Henry wrote:I think its more a matter of emphasis than dichotomy that we all at some level struggle with.
One problem with the Dave Ramsey heuristic from the perspective of the not-particularly-optimistic rational perspective would be that things are bound to get "interesting" in the 21st century, regardless of one's druthers for "peace", "comfort", and "security." And, in fact, such striving within our relatively affluent communities is likely to contribute to the crash.( I make this observation as somebody who has recently affirmed that she will spend not entirely insignificant amounts of money in order to make herself comfortable at the level of "not in chronic pain/disbility"
and in order to help out her own grown children if/when they are in late-early-adulthood crisis situation and/or throwing a wedding*, etc. )
It has also been my experience, that many people who are retired or self-employed, IF they are also a social type will naturally tend towards wanting to create some kind of project/aspect-of-lifestyle in which they are the "boss." This is why a lot of divorces occur when also tending towards affluent E--J types retire. For instance, the only reason I lasted even a few years living with my early retired second "husband" was that we had different sleep schedules, so I had 6 hours to myself in the morning, before he woke up and tried to make me help him with
his projects and/or tried to take over
my projects,
if I made the mistake of mentioning any of them to him. Unfortunately, I have made this mistake more than once, because I am okay with riding shotgun on somebody else's project and/or even taking on paid employment while I am still on the initial steep learning curve.
Beyond access to some learning curves while being paid, I think Ego's Goldilocks comment is relevant to my choices in terms of basic feeling I get from the social environment provided. For instance, I find this forum on the cool edge of stimulating, while I find working with the disadvantaged children on the warm edge of boring. I don't expect to find every aspect of social interaction I might desire in any given setting/community. Therefore, since I desire a variety, it's usually not a big deal to also manage to get paid for what I bring to the mix in some of the settings.
IOW, it's important to recognize where you wish to find yourself in the hierarchy/holarchy when it comes to your projects that are social. I find that I actually prefer a mix of independent-solo, social-in-charge-teaching/managing, social-in-the-follow-learning/building, and social-co-operating. However, I would note that it has been my experience that social-co-operating is the most difficult structure to find/create/maintain. The tendency to devolve to chaos, non-productive conflict or hierarchy is strong. As every boring business book ever written notes, productive collaboration requires shared motivation and vision. Productive collaboration would have to be found in partnerships formed at the cusp of The Renaissance Man and The Business Man.
