Originally posted: https://mrpumpkinface.com/blog/entry/is-a-simpler-life-better
I was taking a walk the other day and saw a cricket hopping around.
Was it going somewhere? Did it have a goal in mind?
No.
Simple creatures like that run on instinct. They don't think about what they're going to do, make plans, or accomplish goals. They get an impulse and the act on it. They don't have any responsibilities. No debts. No possessions. Hell, they're naked all the time!
And there's something enviable to that.
Of course, a human - even a simple minded one - is a much more complex animal than a cricket. But in seeing that little guy hop around I started envying the homeless. They are humans, same as me, but they have much less to worry about in terms of responsibility.
One time there were two homeless people arguing with each other outside my home for an entire day. It was a weekend and I didn't have any plans so I'd pop out every now and then to see if they were still there and if the topic of their disagreement had changed. And for the whole day they were there arguing about the same thing.
There's liberation in that.
There's something compelling in that.
We as busy modern people have way more possessions and responsibilities than we know what to do with. We have bills for internet, phone, utilities, car, home, streaming services, even independent artists we support (ahem, https://newproject2.com/mrpumpkinface/).
It's a lot to worry about. And the collection of these things can - and most often does - become a burden to such a degree that entire cottage industries have sprung up to help people deal with the stress of it all.
Counseling services, interior decorators, storage units, mobile storage pods, clutter-reduction advisers, clutter-reduction tv shows, feng shui.
I suppose it's a trade-off, modernity. Technology is created to relieve us of previous stresses created by previous technology.
But why not go back to the beginning?
Why not get rid of everything?
Why not do away with modern civilization entirely and live a stress-free hunter-gatherer existence?
Well, there's a few reasons.
If you can't cut it you die. As romantic as it might be to long after a pre-civilized existence wandering the land free and wild, the odds of anyone like you or me staying alive for very long are slim. We've simply lost the heritage for it. We don't know which of our instincts to trust and we don't have a familial culture to help us learn. Basically, most of us would simply die (might not be a bad thing in the long run).
We wouldn't be allowed to do it. If a culture decided to simplify itself and do away with technology it would simply wind up being dominated by surrounding cultures that didn't do that. You might get a few months of peace and quite before the Chinese invaded and made a slave out of you. And that's really the reason that technology progresses like it does in the first place: you can't let people that want to dominate you get ahead.
So what's the answer?
I don't know. Maybe try to reduce the amount of things you own. Do you really need more than 4 of anything (besides guns)?
Find a way to get off the grid as much as possible. The State will eventually fail and leave you totally screwed, anyway.
Doesn't it suck how they do that? Yeah, they force everyone to play a part in a system which can completely collapse and is run by morons. But, again, that's more about domination than anything else - they can't let you get too free or you might become a threat.
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