The Education of Axel Heyst

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chenda
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by chenda »

zbigi wrote:
Fri Apr 01, 2022 1:29 pm
And now, when Poland is better off, they basically don't bother to do most of that anymore...
A friend of mine married a Polish guy and they split there time between there and here. She said young Poles want to adopt an urban lifestyles and distant themselves from the rural/DIY life of their parents and grandparents. I suppose that's understandable. Though she likes life in rural Poland and is keen to adopt an ERE-esq lifestyle, and of course you can live very cheaply there. Although she has a UK income so that of course makes it a lot easier.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by MBBboy »

There may be a "grass is greener on the other side" component here. It's easy for people who grew up in developed countries to romanticize a life of living on the land, taking care of animals, etc etc (it's perhaps even common in the US due to cultural reasons). But people who live that life out of necessity don't want it - they would be more than happy to trade places. It's easiest to see in the some of the examples discussed upthread in Poland - I'm also reminded of a few people I know from Ukraine / Russia / Phillipines who moved to the US and got married to guys who live on farms / rural lifestyles.

Their attitude was "I didn't move to America to take care of animals", and they wanted to live in cities and be around people and things and restaurants etc - they things they DIDN'T have back home. They associate those things (edit: rural living, making things yourselves) with poverty. And yet there are many here yearning for their lifestyle.

The life being described USED to be the norm. There are reasons why societies all over the world, from different geographies and cultures, abandoned it - namely, that many aspects of it suck.

The question is how to take the parts that are good and marry it to the positive aspects of progress that have come about as a result of various innovations unleashed by the modern system. This may be my politics and military background talking, but I think the only way to do it is to have a bunch of decentralized groups experimenting and trying things on their own to see what sticks, and run through as many OODA loops as possible.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by mountainFrugal »

MBBboy wrote:
Sat Apr 02, 2022 9:08 am
They associate those things (edit: rural living, making things yourselves) with poverty. And yet there are many here yearning for their lifestyle.

The life being described USED to be the norm. There are reasons why societies all over the world, from different geographies and cultures, abandoned it - namely, that many aspects of it suck.
Not that I disagree that the convenience of our current lives is nice and I have personally benefited from it greatly. However, I would argue that living a modern lifestyle is not abandoning these other ways of life, it is only outsourcing them to petrochemical based machinery or to people in poorer countries. The more that you can insource the less you are relying on that often unseen layer of outsourcing.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

MBBboy wrote:
Sat Apr 02, 2022 9:08 am
The question is how to take the parts that are good and marry it to the positive aspects of progress that have come about as a result of various innovations unleashed by the modern system. This may be my politics and military background talking, but I think the only way to do it is to have a bunch of decentralized groups experimenting and trying things on their own to see what sticks, and run through as many OODA loops as possible.
+1, this

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by white belt »

mountainFrugal wrote:
Sat Apr 02, 2022 10:32 am
Not that I disagree that the convenience of our current lives is nice and I have personally benefited from it greatly. However, I would argue that living a modern lifestyle is not abandoning these other ways of life, it is only outsourcing them to petrochemical based machinery or to people in poorer countries. The more that you can insource the less you are relying on that often unseen layer of outsourcing.
To build on this, any organism will need to take certain actions in order to survive. An organism can either take the action itself, or it can have others take the action for it. Humans as social animals learned that banding together in groups can make it much easier to complete these survival actions. Our modern lifestyle provides the veneer of abstraction; we assume those survival actions are a thing of a primitive and uncivilized past. However, there is always "work" to be done for things like survival and combatting entropy. This becomes very apparent in a specific domain if you are forced to do something that was previously abstracted away (hauling water in a grid down situation, growing and preparing your own food, butchering your own meat, defending yourself during geo-political strife, and so on). This isn't groundbreaking information, but nevertheless it's something that's very easy to lose sight of in the modern world.

The stoic approach of "going without" for periods of time is one method to combat the tendency. ERE's emphasis on insourcing and DIY is another. I'm sure there are many others.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by MBBboy »

mountainFrugal wrote:
Sat Apr 02, 2022 10:32 am
Call it abandoning or outsourcing, the end result is that these things are being done differently. They are being done faster, cheaper, and in many cases higher quality than they were before. (I recognize the quality piece varies) With this machinery, many of the things we take for granted simply wouldn't exist. There's no DIY TV's or computers.

After lives where TV's and other modern conveniences are plentiful and taken for granted, WE can look at it and say decide to cut them out. But there are billions of people in other countries who don't have these things, and want them. Heck, there are people in extreme poverty in developed countries who want them.

Just something to be aware of / careful of. As we think about lifestyle design, let's not pretend that everything modern is evil and that doing things the old way is going to lead to utopia. If you don't recognize the shortfalls / difficulties of past lifestyles, you may be in for a negative shock. I don't think this is a controversial take.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by zbigi »

mountainFrugal wrote:
Sat Apr 02, 2022 10:32 am
Not that I disagree that the convenience of our current lives is nice and I have personally benefited from it greatly. However, I would argue that living a modern lifestyle is not abandoning these other ways of life, it is only outsourcing them to petrochemical based machinery or to people in poorer countries. The more that you can insource the less you are relying on that often unseen layer of outsourcing.
For most people, the point is that, for now, civilization is humming along gloriously, and they want to take advantage of that to live the life they want to live. By preemptively decoupling themselves from outsourcing, they'd be entering precisely the life of dull misery they very much want to avoid.

As one forumite has put it "I was spending entire days on mickey mouse projects to save $3" - most people prefer to just work a couple minutes required to earn that $3, and then go to the store. It can be argued that, if things take a radical turn for the worse, then their misery will be even greater (due to shock and lack of preparation) - but that's the gamble that majority of people is apparently willing to accept.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by jacob »

I'm wondering with the "collective"-solutions mistake has been in aiming for "too many". Community is the Green (and somewhat Blue) answer to the Orange focus on money (+free market transactions), but how big should a community be. I tend to get the impression that it's "as many as possible" or something akin to a successful club, church, or dormitory, so 30-50 people. Perhaps the answer to "squad wealth" is to aim much lower and think "chosen family" rather than "community". It should be easier to sort out 3-5 people; most people already have some experience from dealing with their "DNA family".

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mountainFrugal
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by mountainFrugal »

MBBboy wrote:
Sat Apr 02, 2022 10:53 am
Just something to be aware of / careful of. As we think about lifestyle design, let's not pretend that everything modern is evil and that doing things the old way is going to lead to utopia. If you don't recognize the shortfalls / difficulties of past lifestyles, you may be in for a negative shock. I don't think this is a controversial take.
Yes, for sure. Gradually experimenting with the parts that you can go without or insource is the prudent way to do things rather than "buying the farm" before figuring out how to farm. I am not saying farming is the answer, just that the resources we consume come from somewhere and can have different resource footprints to make, even if efficiently on a per unit basis. The other piece I think you are getting at (my interpretation) is that maybe some of these activities are inherently rewarding and we can choose to do those for ourselves as part of our experimental groups doing endless OODA loops.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by theanimal »

Too much pro civilization talk going on here, someone needs to stir the pot. :evil:

If you are lucky enough to witness the lifestyles of those who are defined as the most successful financially in American society you come to the opposite realization of those leaving. The lifestyles are very empty and shallow, and it makes me wonder, why is this what the world is striving to be like? So the person without that awareness is justified in thinking that they can have more fulfilment by moving away from their more rural life with manual labor because they are sick of toil. But is the toil in the work itself or the attitude to it? And yes, they may be more materially well off, with stores lined with food, aisle after aisle and drinking water so plentiful that you put it in your toilet bowl. But what are they missing out on by leaving? And what are they gaining? A chance to stare at screens for a little longer like the rest of us? If they are coming to America, (on average) they are certainly not improving their health. The awareness of what the civilized lifestyle in America holds allows one the mindset to approach the same tasks that these people flee from (and scorn for their association with poverty) with purpose, fulfillment and joy. Yes, I have access to better medical services here but if I live like they do I won't need it. But if they come here and live like the average American, they will.

zbigi
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by zbigi »

theanimal wrote:
Sat Apr 02, 2022 11:35 am
Yes, I have access to better medical services here but if I live like they do I won't need it. But if they come here and live like the average American, they will.
Average life expectancy in US is over 10 years higher than in Africa or India... Looks like they could really use some of that modern medicine after all, despite supposedly healthier lifestyles (which personally I doubt, nothing healthy about slowly ruining your body working on the subsistence farm or in a hellish third world factory).

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by theanimal »

Yes, if you are going to exist in civilization there is a base line of material wealth. Note that the examples in Africa and India are still civilization and I was advocating against civilization, which are 2 different things. The genie is out of the bottle across much of the world, but there are pockets where one can more or less live as a modern semi hunter-gatherer. Even within civilization itself, there is too much of a good thing leading to problems of our own making. Over half the US is on prescription drugs, nearly 3/4 of the country is overweight and/or obese, incredibly high rates of anxiety and depression, rising youth suicide rates..I could go on. Again, is this the society worth aspiring to?

What was mentioned was Ukraine/Russia and Eastern European countries, of which I'd argue is nearer that level of material wealth that is sufficient in a civilized world. Healthy Average life expectancy of a person living in the US (operating in fully functional health) at birth is 66.1 years*. The world average is 64.3. Russia and Ukraine are 64.2 and 64.3 respectively (and Poland is 68.7!). That places the US at 68th in the world, and far behind more or less collapsed civilizations like Cuba, where the people do live a largely subsistence lifestyle. The US level of care is far from what is necessary once compared to other countries and as documented elsewhere the decrease is due to lower child mortality, which is not 21st century technology.

*source-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... expectancy

If we wish to continue, perhaps we should start a new thread. Apologies to AH for the sidetrack in your journal.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

It makes sense that people who are getting shafted by the first world (sweatshops, subsistence farming in places with 1st-world-shattered cultures and infrastructure) want to get out. Duh.

The suggestion isn't that first worlders should want to sign up to join the third world in getting shafted by the first world, or that third worlders should be stoked about the current situation.

The suggestion is to configure things differently. To pull together to end the hegemony of consumer culture. By first exiting it ourselves, opting out, and then forming crews/squads, and then ultimately being some small part of building something that sucks less than the current dynamic.

The point of my original post is that I think dwelling overmuch on the current configuration of the world, and just extrapolating it to the future, is some kind of mistake. A mistake probably because the world is just going to be different in the future, because the future is always a bit different and because the current arrangement is terminal, but also a mistake of a failure of imagination.

At any rate I'm bored of it. [it= the civ/anticiv debate that we've had on this forum a hundred times]
Last edited by AxelHeyst on Sat Apr 02, 2022 1:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

theanimal wrote:
Sat Apr 02, 2022 1:30 pm
If we wish to continue, perhaps we should start a new thread. Apologies to AH for the sidetrack in your journal.
I think your post nicely unpacked the strawman and wrapped up the conversation, thank you. Anything further along the old civ/anticiv arc should be taken up elsewhere. Anything new, related to what to do/how to think about a future that sucks less is welcome here.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

I've revisited solarpunk this past week. That link is the entry point to anyone unfamiliar - the rabbit hole is worth exploring three to five layers (links) deep.

I'd encountered it a few years ago, but at the time I was too doomery for it to resonate. I thought it too bright green, too unconcerned about basic laws of physics, and too optimistic about human nature / politics for my taste. Too naïve.

I now see that there is space in solarpunk for what I consider to be realistic stances towards the future. There IS a bunch of overly optimistic and under-mathed thought going on in solarpunk, but that stuff doesn't define the genre/movement. The only substantial difference between solarpunk and doomer optimism might be the former's love affair with Art Nouveau and emphasis on aesthetics. Choosing sides is a false dichotomy: I'll take a full serving of both, please.

Anyway, it occurs to me that ERE and solarpunk could make good bedfellows. Solarpunk is heavy on attractive aesthetics - it's immediately appealing to many people. It's light on practicality (as a thing born of a literary genre, practicality isn't really its job). ERE is the inverse. Potentially complementarily so. Functional nonconsumer praxis could help give wannabe solarpunks legs, so to speak.

ERE = solarpunk lifestyle design?

An aspect I like is that solarpunk is inclusive of diverse approaches. #cottagecore is as solarpunk as dumpster-dived reprogrammed open source cyborg toasters that autonomously convert old freeway onramps into hydroponic gardens, or whatever. Solarpunk is as bored with civ/anticiv debate as I am, and says ´yeah, okay, whatever - but what are we gonna build or plant next tuesday from scrap we found in the salvage yard?'

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

The appropopedia article for solarpunk is good as well.
Adam Flynn , Interview with Adam Flynn on Solarpunk, wrote:On the concept of innovative dissent :
"Some of that is rooted in the idea of infastructure as a point of resistance: If you’re better able to withstand being shut off from the system as-it-is, you’re more able to protest against it. Self-reliance and communal resilience helps safeguard you against reprisal.
Infrastructure as a point of resistance. mmph.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by jacob »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Sun Apr 03, 2022 12:31 pm
Anyway, it occurs to me that ERE and solarpunk could make good bedfellows. Solarpunk is heavy on attractive aesthetics - it's immediately appealing to many people.
ERE is the kind of pretty that appeals to a scientific aesthetic. It's almost Howard Roark (Fountainhead) in its functionality. A theory should be as simple as possible but no simpler. The statue is what remains after cutting away all the superfluous material of the rock. This means that a design with nonfunctional parts or functional parts that can be reduced to simpler parts is more beautiful.

This sentiment ...
Robert Twigger wrote: I travelled with Bedouin in the Western Desert of Egypt. When we got a puncture, they used tape and an old inner tube to suck air from three tyres to inflate a fourth. It was the cook who suggested the idea; maybe he was used to making food designed for a few go further. Far from expressing shame at having no pump, they told me that carrying too many tools is the sign of a weak man; it makes him lazy. The real master has no tools at all, only a limitless capacity to improvise with what is to hand. The more fields of knowledge you cover, the greater your resources for improvisation.
But "reductionist ultrafunctionality" (thanks Te) is an uncommon aesthetic and I can see why accepting some "overlay" of vernacular art is necessary for broad appeal(*) even if it makes it ugly from my perspective. In college, I was told I needed a poster on my bare walls to make my room more personal. I bought a poster of an AH64D helicopter. (Apparently I have the same spirit animal as @brute viewtopic.php?p=145139#p145139 ).

(*) Dressing up for the occasion.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

Yes... after reading your post, it occurs to me that the reason solarpunk didn't resonate with me the first time I came across it is because that was preERE for me, and I lacked a functioning philosophy of action. So solarpunk was too handwavey - it wasn't at all useful to me, because I was still trying to figure out what to actually do. I liked the aesthetic of solarpunk, but it was actually somewhat infuriuating because I didn't find anything there that helped me to implement it or help me answer 'what should I do next Tuesday?'

Now that I've got a core praxis, the appeal of solarpunk to me is:
1. A non-interfering aesthetic and perspective on the future that I can play with in my own system. A kit of parts (art nouveau, post-consumer, vision of the future, etc).
2. A set of symbols I can use to communicate with people. If someone knows even the brief outline of what solarpunk is, and then I just say the phrase 'solarpunk lifestyle design', they're intrigued and already have some idea of where I'm going with that. The work has only begun to get at a functional praxis of course, but perhaps a hook has been set.

Is it fair to say that FIRE was the OG hook for ERE, but not the core thing itself? If so, it implies we can swap out different hooks?

Or a different metaphor: ERE is the module that wants to be in a stable orbit. FIRE is the booster rocket originally used to get it into orbit. Potentially other things can be used by different people to boost their ERE modules into orbit.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I’ve been hanging out on the solar punk Reddit quite a bit myself. Permaculture sometimes vibes a bit too low tech for me, and I am in philosophical opposition to back to the past doomers, because feminism. If I’m going to be the one baking cornbread from scratch, I’d prefer it to be my choice.

Also, why can’t I have edible perennials, automated hydroponics, sculpture, meta-modern meditation space, and whimsical solar-powered robotic frog in my garden project?

OTOH, although I do think honoring aesthetics is important, it seems like Art Nouveau theme is kind of random/arbitrary. It just happened to be style during overlap of craftsmanship era and electricity era. It doesn’t have to be the style of a going-back-to-nature-but-keeping-some-electricity-and-associated-technology-and-social-progress-too.

The main practical problem with this vision might be the current non-existence of regionally independent solarpowered solar panel factories.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by jacob »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Mon Apr 04, 2022 2:02 am
Is it fair to say that FIRE was the OG hook for ERE, but not the core thing itself? If so, it implies we can swap out different hooks?
Yes, see e.g. viewtopic.php?t=12146

One might also see FIRE as the predominant failure-mode of ERE.

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