Curious Aardvark wrote on Nov 3^rd, 2021 at 4:34pm:


Because modern society for all its luxuries has a high rate of stress and suicide whereas in modern hunter gatherer cultures suicide, depression and diseases like heart disease and others are almost unheard of.

We have long associated plenty and security with happiness but in terms of happiness and fulfillment we are, in general, missing something big imo..

I am slowly reading through Seneca's letters. He has a wonderful letter ( 86 on Scipio's villa) where he bemoans the luxury of modern Romans and the ill effects of it. http://essays.quotidiana.org/seneca/scipios_villa/ I really enjoy it when Seneca bemoans the modern world. It makes me happy to see how humans are human across time and place.  I agree with Seneca though, too much luxury breeds weakness of body and character. You can find similar arguments the world round. The question then is where is "too much?"

It's also interesting that historians fight over how people lived. How hard was it? Nasty brutish and short? Less stress and work hours than now? I've seen PhDs argue both sides. Some of it is still the "noble savage" vs "progress of civilization"  worldviews if we're honest and the adherents make the facts fit their picture. 

Don't get me wrong, my computer is up, the lights are on, heat is on, had a long hot shower yesterday, enjoying music from thousands of miles away. I don't live a spartan life. Yet I feel the force of the argument that we have grown soft, pampered, and weak.

Lots of talk on depression, stress, and pampered life.

I agree.  Living a life of (mostly) ease makes times of stress more damaging.  But it's not difficult to expose yourself to controlled stressful situations, which can make you more adaptable when unplanned situations occur.

Everyday I do breathing exercises which involve holding my breath after an exhale.  I do cold showers daily.  Which is really exciting now because in PA we're getting into cold temperatures, so the water in the shower is pretty darn cold.  And once a week I do an 18 - 20 hour fast.  I'm thinking about extending that, but not there yet.

If anyone is curious, you can look on YouTube for Wim Hof.  I can say this from personal experience, if you're in the shower and turn the hot water off completely, all concerns that might be in your mind go away.  At least for a bit.

Morphy wrote on Nov 4^th, 2021 at 7:41am:


well you could argue that most of our ancestors were dead long before they ever got around to worrying about mental illness.

In a society where any infection could kill you, life spans weren't that great.

Although they were probably longer than the peasants in early industrial soceity.

You've also got to factor in the fact that ALL primitive soceities we know of practiced slavery.
So that would reduce the slaves life even more while increasing the leisure of the slave takers.

There is a reason early man developed crop cultivation, animal husbandry and plumbing.
They knew all about primitive living and clearly wanted a lot less of it.

Yeah, it basically boils down to population density.
Humans breed like rats, and unlike rats, not much eats us so efficiency was born out of necessity.

And the more people you had, the easier it was to task differentiate.

A hunter could take his Beast to a specialist tanner or 'tailor' and trade some of the meat for getting the fur or leather properly dealt with, while he was left free to go hunt for more.

And when he worked out it made more sense to keep and breed his own beasts rather than hunt wild ones, he had time to make and learn to use a sling.

None of which is particularly relevant to this thread.
Except, why abandon several thousand years of technological progress ?

By all means find some where quiet to live, but do it sensibly. Use the technology to make life more enjoyable.

I am already barred from most places and soon even supermarkets. I don't go anywhere yet where I go I hear that it is all my fault.  Now they are starting to threathen me where I am. There's no place to go in this world for me except out of it, back to God. It seems this world wants me dead, but I will live.

I would combine gardening, pastoralism, hunting and gathering somewhere in a temperate climate with about twenty experienced clansmen 

   If I chose the traditional lifestyle option I'd move to Nova Scotia.  The place is beautiful, the climate agrees with me, and the people are very welcoming and friendly.