Big FREEDOM! Stuff > Living FREEDOM!

Got any advice for living the dream life?

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Lorie:
Well, this is how my husband and I are living our developing "dream" life. It's not perfect, but we're getting better. We live in Georgia with 3 beautiful children. Currently, my husband is Active Duty Military (Army) set to retire this year after serving 20 years. Can't wait for him to be out! For the past 3 years, my husband and I have been traveling through the rabbit hole of an alternative lifestyle that (in my opinion) isn't all that different than how people used to live in this country. And I feel like we've been playing "catch up" the whole time. Like we should have known this a long time ago. We first began by asking ourselves a simple question: What is the difference between pasteurized and raw milk other than the obvious (pasteurization kills BAD bacteria (and everything else)). It was hard finding raw milk at that time. Then I learned about CAFOs and became vegetarian for awhile. I learned a lot and shared that information with my family. That question sparked a journey into food security. After that it lead us to buy a house (we were in government housing at the time with a small patch of grass that was regularly sprayed and mowed courtesy of the government), and we first started a garden, eventually threw in some hens, bred meat rabbits, meat chickens, and now have two piggies. We found out that we prefer rabbit and turtle over chicken! Who knew?!We have 1 1/2 acres and a lot can be done on just one acre of land. I would LOVE 10 or 15 acres, but 1 1/2 was all we could afford. We watched countless hours of youtube videos before we started doing any of this. Until we finally got the guts to DO IT. It was hard... like learning any new skill. Anyway, we are trying to learn how to grow/raise/hunt/gather our own food. Food security lead us to question laws that protect big business that regularly poison our food system that is very centralized (Big Ag, etc.). And when I read about the people in Denton, Tx that decided to ban fracking in their community and then the federal government put a ban on banning fracking... that's when I REALLY started to worry about my children's future when they become independent adults. What kind of crazy f*cking society are they going to live in? They are living in a pretty bizarre one now, but geesh.... 10-15 years from now?? So, I stumbled upon this website a few days ago and I listened to Freedom!. Before this website, it was Richard Grove ,from Tragedy and Hope, that opened my eyes to government corruption and revealed my indoctrination that I went through in public school (this discovery set me on the path to homeschool my children... what liberation and freedom!). And it was Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, that led me to question routine vaccinations. The discovery of Mike Adams led me to one of Adam's youtube videos. And wow! All the dots seem to be connecting. I can see a big narrative unfolding and it's exciting and scary for me. And I am so excited that I'm not crazy for doing the things my family and I now do. I have no idea where I am going with this... it's late, but anywho... my advice is that you start small, but most of all... just start.

apocaloptimisto:
It's getting late so this will be short.

I've been trying to find the ticket to true freedom in the US since 1996.  I've lived in houses, apartments, farms, intentional communities and anywhere there was permanent settlement, there was drama and exploitation.  In 1998, I walked from Oklahoma City to San Diego and lived out of a backpack for six months.  This was my first taste of true freedom.  Then I went stupid, went back to OKC, got a job at Radio Shack to please my mother, and got married to a hypochondriac shortly thereafter.  Once I woke up to the slavery that I had to immerse myself in to pay the co-pays, landlords, car payments, and other bills, I freed myself again and moved into a Toyota pickup, then an ex military 6x6 that ran on waste veggie oil.  I took a brief derailment back into civilized life, again because of a relationship, but could only handle it for a few years before moving back into wheeled homes.  I've tried the backpack thing again at stages where vehicles broke down or I ran out of money for fuel but that's a tough gig and only getting tougher.  These days, I live in a waste oil powered crane truck.  My only expenses are insurance, registration, and minimal vehicle maintenance.  I think the living on wheels thing is the closest thing one can get to true freedom in the US and it can definitely be done as a family.

Check out my introduce yourself post here for more info or check my blog posts at steemit(link in sig)
Here are some other sites that might help.
www.moneylessmanifesto.org
zerocurrency.blogspot.com
ouropenroad.com
wheresmyofficenow.com
3mules.com

apocaloptimisto:
I appreciate the in depth reply but I need to make clear that Mark Boyle wrote the Moneyless Manifesto.

I post info online that other's can take or leave but quit debating long ago.

Two quick points though, just for clarification and to stimulate thought.

If you think trees don't have intrinsic value, please stop breathing.  ;)

Any man made rule system, including money, can be easily cheated by psychopaths and they will rise to the top because they don't care about cheating.  There's no breaking Nature's rules and the rest of Nature uses gift economy.  If all property is owned, how can anyone travel freely?  (rhetorical question) Either they have to stay put and protect their land/property or while travelling, they're constantly having to get permission, reroute, or trespass.  If you can't see that money and property will always cause a condition of false scarcity, tyrannical control, and will stop freedom in its tracks based upon those two points alone, I just don't know what to say other than enjoy the civ life and your definition of freedom while you can.

apocaloptimisto:
I'd like to live in a world where people only take from Nature that which they really need.  That can't happen if humanity follows the part we're on.  The capitalist system and the monetary system enabling it are a cancer to humans and if the links I shared don't make that extremely clear, I'm afraid that our conversations will be a waste of time.

One last attempt to dig through the brainwashing and bias though:
Returning to a nomadic, minimalist, hunger/gatherer/scavenger culture, enabled by diy, open source, decentralized green tech is the only path I've found to freedom that doesn't trample the freedom of others and I've been researching and experiencing different paths for years.  The minimalist nomadic lifestyle is so sustainable that it allowed us to survive extinction events and keep evolving.  The few cultures that still follow this life and have not been consumed by civilization are happier, healthier, and more resilient than those living in civilization and dependent upon slavery systems like money and markets.   

Gift economy is Nature's perfect resource based economy because it follows the rules of Nature, which can't be cheated by psychopaths and those rules also bring psychopaths out into the light.  When they can't hide behind their money, media, fences, religions, governments, corporations, and slaves, psychopaths can only resort to violence to gain influence and then are easily identified and rehabilitated or eliminated from the genepool.  When they can hide behind civ's slavery systems, they can keep cheating those man made systems, perverting the well intentioned man made systems into psychopath incubators, and keep running the show as they have been since the dawn of agriculture.

Your stuff and property are your chains.  You'll see this someday, the easy way or the hard way.

Best of luck.

apocaloptimisto:

--- Quote ---Without quibbling over the exact definition of "need," I would like to live in that world too.  Are you interested in enticing people to pursue this voluntarily or would you throw a monkey wrench in the works to make it happen?
--- End quote ---

Need is easy.  Did you use it in the last week/month/year to survive?  If yes, then you need it.  If no, you don't.

I'm an anarchist.  My strategy now is convince well vetted people by leading by example.  However, it's becoming more and more clear that the behavior of civilized masses is leading to the likely destruction of all life on Earth.  To me, this would make any violence against the civilized subhuman swarms self defense.  I haven't resorted to self defense yet but have no problem doing so if cornered.  For now, I am the monkey wrench.  When the day comes that I need a bigger wrench, I have some ideas. 


--- Quote ---I agree that our current path (combining economic growth and population growth) has led to and will continue to lead to environmental destruction.  I can see how the current economic and political systems allows that economic growth to happen.  I would add one hypothetical: a much smaller global population that has something vaguely similar to the current economic system: if the global population were 500,000 humans, it wouldn't make much difference if they consumed at today's rate of consumption in the U.S.

--- End quote ---
 

My research and real world experience has shown that a population of half a billion humans is the maximum number of humans that our ecosystem could support sustainably if we farmed 100% of the 7.6 billion potentially arable acres of land on Earth using the most sustainable methods and had no drought or disease. Using truly sustainable food production methods, the best I've seen is 2.5 acres per adult per year.  When you figure in drought, disease, and the necessary soil remediation, I think that 100 million is a reasonable number. Nature could easily absorb the damage caused by half a million petrochemical dependent humans.


--- Quote ---to be determined... I wasn't sure if you are enticing people to adopt your views or if you would work to destroy the current system actively.
--- End quote ---

Like I said above, for now, I'm just hoping that the civi's kill themselves off as quickly and cleanly as possible.  If it gets to the point where my personal freedom becomes compromised, I have no problem defending the ecosystems that make our meatbags possible. (I'm already on the list so screw it.  Honesty is always good.)


--- Quote ---I definitely see how the extreme consumerism (and I will add to that: population) tramples on the freedom of others (and leads to conflict as people trample on each other to get there piece of the pie).  As for "only path," I don't know yet.  I also don't envision humans, as a species, pursuing such a path voluntarily, so I didn't know to what degree you would "force" this outcome to happen.
--- End quote ---

"only path I've found"  The last two words are important there.  I'm not claiming to be the messiah, although my lifestyle and the one I promote is very similar to those of the supposed messiah types of the past.


--- Quote ---Obviously, a minimalist society would wreak less havoc on the planet, and the gross inefficiencies of such a system might regulate population automatically.
--- End quote ---

Exactly.  What we see as inefficiency, Nature sees as an autonomous regulatory system.


--- Quote ---Our current economic system is fragile as compared to the world you describe.  I don't know about happier... I don't know much about nomadic people today, but rural people in China are flocking to cities to make money.

--- End quote ---

Every anthropological study I've read that studied happiness has pointed to those with less being happier and more connected in community.  Rural people in China are flocking to cities because they've been brainwashed by a communist state and pushed into corners.  This is an excellent documentary that describes the propaganda machine well.  http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/schooling-the-world-2010/


--- Quote ---I have some idea of what the gift economy is, but I don't understand the part about following rules of Nature or how somebody can find/see/discover those rules.  I also try to assess how difficult it would be for people to adopt new ways of thinking and new habits of behavior to transform society.  Maybe you are the optimist and I am the pessimist, but my gut feeling is that it is far far far too demanding to ask people or expect people in a technological world to limit themselves to a gift economy (I don't see how computers would exist due to the difficulty of making the exchanges necessary to run the businesses... and people want their iPhones and computers).  Do you agree that it would be an exceedingly difficult task to ask people to voluntarily switch to this economy?
--- End quote ---

The links I put in my post above explain this very well.  Asking people to switch will never work because the modern human has been epigenetically devolved to have little faith or courage.  Faith in Nature and the courage to carry on without a safety net are both necessary for gift economy to work.  However, when fiat money crashes and everything people were hoarding to barter with is destroyed by fighting over it, the choices will be accept gift economy or starve.


--- Quote --- Would you eliminate the gene pool of people who want to exchange silver or gold or fiat currency for agricultural goods???
--- End quote ---


If I could flip a switch and they'd all disappear, I'd flip that switch so fast.  I won't breed with anyone that's dependent upon agriculture or money.  When the collapse happens, the people coming to me wanting food for their gold/money are going to get turned away to starve. Post collapse, if I see someone fencing off hunting grounds that I or my tribe uses, whether it's for agriculture, to build a bank, or for any reason really, it will be my pleasure to ventilate their bodies with arrows.


--- Quote ---If humans start cutting down apple trees to grow oranges, then that is the way it is.  the same holds if you change "oranges" to "humans."
--- End quote ---

You're missing something though.  If we allow the slave minded humans to cut down all of the trees, everything dies, and they know no other way than consumption.  There's a line in the sand somewhere and I think civ might have already passed it but like I said above, my ethics don't allow me to counteract or defend until my personal freedom and health is affected.


--- Quote --- I still don't perceive differences in economic wealth as being inherently bad, so I don't view free exchange of money/currency/gold as inherently evil... or maybe there is some other things that make you see economic exchange as bad (in addition to what you mentioned above). I do see potential for exploitation when too much power is in the hands of the few, and I don't really have a solution for that... so I guess why that is why some people lean your way or toward communism.
--- End quote ---

If you believe that there can ever be peace and freedom in a world of gross inequality, I'd recommend studying psychology, anthropology, history, economics, biology, etc.  Robert Sapolsky has done great work in analyzing this kind of thing and a bunch of his Stanford lectures are posted for free on youtube.  People, at lease modern devolved people, want what the other guy has, whether they need it or not, and they get violent when there's an imbalance.  Hunter/gatherers actually design their cultures to prevent the inequality.  For instance, in some tribes, each man makes his arrows a special way, then everyone swaps arrows.  This way, it is less likely that a certain hunter will get cocky because no one really knows who shot which arrow.  There are hundreds of examples like this.


--- Quote ---If you want to entice people to adopt those views, then try your sales pitch on me.
--- End quote ---
Sales pitches are for scammers trying to sell crap.  If' "I'm free, healthy, sustainable, and my lifestyle diesmpowers tyrants." isn't enough to get you looking into alternatives to an unsustainable way of life that's killing everything, there's nothing I can do.

It's rare that I type for this long but it just rained so it's cool, it's not too buggy, and I can't sleep so I figured I could type everything out.  If you have further questions, I'd recommend browsing through the links I posted above.

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