The Education of Axel Heyst

Where are you and where are you going?
jacob
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by jacob »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Wed May 18, 2022 5:25 pm
I feel like the most appropriate thing to respond to my mess of a post with is that I'm just rephrasing ERE in needless complication and maybe just still unintentionally trying to justify a lack of effort in managing financial wealth/investing. I still insist that what I'm trying to solve for in good faith is underemphasis on skill work, and a curiosity in how far a dedication to becoming a hypercompetent badass can actually get you.
In the ERE book (and the spectrum analyzer of the Stoa1 talk), I distinguish between three levels of skill development:
+1) You're good enough to get paid to work for others.
0) You're good enough to DIY but not good enough to get hired by others.
-1) You lack skills to DIY and so have to pay others.

Insofar one develops to the 0 level around a broad spectrum, one has arrived at what I think of as WL8. I have ultimately found that unsatisfying. While there's satisfaction in being self-reliant, it's not enough for meaningful fulfillment. Insofar the spectrum focuses on technical skills, it's the "universal handyman"-stage as far as the rest of the world is concerned. It's conceivable that this can be rolled into certain careers like fixer-uppers or entrepreneurship, but I'm not interested in that.

What I'd be interested in seeing is whether hypercompetency (broad spectrum +1) leads to previously unseen insights. Being able to fill out the gaps described in the Stoa2 talk. With enough +1s is the whole greater than the sum of the parts?

This is relevant because complex thinking requires a thorough understanding of many different ingredients. While it's easy enough to replicate a tiny house or an earthship, but coming up with such transdisciplinary ideas in the first place requires a special kind of brain.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

@wrc to be fair, I'm shoehorning Slowtravel into skill acquisition - I'm not sure it's necessarily an approach I'd advocate. Once I'm done with my travels I'll be much more rooted in one spot and my skill acquisition will be more focused, directed, and intense. Workawaying around the globe you have to give up a lot of control and just take what comes. Fine for a time, but not a long term thing under axelERE. The main benefit is breadth, or a random sampling of stuff you'll never get into on your own on your own land.

@sky FI itself is deemphasized under axelERE. It is not an explicit goal for me, because I think the landscape of possible future scenarios makes the concept of FI as we commonly understand it fragile. I'm not pursuing skills as a FI strategy.

The goal of FIRE (one failure mode of ERE) is freedom from w*rk.
The goal of ERE is to exit Plato's cave.
The (work in progress) goal of axelERE is freedom from dependence on industrial consumer society / flows as much as is possible.

ERE (exiting Plato's cave) is the Real Goal. FIRE is missing to the left. axelERE is my current attempt to triangulate towards ERE by overcorrecting towards the right.

It's possible that I've already achieved freedom from w*rk (the goal of FIRE) even though I'm not FI, by choosing a strategy (approach? Process?) that involves intrinsically rewarding activities that generate sufficient income only incidentally. Time will tell. I have enough runway (cash) to buy me the time to develop the skills required to generate incidental CoL while doing things that are relevant to the flotilla (aka that don't dead end inside industrial consumer society).

I think. 8-)

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

@jacob yeah, awesome. A way to phrase what I'm interested in doing is achieving broad +1 skills, and not exclusively technical. So, yes, a buuunch of practical skills will go in there, but also a fistful of non technical ones. Renaissance men (I'm a man) also knew how to dance, right?

I figure it'll take me, I don't know, ten years to get close to that? The question is, how to approach a meta project of this scope; have I thought it through appropriately; what might trip me up or deraill me; what level of intensity is appropriate; etc.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by mountainFrugal »

jacob wrote:
Thu May 19, 2022 1:23 pm
What I'd be interested in seeing is whether hypercompetency (broad spectrum +1) leads to previously unseen insights. Being able to fill out the gaps described in the Stoa2 talk. With enough +1s is the whole greater than the sum of the parts?
This is really interesting. I am thinking the type of project you could take on would change. An example that comes to mind if you were good enough to be paid for construction, story telling, videography, editing, acting, sewing, music etc. you could put on one hell of a one person show with custom sets etc. So would the skills have to somewhat cluster to achieve synergy? Or would the advance come from making a novel connection between seemingly disparate fields?
AxelHeyst wrote:
Thu May 19, 2022 1:37 pm
The main benefit is breadth, or a random sampling of stuff you'll never get into on your own on your own land.
This may be implied, but seeing how different problems are solved in different contexts might be the meta-skill of your travels. This could help with applied lateral thinking when you settle down on some land.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by jacob »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Thu May 19, 2022 1:48 pm
I figure it'll take me, I don't know, ten years to get close to that? The question is, how to approach a meta project of this scope; have I thought it through appropriately; what might trip me up or deraill me; what level of intensity is appropriate; etc.
I think [that one's approach] depends on one's starting skill. My second-hand ERE forum observation has been that people have very different starting skills. Some, like me, went to school to get GPA and pursued mono-specialization, so I'm starting from near-scratch---can't run a table saw and don't know what "grout" is---and so 10-years sounds about right. Other forumites grew up learning these skills from their parents or community and so they're a lot closer.

Ren skills at the 0/breakeven-level are pretty simple. They could be taught to a 12 year old. Still takes 5-10 years to learn at the derpy-derp rate, but most humans could start learning at age 12 and be done by 22.

In terms of exploring [new trails] deliberately, I think we're still prospecting the climbing of a new mountain.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

Milestone n(ow): Get 2-5 yrs runway in cash, freeing up time to pursue skillz. Done.
Milestone n+1: Generate >=1 CoL Incidentally (first or second order yield) as a side effect of pursuit of skills/stoke/flotilla stuff. Odd to state a goal this way... it's like looking at a dim star by not looking at it. The trick is, to decide that a certain kind of domain of skill acquisition is a good idea, and then set aside the end goal and just get after it, and then check in every once in a while and see if I'm broke yet.
Milestone n+2: CoL is 80+% head taxes due to skills covering all other needs. (90%? wrong metric? Because maybe another skill is driving head taxes to ãpproximately zero? Getting too far over the horizon here for me maybe.)
Milestone n+3: As decoupled from industrial consumer society as its reasonably (as decided by me) possible for an individual to do so because skillz.
Milestone n+4: Something something community constructed societal safety nets that don't exist yet something something in order to obviate / deemphasize need for FI stash for future generations something something

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by theanimal »

What differentiates n+2 and n+3? Getting to the point where head taxes make up 80-90% of one's expenses would seem to indicate that that person is very decoupled from industrial consumer society, no?

From a tactics perspective, it is entirely possible to eliminate head taxes. For example: Shelter-if you are able to make your home from materials you are able to source independent of the industrial consumer society, do you really need home insurance?
Health care (US)- With income as an incidental yield, it is presumably lower (at least at the beginning) allowing one to take advantage of premium credits.
Property taxes- This is probably the trickiest one and can be mitigated by where or how you live. Not owning property and facilitating some type of land share agreement via social skills could work. Otherwise there are areas that do not have property taxes or where they are very minimal. Most of Alaska there are no property taxes, and where I reside (outside AK's 3rd largest urban area) there are very generous property tax credits for residents that reduces my property taxes to something like $100/yr. I am not as familiar with other states. Perhaps there are similar programs elsewhere in the American West.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Ego »

A common problem with retirement in general is that people who want to retire often know what the don't want to do (work) but haven't figured out the most important part.... what they do want to do with their time once they retire. They are driven by a desire to move away from something rather than to move towards something.

Is your desire to decouple from industrial society moving away or towards?
AxelHeyst wrote:
Thu May 19, 2022 3:59 pm
Milestone n+4: Something something community constructed societal safety nets that don't exist yet something something in order to obviate / deemphasize need for FI stash for future generations something something
My guess is, the sentence above is you figuring out what you want to move towards. How it takes shape will determine the skills you will need when you get there. I would bet that what you are experiencing by being apart of the social configurations at the various workaways will be far more important than the actual hands-on skills you are learning.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

Ego wrote:
Thu May 19, 2022 9:24 pm
Is your desire to decouple from industrial society moving away or towards?
Good question. "Decoupling from ICS" felt kludgy anyways and I was trying to improve it. I think a more productive way of framing it is "Freedom to work full-time on the flotilla".

Arguably the majority of my frustrations in the past decade plus come down to feeling like my desire to work on the flotilla was thwarted by various factors.
Ego wrote:
Thu May 19, 2022 9:24 pm
I would bet that what you are experiencing by being apart of the social configurations at the various workaways will be far more important than the actual hands-on skills you are learning.
I think you are exactly right.

And to somewhat speak to another comment (which I thought was dead on, but they redacted it seems), social aspects / dynamics are very much integrated into how I'm thinking about this project. For brevity, 'skills' includes social skills, capital, social/community integration, etc.

For instance, one of the things I'm planning on doing when I get back is let it be known in my community that I'm available for handyman work (it's all offgrid homesteads up here, but many of the residents are aging and could use a hand). The point of this is to develop/practice skills but mainly to integrate into that community better. Income will be incidental. Another incidental yield will be salvaged materials and equipment.

I'm also planning on beginning hosting monthly dinner>brunch hedonfest, inspired by mF? I think? With aims of improving cooking skills, social network, brewing, etc.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

theanimal wrote:
Thu May 19, 2022 4:31 pm
What differentiates n+2 and n+3? Getting to the point where head taxes make up 80-90% of one's expenses would seem to indicate that that person is very decoupled from industrial consumer society, no?
Probably, but I could imagine getting to 90% head taxes by being tapped into industrial consumer waste streams: construction site salvage for building materials, dumpsters for food and clothing, etc. Transitioning between flows is an interesting topic that I'll be putting a lot of thought into.

For example, salvaging active construction site materials might be a great transition skill between 'home depot' and 'directly salvaging materials from the ruins of the early 21sr centruy', which might be a growth industry for quite some time, and thus worth a lot of effort. However, dumpster diving for food might dead end inside industrial consumer society sooner than I'd like, making it only something I'll do temporarily and not invest a ton of effort in to.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

In my neck of the woods you could already salvage tons of building materials from the rust-belt ruins of the 20th century. Except for metal, the scrappers already stripped the ruins clean of metal.

Even the tiniest organisms in the sea tend towards consolidating metals, because so valuable in energetic processes.

Also, if you consider all the unused space in other human’s homes to be part of the waste stream of industrial consumer society, it’s actually pretty easy to not have to pay a monetary head tax. But, most individualists want to “own” their own space.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by prudentelo »

jacob wrote:
Thu May 19, 2022 1:23 pm
Insofar one develops to the 0 level around a broad spectrum, one has arrived at what I think of as WL8. I have ultimately found that unsatisfying. While there's satisfaction in being self-reliant, it's not enough for meaningful fulfillment.
Is satisfaction the right goal or can we say did great artists who killed themselves live their lives wrong? Not meant as flippant. What is life for? ERE quickly leads to this question

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by jacob »

prudentelo wrote:
Mon May 23, 2022 10:46 am
Is satisfaction the right goal or can we say did great artists who killed themselves live their lives wrong? Not meant as flippant. What is life for? ERE quickly leads to this question
Indeed it does. The ancient Greeks had a different definition of happiness that survived until about the middle ages(?) Happy meant "a life meaningfully and well lived" and as such it could not be determined whether anyone had a happy life until after they were dead.

FWIW, their definition of passion was also much different than the modern one.

I don't really have the answer. I lack the mechanism. I think the answer is usually found from outside of oneself, but I don't find much outside myself anymore.

One way to think of it is to ask yourself what is your soulcraft? I see the soul as the depths of one's being (what you have to work work)---different from the spirit which exists outside the self (what inspires the universe so to speak).

Corporate institutionalism does not provide a path towards soulcraft. Humans are not worker bees and with rare exceptions humans do not "have a passion for international patent law contracts" or other weirdly specialized and remunerative interests people claim to have on the CVs. The soul is deeper than that but we pretend it doesn't exist in order to earn a paycheck.

Frankly, I think the way to approach learning the soul is to ask what your actual talent insofar you were allowed to express it fully. Insofar someone lives their life expressing their talents, that should be considered a happy life. Insofar the world they live in or the life they live somehow prevents that, it is an unhappy life.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

I've been refinding solace in absurdism. Micro recap: the absurd is the tension between two facts:
1) If objective meaning exists, humans don't have access to it, and
2) Humans are built to seek meaning. We cannot stop ourselves from striving to see meaning (maybe due to death salience? If terror management theory / Becker has it right?)

The absurd life is living both of these facts with lucidity. Yearning for the impossible with no hope of fulfillment. Camus thought taking a leap of faith to choose some structure of meaning (e.g. Kierkegaard with Christianity) was a bit of a cop out. For Camus, it was all about living the truth of this impossible tension. Hence his fondness for Sisyphus and his rock, and the necessity of imagining him happy.

When I first read Camus talking about the necessity of abandoning hope (for finding meaning) I thought that was some dark shit... But now I'm starting to see the sense of it.

Fwiw I think one reason a lot of people go back to work after FIREing is because all of a sudden at 34 or 42 they're forced to stare their own meaninglessness straight in the face, cold turkey, with no prep work or existential warmup even because it's just been hustle hustle hustle to FI and then bam, the meaning making scaffold of their lives is yanked out, and most of us have just a vacuum of nothing under that: no church, no community, weak family ties, the only meaning making system we have is to be a cog in the consumer Machine.

I've gotten a lot of mileage out of eudamonia and plotkin-esque "soul niche" notions of constructing meaning for myself, so +1 what Jacob said. For me, I have to undergird those lenses with an absurdist perspective otherwise they just feel like LARPing a character backstory to me - I won't / can't take them seriously.

I think part of the Renaissance skill work necessary to ERE is the metaphysical digging necessary to come up with a framework that suffices to keep the barrel out of your mouth when you start to decouple yourself from the wretched scraps of meaning-making narratices that (most of our) cultures have prearranged for us.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I think one of the reasons I’ve never had this trouble (psychological need to return to full-time work) is that I had babies before I ever had a full-time career. So, my sense of myself as an adult did not depend upon it. Maybe some other level Red/Blue experienced like going to war would have same effect.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by chenda »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Mon May 23, 2022 3:47 pm
Ithink one of the reasons I’ve never had this trouble (psychological need to return to full-time work) is that I had babies before I ever had a full-time career. So, my sense of myself as an adult did not depend upon it.
Thats interesting. I wonder if those who have children are less troubled by existential questions and a search for meaning than those who don't. At the very least you have contributed to the perpetuation of the species and have furfilled a biological imperative, so anything else is a kind of add on.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by jacob »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Mon May 23, 2022 3:47 pm
So, my sense of myself as an adult did not depend upon it. Maybe some other level Red/Blue experienced like going to war would have same effect.
Each vMeme provides a value/narrative that someone (one self and maybe others) will recognize.

If someone only has experienced mainly only vMeme (e.g. Orange careerism and consumerism), building up a replacement from scratch is tough. Usually a person has some experience to self-identify and find meaning in a few other vMemes. For example, as a Purple parent or a Red athlete.

But others who are not of the same color will always judge the rarer colors. In an Orange/Blue society, the common colors are reasonably safe (e.g. "I retired to Blue volunteer") but one still might get questioned about reneging on the Blue "duty to work". To get recognized and recognize oneself under rarer different vMeme, one has to have done something substantial before others and perhaps oneself actually believes in it. E.g. having a child, winning medals, organizing a community, or appearing in the media for one's ideas.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I think the order in which we fulfil various v-memes also makes a difference. For instance, many soccer moms may be experiencing parenthood (and sports) more as an extension of Orange than as Purple ( and Red.) I was fully engaged in raising my kids and re-habbing a giant old house when I first entered into a corporate career by way of what was just supposed to be a temporary job because we needed the money, so I never took my corporate career very seriously. Same sort of experience when I entered into a graduate program in economics in my early 40s after I had already been running my own business for a number of years; it didn't seem very real to me.

Most of us will accumulate enough recognizable signs of achievement of various v-memes to pass muster at the level of small talk. It's maybe more interesting to consider what we may or may not have to bring to any new relationship/community/enterprise/etc. beyond the level of small talk.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

James Clear wrote:"Most big, deeply satisfying accomplishments in life take at least five years to achieve. This can include building a business, cultivating a loving relationship, writing a book, getting in the best shape of your life, raising a family, and more.

Five years is a long time. It is much slower than most of us would like. If you accept the reality of slow progress, you have every reason to take action today. If you resist the reality of slow progress, five years from now you'll simply be five years older and still looking for a shortcut."
I'm halfway into my first five years of ERE. The 'big, deeply satisfying accomplishment' here is 'I have a mature postconsumer lifestyle', meaning, I'm no longer fighting any significant old consumerist mindset issues, and I've habituated a personal postconsumer way of life that I find suits me - it's enjoyable, my TTM CoL is fairly stable, all my main baseline needs are met, etc. The nature of ERE resists easily definable metrics, but at this moment I'm thinking it's something like
  • a CoL of about a half jafi,
  • an ecosystem of enjoyable activities that incidentally throw off >1 CoL,
  • a skill and preps system so I could go off-grid (no inputs from stores) for a year at the drop of a hat.
These are just numbers. The main accomplishment I desire is the sense that 'I embody a postconsumer mindset' is a true statement about myself.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

Whoa, it's been pages since I've posted a chart. Slacking, obviously.

Image
FullRes

Image
(Trying to be as close to the green line as possible. Below the red line is bad.)


I continue to trend in the right direction. The learning curve for Project TTM5k continues. The majority of my expenses this month were transportation:

335$ to travel from Tangier down to Zagora, then back up all the way to near Foix, France. Malaga to Barcelona was $110 itself, because it's tourist season now and the day-of prices went bananas.
120$ for shelter, mostly 10$/day hostels when I'm not at a workaway. My workaway in Morocco was $6.50/day, which covered food expenses. That's not typical for workaways, but is a thing in really poor areas like Tagounite.
Then a few sloppy spending mistakes, and that got May closer to TTM10k levels.

My only fixed costs are $42 health insurance and $10/mo for my website. (Once I push out a couple more podcast episodes I'll have to start paying 8/mo for that.) Theoretically, if I were at a workaway for a whole month, my CoL could be $52.

Lessons learned so far from TTM5k Slowtravel Style:
  • Frequent overland travel adds up. Once a month is probably the maximum amount of long distance overland travel a 5k budget can handle, assuming buses and trains and such. Obviously I could travel as much as I wanted if I were walking or biking and wild camping. I'm not there yet though.
  • Hostels need to be kept to bare minimum. In Morocco they can be had for 10/day, but that only leaves 4/day for everything else including fixed costs like health insurance. In europe 20/day hostels is about the best you can find. So,
  • I need to be better about stitching my workaway gigs together to have smaller gaps in between them. Also, I haven't yet explored couchsurfing and housesits. Housesits generally require longer term commitments, which I'm not into at the moment.
  • When putting in overland travel days, it's nice to be able to just not eat, or only eat once a day, and for that to be just a loaf of bread and a block of cheese.
  • Taking an overnight bus is a great way to not spend money on accommodations. :?
  • Workaways are hit and miss. You can't assume you're going to show up to a place with the idea of staying a full month or two, and still want to stay a full month after the first week. I'm enormously glad I'm doing this, but the though of doing mainly workaways for a full year is not appealing. It's possible I need to explore some other styles of workaway though - ones that are a little less demanding. Doing a hostel volunteer position might be like that if the hosts don't suck. The one I'm currently at (in France) I think I'm going to like being at for a full month, and I might even like to stay longer but I have to leave the EU before the end of the month due to my visa deadline.
On that note, my plan is to stay here till the last week of June, then cross over to England. I'll visit a friend in London who has a flat I can crash at, and then aim to get on to a workaway without spending much on hostels. My current host is friendly with a commune in Somerset that makes cider he offered to intro me to, and i'm interested in finding other ecovillages in the UK to check out. The UK is known for having some respectable communities and I'd like to see what the deal is. I also want to visit Ireland and Scotland.

I need to stay in the UK (/out of the Shengen zone) until the end of August. At that point, it's possible my current host will ask me to sail to Greece with them, which would be perfect to set me up with some experience for my end of year Atlantic passage back to the Americas. If not, I'll meander in the general direction of Greece/Turkey/Georgia, keeping an eye out for sailing opportunities.

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