Some interesting responses here, esp. from WhatTheGox that nailed it on the head literally.
I've got that. A house in some kind of a desert.
No electricity, no water, no mobile phone connection and no Internet. I'm going there from time to time, staying till the supplies I've brought last. I've never been there more than 3 days. It would take a huge budget to give the place the comfort of a modern home. Satellite Internet doesn't come cheap, and it's very far from the speed and reliability of a cabled network. Growing food or any plant is impossible on the land.
You have to look at US' history. There were big settlements where the land was fertile, and water plentiful, but very few in the desert.
Nice that you have such a place. Historically settlements are done close to water, as water was the roads in old days. You used boats for transport and shipping. Also fertile grounds were possible because of abundance of water.
With modern technology it is possible to make the dessert fertile. It's not cheap, and it's not easy, but it is possible. You can build machines today that will use solar power to extract water from the air.
A dessert might not be the best place for a settlement on a low budget, whereas a remote ranch in a fertile environment might be better. There are pro's and con's to everything.
I strongly believe that the man that's hellbent on achieving something will achieve it, or die trying.
And of course incremental steps, a wise and intelligent approach with careful planning will yield a higher chance of success.
As for other people, there are usually two camps when it comes to do something:
The
no-can-do camp. You recognize them by the fact that they claim it will be very difficult to achieve objective
X because of
N,
M,
Y,
X and
Z. In reality they mentally sabotage themselves before they even got started.
Problems are everywhere, and things will happen that you did not plan for. If you see those things as challenges and plan ahead, you have a much greater chance of success in what you're doing.
The
yes-can-do camp has a subset of individuals that are intelligent, hardworking, wise, disciplined and have good craftsmanship over a wide array of disciplines. To achieve objective
X, they ignore
N,
M,
Y,
X and
Z and deems it irrelevant, or extract the elements that needs attention and looks close at how to solve it to achieve
X. Never enter a relationship with any individual of the
no-can-do camp, even though some of them claim they're interested, they're really not, even if the resistance is on a subconscious level. Such people only drain the energy and is of no help in achieving anything.
Some good reasons to escape the system is to avoid things as pollution, corruption, noise, superficial people with superficial values and annoying judgmental people. A life where every morning you wake up, and you decide yourself what you do that day, without having a boss hanging on your neck, without you being afraid of saying the wrong thing in your community or in your workplace.
One option could be to leave everything hightech behind, and live like they did in the old times. However, I think that's too radical, as I like technology too much, and nothing would be more fun that to build your own projects, on your own time, see it work and feel the independence.
Life for most urban people these days is to wake up, sit in a car to work, where you sit even more, then you talk with other people in a superficial way, talk about sports, fashion, your kids, where you're going in the vacation, the latest happenings of the kardashians etc. There are few people who go deep in their conversations. And if you are a critical thinker, thinks outside the box, and is critical of the current system, there's not many to talk to. Once you start talking about the banking system, geopolitics etc, most people just morphs into a huge question mark.
And such most drones or slaves waste their lifes, without most of them even knowing it. That is to be said, they might not even realize themselves that they're wasting their life, but in my eyes they do.
I feel bad about all the material things I and my family posess, we use too much resources, and there's too much waste. We eat too much food that's preprocessed, although we try our best to stay healthy.. I feel bad opening a bottle of milk in the fridge. Knowing that I support a capitalistic system where the farmer which is the one that produced the value is the one getting the shaft. At the same time, I feel bad when I throw all this garbage, all the plastic containers, all the waste. Is that life, is it sustainable?
At the same time it makes me very sad to see all the profit greed and corruption in society. How much money you have, and your connections is more important than being a critical thinker. So your position in society is more important than logic, facts and science. Politicians decide over the common man, what he can and cannot do, and it seems like the concern of most politicians is the next election and to bow to their corporate sponsors. This goes down to the smallest municipalities. And if you speak up against it, you get hammered down like you're some dumbwit.
So there's a few choices:
- You become a part of the system and try to amass power and influence, that's not really an option unless you're a power hungry person that enjoys the spotlight.
- You accept status quo and becomes another slave, yet different than the others as you're aware you're a slave. Slavery in the sense that you need to work for decades to pay off your mortgage. And to keep your job, you cannot speak critically of the status quo. This enslaves the majority of the population, and most people are afraid to speak up because they rather want to protect their lifestyle and their family.
- You do your best to declutter your life, simplify it, and fill it with what is valuable for you.
Walking around saying and doing everything that' "expected by you", and watching all the people who are under the thumb of governments, corporations, banks and the massmedia makes me cringe.
The crave for independence is something that's in every man's soul. I do think that the western civilization while it has many good aspects also has many negative aspects. For example, when I go out in public, I'm every time judged by my looks, my clothes, my car and the people that accompany me. If I dress up nicely, drive a nice car and are with people also looking good, I'm usually getting VIP treatment. If I come alone, with a beard, no car, and some old clothes, more often than not I'm totally ignored and treated as a sub human. I guess we're all judging others on some level or another. But in reality we can't know much about another human being before getting to know that human being.
It annoys me to great length to see that most people are only concerned with themselves and does not speak up about wrongdoings in their local community or country. I hesitate myself to do so, as you need lots or resources to protect yourself if you get enemies.
So my conclusion has become that the best solution is to opt out, to spend life learning, thinkering, investigating, ie. being of the hacker mindset, to emphasize other qualities than materialism and superficial values. To me having a nice car and a nice house does not make me tingly. I have no need to impress others, and feel sorry for those that feel the need to do so.
In most countries there's a division of classes. If you're in a lower class, no matter how smart you are, those of a higher class will not listen to you. To me, fullfillment in life is to be at peace with yourself, to be content with who and where you are and to have a sense of well being and if you need to surround yourself with people, surround yourself with people that you're on the same page with.
I see society at large as a broken machine. Of course I could try to change it, but most likely such an attempt would be futile, and I would live a very unbalanced life dealing with all the power, corruption, attacks and outright lunacy that surrounds us. It's easy to see what kind of toll this places on individuals that genuinely try, even those having 100% health and that are very intelligent, often comes to their witts end.
So it might be very egoistical, but I figured as long as I only live a human life, and it's not long, why not make the best out of it? Go somewhere, live modestly and expand my own mind and thinker with technology to the best of my abilities, preferably going off grid and being self sustained. It would be interesting to see if those who has done this actually became happier persons.
To make an alternative settlement (I am sure there's some already), the people involved would need to be genuine and to be trusted, and to be on the "same plate". There would always be disagreements, but mature people would be able to sort such disagreements out before it escalated, esp. if the core value base is pretty equal among the participants.
Also by decluttering my life, I mean a whole range of things. For example, if I receive a parking ticket although I did nothing wrong, that's a great annoyance and clutter. Of course if I were very rich I would not care either way.. But I do not have a genuine desire to become very rich. Happiness is more important. Likewise, people who care about small things who does not really matter is extremely annoying, for instance if you left a pair of socks on the floor after exercise, and somebody attacks you harshly for being so sloppy. I don't need that.
Feedback and criticism is ok. However, constants attack and bullying only makes your life miserable. And I never liked people that have power over me that uses it just because they can, even if it's against the rules. Even if you use logic argumentation, many times it fell on a cement floor. So I figure it's better to avoid all that hassle entirely.
Mostly it is about life and giving it meaning. I do not find much meaning in our modern society where you are mostly judged by appearance and your actions. To "win" in society it's not about acting god, or to be altrustic, but it's about manipulating others to have your way. And to "win" means to have lots of status symbols, money and power. For what reason and to what end?
It is often said that "simple minds are happier". And sometimes I wish I was just a simpleton that went to watch soccer games, play xbox and hang out with the family. But for me, there's always something wrong, something that's not just right. I look around me, and I do not like what I see at all. I'm glad I've found bitcoin, as it has opened my mind to a lot of things, and made me learn more about society, politics and finance, perhaps I even learned too much. For sure I did not become a happier man of learning all of this.
I think if the contact surface with the society at large is reduced, and I focus on the close things, I will be happier. I have read studies that people who are working the land feels happier and also that happiness is larger in small knit communities. I might seem elitist, and perhaps I am, although I'm more than aware of my own shortcomings, I feel that most of the time I'm surrounded by people who do not share my vision and outlook on life. I want to talk about all kinds of scientific things, like renewable energy, which I find highly interesting, politics, money systems, philosophy, psychology, body-language, exercise, nutrition, history, architecture, space. In short, I'm a curious mind, that rather wants to watch a documentary than to watch a soap opera. And I do question authority. Most people seem to be just accepting what idiocy is put upon them. Just because some person has a high ranking title does not mean that this person is a God and everything he says or do is right.
I am annoyed about the high penetration or religion even in most modern countries. I do not think religion contributes much to a better world in terms of scientific advances, but it rather holds people under its thumb. Admittedly it is better in some countries, and far worse in others. Even in the most sophisticated countries there's staggering bureaucracy, inefficiency and unjustice.
I do not want to live in a society where you at any time can be stopped and harassed by police, even for having done absolutely nothing wrong at all. The fascist, totalitarian direction many countries are going towards, that calls themselves democratic, is just horrible.
I want to live in a society where there's mutual respect, understanding and where logic and rational thought is held in high regard, where decisions are made on cold facts, and not raw emotions. Where things are efficient and there's little red tape.
In short, I am a misfit in our society. And as such, I've come to the conclusion that the best option is to remove my contact surface with it as much as possible. Understand me correctly, I love good discussions, and I love being with great people, but it's the overall picture that makes me cringe. I enjoy rather walking in the woods with a dog, looking at a tree than walking in an asphalt streets and looking at everybody else and they looking at me.
As a man I do not need a house that costs millions to buy and takes decade to pay down. All I need is space for making food, a bed and some company, a dog.
As for those that talked about guns, ammo and guard-dog and brought it up in a negative light.. If you live remotely, perhaps even a place where there might be bears and wolfes (If you chose to live in Alaska or Siberia), or you get visited by looters in a remote dessert spot, there's no police to rescue you, so the choice might be between killing or getting killed. I know what I would chose.
And all in all I think the modern life is too stressful, so it would be good to escape from it. Since the human life span is short, would it not be smart to attempt to optimize the quality of it? Since I have already escaped from the indoctrination that is public school and come to the realization of the status quo, why should I not do something about it, why should I do what everybody "expects" me to do?
Since I cannot change society, and have no wish to attempt, the only thing I can change is myself and to do so, I need first to change my environment.
Of course, this is not a position of being a victim, as I have much resources compared to most people in the entire world. But it's just that having an ordinary job that does not make me enthusiastic makes me feel more dead than alive, and when I look around me, most people in reality look more dead than alive.
Would it not be nice to have the world crumble in unrest around you, while you sit in a secure mountain spot, self sufficient, not dependent on anyone? Of course planning and incremental steps are of paramount importance.
Appreciate all thoughts, as I think these matters are of grave importance.
