Even once these basics are sorted, you will only live happily outside society as long as you are lucky enough to stay healthy.
The second sounds like a separate goal unto itself. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that goal, or with having multiple goals, but if you start by saying doing X makes you happy then it doesn't really make sense to say doing X won't actually make you happy because you aren't doing Y.
Presumably if one is actually living alone in the woods they wouldn't be dependent on the larger societal systems like money, security, manufactured goods, etc. How would the get the money to start with without having a job that interacts with the outside world?
But you can't do that if your passion is making music, or mathematics, or computer programming, or electrical tinkering, etc. There just isn't an option to follow the vast majority of pursuits except if you also engage in society.
Thank you. That was my initial thought too. Why is progress the goal? Not everything has to "progress" at all times. What progress needs to be made anyway? And towards what end? Who decides that?
There's an inherent good to stopping progress and spending some time in a cabin in the woods.
If we never stop and enjoy now, then why bother with tomorrow?
The idea seems to be that starting with what we have today and taking another step forward is always the right move. Never go backwards, and its okay if we don't define our goals beforehand as long as we keep moving our feet.
In the common sense where progress is little more than moving our feet, there's no end unless civilization collapses.
If one goes at it from the angle of the goal bring "enough", the end really is just getting to a point of maintaining what we already have. Wanting to secure the basics like shelter and reliable access to food and water is met with much less than what we have today. Surely there's some level of convenience and enjoyment that make sense beyond just the basics, but are we not there yet? And if we are, would progress best be focused on the goal of maintaining what we have that gives the most people an enjoyable life while minimizing our impact on the rest of the environment and everything that allowed humans to be here in the first place?
That's actually where it gets really interesting though. Progress isn't absolute, it's relational and requires first defining the goal. If one's goal is to live a quiet life where they minimize their dependence on others, living in a cabin in the woods and finding their solution for food and water is progress. That obviously doesn't fit for a larger society where the goal is generally increasing dependence and trust on the larger society, but neither is right or wrong.
This has to be negotiated with the people who would want to take your cabin in the woods and throw you out.
Responsibility is a fundamental requirement of freedom though, there's no way around that.
Not everyone's goal is to progress a society though. If one's goal is to live a quiet life and do what makes them happy, what's wrong with living in a cabin in the woods?
That would only be a fundamental problem if everyone owes something to society. That's a much different conversation though, whether everyone is born into a debt that must be paid back to society.