Exactly. Self sufficiency is definitely a myth. Humans cannot survive alone for long. You simply cannot make tools that will keep you alive for long. You’ll have to venture back to civilization to get anything worked via metal at the very least. Just the basic crafts for clothing, shelter, tools and food is more than any one person can handle. It took whole tribes and villages even at the earliest points.
Now if you mean: how can I live in a cabin off the grid with minimal contact (1-2x a year) then that’s doable.
the real self sufficient homestead is founding a village with like at least 50 like-minded people.
At least 50, but I’d make it larger. Maybe increase from 50 to about 8 billion and make sure all the villagers’ needs are met.
How much rent should we charge?
…and refrain from drinking Kool-Aid and punch, just in case
AA got it right as far as that goes. Leadership revolves.
AA would be one of the biggest organized cults on the planet if the founders hadn’t thought of that.
Now, not everyone can be a leader, and those who can’t won’t generally volunteer. So, what you end up with in a small community is a handful of leaders who don’t agree on everything and therefore represent the needs of the people in the group a lot better.
Whether we like it or not, positions of leadership tend to happen naturally. As long as we hold sacred the fact that there is no truly central leadership, it shouldn’t devolve into a cult.
It might just be a part of our nature though. When you enter recovery they give you a list of places to avoid (they gave me one anyway) because the revolving leadership has fallen apart and a single personality has taken over.
AA relies on religion and finding god to treat a medical problem like addiction. I don’t think it’s the best example my dude.
Well that’s not the part I’m talking about. I’m talking specifically about the leadership.
I’m an atheist who attended AA for years and I never worked the steps. The old heads definitely start to put the pressure on you after awhile though. “Yer higher power could be the universe.” Well, yeah, but it specifically says god.
That’s only one factor in a high control organization.
There’s a theory that the longevity of a commune comes down to making costly sacrifices. This signals to the group that you’re not going to be a freeloader. Things like praying at a set time every day, or going to services tends to make religious communes last longer. The tasks don’t have to do anything in themselves; they just have to exist and take up some of your time and effort. Religion has an easier time mandating these things, because you can put the whole reason for it on an ephemeral deity rather than something more concrete. In fact, this signaling to the group may have been the reason religion developed in the first place.
The data on this is mixed, however.
http://cognitionandculture.net/wp-content/uploads/Sosis_2003_CommuneLongevity.pdf
Honestly, I hate these kinds of replies.
None of them answered the question, they just told him that he was wrong for wanting it.
It’s just… Unhelpful.
well then you need to understand agriculture, animal husbandry, construction, woodworking, become a certified electrician, plumber and gas installer, brush up on sewing, first aid, and be prepared to starve to death or freeze to death if you fuck it up, or just die from standing on a rusty nail.
Your terms are acceptable.
The most vital thing isn’t doing everything the hard way - just being smart about doing it all yourself. It’s the sense that freedom is a function of actual independence, and actual independence is a consequence of ability.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/outdoors/a24399/the-art-of-staying-alive/
Well like, I am a woodworker. I haul several barrels of sawdust to the dump every year, and I’m only going to make more as time goes on and I start selling my work. I’m thinking of installing a pellet stove in my house and making my own wood pellets, which would save me a couple hundred bucks a year on gas AND the $30 or so I spend at the dump every year hauling out sawdust. I could further detach myself from the fossil fuel industry and the evils therein. This would require purchasing a machine that cost about what my table saw did, or about my take from the sale of one Morris chair.
Ok, then explain those topics instead of just telling them they are wrong.
agriculture is the act of cultivating soil and producing crops…
should I go on or is that a good illustrative example of how the original request is so far reaching and unspecific as to be functionally useless.
It’s like asking “how do I make a game?”
a video game? a board game? a playground game? a card game? all of which require skills, disciplines, planning, research and understanding of mechanics that no one can summarize even in a single full length book, let alone a forum post reply.
Indeed.
Even if you try to convince them of their wrongness, at least also give an answer to the best of your abilities.
Being self-sufficient should be a goal for every human being to strive for. Independence is a potent form of freedom that makes you feel like a magical eagle.
I’m not saying you should be Ted Kazynski or however you spell the Unabomber’s last name and live in complete isolation for most of your life, because it’s cool to have access to society’s benefits and all. But the more you can do for yourself, the more secure you will be in all ways. Basically don’t be a helpless or useless person.
The more self-sufficient you can be, the fewer societal resources you will take up, which could then go to someone else in greater need. That’s my perspective at least.
The organization I work for is all about helping people get back on their feet, and while I would never want to tell someone they should be more self-sufficient and rely less on us, there’s no denying that our resources are already stretched thin. At times, it forces us to prioritize those with the greatest need, even when others still need help.
The more self-sufficient you can be, the fewer societal resources you will take up, which could then go to someone else in greater need. That’s my perspective at least.
But the more self-sufficient you are, the more resources of yourself you need to supply yourself. So you can provide less societal resources. If you do not need to provide clothes for yourself, you have more time caring for elderly, etc.
As another view, the total resources need does not directly change by changing who does what. The advantages of helping each other are in the OP. At some point however, I would think, the overhead of organization grows so large that it may not be worth it anymore. Just think of the amount of work put into “useless” administration in many countries. But in a 30 person village, this is probably negligible.
Edit: Thanks for helping other people on the feet!
That is a good point, but I would consider resources needed to maintain stability versus resources needed to achieve stability. Metaphorically, it’s easy to stand on top of a mountain, but it’s a lot harder to climb it from the bottom. And the mountain gets taller the longer you wait.
Once you’re at the top, you can lend a hand to the people still making the climb without worrying about being pulled back down.
Good point, and it sounds like you’re doing good work out there
How would one get in touch with such an organization should they find themselves off their feet unexpectedly?
Not having any issues right now, but I think it might be easier to get an idea now that I have resources like a phone with access to the internet than after finding myself in such a position where who knows if I’ll own anything.
Out of risk of doxxing myself, I don’t want to give too much information, but specifically we work to help set up immigrants and refugees with housing, healthcare, education, and other resources, so I am not sure if it necessarily applies to your circumstances. Though my particular role is not that glamorous, I just maintain the infrastructure.
If you’re in the US, you can often dial 211 (depending on your city) to get connected with various resources depending on need, or crisis lifelines in an emergency. Local and state governments will also often host sites or portals with access to various social services they offer. Sometimes even a 211 website for both at once.
In emergencies, hospitals will also always be able to help, but keep in mind a lot of their services are not free. Ask up front if various consults/appointments come with a charge before you end up with a bill. But even if they’re unable to provide anything directly without charge, they can often still put you in contact with services they contract with, such as social workers or community wellness representatives, who may be able to provide free help depending on your circumstances.
I’ve heard even just popping over to public institutions like town hall or the local library (but not schools, avoid schools if you look homeless) can be a helpful place to start to get familiar with resources in the community.
Based and breadpilled
The Conquest of Bread was a breath of fresh air! I cannot believe I read a book about politics / economics that was actually optimistic and left me feeling good about fundamental human nature.
That’s what you got from it? To me it was hard to understand what they were getting at. Not even sure I finished it.
Yeah! Kropotkin argues a couple points:
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People are generally pretty good at self-organizing to solve problems, and have done so effectively in small communities for thousands of years.
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We have the technology* and productive power to ensure everyone enjoys a decent standard of living.
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Much of the scarcity we face today* is artificially created and entirely avoidable if we produce to meet needs instead of maximize profits.
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Things like laziness, corruption, and greed can largely be addressed by ensuring that all of a person’s needs are guaranteed to be met. Many people we currently* call “lazy” are either stuck in a hyper-specialized job that they can’t leave because they need to sell their labor to survive, or unmotivated because much of the wealth they produce is absorbed by someone else. And people tend to take more than they need more often than not because they are stuck competing with their fellow man for resources instead of cooperating for the common good.
He also does some back-of-the-napkin math to show that it takes less than a year’s worth of labor to produce everything a household needs for a year, and that the remaining labor time of that year should be open for people to cultivate different skills and pursue their passions. He argues that the distinction between what we today call blue-collar and white-collar work is unhealthy, and that everyone should do a bit of both.
His central thesis IMO seems to be that in the event of a socialist revolution, people shouldn’t be afraid to immediately start doing socialism. Take inventory of the food & start giving it to the hungry, figure out how many empty houses the community has & start housing the homeless, stop growing cash crops / producing niche luxury goods and start growing food / manufacturing necessities until everyone’s needs are met. He sternly warns against half-measures: maintaining the state’s use of violence or keeping track of some kind of currency or propping up political leaders are all things he claims will spell the end of a revolution before it gets off the ground.
I really loved the book. I feel like it provided a great example of what communism could (and IMO should) look like without all the baggage of so-called communist states like China and the USSR.
*= The book was written in the late 1800s. I think a lot of it holds up really well and some points seemed like they really called events that would happen in the next hundred years. That being said, it’s probably not as airtight today as it may have been in 1894.
The issue I think I have with a lot of this stuff is that’s it’s been written well over 100 years ago. The language is hard to understand, and these authors rarely get straight to the point. It’s hard enough to get my head around modern political texts, never mind the old ones. This isn’t just a criticism of Krapotkin, Marx is even worse in this regard. I still don’t really understand half of what the communist manifesto is talking about if it’s even relevant anymore. Old texts don’t always deal with issues like climate change or overpopulation. It’s easy enough to say we can feed people now, even with the overpopulation, but once climate change kicks in hard it’s another issue.
I would also worry about counter-revolution and why anarcho-communist revolutions haven’t stuck to the extent other revolutions have. There are lots of nations that have tried marxism, few seem to have had anarchism for a similar length of time.
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“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” ~Carl Sagan
Everything we do is build on the shoulders of giants.
Huh… self sufficiency is not a myth. There’s many parts of the U.S. where citizens are off the grid, some more extreme than others. However, if and when the shtf, being self sufficient might make you an easy and weaker target. I believe men should be building relationships with other men in the community. To teach and learn from each other on how to be sufficient not just for themselves but for their community or communities even. Most importantly survival skills.
Super skeptical. They mine their own metals? Produce their own magnets? Forget their own steel? Make their own batteries? Could you provide a few examples?
There are a lot of prepper types out there who might be theoretically 'ready" for societal collapse, but yes, they get there by already having a stockpile of societal goods and materials and of course guns. These folks likely have a great plan for what they’re doing when the bombs fall, but likely not a shred of the social and communal skills necessary to keep a functional society alive for the long term.
Maybe some of the more isolated amish communities could subsist for a while without injections of modern supplies, but even still we’re talking about less an “off grid” lifestyle and more like “radically reduced technology.”
Hm… well for example in the U.S. we have the Boy Scouts of America, this organization teaches boys and young men survival and general life skills. There’s a spectrum of “off-grid” citizens. One one side of the spectrum, they still work and make under the table money, which in turn they use to buy some resources. On the other side of the spectrum there’s citizens who have no communication with the general population. I guess the best way to see these examples would be on YouTube - searching for survivalist, off grid, and or self sufficiency.
It’s wild how many people out there have really solid plans for what they’re going to do when the apocalypse happens, but no plans for what happens in the subsequent months, years and decades after societal collapse.
It’s almost like the hollywood portrayal of survival in a post-apocalyptic world is as good at portraying the struggles and hardships of day-to-day survival as they at portraying people eating breakfast or having phone calls like we do in the real world or like, how many movies and shows give us the view into what real people really do all day long.
It’s that there’s just no views to be had from showing an audience the main character working at their job for nine hours a day and navigating securing a promotion, just like there’s no views to be had watching someone in a real survival situation shivering and crying every day for weeks at a time as they get sick and skinny and lose everyone they care about to infections and starvation.
Because fucking hunting and gardening won’t save you if World War 3 or the Turbo Space Covid Cordyceps Aids virus strikes unless you are already adept at living completely off the land, which outside a few absolute nuts out there, nobody is ready for.
What will save us if the shit really goes down is community.
People don’t survive, societies survive, it’s why we have one now.
Dependency and self-sufficiency are not opposites but extremes in both directions. It’s about finding the middle and and keeping it balanced as variables change.
How does one unlearn this unhealthy idea of self sufficiency?
Learning to love yourself?
You say that as tho its a walk in the park You’re not wrong but isn’t there more than just that?
There is more to it. Like, do you have the capacity to love yourself? Why not? Improving ones self is a continuous process.
Yes! It requires constant analysis, and sometimes you need the right questions to ask. Why can’t I love myself is a hard question to think of asking.
Start getting involved in communal activities like sports, volunteering, town halls, and going to the local bar
Just look around the room you are in and try to imagine creating every object you find all by yourself.
