371–380 of 429 posts
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I also try and avoid synthetic fabrics especially for everyday use. What's your rationale behind it? Asking because I'm not exactly sure why I hold this view, and need some inspiration.
Haha I loved this. This is a distillation of being human. Holding a view, not knowing why, and accepting any new input for justification :D P.s. fellow synthetic avoidant. mostly for microplastics ? dunno.
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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.
Counterpoint - the best single thing you can do for the planet, in terms of minimising your consumption / ecological footprint, is to not spawn.
I lived out of a backpack for two months on a Pacific Crest Trail hike. I got comfortable with it and told myself that I had overcome my materialism, and could henceforth live happily without a lot of stuff and conveniences. Not so much. Now a couple of decades later, I've got a house and garage crammed with stuff. Yesterday I had a plumber here working on a leak, and this morning I have no running water, and here I…
Yeah, when we stop moving, it's so easy to start hoarding. I lived in Mexico for 10 years with just two duffelbags of clothes and essentials. I could carry both on a plane unchecked and be anywhere with nothing left behind, and I loved it. Now I look around me in my apartment I share with my girlfriend and have things I wouldn't have even conceived of, like a gaming PC with two monitors (for what??) and a closet full…
I lived out of a backpack for two months on a Pacific Crest Trail hike. I got comfortable with it and told myself that I had overcome my materialism, and could henceforth live happily without a lot of stuff and conveniences. Not so much. Now a couple of decades later, I've got a house and garage crammed with stuff. Yesterday I had a plumber here working on a leak, and this morning I have no running water, and here I…
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.
It's like kink-shaming being someone's actual kink.
Criticizing "hedonism" is its own kind of hedonism because you are overindulging yourself in your own sense of pride and smugness for "being better than everyone else"
Not that the author of TFA is doing this, but claiming that you have overcome materialism while at the same time posting about it on instagram with your latest iphone, recording yourself on insta360 cameras, with your apple watch-recorded heart-rate superimposed on your videos is a bit silly.
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On the return from my first trip to South Africa I carried 12 bottles of wine in my luggage. That was back when flights included two free checked items. On my second trip to Europe one of my suitcases was full of T-shirt swag to give out at a conference. Lugging both up the stairs, across the train tracks, and back down was a hassle. Both of these were over 20 years ago. And then there's the story at https://notalway…
You didn't have to pay duty on them?
I didn't.
Things were a lot looser then. I brought a 6-pack of Negra Modelo as carry-on for a trip to Europe. The airport x-ray staff in Albuquerque recognized it on the screen, which impressed me. They had no problem with it.
are we allowed to have any colours, though? but really, every person i've seen who "activates" a lifestyle like this one only ever seems to wear black. i suppose it's the choice of any committed rationalist, but i think it's dull also, fine so long as you don't need to go any where that requires a different type of shoe
I've been doing one bag for 8 years and I still am not understanding pack lists. They seem to get more absurd every year. 10L bag with 6 shirts, 6 underwear, 6 socks, extra pants and shorts, a jacket, and all the electronic and chargers? It beggars belief. I can do with like 2 shirts, gym clothes, 2 pairs of underwear, 2 undershirts, and I wear my jacket, in a tom binh synapse, about 25L. With electronics it starts g…
When traveling, I met many who lived by the mantra of self-sufficiency. It seemed both to liberate and consume them. Daily now I see people living on the street with a lot more, but still with needs of all sorts. In some schools of Buddhism, the tradition was to live with only one bowl and one spoon. The practice was to beg daily - yes, for food, but mainly to submit to the judgment of society as to whether one's pra…
It still exists today. A friend of mine was a monk for many years and would make daily alms rounds.
It also happens in other lineages of Hinduism too. A Baul teacher of mine was supposed to do a short teaching tour here in the US a few months ago and actually got turned away at SFO by immigration because the immigration officer just couldn't understand that she doesn't make money and eats all her meals from alms. He told her no one exists like that anymore, detained her, and sent her back to Bengal.
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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…
This perspective reminds me that when people ask, oh you grow your own food and have food animals, it's like living off grid? their perspective is that farms get their input from the ground and sky, but this hasn't been true in centuries. there are many high-tech inputs for all types of modern farming, such as chemicals (even if they are organic chemicals), fuel, machinery, seeds, infrastructure, knowledge, financial…
I lived out of a backpack for two months on a Pacific Crest Trail hike. I got comfortable with it and told myself that I had overcome my materialism, and could henceforth live happily without a lot of stuff and conveniences. Not so much. Now a couple of decades later, I've got a house and garage crammed with stuff. Yesterday I had a plumber here working on a leak, and this morning I have no running water, and here I…
There are things I can't think of my days/weeks without. So for
> In 2015 I got rid of everything I owned that didn’t fit in a laptop backpack
There go my badminton rackets, cricket bat, and cycle. I couldn't care less about everything else :)
(To be fair, the rackets may possibly fit into my Osprey 45L. Never tried.)
On a more serious note: How much does health-care certainty factor into such travels? I am someone who doesn't have a family. So if a sudden death comes, I couldn't care less (I mean as of now - in advance), but I am perennially scared of falling sick and possibly needing care and hospitalisations, and when travelling (or without a base i.e one-bag kind of setup) and then there's at least the allergies, it becomes such a nightmare if you live in a country that doesn't have universal health care and is decidedly third world irrespective of the GDP.
I am asking because when people blog about such plans and minimalism, the gory details of behind-the-curtain things are often left out, maybe not deliberately.