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[mainiac]

If you want to live a hunter gatherer lifestyle you can pick up stakes and head out to the boonies tomorrow.  You wouldn't even need to leave the US to find a patch of nowhere with only sparse contact with the outside world.

Have fun!

[Willfor]

That requires the knowledge of what you have to worry about, though. And it's not even about success today. It's about every waking moment being filled with constantly thinking about "debt obligations schedule work bills payment license promotion foreclosure college bankruptcy marriage insurance conference applications car money therapy" over and over again until you finally die and your relatives fight over your possessions and money once you're six feet under. I can't say that I find that very impressive.

Worry is one of the most primitive emotions we have, and comes to us from a long line of prehistoric ancestors -- to pre-monkey times. Replace your own line of worries there with "lion lion lion water food food food foooooood water lion! water LION water water good place to sleep good place to sleep mate no mate why no mate sleeeeeep" over and over again until death. Only this death comes even earlier. Either because of the lack of food, or the aforementioned lion. Worry is instinctual, and stress is one of our key survival traits. I'm no more impressed by what we used to worry about back when we needed it every waking moment than by how it affects us now. There has never been a time when people didn't worry themselves to death.


Edit: Reading your other replies I think you already know this, so I'm just going to get off of this point.

[Frumple]

The alternative being that everyone lives in self-sufficient communes, er, communities and the method of resource distribution isn't important, because (in theory) the group is so small and tight-knit and there is enough there for everyone and small scale market economies are fine as long as nobody becomes too wealthy in comparison or tries to extert too much independance from the group.

Which would probably be pretty nice if it didn't entail losing much of our tech base in the process.

Only problem being probably better than 50% of the human population would have to die to make it possible. When you've got seven billion plus people mucking about, there really isn't enough space for a system like that to work.

If you want to live a hunter gatherer lifestyle you can pick up stakes and head out to the boonies tomorrow.  You wouldn't even need to leave the US to find a patch of nowhere with only sparse contact with the outside world.

Have fun!

At least until whoever actually owned the land had you thrown in jail for trespassing. Or just shot you for the same. There's laws against doing stuff like that on land you don't own, from what I understand.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Remember when Time did that thing where they altered a US cover to not talk about revolutions, and then we learned that they actually did stuff like that all the time because for some reason Time thinks Americans are jumpy and stupid?

Yeah, it's like Time is asking for people to think they're censoring everything.

[kaijyuu]

To be fair, keeping the 99% would make it an occupy wall street cover, not a generic "protesters" cover.

Not defending anything else about the cover though, heh.

[Impending Doom]

Remember when Time did that thing where they altered a US cover to not talk about revolutions, and then we learned that they actually did stuff like that all the time because for some reason Time thinks Americans are jumpy and stupid?

Yeah, it's like Time is asking for people to think they're censoring everything.

They're nominating all protestors in general, not just Occupy. They found a good-looking picture and genericised (It's a word!) it.

EDIT: Ninja'd

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Remember when Time did that thing where they altered a US cover to not talk about revolutions, and then we learned that they actually did stuff like that all the time because for some reason Time thinks Americans are jumpy and stupid?

Yeah, it's like Time is asking for people to think they're censoring everything.

They're nominating all protestors in general, not just Occupy. They found a good-looking picture and genericised (It's a word!) it.

EDIT: Ninja'd

It leaves me with a bad taste regardless. If Time wants to find a neutral protest picture they can do it without photoshopping a OWS aligned one.

[Criptfeind]

You are kidding right?

No, not really. Don't go mistaking this for some neo-tribalist hippy argument, I'm just pointing out how things in our society may not be as great as we'd like to think. Is it better than hunter-gatherer society overall? Probably. Is it perfect? Hell no.

I meant this part:

Hunter-gatherers didn't know about the seasons and had little reason to care even if they did. If it gets uncomfortably cold somewhere they'd just move to somewhere else until they find a warmer place. It's also worth noting that most places where you would have been able to find hunter-gather bands are closer to the equator than not, so winter would be a lesser issue. "Surviving the winter" is a thing that mostly showed up when people started agriculture.

[Montague]

I did read a National Geographic article about these Hadza tribesmen in Africa that are hunter-gatherers.

The dude that did the article was amazed at the absurd amount of time the Hazda spent doing much of nothing at all. They did not need to stay busy, the actual business of hunting and preparing for hunting and everything else occupied very little time. Granted, they did'nt exactly do much of anything fun on their free time, either.

Although, you could probably do this in modern society as well. You can live simply and legally and reasonably comfortably for something like 500$ a month, which you could make with a 20 hour work week in a minimum wage job. Or a trivially modest pension.

Thing is most people are willing to work a little harder then that in return for more material stuff and comfort.

Only problem being probably better than 50% of the human population would have to die to make it possible. When you've got seven billion plus people mucking about, there really isn't enough space for a system like that to work.

Well, the Adbusters article guy implied this population drop is going to happen anyways in the future with peak oil and energy, food shortages, prices for basic goods, ect. Oh, and war and government oppression, of course. Mentioned his model would really only work in Canada because Americans are too naturally violent to cohabitate like that.

[mainiac]

At least until whoever actually owned the land had you thrown in jail for trespassing. Or just shot you for the same. There's laws against doing stuff like that on land you don't own, from what I understand.

They'd have to notice you first, which is extremely unlikely if you are actually just living off the land far out in the boonies.  And if you just want land in the ass end of the country without any special natural resources or infrastructure, you could buy it for bargain basement rates if you are so inclined.  The rest of the country would leave you alone because you aren't worth the bother.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You are kidding right?

No, not really. Don't go mistaking this for some neo-tribalist hippy argument, I'm just pointing out how things in our society may not be as great as we'd like to think. Is it better than hunter-gatherer society overall? Probably. Is it perfect? Hell no.

I meant this part:

Hunter-gatherers didn't know about the seasons and had little reason to care even if they did. If it gets uncomfortably cold somewhere they'd just move to somewhere else until they find a warmer place. It's also worth noting that most places where you would have been able to find hunter-gather bands are closer to the equator than not, so winter would be a lesser issue. "Surviving the winter" is a thing that mostly showed up when people started agriculture.

Oh. Well, yeah. You'd be surprised what kind of distance a group of people can cover if they aren't beholden to stay anywhere. Leaving a cold region is a legitimate option.

As for winter survival, that's an issue because people could live in colder regions with agricultural practices. You could store up food in an area so that even when nothing meaningful is growing you will still have something to eat. The major issue with that system is that if you don't have enough stored up you are facing certain death. Thus, the idea of surviving the winter months.

[Heron TSG]

Although, you could probably do this in modern society as well. You can live simply and legally and reasonably comfortably for something like 500$ a month, which you could make with a 20 hour work week in a minimum wage job. Or a trivially modest pension.

Please tell me where in a city I can find a house to rent or buy with this kind of pay while still being able to afford both transport to work and food.  Maybe you could pull it off where I live now, but cities require a bit more money to live in.

Mentioned his model would really only work in Canada because Americans are too naturally violent to cohabitate like that.

He should try saying that to my face, I might get all pacifist at him! Better watch out for all of us Americans!

At least until whoever actually owned the land had you thrown in jail for trespassing. Or just shot you for the same. There's laws against doing stuff like that on land you don't own, from what I understand.

They'd have to notice you first, which is extremely unlikely if you are actually just living off the land far out in the boonies.  And if you just want land in the ass end of the country without any special natural resources or infrastructure, you could buy it for bargain basement rates if you are so inclined.  The rest of the country would leave you alone because you aren't worth the bother.

The Homestead Act is still in effect in Alaska, if you want cheaper-than-free land in the middle of a godforsaken icy wasteland.

[Osmosis Jones]

You are kidding right?

No, not really. Don't go mistaking this for some neo-tribalist hippy argument, I'm just pointing out how things in our society may not be as great as we'd like to think. Is it better than hunter-gatherer society overall? Probably. Is it perfect? Hell no.

I meant this part:

Hunter-gatherers didn't know about the seasons and had little reason to care even if they did. If it gets uncomfortably cold somewhere they'd just move to somewhere else until they find a warmer place. It's also worth noting that most places where you would have been able to find hunter-gather bands are closer to the equator than not, so winter would be a lesser issue. "Surviving the winter" is a thing that mostly showed up when people started agriculture.

Oh. Well, yeah. You'd be surprised what kind of distance a group of people can cover if they aren't beholden to stay anywhere. Leaving a cold region is a legitimate option.

As for winter survival, that's an issue because people could live in colder regions with agricultural practices. You could store up food in an area so that even when nothing meaningful is growing you will still have something to eat. The major issue with that system is that if you don't have enough stored up you are facing certain death. Thus, the idea of surviving the winter months.

  I think you underestimate how difficult it is to progress from one side of the globe to the other on foot.

More seriously, hunter gatherers did care about the seasons, very much so. In addition to changing temperatures, it also affects things like which plants are fruiting etc., whether the fish are spawning, where the buffalo or caribou are... basically their entire lives were dictated by the seasons, probably more-so than agricultural societies give they couldn't really store food for leaner months.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

  I think you underestimate how difficult it is to progress from one side of the globe to the other on foot.

You don't need to cross the globe to get to someplace warmer than where you are. Getting any measure closer to the equator means getting closer to someplace warm.

[palsch]

Aren't Time's covers often commissioned paintings (well, digital paintings anyway) rather than photo-journalism? There was this great look at how their Gaddafi one was done.

I don't know who was the artist on this one but it would be interesting to see what they were saying about it.

*FAKEDIT* Ah, here we go.