Ponder this:

[magicmike]

I'm not suicidal but I have nothing to live for... What does that make me?

[evolutionmovement]

An intelligent, underutilized, unchallenged, middle-class man in the modern Western world?

[fishbone79]

It makes you very, very lucky. You can do/go/be whatever you want!

None of us really have anything to live for, we're all just in the business of keeping ourselves occupied until we die... hopefully procreation happens somewhere along the way.

[Aerotech]

...a white male in modern America. Get a new hobby that you can really throw yourself into. I find rock climbing an excellent way to forget that I have nothing to aspire to anymore.

[93forestpearl]

If you have nothing to live for, you need to set your goals higher...

[evolutionmovement]

He's got no job. Not much he can do. Goals don't matter without the money to go for them (or they just take a lot longer), but unemployment leaves you with nothing.

I'm employed, an author, have great friends and family, and working towards building my own car from scratch, yet I often feel the same way. I've always felt this way. I never asked to be here and if I did, I must have been drunk at the time.

[magicmike]

What is the point of having a goal when I have to play by your rules to get there? This is my point people.

I feel like I am alone on this planet born in a time where the greed of a few people like: John D. Rockefeller (oil), James B. Duke (tobacco), and Andrew Carnegie (steel) led america away from the agrarian culture to the industrialized age we live in today. These people made enough money for their families to live on for 10 generations all on the blood sweat and tears of the american people.

We live in a time where 99% of the population are killing themselves to make the 1% of the world rich. I worked the past 10 years of my life to have a net worth of negative 250k. Do I own a home, not really I just live here and pay 2k a month into negative equity that the state gives me for being unemployed. Where do I get the money to pay my gas and electric and cell phone bills? I borrow it from my second mortgage that that bank gave me on a negative equity loan. Does this make any sense to you people?

I'm tired of this system, I'm tired of this government taking and taking and taking from me.

I'm tired of this system where someone is perceived as more intelligent because they sat in college for 4 years.

I've been saying it for years, I am going to buy some land up in New Hampshire and go live off of it...

[evolutionmovement]

Dude, we need to meet some time. I feel pretty much the same way. I wish I never "bought" this house, but I wanted to get my family out of public housing. NH has really high property taxes, though. ME might be a better bet, but I'm not sure. I know their sales taxes are high, so I assume the property tax is not.

My dream would be to build a place that's dirt cheap to run and near maintenance free (maybe one of those concrete domes) and eat only what I grow or can buy at a local farm. For money, I'd be collecting book royalties, odd wood working jobs, and selling my 3-wheelers. That's all just a dream, of course. I do like being a contractor and getting by on reputation instead of a piece of paper and at the end of the day I can point to something I did. I've done the office thing and I'll go to selling drugs before I do that again. Status doesn't interest me and money is only good for building projects and traveling to me.

I think we're alike in that we don't want a return to cave-dwelling, but hate the soulless, brain-dead consumerism of the modern world. Disposable things shouldn't even be manufactured. If you can't afford a well-built quality thingamajig, then you should do without it.

[555BCTurbo]

I feel like I am alone on this planet born in a time where the greed of a few people like: John D. Rockefeller (oil), James B. Duke (tobacco), and Andrew Carnegie (steel) led america away from the agrarian culture to the industrialized age we live in today.

I agree...

When I used to farm, I never felt more honest. I worked the land to produce crops, which eventually feed people.

I thoroughly enjoy my job now, but I basically am just damage control, as crime is more advanced than policing is anymore.


Needless to say...I hope I die behind the wheel of a tractor...when I'm 95

[N1446]

if i may weight in on this , i find having nothing to live for is benificial in existance - with somthing to live for , you yourself become a dependee ; tied to what it may be that you are living -with , moreso than for ; with it you feel real and if it happens to get away from you , You are left in existance as absent to that of what has just gone away
-
still though you are present and do exist in place after the dependant is away , making you real
In comparrison to your shadow - your shadow is tied to you and makes YOU the only reason IT is even see-able
-
depending on material things makes you material in existance
the feeling of being real arises when you depend on material things and rely on what is unreal
-
the concept of existance is naturally artificial - You make IT what it is by simply being present and sharing what you know , i too spend time questioning the order in life for similar reason , i side with evolutionmovment in being the contractor where i too take comfort in seeing somthing i ve produced , i study architecture

a passion is what is needed

[fishbone79]

I used to build houses for a living. I made allot of money, but that life sucked.

I got some loans, went back to school, and now I've nearly got my PhD.... and I only did it "just to have something to live for." Now I write papers for free (e.g. - warning, huge) and live barely above the poverty level... but I love it!

Anyway, I too would like to build a compound out in Wyoming; I have honest-to-goodness blueprints that I drew up a few years ago. The only hitch is a piece of land. I needed a place with a climate that would allow self-sufficiency but still maintain seclusion and almost complete isolation. The only real options for that in the contiguous US are out west. We should discuss.....

[magicmike]

now we are talking. so long as we don't create our own religion we should be ok...

[kimokalihi]

if i may weight in on this , i find having nothing to live for is benificial in existance - with somthing to live for , you yourself become a dependee ; tied to what it may be that you are living -with , moreso than for ; with it you feel real and if it happens to get away from you , You are left in existance as absent to that of what has just gone away
-
still though you are present and do exist in place after the dependant is away , making you real
In comparrison to your shadow - your shadow is tied to you and makes YOU the only reason IT is even see-able
-
depending on material things makes you material in existance
the feeling of being real arises when you depend on material things and rely on what is unreal
-
the concept of existance is naturally artificial - You make IT what it is by simply being present and sharing what you know , i too spend time questioning the order in life for similar reason , i side with evolutionmovment in being the contractor where i too take comfort in seeing somthing i ve produced , i study architecture

a passion is what is needed

That's deep

[kimokalihi]

now we are talking. so long as we don't create our own religion we should be ok...

I agree. No religion. That always fucks things up for everyone.

This thread is quite interesting as I have always thought it would be nice to gather all my friends and live together in a small place in the country and do a lot of farming. Eat healthy natural foods without chemicals and use alternate means of energy like solar or wind. Get away from TV and society and be happy.

Then I realize that nobody would join me in this because they're too caught up in it all to try something new, worthwhile and meaningful.

Then I forget about it all and go back to being a robot.

I'm so tired of being just another slave.

[fishbone79]

As long as you don't consider atheism a religion...

Actually, to be honest I'm more of an agnostic, but definitely no fanatic. Religion is irrelevant to the enlightened.

Anyway, I've been reading quite a bit on what it actually takes to be self sufficient. It's no easy task, but certainly manageable... until you get old. I'm most of the way through the Foxfire series (if anyone hasn't heard of them, I highly recommend... They're absolute classics).

I don't mean to romanticize what's documented in the series, but I think a divorce from materialism is inevitable if taken to heart. Anyway, I was pretty surprised to hear that others here had even considered something like that in a society so stuck full of iPods, Blackberries and the useless drone mentality.

No wonder this is the only forum where I post with any frequency or earnest.

[kimokalihi]

I'm sure you're right about materialism. It's pretty bad and you'd have to let it go if you really wanted our species as a whole to be happy.

I love electronics and gadgets and cars so that would be tough. I've often thought about how much I hate how materialism has made us act and live and treat one another and how nice it would be to leave it behind and then I picture myself without these things and it's quite difficult to imagine that life. I guess after time goes by without materialism you wouldn't miss what you didn't know anymore or for the future generations, what they never knew. Or maybe we could somehow learn to live together peacfully and still have cool electronics and stuff like in the Venus Project.

I doubt it though. I think we'll destroy ourselves before we do something good for ourselves like that.

[fishbone79]

I love electronics and gadgets and cars so that would be tough. I've often thought about how much I hate how materialism has made us act and live and treat one another and how nice it would be to leave it behind and then I picture myself without these things and it's quite difficult to imagine that life. I guess after time goes by without materialism you wouldn't miss what you didn't know anymore or for the future generations, what they never knew.

That's a good point, and I'm the same way. At least, I was... It changed after I spent a few continuous weeks camping in the middle of nowhere in the Adirondacks with only my pack. I realized that I was stuck to all that useless crap and that it distracted me from thoughts and relationships that are more important.

I still like my gadgets and my crap; and I'm a compulsive tinkerer in a love affair with my tools, but I think if I had to give it all up I would not look back.

But, you're right... this species is on a collision course for extinction anyway.

[kimokalihi]

That's the other thing. If I was to give it all up I'd only do it if at least most of the people I care about were going with me and giving these things up as well. Without them it's almost pointless. Without them I'd be miserable and almost positively worse off than I am now.

It's like a dictatorship where one stupid guy rules so many people and yet he's only one person but it would take everyone to go against him at once to change things. The problem is there's so much fear that you can't summon everyone to rise up at once.

[evolutionmovement]

I don't see why we have to give up everything. Maybe the pace of electronic advancement would slow as things would be made to last and no Beta releases would be allowed. It could be like 30-100 years ago—look at how long TVs and radios lasted (and they were repairable). They cost a fortune, but they lasted for a long damn time. The toughest thing to defeat would be the idea of disposables and the Walmart instant gratification mentality that feeds into the insidious idea of planned obsolescence. People aren't taught to find themselves and their place—they're taught to consume and get boring soulless jobs that help them consume more so that they can prove to the other drones that they're as or more valuable. All it is is a cheap drug. It feels good to pick up something new. For a little while anyway. Probably goes back to us being hunter-gatherers and feeling great about finding something to eat or use to make tools/shelter, but all these things were meant to be consumables. The fact that consumerism is not fulfilling in the long-term shows the dishonesty of it. Humanity probably needs to evolve into the civilization it's built or go back to hunting and gathering if they want too be happy.

A problem with revolution is that almost nobody involved, even if successful, ever sees any kind of rest as the power vacuum inevitably pulls in the scum to take over and they fight it out until the most depraved one wins. People hated Rome, but look what happened to the Western world for about 1000 years after it fell. And as brutal as the Catholic church was, they were needed to restore order to an absolute mess (and got power drunk. It happens). That's one of the amazing things about the US revolution—a few elitist liberals convinced a bunch of farmers and small business owners to fight the most powerful empire in the world and even some of their neighbors for the promise of some money they weren't likely to see. And it worked and, besides the continuation of slavery to appease the southern economic powers, was a pretty trouble-free transition.

[magicmike]

There is alot of good stuff being said here. I'm glad to see I'm not alone in my thinkings. The only problem with this is that I can foresee any attemt on doing this on US soil ending up in another Waco.

[brand]

Are you all gen x'ers? Sorry, I just think most of this sounds like tired cynicism. We have it pretty damn good in this modern age compared to 100 or 200 years ago and all I hear is complaining. Yes, we have some problems. I'll take the perils of Wal-Mart over dying from dysentery.

Good luck with your commune

[Dynamic Entry]

I'm not going to defend religion, but I do think too many people over-react in their recoiling from it. Humans do have needs that are not physical. We have cravings for purpose, as seen in the OP and all the above.

North America used to have a grand purpose, shedding control from Europe and pursuing it's own ideals. Maybe it was once this honorable, maybe it was always corrupt - but it seemed true for the masses for a long time I think. Now the means to that end have become our end and the majority of the developing world is held in poverty by the system our countries have imposed on global ecomomics.

Funny that it isn't this unjustice that makes us feel uncomfortable, but the incredible boredom that accompanies it.

Life is unreasonable. And seemingly pointless. Steve said it best, 'I didn't ask to be here'. I think about that often also.

But here we are, and as magicmike, I am also not suicidal. Just pretty disenchanted and often unenthused.

The only thing of value in this world is relationships. Love those you can and be loved in turn.

But that can only exist inside a framework where you are an engaged individual. So find your passion(s), don't be afraid and, if you can, find a way to make a living off it or enough of a living elsewhere to be able to do it in your spare time. Sacrifice the things you don't really care about ***. And to make your time really valuable to you, employ it in a way that doesn't make the world a worse place. ie - it should empower people, not the opposite.


*** For instance there are likely some that have sold cars/parts that are dear to them to make ends meet but just can't cancel their cable. Even though cancelling their cable would make them a more happy individual, and save big money on the course of a year.

[legacy92ej22t]

I feel your pain.....

My wife and friend of 15 years is divorcing me. I still pay all the bills, mortgage etc, plus I give money for my kids. I have a good job but it is driving me crazy, I work very hard to make my employers extremely rich while I make just enough to not be "poor". I work my ass off for other people, I pay for a house that isn't even going to be mine by the time the lawyers are done with me, I will probably be living in someones basement when it is all said and done and still be working my ass off just so domestics doesn't throw me in jail or something. My wife has the explorer Ltd I bought her, am buying her, while my own personal car( 96 LOB) is going south fast, blown exhaust, oil leaks, ac bad, front brakes are grinding the calipers etc. I don't have the money to fix it cause I am paying for her car. I could go on for pages but won't as I am not trying to take away from your thread.

I guess the big difference is that I do have something to live for, my kids and the fact that I need to be around to work so that they are provided for...... Not really what I expected out of life......

[N1446]

i n my opinion matt ^ these are some of the reasons you exist
not simply what you are here to do
i get goosepimples reading these posts because it s all real , even though this convo is playing out online and in between my ears - i hear you

godspeed men

[evolutionmovement]

Damn, I wish I was rich so I could have a welcome place in the compound for you guys to come and live. That's compound, not commune—there will be no cumbaya sung!

I don't have a problem with people having more than others, it's the breadth of the disparity, the irresponsibility of the rich, and the expense to the rest that I abhor. People like Gates and Buffet, I don't mind at all as they seem to get it and are giving a ton of it away. And it's not like they're living in destitution to do it. Too bad there's not more of them.

I definitely agree with Andrew that good relationships are the most important things you can have. I don't deal with many people, but the ones I do I'm very close to and would do anything for and I know they'd do the same for me. As annoying as it is to be delayed on building my car, I made the choice to buy a house for my family because it's far more valuable a thing to do than have drive something that looks like a WWII fighter with clipped wings getting over 70 mpg and near supercar performance... But that damn nephew #2 is making a racket upstairs right now and I wouldn't have to deal with that if ... hmm.