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#181
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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.
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"When the time comes, just walk away and don't make any fuss." Last edited by Fkeu'itan; 10-01-2010 at 09:21 AM. |
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#182
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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
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Know your idols: Who said "Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.". (Solution: "Mahatma" Ghandi) Stop terraforming Earth (wordpress) "Humans are storytellers. These stories then can become our reality. Only when we loose ourselves in the stories they have the power to control us. Our culture got lost in the wrong story, a story of death and defeat, of opression and control, of separation and competition. We need a new story!" |
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#183
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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. |
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#184
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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. Quote:
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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.
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#185
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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.
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"When the time comes, just walk away and don't make any fuss." |
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#186
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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.
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Stay thirsty my friends... C V M N |
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#187
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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. |
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#188
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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.
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![]() The Dreamer's Manifesto Mike Malloy, a voice of reason in a world gone mad. "You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling." - Inception "Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy **** we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off." - Tyler Durden Last edited by Tsyal Makto; 10-01-2010 at 10:01 PM. |
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#189
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Warning - long text, as I reply to several posts
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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. ![]() Quote:
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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! Quote:
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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! Quote:
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. Quote:
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
__________________
Know your idols: Who said "Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.". (Solution: "Mahatma" Ghandi) Stop terraforming Earth (wordpress) "Humans are storytellers. These stories then can become our reality. Only when we loose ourselves in the stories they have the power to control us. Our culture got lost in the wrong story, a story of death and defeat, of opression and control, of separation and competition. We need a new story!" |
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#190
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They just started looking into Australia. It's got lots of huntable species, vast land, and even wild horses. Though...spiders. ![]() Immigration might be a problem, too, again.Quote:
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. ![]() Quote:
). 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.
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![]() The Dreamer's Manifesto Mike Malloy, a voice of reason in a world gone mad. "You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling." - Inception "Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy **** we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off." - Tyler Durden Last edited by Tsyal Makto; 10-05-2010 at 03:19 AM. |
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#191
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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. ![]() Quote:
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 ![]() Quote:
![]() 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).
__________________
Know your idols: Who said "Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.". (Solution: "Mahatma" Ghandi) Stop terraforming Earth (wordpress) "Humans are storytellers. These stories then can become our reality. Only when we loose ourselves in the stories they have the power to control us. Our culture got lost in the wrong story, a story of death and defeat, of opression and control, of separation and competition. We need a new story!" |
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#192
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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. |
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#193
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Just something to think about... |
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#194
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Confirming that north of Wisconsin is not just cold but ****ING COLD....
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#195
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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
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Know your idols: Who said "Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.". (Solution: "Mahatma" Ghandi) Stop terraforming Earth (wordpress) "Humans are storytellers. These stories then can become our reality. Only when we loose ourselves in the stories they have the power to control us. Our culture got lost in the wrong story, a story of death and defeat, of opression and control, of separation and competition. We need a new story!" |
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