They chose how to live their dreams, did it for ~50 years and still ended up pretty comfortably. If they had the same viewpoint you have, they would probably have lived miserably until an Oxycontin OD.
I get it, there's stories every now and then of some person that died because they couldn't afford their insulin (for $275/bottle). And every time I stare at the story wondering why that person decided to kill themself for reason.
I get it that newer insulins should be cheaper, that they're way over priced. But it's disingenuous to pretend there aren't options for people that can't afford them.
Your two examples are telling given the current state American healthcare system. I don't think its a problem in Europe.
The responders pointing out that the back-to-the-landers often don't have adequate medical care aren't entirely off-base. Pharma is fundamentally broken in the US, and this places strict restrictions on the freedom of many people here: if you need medical help on a regular basis, you have no option except to work--the "rat race" as it were. Work itself won't make you happy, but I think for most people, dying of illness that went untreated because they can't afford care isn't happiness either.
But some of us are healthy, and I do have choices. In the past ten years, I've worked a rat race job, then actively chosen poverty and didn't have health insurance, and finally started a company that's successful enough that I have health insurance again. I don't think it's accurate to say that individuals don't have choices. And that goes for everyone. Certainly some have more choices than others, but we all have at least a small degree of agency in our lives. So I don't think it's entirely fair to think that everyone is unhappy because they chose a life outside norms (i.e. without health insurance).
The question remains though, whether choosing to step outside of the norms actually makes us happy. I think the answer to that is somewhat individual: we all have different things that make us happy. But for anyone, there's a certain amount of hubris in assuming that you know better than the norms. Often, norms became norms because they work for a lot of people. I think, for example, we have lots of evidence at this point that percentage-wise money does buy happiness--up to a certain amount, and depending on how you spend it[1]. But those are percentages, not absolutes--there are miserable and happy people at both extremes of wealth and everywhere in between.
I don't know where this leads us. I suspect the reality is more complicated than any of us understand.
[1] https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/danielgilbert/files/if-mon...
These people live fulfilling lives and work to contribute to each others' well-being and the well-being of others. I'm working on finding a similar living situation for my partner and our child.
Your ideas about what happens when someone quits the rat race are false and fear-based.
We don't live in a kill-or-be-killed world and we have many choices about how we live.
The back-to-nature theme is fine for privileged landowning educated people. But the vast majority of everybody everywhere is dependent on the local grocery.
And yes, hypersanity is probably the most extreme form of privilege. Also, the back-to-nature theme is great, not merely fine, and something indigenous cultures are trying to reclaim as a human birthright. They're arguably way less privileged by your standards. Privilege isn't a reason to dismiss a good idea.
Treating nature as something to live with collaboratively rather than avoid or treat as subservient/separate from us isn't privilege. It's science. Mutualism > competition.
Its 'privileged' to preach that nonsense to apartment-dwelling two-shift-working people with barely the time to visit the bodega on the way home.
Its 'privileged' to imagine this approach to live could be for more than indigenous peoples (rapidly dying out, why is that do you think?) and upper-class first-world wealthy dilettantes.
Privilege is there to be shared. This includes privileged wisdom.
Indigenous cultures are dying out due to settlers and colonizers decimating their lands, cultures, and people. This is not news. It has nothing to do with their way of life, aside from not having developed appropriate weapons and immune systems from those who would seek to kill/displace them.
As for the global food problem, I personally hypothesize capitalism needs to fall or radically transform before that can be addressed.
Learning to peacefully and freely share food seems like the simplest way to address current food issues, but people's desire for money seems to get in the way.
Your take is simply a disempowering reason to stay stuck. We can always reconnect with nature in various ways. Your perspective is self-limiting and keeps you from realizing ways to accomplish it.
Other people are probably figuring out how to do it and you haven't even bothered to find out how.
Here's the first link I found from googling "how to reconnect with nature while living in a city." These are decent approaches and I would say are barely scratching the surface.
https://permaculturenews.org/2017/02/20/can-connect-nature-c...
If you want to reconnect with nature, you can. You sound like you don't want to believe it's possible, but even the smallest amount of effort can make a load of difference. Have you done any googling to challenge your belief? Have you sought out free ways to reconnect with nature?
But I'm hyper-aware of how my situation is utterly different from billions of humans on this planet, with little or no access to even a tree. Or opportunity to sit under it. Living in high-rise apartment blocks far, far from these imagined opportunities.
The world out there is more like blade runner, than a utopia, for the vast majority of people.
The mind is a powerful tool and if people believe they can use it to reconnect, they're much more likely to find a way to. When it comes to subjective experiences, it's important to engage cognitive biases in the direction we want them to go. Beliefs are useful for that, so we need to choose them wisely. Telling people they're not capable of accomplishing things is only helpful if they're rebelling against you because then they'll take it as a challenge. For others who are already in a disempowered state, they could use your message as reinforcing their stuck perspective. I choose to view life in such a way as to promote change and well-being, not get me or anyone else who hears my perspective stuck in it.
I didn’t say there wasn’t a motivator. I said it isn’t money. Until about a hundred years ago, most folks were self employed and chased down whatever they needed for the day. It’s in that last few hundred it became mostly about money for the masses.
There are people that live isolated and off the grid lives, unmotivated by money & rat race. Your idea of survival & what makes a good life may not match up with others.
But in the context of daily life of the masses, you’re correct in that we all just chase the popular social meme. It HAPPENS TO BE money, but it could be bottle caps get you stuff that supply side is selling. It’s what supply side accepts or gtfo. The threat of being evicted from the only life one knows is not literal death, but it feels like it, so we chase money, not bottle caps as a pragmatic acquiescence to social forces.
Imagine we lived in a violent brutal world where it was kill or be killed. Even if you realize that killing only brings you stress and unhappiness, you won't last very long if you stop doing it. As soon as you lay down your arms someone will come and bash your head in with a hammer and take what's left of your belongings and family.
You could decide money and the rat race are pointless and decide to just stop pursuing it. And you'll survive... for a time. Then you won't be able to function in society. Won't be able to eat, or have a place to live, effectively the equivalent of having your skull bashed in like in that previous world.