Yes, that is very true. I have experienced all these stages in the past decades of my life in various strengths, so I pretty much know about depression. And there is that distinction of emotional numbness which is "severe depression" and sadness/melancholy which is not as "severe". From that stems the paradox that if someone is in that numbness state and gets better, he actually from the outside seems to get worse, as the less severe stage is the one that expresses itself in sadness.

True - it is of no use to convince yourself that you are happy. But it is also not realistic to expect a state of continous happiness. Life as it is really is a series of ups and downs, of light and darknesss. And indeed happiness comes from the ability to feel emotions, to act upon them. And that is what I meant by getting out of the emotional numbness - personally (and I have to say that probably this differs for each person) this is what changed in me - I am more "in touch" with emotions and feelings now. For me, this inevitably means also a lot of sorrow and grief, but at least it allows for happiness also.

Greetings, Aurora

That situation doesn't exist with anyone here, fortunately. But there was reason to think it did, when several members posted resurgences of "PAD". Of course, that later was cleared up, and it was concluded that nobody was looking for depression, rather a new wave of more positive emotions. So really, there's no reason to discuss the matter, its just that Layzie asked for my story and well, things took off from there.

I agree. I think through a series of misinterpreted posts (with perhaps myself to blame), there was a notion running around that I was trying to convince people to be happy when they are not. That is not true, and that is not the case with myself. I want people to be genuinely happy, and that means finding what makes you happy and pursuing those things.

I think part of the problem is that we're maybe trying to be too poetic and eloquent, as Sempu said. There's a time and place, but sometimes it can get lost in translation.

This all points up the need to be very clear about the context we're talking in. This is a thread titled "Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible," so that's the default context. That's where most of my postings have been aimed. The title isn't "Ways to perpetuate or ennoble the depression of...". Mind you, neither is it "Ways to eliminate the depression...", so there is a certain assumption in the word 'cope' that depression is permanent for those who have it. I don't agree; I look to stretch that definition of 'cope' towards 'change'.

Much discussion about it being unwise to convince yourself that you're happy. What about the other way around? Anyone ever convince themselves that they were unhappy? How'd that happen? I know I've done it.

That's it... it's also about Pandora being intangible to us. I don't want that changed (unless you can take me there :P )
Pandora is my home. I don't want to have to forget about it.

Thats the thing, after deeply thinking "why do I have PAD after seeing this, and others have PAE?" and I believe (as a basic thought) I do have PAE while watching Avatar, I have all the time in the world to watch Jakes life unfold, to watch his life completely change forever, and I dont want it to end. I watch it smiling as I see him with Neytiri, how they are learning about each other, and he is trying to learn the Na'vi ways. He's getting a new life. And I'm happy, because I'm a part of it. In that time I'm there and I'm lost in that world. Then once the credits roll, the life is gone. I'm back in the world I wanted to get away from. Having to go to work tomorrow, then school...

I believe thats what's the problem. Anyone else agree or feel the same?

Yes, I definitely feel that... :'(

I see my home.. for 2.5 hours. Then I end up stuck here again... With all the other people, all the problems, everything that's wrong here that is perfect for the Na'vi... :'(

There is a strong contrast between our world and the Na'vi world. But there doesn't have to be.

Think about what would make that contrast less extreme. What makes you happy?

Going to raves, being with people who are close to my heart and understand me, being free, being away from people who are mean, spiteful, basically those who don't See, being with the one I love, being at a new place.... things like that

I don't WANT it to be 'less extreme'. That contrast is what gives me something in life, it's something to wish for... Unless you can create Pandora here, then I don't want to lose that.

Also I forgot making music and listening to music

It sounds like you're going through some stress created by these "mean people". Have you tried meditation? Giving yourself time to clear the mind of all the nonsense that surrounds us can really help. I think you'd be surprised how hard it is to think of nothing. It shows how cluttered our minds are, but if you keep at it you should be able to think and relax and reflect on your life clearly.

Keep pursuing the things that make you happy. And the things that make you sad, stay away from. That doesn't necessarily mean run away from your fears, rather, run away from any of these mean people.

I wasn't really talking to you. But I'll respond anyways.

I guess, what's confusing me is this contradiction.

You don't want to lose sight of Pandora. I'm the same way. Again, I don't understand why you think otherwise. But wouldn't creating a Pandora here make the comparison less extreme? That's actually what I'm aiming for - to create Pandora here. In order to do that, you need to have a clear vision of what Pandora is. So I wouldn't want to take that away, not that I would know how to anyways. But along with the vision, you need a desire to make your life better for you. This process of working towards a Pandora here should make you happier. So you can be away from home, but still be happy knowing you're working towards it. It's the journey, not the destination so to speak.

I still do not really understand you. Why would it be actually worse for you, if you could have some of the things from Pandora or the NA'Vi here on Earth? Why does it have to be all or nothing and especially why is it better to have a stronger contrast? Would you actually increase the contrast voluntarily by living in a place that is even more in contrast with Pandora or in a place and environment that is closer to it?

What DO you wish for - what is it, that dreaming of Pandora makes you wish for? If it is not getting closer to that way of life what is it? Really beeing on Pandora, really beeing a NA'Vi, I would guess. To what does it inspire you?

Yeah. :'(

I don't see how I could, except possibly future genetic engineering and maybe physical modifications. Even so, there's still a huge amount that gets me nowhere closer to...

I wish for everything... all that we can never have here :(.
I want to ride an ikran. I want to run through the bioluminescent forests. I want to find a beautiful woman who Sees me... I want tsaheylu :(... I want to be free and not have to worry about work or money or houses or governments or ayskxawng. I want to look like the Na'vi do. I want to live that life. I want to be myself.
There is so much that I want, I couldn't explain it all... :(

YouTube - Hang gliding in the Italian Dolomites
YouTube - Hang Gliding in Oceanside, Oregon

Go look at the "Pandora on Earth" thread again, and look at some of those forest pictures. They might not glow, but come on, who wouldn't want to run through them?:)

There are plenty of beautiful woman warriors out there, you just need to look for them (I know this doesn't help much, because others have said it before), trust me. There's millions of women out there that want to live like we do, and have the strength to fight for it, just check the forum here. While yes, vanity, consumerism, and general shallowness have corrupted a good share of the female population of the modern world, some have managed to ascend above it. Find them. As for tsaheylu, you can have it, as long as you have an open mind spiritually. In the throws of passion, true love and passion, you tell me that two souls aren't intertwining.;)

Yes, the strangehold that modern society has on people - that there is no alternative, and to be a consumer wage slave is the only option - is incredibly daunting, but the important thing to remember is that it is a strangehold of ideas. To reject the ideas is to sap the modern world of it's power. The things we know here - of the beauty of nature, of truly free ways of life, and the power of the individual - are things that those who rule the modern world don't want us to know, because their illusions of false happiness through consumerism, and there being no alternative to a worker lifestyle, collapse. There are people out there that have managed to free themselves from the strangehold of the modern world, that live the Na'vi life on Earth, because they recognized the faux power of society and rejected it. If they can do it, you can too.:)

You might not be able to have everything exactly as it is 100% on Pandora, but if you put the effort in, you can get pretty damn close. Until you make it to Pandora, either through virtual reality, the afterlife, or somehow tracking down one in this vast universe, you're on Earth. You're on an Earth though that has vast beauty and freedom that you can have if you're willing to buck the trend of the rest of the world, fight the aristocracy, and pave your own way in life.

As long as you're here, might as well make the most of it, right?

What worked for me, go out on a clear night with a full moon, just after it snowed, take in a deep breath of chilled fresh air, and look at the stars, moon, and your surroundings.

That is quite some vision. What are you doing towards making it happen?

Well, I understand you, HNM in that of course hanggliding is not an Ikran and that a lush forest still is not bioluminescent and that tsaheylu is just not happening here on Earth as well as there are no floating mountains and a sky with a giant red planet. I long for these too, I have to admit. And I think they will and always have been in my dreams.
But I did not intend to ask for your longings or dreams, I meant to ask towards what these longings inspire you? You said they are good for you, you cherish these longings despite them beeing unreachable (ok, some actually are - like finding a soulmate and becoming free of society and live more naturally)? So if they are good for you, what is their effect on you, towards what do these things inspire you in your life - what vision for your life here and now do you get from them? Pandora is intangible and dwelling on a longing for it that cannot be fulfilled only makes sense, if it inspires you towards something in your life now and here, otherwise it is just escaping into dreams and waiting for some miracle, I would think.

At one point, I had such a strong feeling that Pandora could be on Earth, that we were capable of a real, fulfilling life, but now i'm not so sure.

All I can see is the extent to which greed has enraptured the world and it's people. And now I doubt that there is anyone left.

Pandora is a chance to escape the machine, the thing that all keeps us in a stranglehold - and to get back to the roots of who we are, what we should be. A compassionate, loving race that cares what they do. That, for me, is the draw of Pandora. The Ikran, the floating mountains, the bioluminescence... That's all a bonus. Although there is no doubt she is a beautiful moon, she certainly isn't the only wonderful blue-green orb in the universe. What I truly love about it is the people. What they think, what they do, how they live, how they feel. How much they actually care about their planet. Something that we lost many decades ago, centuries, millenia even.

That, for me, is why I have never wanted to be there more than I do at this moment.

It is so - it could be. How the chances are that it will be real is another matter :(

Indeed!
The two split draw is the actualy physical (virtual) reality, the "bonuses" and they have indeed a strong appeal themselves - and the emotional (for lack of a better word) component of how the people there are, how the life is for the NA'Vi. The physical parts are great, but they are in a way fantasy and can be put into that realm. It is not Earth and longing for these is a bit troublesome as there is really no assurance that these things are possible at all. The emotional part OTOH is very real, it is so strong because we feel that it is not beyond possibility. We feel that this could actually be, that this is how it should be that this is probably how it has been a long long time ago. That it is more tangible than floating mountains. It is just within or just beyond our grasp and that makes its impact even stronger on us. At least that is true for me and most likely for many of us here.

It is the feeling that something like this existed here on this planet before, that it is something that was lost - unlike floating mountains that never have been on Earth. That feeling of loss and looking around at the "landscape of loss" in this time is what causes a lot of the sadness. It is the loss in all nature, but specifically in the loss in the spirits of one species - our own - that creates a deep longing to get out of here, to change it all and it is the sheer immensity of such a task that lets us feel dispair. :,(

Sorry, I feel a bit gloomy today :S

I may know what you mean. I wrote something on a sort of similar theme back in January:

I've always fantasized about two things: walking on Mars, and living in the Pleistocene (Earth before the dawn of human civilization). Something about the raw challenge of an untamed world, whatever the context, really gets to me. I walk, I hike, I climb, I scuba dive.

But it never really feels right. I always get the feeling I'm doing the equivalent of sleeping in a tent outside my house. There are barely any real untouched wildernesses. Although some may appear pristine, in most parts of the world these tiny fragments are denuded of the megafauna (most are long dead) that would give them the true stamp of authenticity.

I wonder if this is something universal in us, a desire to return to some imagined world, a clean fresh sandbox without the tell tale signs of millions of other humans on it.

We know that the lives of hunter-gatherers are and were unpleasant. Death in infancy, death from disease, murder. All common. But still we feel the pull.
I think that we yearn for this because a hunter-gatherer lifestyle (as nasty as it was) is the one evolution primed us for. Before the dawn of agriculture all humans on Earth lived like this. That was about 10,000 years ago, which seems like a hell of a long time until you realize that it's just a few hundred generations past. At most, only a few hundred ancestors separate you from people who lived (sort of) like the Na'vi. In evolutionary terms that's almost nothing. Civilization sprang up overnight and we're pretty much still primed for making stone tools and hunting woolly rhinoceros.

I also wonder whether the story of Eden, the unspoilt wilderness of the Abrahamic religions, arose from some ancient oral tale about the world before farming, the world before bread and rice and cities. Did they feel the pull as much as we do?

I think that the imagery Avatar shows us of a beautiful (if fictional) Edenic state of being could well become the template for all of our wilderness dreams.

Those ARE what inspire me... there isn't anything on Earth that matches them. I don't have any particular vision for here because it isn't my home.
Maybe I am waiting for something, even though I don't expect things to ever happen... Is that really such a bad thing though?
I'm making the best of what I'm stuck with, but it's never going to be perfect.

For me... all the things on Pandora we don't have are equally important to the Na'vi, to living free... I want all of them, none of them are a bonus for me :(

what makes thing much worse for me is that the emotional part is THEORETICALLY possible...

But it isn't going to happen.

I'm still lonely, I still haven't found anyone, the only people I know who See and who I really care about other than my IRL family are here.

I'm still lonely :'(

I don't see how it will change.

This is an absolutely perfect way of putting it for me.

I don't think there will ever be a place on this Earth where i'll be able to feel that severance with the modern world that I have always longed for. I'm searching for such places - it's the only reason I feel at all alive at the moment - but I don't know if i'll ever find them.

Because i'll always know in the back of my mind that 'modern civisation' and all the trappings of that is just a stone's throw away.

This is perhaps the biggest misconception running around these forums - that there is body else. Nobody cares, nobody sees, nobody wants a meaningful life. That is not true. If this forum has proven anything, it is how individuals from every corner of the earth with different backgrounds can all dream the same dream. Not to mention this forum is essentially a branch-off of a movie forum, there are a lot of other people out there.

Sometimes I walk into the woods and feel the same way. All the forests around my home are less than 50 years old and some have large traces of human activity. I appreciate the beauty, but it lacks the authentic feel. However, recently I've found this lack of authenticity as source of happiness. There used to be virtually no trees in my area, but now there are large forests. I'm living in a time where humanity is starting to turn around. It's make it or break it time. We either destroy our planet or we nurture it back to it's original health. Someday my great grandchildren are going to look back at this historic moment and wish they could have been part of the revolution. I am very lucky to have this opportunity.

Well then Pandora would be a problem too... because if you can get there, then so can the people who will damage the planet (as they did in the movie).

So half a mile from civilization isn't enough, but 4.5 light-years may not be enough either.

Or maybe there's a perspective that both can be good enough.

Oél ngáti kámeie ma tsmukan.:'( I've been feeling this a LOT lately, too. Especially because of complications that have risen recently with the LN RL tribe, because of political crap jamming up the process of acquiring land. It seems everytime I want to make a break for my freedom, there's the Sturmabteilung standing in my way.

This world ain't for you and me, kid. Maybe at one time, but not now. I'm fighting, but dammit it's difficult. I'm still clinging to hope that eventually the worst ilk of this world will end up destroying themselves, and the world that we dream of can rise from the ashes.

Warning - long text, as I reply to several posts ;)

What are these problems. I have to admit that I have not been following them lately. Are they already that far that they are getting land? Anyways - the underlying problem is, that the dominant culture is not really in favour of other ways of life. And it does not care if it is native indigenous people or people who want to become indigenous (meaning origina/unique to one place) once again. If it was not for the tromendous public relation affair the traditional people can cause, I have no doubt they would be gone already.

The people in power dont want anyone to leave. It is the only way, people can really harm them. Revolutions can be fought, protests can be teargassed, petitions can be ignored, ... but there is much less you can do to keep people from walking away. Still there are things that can be done and those are mostly legal bull - indigenous people of any kind have to put up with laws and regulation and ownership issues and they have to fight with the weapons of the enemy, with lawyers and books. :(

I see you, my brother. I sometimes feel that gloomy also. I know that this industrialized world is not for us - its not home... :'(

That is very true. There are so many. I dare say that it is even a majority of people that care. Many are not willing to act on it or even to admit it to themselves, but many are. But they all feel that misconception, that they are alone, that no one else does feel like they do. This is what has to happen - these people have to come together. And in patches they are. Maybe that is the biggest effect protests and rallies have - they most often cant stop the thing they protest, but they show people that they are not alone.

I dont know if any of you looked into that rather new ageish "indigo child" phenomenon. I dont want to give it any credit, but suffice to say that the questionnaire one can take to find out if one is "one of them" holds interesting questions. I have no doubt most of us here would get a straight A in that "test", but there is the claim that this is true for most people that ever take it. So that is what is taken as evidence of it beeing a fraud. But looking beyond that, what does it mean - it means that many many people say "yes" to questions like "You have the feeling that you are not at home here, maybe even from another planet" or "You have trouble functioning in the system, have trouble accepting authority" and questions on the relationship to earth, nature and spirituality.
So even if answering these does not mean anything in respect of some special aura or something - the fact that there are so many that fit into these tell me that we are way not alone!

Well, It is hard indeed. Impossible in my country for sure. I tried, but you cant even get in any place you dont hear the noise of cars or machines in the distance. Even going into the mountains, you meet people, you see cablecars and forest roads. There are some beautiful places though, even if civ is just behind the corner. They can give power and a good feeling. True distance I hardly ever experienced. Just glimpses. I was in south Africa for geological mapping and I was at least so much seperated from civ, that I had to walk some hours to get back to the truck. Still, even there of course you could see telephone lines and sheep fences. I know there are some places that are truely far away, but they are few...

Ok, HNM I understand that. It may get tough with time though, as to have dreams that are really not just not coming true but also dont inspire towards things in your life can be exhausting very much in the long run...

That part on the emotional part is what I meant. It is theoretically possible, it is at the edges of our grasp. One could reach it, but one could also fail and in any case it would be quite a piece of work to get there. But that is what makes these things even tougher. I can (even with some pain in my heart) tell myself that floating mountains will never be real here and I can bring myself to accept that, but the emotional side, the social and even spiritual side - these are things that are tangible and that makes it very hard to put them off, as I know that they are in theory possible. Yes, it makes it even harder!

Dito - I always was fascinated at the thought of living in the "stone age". And yes, I think it is because that is what humans evolved to do. That agricultural lifestyle with its rise of hierarchy and mass society did not suit us well and the industrial lifestyle that is an even shorter blip in the human history is even worse as it even removes our way of life even more from the primal blueprint.
Now I dont believe that hobbesian world view of nasty, brutish and short lives of the aboriginal people. From an anthropological atandpoint that image cannot be held up. But thats not the point now - The point I want to make is that people evolved to live in small band societies, in tribes and clans, supporting each other to survive and live to tell stories and to collaborate in hunting and gathering. Our minds and our bodies evolved to that. The agricultural revolution destroyed that, people started to die early because of malnutrition from monocrops, they became shorter for the same reason, thea became more agressive and depressive due to the hierarchy that formed. They became stressed as they had to work more and more and lived in denser and denser populated cities with strangers.
The way out would be to recreate this setting. Not focussing on the level of technology now, I just say, that the way people live now - in huge cities, detached from each other, from the land from their nature is not working.

Hah - I have been saying that for a long time now and I think it is very true. If you have the time, read "Ishmael" from Daniel Quinn (it is available as text or pdf in the interwebz also). I just read it some weeks ago and it basically confirmed that all by making a very detailled analysis of the Christian Story. I also read recently, that elements like this are within Nordic mythology, where the original gods of the wild nature were accompanied by pastueral gods that worked well with them but then agricultural gods came and there was a fight. They forged a truce, but the cost of that eats at the fabric of the relationship between all of them until at the end of time, Ragnarök will happen as the world cannot bear it anymore and the gods of the wild will rise up... :D

So basically the old myths are full of it. Gilgamesh is another one - the story of agricultural people deforesting ancient lands and getting in trouble with the wild nature that does not want to go and people that are on its side.

I think it was a huge struggle from the beginning. What we see now with amazonian tribes that have to fend off farmers started 10.000 years ago and was not less horrifying back then. And it took its place in our mythology...

Greetings, Aurora

They were looking at a place called Geraldo Island, in Brazil. For a while it looked really good (REALLY GOOD, less than a million Euros for 2000 acres), but apparentally the Brazilian government is really a hard-ass when it comes to immigration, plus we just found out that the island is a protected. Plus Brazil is pretty strict about hunting, so that would obviously pose a problem, as well.

They just started looking into Australia. It's got lots of huntable species, vast land, and even wild horses. Though...spiders.:shoop::P Immigration might be a problem, too, again.

Sad, isn't it? :'( Only furthers my opinion that we have absolutely no true freedom, anymore. Sure, we have rights, but they're just cheap imitation freedoms doled out by the ruling class, that can be yanked away at any time they wish. Now they're after the one freedom left, the freedom to leave. Not by force, but by things like monetary debt or immigration laws. They don't want people living their own lives, because that's one less peon to exploit.

I honestly don't know what I would do if I lived in a country like North Korea, where the inability to leave is actually by fiat. I would probably kill myself, to be blunt. :(


It's an interesting concept, and something I have somewhat of a belief in (I do dib-and-dab in the metaphysical sometimes, it's quite an interesting subject:)). With that said, I definitely believe there is something to dreams, and Pandora and the Na'vi coming from dreams, and the deep connection that we all have to that mystical place (and let's not forget that picture you drew years ago). Whether it simply be genetic memory from times long gone on this planet, or something even deeper, I don't know. I know something is there, though. The problem I have is with some New Age things, such as indigo children. While I don't doubt that there could be some people like them walking the Earth (shamans, etc), I just have a feeling that it is something that the Western world will end up cheapening, like so many other things in the past.

Ah bummer! But that was to expected. I did some research on my own and quickly found that immigration can really be a problem as can be hunting rights. Often there are ways around this by some shady means like creating a company and declare people as employees or by bribing officials or officially buying citizenships. The downside obviously is that this can lead to serious troubles if done improperly. A local lawyer would be required at least. Regarding hunting or protected areas of course you basically cant win - pouchers and people violating environmental protection (in their eyes) are pretty high on the black list of any government.

YES it is sad. As it was mentioned in another thread I started on land ownership - even if you own land, it is more like rented - they can take it away if you dont pay the rent they call tax and usually you dont own the mining rights, water rights, hunting rights and have to either buy them too or are simply unable to do so. And the more overpopulated the world gets the worse it is. The freedom to leave - portrayed by Daniel Quinn as the way to go is indeed getting tougher. Even so, or especially when you dont want to leave the country physically. Not only are immigration laws, land ownership rules, land tax, huntung regulations, but also you have to abide by many other rules like childcare, schooling, tax and welfare, farming regulations,...
Examples: Here in Germany you cant kill and prepare a farm animal yourself (it has to be done by a butcher), if you have more than 20(?) beehives, you are considered a commercial honeymaker, if you have more than X cows, sheep, pigs, acres of farmland, acres of woodland you are considered a commercial farmer - each of these would mean you need to follow additional rules and make tax declarations...

So I guess it really is hard and it takes a lawyer - but the only other way is to truely drop out, meaning to officially become homeless, squat on public land and try to make a living by scavenging and hunting small unrestriced animals in some remote area where no one cares. This may be quite close to a hunter gatherer lifestyle but it is still quite restrictive and does not really free you from all rules - you just have to take care not to be caught. And if you do, you die, cause coming from the wild outdoors into prison walls will most definitely kill you.

:'( :'(

Yeah, thats why I said, I dont want to claim any credibility to the indigo child idea. Too often these concepts are too closely tied to people making money of it or basing it on really obscure concepts. What I found interesting though is this. The Indigo Child questionnaire is a set of questions that, if answered with yes, lead to the "diagnosis" of beeing one of them. Critics say, that this is a ripoff because the questions posed are so general that the vast majority of people would say yes to them. In a reverse conclusion, this means that the majority of people actually agree with these questions. This in turn tells you something interesting about the majority of people, if you read through the questionnaires in terms of what seems to be the opinions and feelings of the majority of people. And it obviously is not competition, opression, greed, selfishness and ignorance, but things like beeing sensitive, emotional, intuitive, creative, loving, naturalist, environmentalist and so on.
So from that I conclude that "we are not alone" at all - just most of the people dont admit it to anyone but a stupid indigo child questionnaire :D

Yeah, that is truely a bit mysterious and I am not really sure how to elucidate this further. The simplest explanation of course would be that it simply is the "trend of the time", a common reaction of minds thinking in a similar way to memes and concepts present in our time. The most metaphysical one would be one involving past lives and reincarnated souls from other planets. So I'm not talking about the way of life of the NA'Vi or the pristine nature and connectedness on Pandora - that I think is really something that is just human - it is the way humans evolved and lived for hundreds of thousands of years, so naturally there is a longing for that. But floating mountains, red planets in the sky, tall blue people - what is with that - it cant be "genetic memory" really. And what about the amazingly frequent dreaming of flying in people of all times and its presence in the shamanistic experience. This is unearthly whereever you want to take it from there. It comes from our minds, our imaginations, our dreams - and who knows where they come from. Hehe - maybe learn lucid dreaming and just ask them :rolleyes:

Oh sorry - we strayed offtopic again.
We've been talking about the dreams mostly and on the troubles we face when trying to realize some of them but less on ways to really cope with the desire to realize them (especially the intangible parts).

Hello people, sorry to go a bit off-topic but just wanted to duck in and hopefully provide some hope to people who 'want out' but are worried about laws and stuff. I too am looking to get out of civilization as soon as possible, my dream is to live somewhere in Yukon in Canada eventually.

The thing is there are parts of the world that are practically empty, places where you can go and do whatever you want and nobody is there to mind and nobody is going to force laws on you. These are the best places to go in my opinion, land that has been unspoiled. I don't agree with the whole 'owning land' thing, nobody owns nature. The hardest part will be the immigration.

What I'm saying is that don't give up on your dream, living somewhere you love and 'living off the land' is a very achievable dream. There is so much beauty on Earth and you can go out and experience it if you so wish, do not let fear stop you friends.

There is a reason why the Yukon is practically empty, it is COLD... the kind of cold that gives cold a bad name, cold that makes other country's cold look like a mild chill, cold that freezes your pee before it hits the ground, cold that prevents anything other than icicles growing.

Just something to think about...

Confirming that north of Wisconsin is not just cold but ****ING COLD....

Well - we have considered the northern territories but basically came to the conclusion that it is pretty hard going. Living there requires incredible adaptation or quite a bit of civilization which in turn requires imports which in turn requires money and so on. Saw a docu yesterday on Alaska - people do live very remote there, have nice communities in which no one locks the doors and they can hunt and fish and even heat with wood. But little other food grows there, keeping animals is really hard, esp in winter and of course winters are long and seriously cold.
Thats the thing - the places in which native cultures and large wild lands still survive are usually not extremely well suited. I believe this is also the reason why people see the lives of these natives that live there as tough without end and picture the same for native cultures in the past across the globe.
Still, I think with enough knowledge and the will to work more than the classical 4h/day for hunter-gatherers a living can be made in that areas. Just dont go all "Alexander Supertramp" there (Movie: Into the Wild). A living definitly can be made in form of an ecovillage community (with things like solar/wind energy and a greenhouse). I guess winters are quite unpleasant though - but summers in which the sun never goes down must be fascinating;)

Hey no worries, I love the cold and the snow and the fact that it's so empty. Nobody to say 'you can't do that' or 'i'll ring the police'.

This thread is about Pandora, not doing it on Earth :P
It's fine to suggest that (not that I would, there's far too much I'd miss on Earth that I wouldn't on Pandora (actually mostly people)) if it works for some people, but I asstill want to be on Pandora :(

As do we all friend :( but until we can get to Pandora whether it be in the next life or by space travel, we might as well try and bring a bit of Pandora to Earth :)

One solution for at least a few people who want to get out from our civilisation is to join in with an indigenous community somewhere. They already have the knowledge to live of the land and they often also have a deep connection with each other. But to realize such a thing you must ofcourse first befriend them, learn to know them very well and above all gain their trust. Perhaps then thy would include you, or at least let you stay (at least for a while) on their territory, and if you have gotten real close to them perhaps they will teach you how to live there. Perhaps one good way to get into such society is through marriage. But that ofcourse craves that someone in that community want to have you as a spouse.

But even if you cannot live in an indigenous community, perhaps they still can give you some advice how to live outside the modern society.

And even the contact with people from such a community in itself would be very rewarding since it would for sure help you to get another view on your own life and situation. So perhaps it would be a good idea to get in contact with some aboriginal community. A way to obtain that can be to contact some anthroplogist that have done fieldwork among such peoples, or some NGO that work together with indigenous communities.

I don't know... for me, the feeling is Pandora itself as much as it's society... I want tsaheylu, I want to fly on an ikran, I want to connect to a tree of voices, I want to run through bioluminescent forests along the trees... I can't do that on Earth :'(