Thursday, February 26, 2015

survivalism philosophy


SURVIVALISM PHILOSOPHY

I’ve never really understood others fascination with philosophy.  What do you mean, what is the meaning of life?  It’s to replicate our DNA.  I don’t know why we have to throw religion into it, or study paintings with titles “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?”.  Why read Voltaire or Enlightenment writers?  It all just seems like flailing about in the dark, and the dark was a hood we pulled over our own head.  A replacement for religion?  Religion, and I mean religious institutions, not religious belief, gave us nothing but trouble and now it seems like finding its replacement isn’t doing much for us either.  My Book Swap Buddy at work, a retired guy who has leftist leanings so our conversations are pretty interesting ( I don’t lean left, but I despise the right ), gave me a hideously overpriced book ( $38, in 2001!!! ) “Grasping For The Wind” by John Whitehead.  Subtitled “the search for meaning in the 20th century”, the thing makes you a bit dizzy as it “examines the progressive, unfolding, interweaving of religion, philosophy, politics, the arts, psychology, and sociology”.  I mean, it’s interesting ( although I’d be pissed if I had paid for it- the best part so far is new to me information that Jim Morrison was a big fan of Nietzsche which seems obvious in retrospect but I’d never really pondered his background search for his poetry ), but I’m over half way through it and one can’t help but get the sense he should have come to the point by now.  Something tells me it is going to be convoluted and high-faluten ( there was a video series the book is based or-or visa versa- so it might even be on U-Tube by now ), if I even manage to read it all the way through.  It seems to me it is as simple as the modern Industrial Age threw us all for a loop with its continual destruction of culture up to the present day.  I say, why look further than a wish to return to tradition as a cause for all this pointless philosophizing ( of course, one could then get philosophical about what era of tradition we are even talking about.  Immediate pre-Industrial?  Pre-nation state?  Traditional West, or East?  Traditional Iron Age?  Sooner? )?

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Nothing is going to replace what we lost, be it Sadism or Feminism or different religions such as exotic Eastern ones where little fat statues with man boobs are chocked in a cloud of incense.  I wish we could return to a hunter-gather future, but something tells me that that can never happen again.  With seven billion people and more every hour, even a 99% die-off is still going to leave far too many people on a denuded planet to practice our true ancestral occupation.  The good news is that there can always be nomadic or pastoral ways of life.  Let the asparagus growers fight over the few well watered fertile areas ( and by the by, for you good old Southern boys thinking a yeoman farmer future is possible, the Mississippi delta region was home to a centralized indigenous civilization once before.  Geography can be a bitch ), and the rest of us can get by as herders which offers a much freer life ( if more prone to violence ).  But regardless, however your area eats, tradition gives a solid satisfactory background to life.  We become, once again, preoccupied with protecting, providing and nurturing.  The shrinking of the group to the tribe.  What other meaning do you need out of life?  Companionship, a meaningful existence, security. 

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All this other mental masturbation is unnecessary.  We miss what we no longer have, traditional lifestyles, and survivalism is a belief system that intoxicates us into believing we can have that again if we survive.  We don’t prepare just because we believe we are too important to die, but because after the upheaval we think we’ll have something worth living for.  So, if you are looking for a philosophy to explain our present, how about instead one that celebrates the future as the past?  Some damn fool charging you a full days pay to wax philosophically about philosophy and the search for meaning, of course using fully the tools of the Industrial Oil Age to give you a whopping dose of glossy eye candy, just contributes to the problem.

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13 comments:

  1. Probably wishful thinking James? But I wonder if it's possible to pick up an old abandoned homestead in your neck of the woods, with at least a few still usable buildings, for not much more than the price of raw land?

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    Replies
    1. The extreme high value idiots put on used crap around here, I really dobt it.

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    2. The value of used crap: it could be nice to have until you have to spend money keeping it or moving it. If other people want it, it could be valuable.

      I suspect that Elco locals put high-priced FS: signs on stuff, but the real price will be found when you offer a little below what it's worth to you.

      Fer 'zample: pdx Craigslist 1984 33' Holiday Rambler with 100K miles on the chassis and a "rebuilt" 454 that is allegedly in "running and driving" condition (meaning it is hosting deadly black mold where 30 years of leaking is) is offered at $3000 on Craigslist. Does it have a clean title and a registration in the name of the person selling it? Batteries, tires, cracked glass, etc. all bring up in actual new condition and down in as-found condition. On average, this machine will sell for $1800 in this kind of condition if the seller has time to sell to someone else, or less, if the buyer is a sharp operator.

      If a person is handy and doesn't mind Previous Owner created problems (wiring, plumbing, etc), a POS like this can be a good cheap base-camp vehicle. 4 mpg is a good number to use when calculating fuel burn on a GVW 12K pound carbureted vehicle.

      pdxr13

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    3. See, even $1800 seems excessive. I'd argue $800 at most.

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    4. 33' RV with appliances intact and genset that is demonstrateable starts east, sounds good, not leaking exhaust or fluids, AND can drive at least 70% of nameplate Watts into cube heaters you brought along, will start and run engine, wheels and tires "acceptable" (not for cross country trips, but okay for the one trip from purchase place to Final Resting Ground) is worth 1800 bucks. Agree that typical used POS RV lacking the above goodness should sell for near the scrap metal value or less if it needs to be removed RIGHT NOW with an expensive RV towtruck. Lacking title and registration in the name of the person selling it (photograph of ID and person in front of RV for prosecution purposes) is a deal breaker- I won't get stuck with something that is not and can not be mine.

      pdxr13

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    5. And, value is relative. Since any RV I now get is just storage, I don't need them/want them as I used to.

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    6. As someone that lives in an RV, trust me when I say that they're no fun to live in, in the winter time. And I'm in CA. Maybe a modern one that's better insulated and has a good working central heating unit. But how well insulated can even a modern RV be with their thin walls?

      After seeing the northeast being hit with the weather that they have been, I'd never consider anything but earth sheltered anymore in such an area. Even in more temperate climates earth sheltered just makes more sense. A minimal of heating and cooling.

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    7. At one time I thought about sandbag and stucco around my RV. Gotta be the cheapest/easiest way to go.

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  2. Pardon me, Oh Magnificent Haired One, but your anti-philosophical statement that we "exist to reproduce" is, in itself, a philosophy on life. It may be simpler than some but it is by no means cut and dry. Simple biology? If it were only biology that keeps us striving to stay alive then why do so many commit suicide? You could argue that their genetic make up is busted but, they come from varied backgrounds and gene pools. I haven't heard of anyone finding the suicide gene yet. Apart from that you have people who have no desire whatsoever to reproduce ( you could make a much more sound genetic defect argument here).

    The point is that the evidence of human behavior seems to suggest that there is something more complex than biology alone driving us.

    -Novice

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    1. A lot of folks might not want to reproduce, but they do want to try practicing. So, sex drive is a backdoor trap to reproduce.

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    2. "So, sex drive is a backdoor trap to reproduce."

      If you're using the backdoor to reproduce, you are probably doing it wrong!

      Just sayin.

      Delete
  3. “I don’t lean left, but I despise the right”

    Whenever the discussion of the political scale comes up, things generally get complicated in a hurry.

    My guess James would be that you don't actually despise the true right, but rather what passes as “the right” today (i.e. the jackasses on fox news as well as any of the other jokers on the radio that label themselves conservatives, but are anything but). The modern right, or neo-conservatism is absolutely worthless. A group of people that support endless excuses for foreign wars, claim to be opposed to big government and spout off a lot about the constitution, until one of their own wipes their ass with it, and then they stand fully behind it.

    Where it gets complicated is when one discovers that liberalism in its traditional form, the “right wing” as it were, stood for very small government; a stark contrast from modern liberals that are really more appropriately referred to as leftists. Now to find this brand of liberalism, one would have to go way back before the war between the states to the early days of the U.S.

    My assessment James, is that you are of the Thomas Jefferson, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants” variety liberal, meaning a liberal in the classical sense of the meaning. Like I said, it gets complicated. Try calling a small government minded individual a liberal today and see where it gets you? That's because the meaning has been so distorted in modern times as to mean something entirely different.

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