That Elusive Utopia
We’ve occasionally dipped a toe in the various trans subreddits, marvelling at the inhabitants and their improbable woes, but other bedlamite communities are available.
For instance, we could linger in the mood room of Reddit’s anarchists.
Where questions abound:
There’s a lot to unpack in there, what with the implications of crime and the assumption of some inexhaustible human kindness, but let’s press on. In the replies, deep and radical knowledge may await:
My partner would go out and dumpster dive, and I would forage and garden, that was our “grocery shopping.” I knew where to find fruit and wild vegetables. It took about a year to learn what was edible in the area.
A year of hit-and-miss. Bodes well for the digestive tract. And yes, the thrill of other people’s bin contents has been mentioned here before.
Not really selling the lifestyle, I fear.
Living free. In other people’s bins.
So not entirely liberated from those capitalist shackles, then.
I’m sure it wasn’t due to any maladjustment.
I truly miss the experience, but I believe it was too much for my ex to handle and it accelerated their mental health issues.
Okay then.
Other enthusiasts offer their hard-won wisdom:
The word is thievery. Lol.
However,
And then there’s this guru of the alternative:
It’s all kindness, kindness, burglary.
But it’s earning a living that’s ugly, you know.
Readers with a taste for dissonance and convolution will find much to chew on.
Update, via the comments:
EmC quotes this,
And adds,
Squatting – theft.
Commercial burglaries – theft.
Retail thefts – theft.
It is worth noting the extent to which this supposedly heroic “rejection of capitalism,” all this awfully pious “life without money,” does seem to depend on freeloading and thieving from others. Specifically, from those who don’t regard earning a living, supporting themselves and their families, as a vice. Some kind of unendurable indignity.
Decide.
“If you live there, it’s yours,” says one participant.
At which point, a psychological profile may become apparent.
Speaking of human kindness, there are tip jar buttons below.
Is today’s word ‘pith’?
Well, it’s a strange, rather unworkable pile of ideas. If you poke about in there, you will find yourself tripping over the contradictions.
And then there’s the whole violent crime / prison thing.
Because “crime isn’t a framework that would exist in an anarchist society.”
So like socialists, but dumber?
I note that even those dismal, ugly and frequently criminal existences become impossible without the productive to scavenge off of and exploit through theft. Anarchists are the dumbest of all political groups.
There’s not a lot of realism, certainly.
Have some human kindness, barkeep. Ping!
Bless you, madam. May you remember to remove your wireless earbuds before attempting to wash your hair.
Who the hell keeps their wireless earbuds in constantly?
This is my innocent face.
[ Points to face. ]
“dwelling place”
“I spent several years trying to live in rejection of
capitalismbeing an adult.”FTFY
One more time.
Quite.
Some fantasies don’t hold up well in court.
(via)
Should have borrowed a frock.
But don’t mention the mental illness. That would be rude.
It did seem there was a deliberate effort, In the article, to avoid the words ‘she’ and ‘her’.
He and him would have been just fine, and indeed accurate.
What is indeed puzzling about people like anarchists and criminals is the sheer amount of effort put into tasks that bring a smaller return than, you know, working a 9 to 5 job.
Only when you realize they’re not the sharpest knives in the drawer and most times without a conscience or empathy for the people they’ve hurt, then it becomes vital to put them in a place where they stop preying on people. Only now we’re electing them to high office.
Company phone from my old job – theft.
Squatting – theft.
Commercial burglaries – theft.
Retail thefts – theft.
Well, quite. And this supposedly heroic “rejection of capitalism,” all this awfully pious “life without money,” does seem to depend to a remarkable extent on thieving from others. Specifically, from those who don’t regard earning a living, supporting themselves and their families, as a vice.
Some kind of unendurable indignity.
[ Slides tip jar to more prominent position, adds tinsel. ]
I don’t buy into the wild claims that Ivermectin is a cure all, but here the drug would be warranted. His digestive track is likely… lively.
Should have been 75 years.
Make that 750 years.
:::sigh:::: another idiot who has no knowledge of basic economics or what “money” is.
We have money to exchange because carrying around enough chickens to trade for a coat is a bit unwieldly.
Commercial burglaries – theft.
Retail thefts – theft.
One wonders what exactly this creature living without money is doing with the proceeds from the commercial and retail thefts?
stealing electricity to charge the stolen cell phone and stealing ready to eat food directly from the establishment – no money needed to obtain benefit for those. But beyond that – what is being burgled and what are they doing with it? Because black market resale of stolen goods involves money, and therefore is capitalism.
All these communist/socialist/anarchist schemes are parasitic in nature and rely on the productive to supply the host infrastructure, just under varying levels of coercion.
Bears repeating.
They truly are lazy in the physical sense. Which is why so many are drawn to academia, NGO’s, “charities”, even middle level management and especially our legal system. With AI, watch for an explosion in stupidity from that latter element. But the juice they get from a feeling of moral superiority drives their “research” diligence. When we did away with religion, we didn’t do away with the kinds of leeches who were drawn to it. The moral busybodies didn’t go away, they just found a better venue.
The left are still fundamentally retards, but again they are not the problem. We have always had retards, be they priests or kings or whatever. The problem lies with those who tolerate them. Who bow down to their stupidities. Who try to make accommodations with/for them. The people who fear the retards, who shy away from pushing back on them. Don’t fear the retards.
They want to be Australian aborigines?
Three years probation for trading a teenager for a monkey, seven years on a child abuse and neglect registry for letting a 5 year-old walk about a gated community without supervision.
Is a loss of judgment and sense of proportionality a sign of civilisational dementia?
Creating value: Saw a talk many years ago by an academic in population genetics/evolution. He mentioned as an aside that because the world did not value his work as it should he was planning on only working 20 hrs/wk from then on. He said this publicly, but expected to continue to get a full salary. The hubris, it could fill a room.
Back in college, I was interested in philosophy but realized no one would pay me for it. So it was relegated to a hobby. I did get some professional mileage out of it, but not full time.
I do! You’d have to meet my wife. The moment I start playing any video on my computer without speakers, my wife, who might be in the back yard, will yell, “What are you watching?” This despite me listening to her inane tiktoks through her phone’s tinny speakers.
“One must keep the peace.” Imagined quote from the Sheriff of Nottingham.
Do you recall who it was? I wonder if it’s anyone I’ve heard of.
But let me guess: Nobody at the talk questioned the reasonableness of his declaration?
UPDATE: Google AI Mode suggests that it was Robert Trivers:
pst213: no not Trivers. It was a specialist in group selection but ironic that he sounded almost identical to Trivers. Cannot recall the name now.
I believe that in some circumstances in some cultures, it is indeed possible to live entirely without money. Some Buddhist priests in some areas can live entirely by “begging”, and the local culture supports a certain level of this behaviour on a voluntary basis. But it is a contemplative life of abstinence and abnegation, one difficult to imagine our good redditors actually being able to engage in effectively.
And worth remembering that theft was in past times regarded as a far more heinous crime than it is today, frequently punished very harshly especially amongst small communities where such parasitic activity was very much frowned upon. Thieves were often executed or at best, exiled and excluded.
It’s them, Yogi.
Uh, um … [head desk head desk head desk]
A squalid ending.
I’m on a team of six (including me). They’re all Millennials.
I just learned that two of them use they/them pronouns.
I’m just two years away from retirement.
I am so cooked.
My favorite of the collection.
That would be number 10.
The women on the Clancy jury look like absolute nightmares to me, and I say that as one who thinks [most of] the defense’s story is highly plausible. [reason|reason]
I can totally see why that one guy would stand his ground. I wouldn’t want to take their side, either. Good for him.
Make asylums great again.
The bedlamite quality is hard to miss. But there’s also inadvertent comedy.
I was quite tickled by the hair-trigger language policing resulting in women who pretend to be men being chastised by the moderator for saying “hey guys” to other women pretending to be men. Only for it to turn out that the moderator is a man pretending to be a woman. And hence, one assumes, his personal sensitivity to the word guys.
Or the cross-dressing chap who wants “height reduction surgery” – having his legs broken – because his supposedly real self is two inches shorter than his actual self.
Or the woman pretending to be a man, who was outraged by dinner guests not regarding her as a potential mugger or rapist. Because assuming that your host doesn’t spend her evenings in darkened car parks waiting to assault women is “transphobic” and “invalidating.”
I mean, if there’s a way out of… that, it’s not obvious to me.
Also from r/Anarchy101:
Decide.
“If you live there, it’s yours,” says one participant.
[ Post updated. ]
Even then, many contemplative religious orders are engaged in activities for the benefit of others, not themselves. Okay, so maybe they pray incessantly for things like world peace – again, they take just what they need and go about their business for others. I don’t see that redditor doing likewise.
Had I been a juror in that room, I would have lost it. I just would have thrown hands.
These jurors will be vilifies on social media and they will be shocked, SHOCKED, that the rest of the world does not think like they do.