volvoxvsmarla
That sounds like a nice cover version
I kind of fail to see how a life in which all my basic needs are secured as long as I agree for them to be secured for everyone else, thus freeing me from anxiously giving my life to the futile attempt to crawl above others, is “altruistic”. Working your ass off for nothing but your crude survival and the benefit of a handful of others doesn’t seem very selfish if you put it in this perspective.
In any case, whatever is going on right now - it’s… not good, to say the least. Wanting to fix the problem with the problem is horribly naive.
Anyway, nice meme.
I just don’t want to be homeless when I am old. That’s all I want. Having food and housing. A two room apartment for me and my husband would be nice. If I can use the public transport on top of that, I’m all set. A three room apartment would be a luxury and being able to go out every once in a while would be absolutely astronomical.
(I also want to have healthcare but I am in Germany so I got that going for me which is nice. )
It is not about being rich or super rich. It is about climbing the hierarchy being an exploitative act in itself. If you dream of creating your own business you will - you have to, basically by default - do this by exploiting other people on the way up. Your success and you becoming “mildly rich” is always built on the backs of others.
Edit: just to be clear, I am fully aware that in the greater scheme of things, a person earning 30k or even 300k is not the enemy of someone earning 25k. Obviously we need to get rid of pervertedly excessive wealth. Having 300k-30k-25k hating on each other distracts from the bigger problem.
But at the end of the day, and I say this with as little moral judgement as possible, as soon as one person controls another one’s salary and undercuts it for their own profit, we are in a system in which success is achieved via exploitation. And this is the case in 99.9% of work environments.
Haven’t used reddit since boost went down but I am planning on going back in a couple of weeks/months.
That reminds me how my father loves to tell the story of a doctor who wasn’t convinced that sun causes skin cancer so he went to India for a year and didn’t wear sunscreen once and lo and behold he didn’t get cancer so he disproved that sun causes cancer.
Again, my dad is a mathematician. Granted, analytical and computer algebra, not statistics, but dear Lord.
There be people like that. My dad was a professor for applied mathematics at a top level university in Germany, published books etc. Nowadays he works as an indepentdent business consultants and is insanely successful on an international level. And while he does believe climate change is real he is very, uhm, alternative when it comes to health and nutrition. Think fruit juices and nutrition supplements and sun doesn’t cause cancer and “holding a lazer to your heel makes your rotten teeth unrotten” kinda stuff. (Didn’t work.) Watches weird ass youtube videos by “experts”. Me, having a M.Sc. in Nutrition and Biomedicine, I am in no way an expert like these people or himself when it comes to nutrition, health and medicine, according to him. People can be extremely smart and talented in some parts of their lives and be completely bonkers in others.
Not to be the bad guy here, but as an average person, somewhen you reach a point of feasibility where it is just so freaking hard. Like, ok, we don’t own a car, we don’t drive. We rely on walking, public transportation and biking every now and then. We barely ever eat meat. We try not to buy imported fruit and vegetables, that one avocado every other month is more like a celebrated treat for our toddler. Try to avoid stuff wrapped in plastic. We avoid, reuse, recycle. Don’t buy new clothes, hardly buy clothes for us grown ups at all. Most presents our girl gets are pre owned, too. We line dry our clothes that we wash with as little detergent as possible, as rarely as possible, at the lowest temperature that still does the job.
But we live in a rental that heats with gas (as do a lot of Germans). We try to heat to a bare minimum despite having a small kid at home, we tried adjusting to cooler temperatures but below 18° room temperature during the day we just couldn’t do it in the winter. Not to mention the mold. We buy the organic, fair trade coffee, knowing fully well that we shouldn’t drink coffee in the first place. I type this from a phone that is not even 18 months old since my other phone got so unbearably slow it was unusable in everyday life.
And I feel bad about those things. I feel bad about every time I buy a coffee in a paper cup (and if I knew I would need a coffee to go I would have brought one from home to begin with so of course I don’t have a reusable cup on me either). I feel bad about our toothbrushes because they have plastic in them and about my mascara coming in a plastic container. I feel bad about picking up a toy kitchen with a family member’s car instead of using public transport. I feel bad I cannot afford to go to those shops where they sell foods unwrapped and that I cannot always get the organic options. Hell I feel bad because I don’t know which option is the better one, the regional apples in a plastic packaging or the imported ones without or the organic ones from somewhere in between and I feel like I should know for every item.
But I just don’t know how to go further. I don’t want to brush my teeth with sticks and I don’t want to make my own deodorant. But I feel like I will forever be at fault and owe my daughter everything until I literally live in a cave. Maybe it’s like this 80/20 rule but I feel like 80 is just not enough. That kid deserves 100, she doesn’t deserve excuses that something is too hard or not feasible.
We’re trying. We really are, my dear. And I am so sorry we are failing you and we cannot give 100%, be it for financial or practical reasons.