He can afford to disappear for a week every month?
That’s what I’m saying!
Yeah, sign me up! Not for the starvation thing, the money thing.
Sure it’s not normal. He’s chosen the Hermit path. Fair play to him.
That’s about the scariest shit I can imagine, but I admire him.
As a practicing Buddist, I do this often. Smoke enough weed, and an empty shack becomes a temple of delight.
but in this crazy crazy world, is normal so good?
Sounds like buddism to me
silent hill protagonist
Umm, hello, is this the Based department? I’d like to report someone…
Fake: Anon has friends
Gay: Imaginary friend is a guy
Open and shut case.
Bake em away, toys.
I bet his friend is never worried about stupid shit.
I’d be worried about rats nibbling my nutsack while I sleep on the floor of an abandoned factory.
That is a basic survival worry. I tend to believe that humans faced with real survival issues are less negatively impacted than those who have material worries.
My stress about work is killing me.
My stress about not freezing to death leads me to do things like chopping wood, lighting fires, and maintaining my chimney. Which are all good things.
Chop wood, carry water.
My wife doesn’t love multi day backpacking. But she loves the glimpse of how I am and how we are - during that time.
Our priorities - Stay warm, stay dry, fetch and purify water, hike the right distances to get out with food in hand, packing and unpacking our gear, avoid dangerous wildlife, cook, sleep.
When every day that’s your goal state it’s super simple - stress is actually just a response to things that might kill you again. And not 20 steps away from it. “I might perform poorly, my clothes might not be appropriate for the job, I’m running 3 minutes behind - which may cost me my job, which could be long term, and financially we won’t recover, and then we might lose the house or starve”. Up against “I need water and dry clothes”.
I think the reason it’s not a problem is there’s agency you can take over that stuff, and it’s not deferring to a blatantly malevolent system designed to crush you into dust and extract the value for things like sleeping inside and getting the ever diminishing treats that make you not kill yourself while you’re doing that.
whereas when it’s cold your body does stuff by itself to heat up, and there’s usually more you can do besides to fix or at least emotionally cope with the problem in healthy ways-warm clothes, blankets, wood chopping, chimney maintenance, something inadvisable with nichrome wire, etc. When you’re fighting a nazi, you have to be moving or carefully still, and the moving actually matters and maybe you kill or escape the nazi before it kills you. your actions actually matter, even if the base situation is more outwardly harrowing.
there’s no cognitive dissonance to survival issues, no worrying about how you’re seen, no helleresque bullshit. nothing even stopping you from acting but your own assessments.
Indeed, the majority of us aren’t made to worry about arbitrary problems that are beyond our control constantly more than trivial and survival related problems.
Weird only to a mind that’s used to being constantly bombarded with low quality entertainment, lulled into comfortable numbness with mostly unnecessary material goods. While this is overly extreme (and potentially hazardous… though that being 4chan it’s probably exaggerated, if even true), most people would do well to take periods of disconnecting entirely and have minimal entertainment available. Zen Buddhist retreats are great by my experience. Yoga Retreats are nice but you need to weed out the ones that are really just masturbatory Wellness holidays for rich white women. Vipassana retreats are probably good too tho I personally haven’t been to one of those. But just starting meditation would be great. https://www.wakingup.com/ is a low bar access point with guided meditations but also a lot of great philosophical discussions from several different branches of thought (notably Stoicism and Buddhism but others too). And you can get it for free (request scholarship) if the price seems steep.
Shout-out to my man Sam.
I know a lot of people here hate him for his political takes, but his meditation app can be divorced from his podcast career. His science based approach to meditation, with no spiritual conflation is so refreshing.
I’ve had so many life changing realizations about my own mind thanks to him. His efforts to emphasise the outcomes of compassion and stoicism in the face of hostility have changed my outlook on engaging with abrasive people, and is one of the most important lessons I’ve learnt in a long time.
Furthermore, the realization that free will is an illusion helps to change how you view people who annoy you. They’re victims of their own minds, and slaves to every prior cause in their life. Forgiveness and tolerance are both rational, and impossible perspectives to deny, once you can see it clearly.
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Anon’s friend is just Batman going through his early training montage.
Post-industrial Buddhism is what it is. Yeah like it’d be great to do that in a cave or forest or open prairie but who the fuck can afford those things?
Abandoned buildings are free as long as you don’t fuck with the native inhabitants’ meth.
I would just worry of asbestos or heavy metal contamination in the buildings, especially if I’m sleeping on or near the floor
Are you worried about this sort of thing in general? I would argue that these things are pretty esoteric concerns.
All the good caves are taken.
who the fuck can afford those things?
Anybody? Where do you live that hanging out in the forest costs money?
OP didn’t mean the cost of going there, they meant still paying the bills while going to the forest instead of work
That’s still going to be a problem living in an abandoned building though. That part doesn’t change regardless of where their friend goes to meditate (unless that place is work I guess)
Transportation to and from the forest isn’t free.
Also some places have laws against camping on public land to discourage homelessness and these would likely fall afoul of those.
I promose you those places also have laws against camping on private property in an abandoned building.
Yes, but not as many people go to abandoned buildings so you’re less likely to be seen by others and reported.
murrca.
there are no commons.
In the middle of a city, which doesn’t have nearby forests.
If we’re talking about the US, that’s no city I’ve ever seen except maybe the southwest
Actually the larger parks near me (the only places that have enough trees to qualify as something close to a forest) do cost money (american city metro area)
Easter Island
What forest? Most people live nowhere near a forest
Most American cities have a forest within a few miles. Our largest city, for example, has 50 acres of forest right in the Bronx.
Most people don’t live in America either
Most people on 4chan do
Uh… that isn’t normal.
Honey, there hasn’t been an ounce of “normal” anywhere since at least 2001.
oof, never thought I’d see the baseline for “normal” set to after covid.
Jeez. I totally meant to type 2001, not 2021.
*in america…
Supply of “normal” is increasingly limited outside of it, too.
