331–340 of 429 posts
I am surprised one bag crowd seem to pack so many computing devices with them. Some have phone, laptop, ipad and kindle and pride themselves on being minimalists.
This page contains some interesting advice I didn't know, useful for traveling in general. Traveling without a luggage is a staple of mine, but I am not at this pro level yet. For other commenters, overcoming materialism means not being attached to objects. Not necessarily living on a backpack. The idea is to have objects if you can, but don't suffer for their loss, or their gain. Seneca, the stoic thinker, might be…
Overcoming materialism by carrying as much Apple hardware as possible in a backpack. I hate these kind of "minimalism" stories.
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Not sure if that’s good faith, but of course your kids’ contribution doesn’t have to be the same one you make. That would be absurd. If you don’t have kids, their contributions won’t exist.
It's good faith, I wasn't sure how literal you were being so I threw it in. But importantly my kids might be more capable than me or less capable than me to effect change. Who knows! > If you don’t have kids, their contributions won’t exist. My choices alter a million things about the future. If we look at everything I was a critical step in causing then we're going to massively overvalue my contributions. Also, shou…
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Counterpoint - the best single thing you can do for the planet, in terms of minimising your consumption / ecological footprint, is to not spawn.
Probably the single best thing you can do for the planet is become a green energy lobbyist.
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Relatively few people's economic output can compare with them producing new people. If your last name is not Feynman or Curie your most valuable contribution to the society is a couple of kids.
I'm not sure about this math. What percent of my kids' economic output am I supposed to take credit for? And even if it's "all of it", if you can make some big company or semi-common job 0.00001x more efficient then that's a bigger impact than having kids.
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People freak out about this, but all it boils down to is bringing enough socks, underwear, and shirts for ~5-6 days, 2 pairs of bottoms, and (depending on weather) or a combination of 2 and/either sweaters and an outer shell. Wear the biggest stuff (pants/sweaters) on the plane. After that be willing to do laundry, which will often put you in a position that's outside the tourist mainstream and force you to slow down…
> Freak weather events can be used as an excuse to shop for clothing, too (the best rain jacket that I ever bought was in this situation in the Netherlands - it was expensive, but I'm still using it a decade later - a fantastic souvenir that people always complement me on when wearing it). This doesn't make any sense. Going going to a random shop to buy a rain jacket is inevitably going to be worse than doing careful…
Also, these things make great souvenirs. Every time I wear my merino wind buff, I think of that little Irish town on the Atlantic coast where I bought it, and how wet and windy it was.
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There might be some version of a future where robots take care of managing the industry for our benefit in a post-scarcity setting, allowing us humans to live as simple a life as we want, knowing that when a material need arises the robots will be willing and able to quickly fulfill it for us. I don't think that's where we're headed, but I like imagining.
With the direction everything is moving, we will get back slavery faster than we will get robots and AGI.
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I found this a bit odd, especially when the author mentioned they lose their apple watch a lot so buy an older one. It feels peculiar to buy such an objectively expensive high end item when you know you constantly lose it, and barely use any of it's features. To me that is continual overconsumption. I can't pretend I don't have my own contradictions going on, so I'm not having a go at the author. But I did find it a…
'One baggers', at least those who post online about it, are very consumerist in general despite the practice being about minimalism. You'll find people posting about upgrading their bag from the $300 Aer Travel Pack, to the $400 Goruck GR2 because of style preference. I've seen someone talking about repurchasing items they already own in a particular color to match their packs color scheme. I think the motivation for…
I think YouTube has caused a big increase in this. One bag, EDC, Ultralight - the videos are all completely the same. "Here's a bunch of things I just bought, and here's a bunch of things I've used for a month and am throwing away". With YouTube they can get paid to do it though, and get to add a new dimension to their hobby which lets them connect with others.
As you say, all of this is fine. I certainly can't cast judgement either, I for sure have my own issues with over-consumption.
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You couldn't survive with just a backpack if other people "overcame their materialism" and didn't own all of the capital that allowed you to survive, like providing you your equipment, food, knowledge, and emergency rescue if it came to it. Criticizing "hedonism" is its own kind of hedonism, or in common parlance, a first world problem. It is a luxury that cannot be indulged by poor societies.
I travelled the world with a backpack. The good news is, it took me nearly 20 years before I started taking hot showers for granted again. It really did make me very grateful for a lot of things. But I’ve also had similar thoughts to you. I watch a lot of hiking videos of the PCT etc as one day I’d like to walk it. When I watch those videos, and when I see people on social media telling folks to “drop out of the syst…