If I rode my bike to work I would not only probably die at 30 but would probably die sooner due to some elderly person hitting me as I try to cross the eight lanes in front of my apartment. If I spent any more on food I would be losing money each week, so organic crap is out. There are bigger fish to fry because in the U.S. we are working our entire lives away and not getting anything in our pockets out of it, and the only jobs we can get are jobs to try to sell things to people.
Your question is a spiritual one, and the basic answer is that we don't want to admit there's a question and will anesthetize ourselves in the short term to avoid it.
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United States22883 Posts
On December 09 2007 23:35 lugggy wrote: Me personally, I don't believe in happiness. Yeah, you need clinical help.
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Luggy, your post just above is very, very impressive! Thanks for joining the discussion. You touch on several issues that are so important and very worthy of consideration. I hope anyone reading this thread will think about what Luggy just said above.
Lifestyle and advertising: yes, an excellent point. This deserves serious discussion. You know, most people like to think that advertising has no effect, at least not on themselves, and many corporations that spend exorbitant sums on advertising will also claim that advertising does not make people want to buy things (it's a real issue when we talk about alcohol or cigarette advertising.) The fact is, if it didn't work, billions of dollars would not be spent on it. It works. It works, and it works very well. There are all kinds of brilliant psychologists and sociologists at work behind the scenes trying to help corporations and various interests manipulate you to a certain end. So part of why I try to raise the questions I do in this thread is that I would love it if more people would question the vision laid out in so much advertising, namely the notion that you can buy your way to acceptance and fulfillment. Do you need all the crap they tell you that you need in order to be happy? Do we all need nice cars and big homes? Do we need flashy products and hardware? etc etc.... A yes answer is a death sentence to the environment and a prison sentence to your life.
Anyone interested in the manipulation of public thought by corporations and government should do a search and some reading on a man named Edward Bernays, who revolutionized PR and propaganda (He wrote the book on propaganda - literally, it was called Propaganda) in the early 1900's.
Politics and Economy: Yes, modern economies depend on we the consumers buying all kinds of crap we do not need. Modern economies are built on the idea of perpetual growth. Perpetual growth requires people to buy, buy, buy! And buy more next year than this year. The fact is, economies today tend to serve powerful interests and not regular people. So this is a real problem when one considers that most of the environmental degradation taking place is a result of economic activity and consumption based lifestyles.
You are right that the political system, at least here in the U.S., offers us nothing in terms of solutions. Choices are purposely constrained so that any choice regular people will make will be a pro-corporate, pro-consumption choice. The media will not cover anything you or I have mentioned here, because it would offend their advertisers and threaten economic activity. This is why I advocate individual action. We can be upset that the political situation is virtually hopeless, or we can take matters into our own hands.
Will most people take things into their own hands and make changes? Probably not - at least not right away. But I began changing, and I know others can too. Many people have made much deeper changes than I have, and there are many people who think and act differently from the mainstream, even if collectively we all represent a small percentage of the population. I have found that changing my lifestyle and becoming a more responsible world citizen is very empowering, and eases my worry and anxiety about the ills of the modern world (because I know that at least I am doing something about it all.)
About Luggy: You sound very, very disillusioned. I don't think you are so crazy for that, although maybe somewhat exceptional in your sober consideration of the modern situation.
Some people have it harder than others, in the US and elsewhere. But everyone has choices.
You are right, people in the U.S. are working more hours for less money (incomes have been dropping since about 1980 - I believe the increase in material well being of many US families has to do with the availability of credit, aka slavery.) Americans and many others live a vicious cycle of work and spend. But a lot of this (not all) is a situation of the horse and the carrot. The American Dream is dangled in front of our faces and we are told that by joining the rat race we can obtain it. But the faster we run, the faster it eludes us. The trick is to recognize that we don't need so much of what they say we need. Then, many times, we realize we don't need to work as much, because we aren't buying as much. This is the road to freedom, and it is also a way to reduce our impact on the environment. We go under the wall instead of over it.
We have to recognize what we do not need, and resist the forces that try to tell us what our needs are. We have to take back our power and make responsible choices. At least that is what we should do. It's hard, but the difficulty is mostly in changing how we think.
As for bicycling, the conditions vary place to place, but all risks included (and they can be considerable), bicycling will improve your life expectancy AND save you a shitload of money, AND reduce your environmental impact. I highly recommend it!
Thanks again, Luggy.
Nick / Inky
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i think its sad the way the world works today. Im not the most eviromental-friendly person, but i try my best. I barely use the car, i move on public transport, i dont buy much stuff for myself etc. My big weakness could be that i love taking a shower and spend 30++ minutes under the water. I have to change that habit.
Im happy atm, but of course if i had some more stuff, i could use it pretty much. I think what makes you happy is the way you live life, and not what you have.
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RtS)Night[Mare: Good, buddy! Every little thing you do to help is appreciated by the Earth. Be proud of each step you take, and keep looking for new ways to improve. That's all there is to it!
You are absolutely right, I think. How you live is important, not what you have.
Last of all, nearly everyone has a vice when it comes to these kinds of things. In your case, maybe it is the shower. You can work on this!
Just for your information (not to make you feel guilty, but so you can be aware), I'll tell you that on a low flow shower head, you are using roughly 2.5 gallons of water a minute. On a 30 minute shower, that comes out to 75 gallons of water! Bear in mind that clean water is becoming scarce on Earth, and in 20 to 30 years, it is believed that 50 percent of the human population (total population will exceed 7 billion then) will face water stress and water scarcity. Also keep in mind that if your water is chlorinated, and you are taking a hot shower, you are breathing in chlorine. Did you know chlorine was a chemical weapon used in WW1? It is a poison, and linked to myriad health problems.
These are things to think about, and it is up to you how to use the information! I used to be addicted to long showers. I still am. The way I get around it? I shower once a week, tops, and I continue to try to reduce the length of my showers. Otherwise I will use a washcloth and water.
Thanks for commenting!
Nick / Inky
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i am happy with my life, my work is great, my social life is excellent, everythings going fine. i prefer driving with my car instead of bus, train, bike etc. i like to take long showers and bathes, i like to buy things i like. i like to waste my time and money on stupid things. if i feel its worth buying some expensive brand, i am going to buy it.great life.
i couldnt live the way u liv na,inky,
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HiTexas, thanks for commenting. I think your attitude and lifestyle are really common, and both are understandable. Like I said, my thread is not about preaching so much as it is about questioning and encouraging.
Whatever lifestyle choices you make, what is really important is to simply understand the COST of those choices. You may differ, but I think many people would want to change if they understood the cost of what is considered a normal modern lifestyle. But wanting to change and actually changing are still separate things. Beyond wanting to change, one has to know HOW to change. I think many people, myself included, often get hung up on the difficulty of carrying on a successful unconventional lifestyle. It is difficult, but not impossible. The difficulty is primarily in learning to think differently, and in going against the grain.
Either way, how you live is mostly your choice. I would hope you would make responsible choices, but at the end of the day, I hope you are happy with whatever you choose.
Last of all, I ask that you not be so quick to decide that you are incapable of making changes. People are capable of many amazing things. Most great changes take time, however. If you decided you wanted to change, there would really be no need to do it all at once. You just take one thing at a time and do the best you can.
Peace!
Nick / Inky
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I've only read the OP and Inky's response to it, for the most part. There is much more here that I haven't touched yet, so I'm sorry for that.
Advertising may not be working through every individual directly, but the culture clearly corresponds to some reality propped up by some corporate product (loosely put together by a combination of compromised artists, gatekeepers, "producers", etc.). Whether designed by evil or simply haphazard, for our purposes it's culture coming to us from above, vertically not horizontally.
Think of it this way. People all around you are starting to get the latest mp3 player, computer game, new car, nice house, clothes, etc. It just seems like reality. Where did it start? Was this really an improvement on the way things were going? It's pretty clear that our lives are not getting better by this. Just do the math. You or someone who takes care of you probably worked (or will work) thousands of hours to pay for that car and other crap. That's a year of full time hard labor. Which means their life consists, then, of weekends. A hard separation between life and work is then created, both of which are driven easily from the outside by business interests in you as consumer or employee. Humanity then has to work through those institutions or outside of them in a very, very small way.
I have to reiterate that I think the amount of people that will change on the "moral appeal" will be small, and that if you want to tackle these bigger issues there has to be a change in the external forces that so many people yield to or have unknowingly committed their lives to. Governments have the ability to do that, by changing what they do, and by coming to agreements (for instance, if one country decides to stop expecting growth but instead to aim for sustainability, that only hurts them on the international scale, but if all the major players agree to do this, like nuclear disarmament, or the kyoto treaty, then it can really happen).
The biggest thing individuals can do is to make sure the right people are winning elections. That means not only figuring out who to vote for but doing it in a way that makes you able to inform everyone around you. I can't say I've spent the time to do that. If we give up on using elections then the only option left for change against these external forces will be violent conflict. So let's keep that in mind when deciding whether to half-ass the option we have to elect officials.
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Luggy: good points about advertising and consumer lifestyles. People do very much get caught up in the work/spend cycle, losing many important aspects of life to consumerism. This is exacerbated by debt, which may lead people to spend 2 and 3 times as much as the given price for various goods and services. I think it is no coincidence that Americans are working more hours with less vacation time year after year.
But I disagree with you on tactics. You said yourself, in an earlier post, that the politicians are offering us no real alternatives. The fact is the political process is a joke. If we wait on a political solution, we will wait ourselves to death. It just isn't happening that way, because those politicians serve the interests that are working us to death for a bunch of crap we don't need in the first place. They don't serve us. I see no mechanism for changing that besides showing the politicians that we can make them and the powerful interests superfluous (taking things into our own hands.)
A problem with the political solution also is that it encourages division of labor (it is division of labor.) Wherever you have specialization, you have disconnection and alienation. The amount of disconnection depends on the amount of specialization, but what I am getting at is that if regular people give their power to politicians, the politicians won't manage it responsibly or in the interests of the people the same way the people would. In other words, do you trust someone you don't know and who doesn't know you to make choices for you? Or would you rather make those choices for yourself? Who knows your interests as well as you do?
What happens is these politicians probably typically mean to do well, but we place them in a position where they are tempted to do something other than what they should. And many will give in to temptation as the temptation grows.
The surest way to change the world is to change yourself. Like Ghandi says, "we must be the change we want to see in the world." Your life is your message. Your vote is just your vote, and, sadly, it won't amount to much of anything today.
By all means, do still vote, just don't be tricked into thinking that is ENOUGH.
And the very last thing I would advocate is any kind of violent action, just to be clear.
Even if people like me manage to convince only a very small number of people, it is a start. People who believe in these kinds of ideas need to be outspoken. Large scale change happens one small step at a time.
Nick / Inky
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I think you will convince people who are ripe for the convincing, a fixed, small group, that had it coming, if not by you, then someone else.
I'm not just saying to vote right, but to make sure everybody does. If we can't win any elections, that is, have someone really representing necessary changes, then how is all this going to change? You are going to slow down problem X by 5%, nothing more. Systemic change is necessary for the other 95% and that has to come from above, which means we have to win elections or violently overthrow (impossible, therefore we need to get people to vote for our informed choice).
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