Sorry for doing a kind of poor job of responding to people's various posts on
the big "life simplification" thread. I got a little fixated there on trying to
"condense" (haha) several years of rumination into a series of three posts. I
think I've got all the epic monographs out of my system, now!
Jynx writes in his latest phlog (not going to link to it just yet because he
seems to be tweaking the software used for his phlog and I want to wait until
things stabilise) that my latest post has left him feeling contemplative.
Honestly, if I've gotten one person to think about this stuff, it was worth the
hours of writing.
Earlier, Jynx wrote that he felt he was personally dishonest about his use of
technology. Well, me too, man! I really want to emphasise that all the many
pages of stuff I just wrote is stuff I've been thinking about and tentatively
starting to think I believe, for years. It describes a way of life I've been
moving toward, step by step, for all those years, but I'm still a long, long
way from being able to hold myself up as an example. I'm no monk.
Tomasino mentions some of the archaic tech he enjoys and collects. I like old
tech stuff too, not just retrocomputing but mechanical watches, film cameras,
fountain pens, etc. Most of it avoids some of the perils associated with modern
digital tech, but it can still be problematic. There tend to be very few casual
users of these devices today. Most of them are enthusiasts and/or collectors.
Which is fine, of course, I'm not trying to criticise anybody. But if you get
fed up with expensive or non-sustainable tech and decide to "do it old school"
in order to save money and/or the planet, it's _very_ easy to find yourself
falling into that enthusiast community/mindset, and all of a sudden you're
buying permanent fountain pens more often than you used to buy disposable
ballpoints. Which, if it makes you happy, more power to you, but if your
original motivation was being fed-up with a disposable society and wanting to
make a change, then you've just slipped up.
Tomasino also mentions daydreaming about apocalyptic scenarios where all his
low-tech hobbies suddenly become survival skils. I'd sure be lying if I said I
didn't do this, too!
