Comment by modeless
8 hours ago
The lifestyle you describe is very cheap and you can certainly afford it, if you wanted. There are plenty of rural small towns you could choose from. Why not do it if it's what you think you want?
8 hours ago
The lifestyle you describe is very cheap and you can certainly afford it, if you wanted. There are plenty of rural small towns you could choose from. Why not do it if it's what you think you want?
You can't escape the rat race even if you hide in a cave these days. Life like that is no longer possible, at least not in Europe.
I didn't write that to shame anyone. I happen to like my life in the city with all the negatives.
But sometimes I think about this - is all this 'comfort' worth the destruction of nature ?
> I'm really struggling to understand what we've grown into and why this rat race is considered 'better'
> I happen to like my life in the city
Ahh... you struggle to understand why a life you like is considered better than a life you like less, or dislike?
People probably consider it better for the same reasons you like it. It should be obvious.
> Life like that is no longer possible
Completely false. In fact it wasn't easier back in the day. It was much harder. People back then just had hard lives.
What are these "rat races"? What makes you think you're doing something worthless? Do you really believe everything is worthless? That's preposterous and nihilistic. If what you are doing is worthless, do something that isn't.
Grandiosity and pride may make you feel unsatisfied, but that's a problem with ego. Our culture is big on empty posturing and hollow spectacle. You don't need to buy into it. Humanity is how it is; perpetually flawed and immature. The main thing you need to escape are your own vices. Your vices are what give foolishness and evil their power over you.
While the secondary purpose of a job is the good it produces, the primary purpose is your growth as a human being. The job, like all other aspects of life, is an occasion to work out your virtue and your humanity in the concrete. Measure your existence according to the objective good of the inner life, not against external things.
Do not try to "immanentize the eschaton". Do not try to locate transcendence in the immanent. That's a major source of much misery. People have an intrinsic yearning for transcendence. When it is misdirected, it results in the hedonistic and ultimately fatal and fruitless hunt for the transcendental within the immanent, of "vertical divinity" within "horizontal creation". Some try to simulate transcendence within the immanent with all sorts of silly gimmicks, but predictably, this always fails. One must locate the transcendence where it actually is; everything is death and superstition. Your job is not the right place to look for it.
Leading a slower existence in harmony with nature and community has its trade-offs.
There are so many things to consider. It's a fascinating topic. For example, if you give up access to restaurants in order to live simply, how does that impact your approach to food in general?
How about losing access to a hospital? What changes do you make to prepare for, or respond to, health crises?
The questions I ask above are from one direction, and only a sample. I think they're demonstrative of the kind of wide context a decision like this has, though.
> if you give up access to restaurants in order to live simply, how does that impact your approach to food in general?
I think many people would develop a much healthier relationship with food. We live so disconnected from the reality of all the resources and labor it actually takes to bring food to your plate that we've lost appreciation for the interconnected nature of how we live.
Oddly enough, it's the individualist style of home cooking for ourself/only our immediate family that's a departure from the more community-focused lifestyle humans once lived, where cooking and eating involved the entire tribe/community. It was a shared experience.
When people in this thread are nostalgic for a more rural lifestyle or debating rural vs urban, I think that's missing the forest for the trees. What we are really longing for is a sense of community and connection that has been lost. And that community and connection can happen no matter what the actual setting is (urban vs rural). "Where ever you go, there you are."
There's even places in Spain or Italy where they will give you the house for free, and possibly even cash to move in. Still with these benefits they are not reversing the decline of the country side.
I'd say that is nowadays almost completely just a direct consequence of general population decline, and not some more specific effect; this just hits rural communities harder because attracting new people is already difficult there (=> most job opportunities are elsewhere), and it is much easier to fall below "viability thresholds" (i.e. too small to sustain a general store) than it is for cities.
I'd argue that the "real" urbanization mostly finished in the 1980s or so, and the "urbanization" we see now is mostly incidental (and happens at lower rates, too).