I always feel so disconnected to my fellow humans when I hear people longing for "simpler times" where they are just out in nature with no technology or modern tools.
I would be miserable living simply like that. I don't like spending too much time in nature, I get hot and sweaty and itchy and bothered by bugs. I am always wishing to be building something with electronics, or playing a game, or watching a show or movie.
I also want freedom from work, but I wouldn't use that freedom to "live simply" or get away from technology.
> Not sure from the page but I rode one coal powered steam train in Poland for “fun” and i wish i never did. It was an open carriage trip in koszalin and the pollution it did was such that coal particles rained on everyone. It was awful and I don’t get the nostalgia of riding such an obsolete vehicle. I was so outraged about it I told my wife the experience was like trying to experience a big pre industrial city without sewage system and finding it nostalgic.
It's actually not that hard to return to this lifestyle. Maybe easier than ever before. Just buy an old farm somewhere in the middle of nowhere and do your thing. There are many regions in the world where farmland is really cheap and nobody will bother you.
your experience is not applicable to others, thanks for your feedback and we appreciate it. Lots of people understand that nature is a part of life just like you are and live accordingly.
“ The visions are filled with communities of mutually loving people, the elimination of middlemen from transactions, where everyone knows the true you, the nonexistence of bureaucracy, the existence of a social good that’s identifiable by looking around. Essentially, the simple life.”
Humans weren't built to live in massive societies with 100s of millions of people.
No wonder we love minecraft and Satisfactory and playing murder-hobos in ttrpgs. I would be in favor of restructuring society to be in smaller units, communities where people know and understand eachother, but nobody has that power.
One thing I disagree with "We won’t live in small villages with cobbled streets en masse anymore because we need the giant glass skyscrapers and the congealed intellect of our multi billion population to move ahead"
Do we? What is "moving ahead"? I would say there's a good chance our way of life is simply going to waste all the resouces that sustains it and collapse over a long period of time without moving on to a "higher" state. I know lots of people working in tech, none of whom actually advance useful technology. Instead they advance technology that makes their bosses rich and makes people consume more for no real benefit. That's actually the opposite of useful. The glass skyscrapers are not helping us move ahead.
It just depends how far through the eye of the needle we already went, and how far we have to go. I don't want to go backwards. Humans are adapting, always locally, and never uniformly.
I don't hate it, but at the same time things like the power grid and semiconductor manufacturing have supply chains that easily have 100 million people each in them if you follow it down enough. That's probably underestimating it, even. Modern society is super complex like that, however I don't think it's accurate to say that electricity and the internet have not brought any benefits to humanity.
I get it, it can be alienating to live in modern society. But you can create meaning and community even today. Probably not if you spend 80 hours a week in the office, but if you put in the effort to get to know your neighbors, join local sports clubs and keep up with the friendships you've built over the years, having a social group is not out of reach. It's just that you can't maximize for two different goals at the same time.
>We want to live in a hunter gatherer mode where we get to follow our curiosities and our ambitions and our vibes and our likes until it reaches the natural conclusion
Took me a few reads too. I think the intended meaning is:
"There are those who are convinced that there is more to things; they spend their time chasing that 'more' but typically don't find it. And there are those who are convinced there isn't more to things; they find themselves frustrated at the abyss."
Them damn gen alphas having no sense of punctuation! Back in my day, which was when Millenialism was at its heyday, we used to put commas everywhere we, well, damn, pleased!
I would be miserable living simply like that. I don't like spending too much time in nature, I get hot and sweaty and itchy and bothered by bugs. I am always wishing to be building something with electronics, or playing a game, or watching a show or movie.
I also want freedom from work, but I wouldn't use that freedom to "live simply" or get away from technology.
From a post earlier today
To me, it sounds like you haven't been in nature at enough places to find the one that talks and belongs to you.
Travel more.
Except none of that ever existed
No wonder we love minecraft and Satisfactory and playing murder-hobos in ttrpgs. I would be in favor of restructuring society to be in smaller units, communities where people know and understand eachother, but nobody has that power.
One thing I disagree with "We won’t live in small villages with cobbled streets en masse anymore because we need the giant glass skyscrapers and the congealed intellect of our multi billion population to move ahead"
Do we? What is "moving ahead"? I would say there's a good chance our way of life is simply going to waste all the resouces that sustains it and collapse over a long period of time without moving on to a "higher" state. I know lots of people working in tech, none of whom actually advance useful technology. Instead they advance technology that makes their bosses rich and makes people consume more for no real benefit. That's actually the opposite of useful. The glass skyscrapers are not helping us move ahead.
Humans were built to socialize and live in societies though. It's part of our own nature to group up and form communities.
I get it, it can be alienating to live in modern society. But you can create meaning and community even today. Probably not if you spend 80 hours a week in the office, but if you put in the effort to get to know your neighbors, join local sports clubs and keep up with the friendships you've built over the years, having a social group is not out of reach. It's just that you can't maximize for two different goals at the same time.
We don't all want that.
"There are those who are convinced that there is more to things; they spend their time chasing that 'more' but typically don't find it. And there are those who are convinced there isn't more to things; they find themselves frustrated at the abyss."