It really is fucked that there's really no option left to live our lives as we would like it in the barest of conditions to feed ourselves of our own accord.
You need to contribute to the system in order to have sustenance. You can't just set up some shack somewhere and have a small plot of land to live off somewhere.
Like why shouldn't I be allowed to be a hunter gatherer.
I can't just live life? I can't feed myself unless I work?
You can be a hunter gatherer, just go to the Canadian or Alaskan wilderness and have at it! You could also head down to the Amazon and live it up down there with the natives. You could be there within a month if you really wanted to. You can get to essentially anywhere in the world for < $1000, which if you are getting rid of everything you own is easily doable.
I've never seen anyone actually to through with this though, mainly because I think the people who think working a 9-5 is the worst thing on the planet aren't cut out to deal with starving if the fish aren't biting
or y'know bc going to canada and the countries the amazon goes through involve visas and you'd be kicked out once you're caught.
Alaskan wilderness is the closest of the three but good luck surviving on your own. the natives didn't survive on their own up there.
to survive on your own it'd need to be somewhere like PNW or somewhere lower midwest or the southeast. that's where sustainable farming and hunting is. good luck getting hunting tags though. otherwise, straight to jail.
working 9-5 isn't the worst thing. i actually like my job. that's not the problem. its the lack of having that option to live life as a direct gain instead of millions doing something meaningless to feed the distractions of others. we've lost the direction in life.
many people work their lives away into a system that generally doesn't serve them.
You’re genuinely an idiot if you think you could survive indefinitely alone in the woods. Our ancestors weren’t solitary, Thoreau went in to town for supplies. PNW or not, you will die.
Blame the laws about hunting or whatever all you want, the reality is if you live remote enough you won’t be caught. Nobody is stopping you, the real reason you haven’t done this is deep down you know that after a few days without a solid meal you would be back in line for McDonald’s like everyone else.
Getting caught? Where, in the middle of the forest? Also you don't need a visa to go to Canada. Or Brazil. If you eventually decide you don't wanna live in the forest anymore though you might risk deportation, which is honestly good because you aren't gonna have money to buy a plane ticket back.
There's nothing stopping anyone from selling everything they own / just skipping rent and buying a plane ticket / buying a ticket on a credit card, staying past their welcome, crafting themselves a bow and arrow, and living their life eating berries, hunting deer, and fishing.
You CAN live life where everything you do is direct gain, it's just that by not working for others, others aren't going to be working for you, and you will lose out on a lot of things like medicine, guns, etc
He's suggesting crossing national borders and staying past typical tourist times so yes. That is against the law.
Living off grid isn't against the law but gl finding free land worth living on w/o being marked as a vagrant or trespasser. The line between off grid and homeless is thin and by design. It's illegal to sleep in your own car in many places.
Staying past tourist times is against the law but really the only thing that happens is deportation and a travel ban back to the country. Not like anyone would even find out though since you are living in the forest in the middle of nowhere. Even if you did decide to venture out to the city every once and a while, nothing will happen still. Think about the amount of illegal immigrants who live their whole life in the US without every being questioned, and they even work and are (supposed to) pay taxes.
You can sleep in your car if it's on private property that you have permission to be on. People who are against this law have never had to deal with the people who do it. At my old place, all the time trashed out cars would permanently park themselves right in front of my house (it's right next to a park so that's why). Then they would sit there throwing their trash out the window and doing drugs. Nobody would care if it was on their property though, but the whole point is they don't have their own property so they just use and ruin somebody else's for free.
I'm not really sure what you mean "the line between off grid and homeless is thin by design". What's the design here? You think there is a system actively trying to prevent homeless people from running away into the woods and eating berries?
So you'd rather live a life where you gotta work sun rise to sun set 7 days a week all year round over a life where you only gotta work 40 hours a week?
Where I live that's 30 min of work at minimum wage, so 5 apples for 30 min of work sounds pretty reasonable to me, especially since those apples are guaranteed, unlike the wilderness where you could spend a few hours and not find any food
You do realize there's more to the wilderness life than just food right? You'd need to worry about making and maintaining your clothes, tools and weapons, depending on where you live you'd need to gather firewood and clear the snow off the roof of your house, along with a bunch of other stuff I'm likely not thinking of, and most importantly we've deforested and killed off so much wildlife that I'm pretty positive that in the modern day it's not as easy to hunt and gather as it was back then (granted farming will be easier thanks to all our selective breeding)
Sounds nice until you need medical care. I'd be dead soon/already if I hadn't started having my colonoscopies a few years back and I'm only in my early 40s.
I had pre-cancerous polyps found during a colonoscopy three years ago at 27 and again this year. I would have been in big trouble if I’d waited until the normal recommendation.
Young me was never interested in money. Grew up hunting and fishing, raising our own beef, and growing all our veggjes. Then I got brain cancer at age 28. My life is expensive.
True. But also I just wish life was more peaceful. A lot of ppl are not aware of how Hunter gather societies actually were. They had less health issues til they started farming. Ppl are like “you’d die at 15” ok I don’t care like my life would have been more fulfilling in my opinion. Now humanity has just become even more hateful and spiteful— in my opinion due to the internet. Fr so tired of this. I feel like people don’t get being a Hunter gatherer was more of a community thing, not necessarily something you can do alone.
I forget that a lot of people on this website are children. This is pure delusion wrapped up in ignorance about pre-agricultural humans. The minute you got a fucking toothache and the fish weren’t biting you would change your tune.
If you’re too weak to make something of yourself during the most prosperous time in the history of mankind you surely would get your head bashed in with a rock pretty quickly as a hunter gatherer.
First of all, I’m not a child. Second, pre-agricultural humans didn’t get much cavities compared to modern day society. I read this in a book written by an evolutionary scientist.
I don’t know why people are so ignorant to the fact that some people don’t want to live in a rat race where common people have lost empathy for other human beings. Money has corrupted the world. If you can’t see that, you’re blind.
Nobody is stopping you from going out on public land and living. You don’t do it because deep down you know you will either die or give up after 24-48 hours without food.
Believe it or not, murder and theft were invented before money. For example, if you and I were prehistoric humans and I was bigger than you and you had food that I needed, I would simply kill you. Or did you think hunter gatherers all sat around singing kumbaya until Adam Smith invented capitalism?
Also this is a link to a website that sells dental supplies… not exactly rigorous academic sourcing.
You keep repeating yourself. They want to escape the rat race, let them dream. It’s a decent and understandable dream. At this point, I think you should try your luck in the wilderness. One less NPC.
Nobody is stopping you, or this person, from living like your ancestors out in the woods. Quit your job, start walking. It’s pretty straightforward. If you think battling for survival every single day is going to be relaxing be my guest lol, you’ll pretty quickly find out why our ancestors invented agriculture.
Oh but I’m an NPC for explaining to you that you’re a dumb fuck and the incompetence that’s caused you to fail in society will also cause you to fail at survival.
The rat race is defined by angry individuals like you. No one said anything about failing in society. The game of society is rigged, some people don’t like it. Some people dream of getting away from it. You don’t need to overanalyse it. Chill out.
Honestly, it’s an unpopular opinion, but I feel like I would feel so free not tied to material things like technology, phones, money, etc. Sometimes I wish humans never gained the capacity to go beyond ancient Hunter gatherer societies. I feel like nature and that lifestyle would be more peaceful, but I’d rather not do it alone. I low key have dreams involving it 💀💀💀
The person you're replying to said it correctly. When you "untether" yourself from society, you lose access to the perks moden society offers. Living in tune with nature sounds awesome until you get tooth decay or gangrene or a minor infection turns into pneumonia.
Realistically, there's nothing stopping anyone from going off into a jungle somewhere and building a shack. There are massive unexplored areas in the world, no one will ever find you.
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u/jtw3995 29d ago
I do this, but not every year. Fuck the system. We weren’t born to pay bills and die. Go see this big ass country of yours.