Ignorant people

British society en-masse holds the attitude that free (well, taxpayer funded) schools are a God given right and they don't care how much money is spent on schools - the more the better - whilst rarely questioning whether the state school system is actually good value for money or not.

A similar attitude also holds for prisons. It's a known fact that prison is expensive to the taxpayer but British society en-masse believes that ever penny spent on prisons is a penny well spent.

Why do you never answer my question?

Do you really come here just to troll people?

Do you really believe everything printed in the Economist?!

There was something in The Economist a few years back and it basically said that self sufficiency only works up to a certain level of technological advancement, because once you pass a certain point you need an ever increasing number of specialists who have to work entirely on their specific task.

To maintain self sufficiency long term we're effectively back to a stone age level of existence and even then there were some who had "more" than others, usually the hunters and warriors. 

In terms of the current UK or global population we're well beyond what could be sustained with self sufficiency, we need the economics and efficiency of global industrial agriculture to sustain the world population, the yield drop in moving away from fertilisers and pesticides and from industrial meat production would mean that a large proportion of the global population would starve. 

Hi again Sholay,

I just read your post again and see you're 20.  If I'm honest (which I try to be!), I think I felt the same at your age.  Sorry - I hope that doesn't sound patronising.  I don't mean it to be.  My experience was that I grew up quite shut off from other people, and from the world in general.  I learned early on to escape into my imagination, and to fantasise.  I tried to create 'ideals' in my head of how life would be.  I was - and still am to a large extent - what you would call a romantic.  I was extremely naive.  Even when I finally went to university, at 28, I was much more naive than the other undergrads ten years younger than I was.  University was a very challenging experience for me.  Suddenly, I found all of the 'beliefs' and assumptions I'd grown up with being challenged.  I found it very difficult and distressing.  For instance - and I'm ashamed to admit it now - but I was quite homophobic and sexist.  I'd grown up in an environment where women - often jokingly, it's true, but still - were regarded in the way that many of the old 1970s comedians used to regard them.  As inferiors to me, who talked too much (nagged, or rabbited), and whose place was in the kitchen.  Homosexuals were more tolerated then, but were still - in my social milieu - treated as objects of ridicule and contempt.  So... I took all of that stuff to uni with me, thinking it's what everyone believed.  And boy, did I suffer for it.  I remember once saying to a fellow student that I'd seen two men kissing on campus, and I'd thought it was disgusting and it made me sick.  She came back at me for my homophobic beliefs, and it really stung.  I remember going back to my room and dwelling on it.  I thought she was wrong... because I couldn't be wrong, surely?  Wasn't it commonsense?  Hm.  Another incident concerned a fellow student who started to lecture me on eating meat.  She was vegetarian, and started to tell me how the veal cutlet I was then eating was produced.  I told her I wasn't interested, and that she should shut up about it.  Again, though, it stung.  Again, I dwelt on it.  She'd contradicted me, and I didn't like it. But she - like the one before - had planted a seed in my brain.  As part of my way of dealing with these things, I began - instead of stubbornly shutting off from them - to think about them more.  I read books about the ethics of animal rights.  I went to an open lecture, given by Sir Ian McKellen, about the threat imposed by Clause 28, which was then the hot political topic.  Long story short - by the time I graduated 3 years later, I was a vegetarian, and a vocal advocate for gay rights.  University had challenged me in all ways, opened up my mind, and 'educated' me in a way I hadn't expected.

So much for my story.  I, too, think I can see where your coming from - and I read, in your words, something that chimes with my own experience of life.  Your feelings are actually laudable and admirable.  You clearly care deeply for others.  The realities of the world are often harsh.  I find it incredible, at my age, that we can send a sports car into space and communicate with someone on the other side of the world in seconds - yet we still hate and kill each other for differences of belief.  Why can't we come together?  Why can't we see the damage we do?  Why can't we live in peace and harmony?

Sometimes, those challenges seem insuperable, and they get me down.  I feel like giving up.  But there is an alternative - slow-moving though it may be, and insufficient though it may seem.  We can make ourselves part of the protest against it.  And we can join others who feel the same way.  For myself, I 'dropped out' of society after uni.  I'd always felt a little outside of it all, anyway, so it wasn't difficult.  I allied myself with causes which were now dear to my heart.  Animal welfare, environmental politics - the whole counter-culture.  I down-sized my life and learned to live simply.  In Gandhi's words, I lived simply - that others might simply live.  I read Gandhi, of course.  And Thoreau.  I read Schumacher's 'Small is Beautiful' - and incredibly influential book.  I took in, basically, everything that seemed to be in tune with how I felt and how I wanted the world to be.  I learned lessons that enabled me to see that I could make a difference in this imperfect world - however small that difference might be.

I need to finish, or I'll be late for work!  I think you get the gist of where I'm coming from, though.  I think maybe you're at the start of a journey.  You have the right ideals and beliefs.  I think, now, you also realise the challenges to them.  Take up those challenges!  Make your life a counter-measure to the thinks you don't like in the world.  Maybe get involved with some group or other that is in tune with those ideals.  If you can't change everything... you might at least change something!  Small steps.  That's the best that many of us can hope for.

I wish you well.

Tom

Hello sholay09 I hope I understand, you obviously care for other people very much.

Have you seen or heard   something that has upset you?, starving children or people in war  areas struggling to just live?

this sort of new information can be difficult to understand when others seem to have so much.

wishing you well, this is an unfair world,

x()x

hi spotty, so where shall set up our  hive?

packing a few basic needs right now, so that is me and erm? Me.!

there are a few still surviving,and yes even they compromise,to exhist when you don’t fit means adapting to fit best you can given your think differently to the masses, hey! Hang on! Isn’t that just like my life as an aspie?

sure is,i do whatever I can to coexhist in a society I do not understand or agree with, I have no choice,

to try and live outside it’s rules I would struggle as everything is owned or controlled by Someone!

thank you my hippy friend,peace  and love  To you and all., x()x()x()x.the four hippies Lol.

Thank you for some of the people that agree with me when I said that life is unfair and for saying that some things or everything would or should be free like food and water especially as I would like for someone to understand what I mean and what I am saying.

Thank you,i  just saw the original poster struggling like your Daughter to see why mankind should own the most basic needs in life and deny them to those with nothing or any means to earn them,

she isvif coarse very right in her thinking, sadly Society has to keep pedalling as we have decided this race is to be run this way, x()x

Ah Lone, a soul after my own heart, I have dreamed about that same hippieish commune many times, doing what you can to contribute and a 'hive' that looks out for it's own, but with due respect for all others too. Alas I think we are hopelessly naive. ()()()

No! You haven't offended me at all! I like discussions like this where people can debate different points of view, I think it's interesting and healthy for us all to think differently and it's only by listening to different points of view that I find I can learn new things. 

I remember a similar discussion years ago with my teenage daughter who was complaining that female sanitary products aren't free. While i could agree with her that it did seem unfair, men do often need to buy razors because their job demands that they be clean-shaven. It's not a perfect analogy but, in a perfect world, all of these things would ideally be free.

We certainly don't live in a perfect world but some things have improved, like us being able to chat on here despite being hundreds of miles apart! 

just to add as a young person none of the cost made sense to me either?

I had simplistic views, to live,to help others to live, I would grow crops to feed and others would help. If they couldn’t then they could exhist in my tribe doing whatever they could to keep living with me,

so if I suddenly could no longer work hard I could cook, or wash,or care for the young. Just coexist in a joint mind to keep living with whatever we could create amongst ourselves,

yes so very simplistic, 

mankind has forgotten that this planet belongs to all beings, not owned by few.

We have lost our way big time, be greedy, surround ourselves in modern wants and desires, for What? To be better than the Joneses?

If I could find a hippy commune that truly worked I would be off today. Self sufficiency, a community based on love and kindness, those who can do one thing supported by others who can do other things, 

x()x to all, peace and love( no charge for the hugs,all free)

Edited to correctvmany joined upbwords, my keyboard is playing up.

Hi Endymion I agree totally with what you are saying,,,,but, to try and understand the original question I assumed they were unable to see why the most basic things in life have to have a cost in monetary terms, a cost at all. Surely if you need wealth of  any kind But are unable to work or need support then this is a wrong way of society to discriminate towards those that have nothing from no fault of their own?

so if you need help or support but cannot pay you   die because society says it must be paid for or bartered for.

The tribes i  had in mind but didn’t describe sufficiently all work together for a common goal. No hierarchy . Maybe I should have been more specific,?

i don’t always give full information as in dates,times,I have poor memory facilities due to dyslexia, mostly memory but also eye to brain,brain to hand coordination.

maybe if I had said neolithic  or cave man tribes.?

taking it back to the most basic of needs and not based on wealth or ability to own more animals.

to just live and help others live! Survival as a team?

sorry I May have offended you,i May have offended the original poster by suggesting they are child like in their thoughts?

not my intention. I just read the words as written and took it to be from a young mind not understanding mankind’s greed.the unfairness of wealth as a means to suppress poverty,

 X()x to all.

Even in those types of tribes though, some members / families have more cattle than others and cattle = wealth in such communities (rather than our idea of money = wealth). Those families tend to have bigger / better equipped houses than families with fewer or no cattle. 

What does make those tribal families more equal, if not equal in terms of wealth, is that everyone does have to gather their own water and farm their own fields / fish from their own boats. These things (crops / fish) are bartered too, just like we exchange money for goods here, so they're not so different from us really.

None of the things (water, crops, meat, fish) are free because every member of the tribe contributes their time, effort, hard work into gathering these things - all day, every day.   

Life is unfair though, I think most of us would agree with that when considering how events such as the banking crisis affected blue-collar workers much more than the big bankers despite it being them who caused the crisis.   

Dear sholay09 I can see exactly what you mean.I think?

in certain tribes in some countries the people have no money, they hunt together to eat, they work together to build shelter, water is preciouse and  great effort is made in some tribes to collect it and use it wisely.

so your point of view is valid.

May I ask you have you suddenly just been told you no longer are allowed an allowance or some kind of support to help you continue to live as you always have?

you need not answer my question if you chose not to.

as a young boy I always questioned why things had to keep going up in price? Why some had loads of money and some had none.

yes it is a simplistic view but if we were to go back to basic fundamental life all we need is.

All working together to feed and give shelter to each other, 

I for one would love to live a life of working with others just to survive, all working as one. To feed care and support one another.

 Sadly mankind has decided there must be money, money is not good as those who have most of it control those who have little or none.

it is a greedy based concept, devoid of humanity.

I wish you happiness, please keep posting or talking, if you want to vote up just because it makes you happy or stops you feeling angry then feel free to do so.

Maybe you voted them up as it gave you some kind of fear that you said things they didn’t appear to agree on, or understand.kind of i am sorry you did not agree with me, sorry.

i May have all this wrong but you seem to be a young minded kind person who is struggling to see how life can be so strange and unfair?

take care, and thank you for talking to us,

Sholay09 said:

that we should not have or we cannot have some free events and other free things including like food, water and more others for all ages when they should not even say that at all as it is wrong, unfair, makes me more angry,

Glad Tidings to all, here. I might regret contributing here... yet I think that I can see something in both opposing points-of-view. This indeed could turn into a very long discussion, yet I may begin from a very simplified standpoint:

In a City, these things must be paid for, in exchange for "maintaining a city and saftey within it". (Plumbing, Police, Healthcare, Politics... etc.)

...Without (not within) a City... these things are "free"... because they are Natural.

All of this depends upon your own Age, Job, Inheritance, Social Status...

...And I Post all of that in wondering... might that sort of thing be what you are trying to say, Miss Sholay09...?

I agree with Former Member, it would be an interesting discussion about how self-sufficiency would work on a grand scale.

I'd also like to know who the "ignorant people" are, because I think both sides of the debate could be given quite intelligently. There are many sources of information out there to ensure that neither side would need to be ignorant of either their own perspective or, indeed, the opposing one.  

I think disagreement should be the basis of further discussion - not hatred.  I get disconcerted if my own opinions are challenged - but I'm always prepared to listen to what the other person has to say.  Sometimes, I even end up changing or moderating my own beliefs as a consequence. 

Food, water and shelter are basic essentials of life, yes - as per Maslow's hierarchy of needs - but that still doesn't mean they need to be free.  Food can be intensely costly to produce.  Houses need to be built, by people who are paid to build them, using materials that have to be produced by people paid to produce them.  If they were then simply given away - how are the builders and producers to be paid for their labour and materials?

Ideally, of course, everything would be free.  But then people wouldn't have any incentive to work to produce the stuff.  I like the idea of self-sufficiency - being able to build my own shelter, grow my own food, etc.  Such things can be done very cheaply.  It's actually remarkable, once you pare things down to our basic needs, how little an income we would all need.  I live on what is assessed (in our society) as a 'below-the-poverty-line' income.  Yet I'm not impoverished, financially or spiritually, because I don't need much money to live on.  I'm happy with a frugal, basic life.  But not everyone wants to live on survival incomes (unfortunately).  It's a deeply unfair world, too, with the way wealth is distributed, and with people starving when there is food enough.  But making things like water, food and shelter free... well... maybe you could explain how that might work, taking everything into account.

Oh sorry I made a mistake as I do hate it when people do not seem to agree with me on something like that.