Living The Dream: What Do You Own – Really?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I would say that "losing your home and everything you own, and moving into temporary subsidized housing" qualifies as "not owning anything", though. I mean, it's a step up from losing your kids and living on the street, which happens to altogether too many people, but it's still pretty much an all-around totally shitty situation.

http://news.opb.org/article/number-homeless-families-oregon-increases/

Oh, and here's a bit about our homeless camp: http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2011/06/portland_extends_contract_for.html

[kingyak]

You were living alone, with no financial input from anyone else?

Until the last 6 months, when I moved in with a friend to save $50/month on rent.

[The Rev]

A kerosene heater and sun showers in an apartment? Do you even have any idea what you're talking about? 1. Illegal as fuck, you WILL be evicted if your landlord finds out, and 2. kerosene heaters kill people from carbon monoxide poisoning all the time. WTF, that's completely idiotic.

A house, actually. In this case I know exactly what I'm talking about because I did it for about 4 months (January-March, if memory serves) because paying the $800 to get the gas turned back on would have meant giving up things I wanted more (and even if I'd cut those out, I still would have to live without gas for at least a couple months, so I hoped for the winter to stay mild and started trying to put back enough to turn the gas back on before next fall). I CHOSE to risk the landlord finding out and evicting me (fortunately low-risk in my case, since the landlord was absentee and I CHOSE to risk carbon monoxide (thought did keep a window cracked to cut down on the risk). Not a good choice, or a legal one, a smart one, or one I'd likely make again, but still a choice.

Kids are (mostly) a choice, until you have them. That's why that argument is facile.

Birth control fails, and abortions aren't free, or even cheap. Sometimes people plan to have kids because they're financially stable, and then they get divorced, and then the economy tanks. Sometimes people simply make bad decisions. Regardless, children are born. What would you do if you knocked someone up? Do you have a choice?

But there's still a choice there. Even in the case of failed birth control, there was still a choice to have sex knowing that birth control isn't 100% effective. I'd prefer a world with universal healthcare and a scientific understanding of abortion as a backup plan for when a condom breaks, but until we get that you have to accept that having sex could lead to having a child. The only time a child is not in any way a choice is in cases of rape.

Real life happens. When you see poverty increase, that means that people who were not in poverty before have entered it.

No argument with you there, but you equate bad shit happening to a total loss of control, you're buying into the "victim mentality" that the well-off like to believe affects everyone lower on the spectrum than them.

Are you saying that accepting reality is playing to the victim mentality? If so, then I completely disagree with you.

[LMNO]

Hey, stop knocking my extremely priviledged worldview!



Anyway, it's sounding like The Rev has the notion that the perfect state of being is a hedonistic, "do as you please" series of behaviors 100% of the time.  He neglects to notice that this state of being has never existed, at any point in time.  

Life is hard work, even for us rich white men.  

And, as an aside, I should point out that the most fun and joy I have is entirely free of monetary cost.  I have things, and they make me comfortable, but they don't make me happy.

No. No. No.

The point is that what many of the things we call choices are not choices, but driven by necessity. Within those necessities lie certain choices, but the choices are still being driven by some external force.

Hold the phone.

Your entire thesis is, "I can't do what I want, because reality is in the way"?



Chapter 5


Life is unfair, wear a helmet.
The wise spag wears a helmet, but also drops hammers.

Anything could be a punchline.
Even the wise spag gets punched.

Chaos never ends!  
Even its vacuum has a presence.
To struggle against it
is like pissing in the wind.







Bolded for emphasis.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

A kerosene heater and sun showers in an apartment? Do you even have any idea what you're talking about? 1. Illegal as fuck, you WILL be evicted if your landlord finds out, and 2. kerosene heaters kill people from carbon monoxide poisoning all the time. WTF, that's completely idiotic.

A house, actually. In this case I know exactly what I'm talking about because I did it for about 4 months (January-March, if memory serves) because paying the $800 to get the gas turned back on would have meant giving up things I wanted more (and even if I'd cut those out, I still would have to live without gas for at least a couple months, so I hoped for the winter to stay mild and started trying to put back enough to turn the gas back on before next fall). I CHOSE to risk the landlord finding out and evicting me (fortunately low-risk in my case, since the landlord was absentee and I CHOSE to risk carbon monoxide (thought did keep a window cracked to cut down on the risk). Not a good choice, or a legal one, a smart one, or one I'd likely make again, but still a choice.

Kids are (mostly) a choice, until you have them. That's why that argument is facile.

Birth control fails, and abortions aren't free, or even cheap. Sometimes people plan to have kids because they're financially stable, and then they get divorced, and then the economy tanks. Sometimes people simply make bad decisions. Regardless, children are born. What would you do if you knocked someone up? Do you have a choice?

But there's still a choice there. Even in the case of failed birth control, there was still a choice to have sex knowing that birth control isn't 100% effective. I'd prefer a world with universal healthcare and a scientific understanding of abortion as a backup plan for when a condom breaks, but until we get that you have to accept that having sex could lead to having a child. The only time a child is not in any way a choice is in cases of rape.

Real life happens. When you see poverty increase, that means that people who were not in poverty before have entered it.

No argument with you there, but you equate bad shit happening to a total loss of control, you're buying into the "victim mentality" that the well-off like to believe affects everyone lower on the spectrum than them.

As I said before, 1. Once kids happen, you have 'em. Are you celibate? Because if you're not celibate, then you are, by your own logic, making the choice to have children. Furthermore, rape removes that choice from many women. Are you going to argue that "there are programs for that"? 

and 2. NOBODY except for you has introduced the idea that poverty removes choice entirely. It, as I said before and you have chosen to disregard, severely restricts choice.

I do not have a victim mentality, I can assure you of that. But I have been impoverished, I have physical marks of childhood malnourishment, I have lived in abominable conditions, and I am keenly aware of the advantages that I have which resulted in coming out of poverty. Many of which advantages others are not privy to.

You seem to have a fairly common "If I did it, so can anyone" outlook, which is erroneous thinking because it assumes that anyone who is impoverished has the same set of opportunities and circumstances. Try a mental flexibility exercise; think to yourself "what if I hadn't been able..." about certain of the options you had, like using a kerosene heater. Imagine some of the reasons that wouldn't have been possible in other circumstances.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

You were living alone, with no financial input from anyone else?

Until the last 6 months, when I moved in with a friend to save $50/month on rent.

Well aren't you quite the virtuous virgin.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Hey, stop knocking my extremely priviledged worldview!



Anyway, it's sounding like The Rev has the notion that the perfect state of being is a hedonistic, "do as you please" series of behaviors 100% of the time.  He neglects to notice that this state of being has never existed, at any point in time.  

Life is hard work, even for us rich white men.  

And, as an aside, I should point out that the most fun and joy I have is entirely free of monetary cost.  I have things, and they make me comfortable, but they don't make me happy.

No. No. No.

The point is that what many of the things we call choices are not choices, but driven by necessity. Within those necessities lie certain choices, but the choices are still being driven by some external force.

Hold the phone.

Your entire thesis is, "I can't do what I want, because reality is in the way"?



Chapter 5


Life is unfair, wear a helmet.
The wise spag wears a helmet, but also drops hammers.

Anything could be a punchline.
Even the wise spag gets punched.

Chaos never ends!  
Even its vacuum has a presence.
To struggle against it
is like pissing in the wind.







Bolded for emphasis.

I REALLY don't think that's what he's getting at. And if you are saying what you seem to be saying, it's just more entitled bullcrap that passes judgement on people who aren't doing as well as you are.

[kingyak]

Are you saying that accepting reality is playing to the victim mentality? If so, then I completely disagree with you.

No, I'm saying that claiming that reality removes all of your choices is playing into the victim mentality. There are always choices. The less money you have, the more the available choices suck (and I fully advocate society doing everything possible to alleviate that suck), but you can always choose to do something else if you think it'll suck less.

[LMNO]

I think what I'm trying to say is that I haven't been in real poverty ever, and I haven't been in faux poverty for decades, but even when bio survival is accounted for, I still experience life as hard work, in terms of reaching my joy.

You might consider that rich-boy entitlement, but I see it as that which Rev wants, never has existed.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I think what I'm trying to say is that I haven't been in real poverty ever, and I haven't been in faux poverty for decades, but even when bio survival is accounted for, I still experience life as hard work, in terms of reaching my joy.

You might consider that rich-boy entitlement, but I see it as that which Rev wants, never has existed.

Life is hard and unfair. Some people have more luxuries than others, including the luxury of purely human pursuits.

My take on what Rev was getting at is that until basic needs are met, you can't even start on "happiness", and the current system is increasingly designed to make it more difficult for more people to have their basic needs met, at least with any semblance of security.

What is happiness, anyway? It's certainly not something we have an automatic right to.

The luxury to pursue your own interests is truly a valuable thing, and the more you have of it, the more time you have to spend inventing your own unhappiness. Some people have more of that luxury than others. It's not tied to money, other than as a construct of society (one which is very difficult to escape). It's tied fairly directly to security, whether that security is owning a shack and a garden outright, or having ample income to lease a condo.

It's always been interesting to me that many of the people I know who have the most subjective difficulty navigating life are the people who have had, relatively speaking, the easiest lives. I feel sorry for them, in a way, because it seems like they are unable to appreciate what they have, and also sorry for them because it seems as if, should things actually become hard for them, they would simply die.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Are you saying that accepting reality is playing to the victim mentality? If so, then I completely disagree with you.

No, I'm saying that claiming that reality removes all of your choices is playing into the victim mentality. There are always choices. The less money you have, the more the available choices suck (and I fully advocate society doing everything possible to alleviate that suck), but you can always choose to do something else if you think it'll suck less.

and 2. NOBODY except for you has introduced the idea that poverty removes choice entirely. It, as I said before and you have chosen to disregard, severely restricts choice.

[Jenne]

My husband has a saying: "This must be a problem of the well-fed."

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

My husband has a saying: "This must be a problem of the well-fed."

First world problems!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I wanted to mention that, upthread, there seemed to be significant conflation of "happiness" with "fun". It's an interesting conflation, because you can have happiness without fun, and unhappy people are still capable of having fun, although the rush of happiness chemicals associated with fun is usually short-lived in otherwise unhappy people.

[kingyak]

As I said before, 1. Once kids happen, you have 'em. Are you celibate? Because if you're not celibate, then you are, by your own logic, making the choice to have children. Furthermore, rape removes that choice from many women. Are you going to argue that "there are programs for that"? 

Even once you have kids, you do have the option of giving them up (not an easy choice in most cases, but a choice). More celibate than I want to be, but not entirely, and I accept that it could lead to children. As for rape, my argument is "I wish there were programs for that."

and 2. NOBODY except for you has introduced the idea that poverty removes choice entirely. It, as I said before and you have chosen to disregard, severely restricts choice.

Maybe I misunderstood what you meant by:

But that assessment only works if you have a certain amount of leeway to begin with.

If so, I apologize.

I do not have a victim mentality, I can assure you of that. But I have been impoverished, I have physical marks of childhood malnourishment, I have lived in abominable conditions, and I am keenly aware of the advantages that I have which resulted in coming out of poverty. Many of which advantages others are not privy to.

You seem to have a fairly common "If I did it, so can anyone" outlook, which is erroneous thinking because it assumes that anyone who is impoverished has the same set of opportunities and circumstances. Try a mental flexibility exercise; think to yourself "what if I hadn't been able..." about certain of the options you had, like using a kerosene heater. Imagine some of the reasons that wouldn't have been possible in other circumstances.

I think where we're butting heads here is that I never suggested (or meant to suggest) that you have the poverty is a choice and you have the choice to not be poor. I wouldn't suggest that, because it's not true. I was merely saying that you always have a choice of how to deal with a shitty situation. It's usually not a good choice, and in most cases the consequences are worse than the consequences of staying in your current situation, but there is a choice.