Agreed. Also, eating and having a safe home is good and transportation and health care are nice. It's a matter of finding ways to uncouple the notion of "earning a living" from "has a 9-to-5 and a paycheck' and instead connect it to "being alive and connected to your community in meaningful ways".
I can buy that one in ten thousand people can come up with a technological innovation that can provide food, shelter, medical care, and personal amenities for the rest. I cannot buy that one person can come up with a technological innovation that can provide child care for the rest. But of course, when people talk about "earning a living," they are rarely considering child care... :(
Vivian Spartacus True, though I'd add a caveat: Child care could become a thing done when it is desired, as opposed to when it is mandated. That is, at any given time, there are probably enough people who want to watch after the number of babies and children. So, let them.
Meguey Baker Right, the other problem is the hedonistic treadmill. The 1960s were a fabulously wealthy time compared to the 1910s, and a fabulously poor time compared to now. At some point, enough needs to be enough.
Granted, there's also been more discrepancy between rich and poor, but the urge for more, better, comfier continues.
William Nichols While on its face, I would agree with that statement, in practice it is a slippery slope. The idea that child care is desirable and fun, and is more akin to leisure time than work, devalues the actual work of child care. This becomes, particularly, a gendered argument, as moms are expected to always enjoy child care and to be happy to forsake other pursuits to be with their children at all times. The fact is that a) no one wants to do child care 24/7 and b) child care 24/7 is hard work.
Looking at other countries where care for young children is more valued, you find places like Denmark, where each parent gets something like 18 months off with pay, and the parents can alternate who stays home. And while we're dreaming, we could dream of a society that values fathers being home with kids and therefore breaks down the gendering Vivian Spartacus is so accurately mentioning.
Vivian Spartacus Yep, and I could feel the limb not quite supporting the weight. Given his time and place, Fuller was probably not particularly aware that the work women do is often not paid -- and is still work.
and, frankly, i don't want robots to replace moms and dads and aunts and uncles and friends. We just need to give those other groups more of the responsibility -- though, I haven't done a lot to take care of neices and nephews, so I'm as guilty as anyone of perpetrating that.
"Granted, there's also been more discrepancy between rich and poor, but the urge for more, better, comfier continues."
I have too much stuff. I would love to have the 1/3 of the stuff in my house I don't need disappear. I don't need more better/comfier, I need more authentic/connected/meaningful. Instead, we get marketed to so intensely that we overbuy all the damn time, because we are trained to be good little consumer-bees that make sure there is "demand" so that everyone still has a "job".
It's more having kids at different times of the year with different growth patterns so not a whole lot can be handed down each year. Add in the leftover psychological bits from all the grandparents who were children of the Depression where you rinsed out plastic bags and washed tinfoil, combine that with kids having their own money to learn about buying for quality and durability, and mix in a healthy dose of omg-we-are-a-crafty-bunch, and we have our weaknesses. Mostly books and LEGO and craft supplies :)
When I actually stop and think about it, our consumer-ness is not huge, I'm just continually aware of the pressure to consume more. Hoarding horrifies me. Keeping things that are useful or beautiful and have a place, ok. Keeping piles of unopened junk mail? }Shudders{ I'd a thousand times rather have experiences than stuff.
Ogre and I are working at de-crapping our lives, because I come from hoarding parents, and I do not want to end up with my nephew resenting the fuck out of me when he's 40 and I have too much shit for my 84 year old ass to cope with. So lately we've been going through our shit with an iron fist. The worst part is getting rid of books, because on some level it hurts me so much to get rid of them. For long stretches at a time they were pretty much my only friends. I'm trying to be brave and tell myself that selling them to used bookstores means that other lonely kids can find and be saved by them, too.
And we would, ultimately, like to move into a smaller place closer in to the city, or at least in a more walkable area so that there is a motivation for leaving the house. I can take a shitty commute if I don't then also have to commute to have fun.
I've noticed we buy much less stuff now that we don't have regular television.
Mickey Schulz have you thought about using Bookcrossing to deal with your books? Register them, write the info inside the cover, include an explanatory bookmark (which you can download for printing), and release them into the wild.
I think you do not comprehend the magnitude of books we are talking about.
You know those great big Ikea "Billy" Bookcases? 6 of those back to back, And 4 slightly smaller bookcases in the same room, Another Billy bookcase in the living room, and two waist high bookcases in the bedroom. Oh, and the 6x6 foot shelving unit of gaming books, and the waist high bookshelf full of gaming related fiction in the garage.
We have a lot of books.
This is what happens when two formerly lonely, nerdy readers get married, and one of them goes to grad school.
Maybe just for the ones you find most difficult to let go of.
I purged my physical library about 2.5 years ago when I found out I would have to move from MD to NOLA. I already had everything catalogued on LibraryThing, so I moved everything that needed to go into a new list, then offered the list up on my social media accounts, with the caveat that whoever wanted something was responsible for making the arrangements to get their books.
You could do something similar with photographs of the shelves detailed enough for the titles to be readable.
What works for us: The actual public library. We're two blocks from the main branch of the library, and they have taken on many of our books. That's all I got on getting rid of books.
Meguey Baker At least those things are ostensibly useful, yeah. Add in shifting needs of multiple people as they grow, and its a lot harder to keep the stuff down.
I think this thread (and the prior one of the woman with the crazy house) has suggested something. Namely, books and children have some similarities: they are valuable. They are considerably more valuable to those that posses them than to others. And, ultimately, they are both luxury goods.
I had over 1000 books, now I have 20. I'm happier, lighter, better read and better informed than when I had shelves full of books. Our house feels better too.
There were reasons why I had all those books, but with very few exceptions those reasons weren't about the books themselves. They were things like: - fear of not having access to good reading in the future - pretending confidence by showing off how many interesting books I read/have - attributing the feelings I had when I read those books to a place on a shelf (rather accepting them as part of me)
When I really looked at it (helped enormously by Karen Kingston's great book on clutter clearing), my 1000 books were there as cover ups for unfaced fear and insecurity.
It was too much to move them all on at once, but the more I did it , the easier it became - and, in the process, the fears and insecurities these books were holding in place drained away.
It does take compassion for your feelings to start moving books (and other things) on form you life. But the rewards of doing so are enormously worth it.
(If you want a place to start, Karen Kingston's book and online courses are excellent https://www.spaceclearing.com/web and, I'm sure there are plenty of other resources out there, just search for clutter clearing and go from there.)
Michael D Yep, I found the desire for possessions is almost always psychological -- we crave the things because we thing they give life meaning. And study after study says the opposite.
Meguey Baker That. It got easier when my mom started accidentally buying me the same gifts because she couldn't bother remembering what she'd already got me. There's issues. Ohhhhh, so many issues.
Well, that and cleaning out their house and helping them pack to move. I have never so hated everything material I have ever owned in my life.
I cleared out my grandparent's house after they died. They had lives there for 50 years, and I sorted the whole house into rooms marked Keep, Donate, and Sell, and filled a dumpster with trash. It took me four days, during which I was also tending my three kids ages 6 mos, 5, and 8. The simplicity with which they lived was profound - library for nearly all their books, hobbies were bird watching, crosswords, and service organizations, clothes down to a very comfortable minimum, no games or excess stuff anywhere. The contrast to my own overstuffed house really started me on a path of de-cluttering, but there's four other people to take into account, and not a lot of time to spend just on getting rid of stuff.
Everything you move on, however minor, clears some space in both your house and your being.
Moving just one thing a week adds up to 52 things gone every year - and once you get the process going it gets easier and faster.
As for other people's stuff - the space you clear starts to make a difference for them too, and their reasons for keeping stuff may be even deeper than yours. They may not have the same enthusiasm, they may live with levels of stuff you couldn't bear yourself, but each thing you move will still make a difference to them. Give them the space to move at their own pace and when they're ready what they clear may surprise you.
Not only that, Michael D , but remember: Part of why we all need to work is so we can all collect stuff. The stuff -- and the space to store it! -- costs us hours. It costs us our lives.
And this we come full circle to the original quote - we don't need half the stuff we have, and if we understand that, we don't need half the job we have either.
Except, y'know, health care kicks in at 38 hours / week. And retirement. So yeah, the system is built on us all being good wage-earners and wage-spenders.
Meguey Baker Yeah. We've moving towards a system where you don't need to be a full time wager earner, but we aren't there yet.
What do i mean? The ACA makes it easier to get insurance without working full time, if you either have very little money or can afford health insurance. With a rothira, you can at least put some money towards retirement. And, if you have considerable 1099 income, it can make sense to incorporate and grant yourself a full 401(k). The tools exist, but they require serious income to make sense.
Patreon is -- hopefully -- working as a platform to link income with artist and community expression, though getting full income from that seems really rare.
We're not there yet, but i have some hopes we'll get there.
Agreed. Also, eating and having a safe home is good and transportation and health care are nice. It's a matter of finding ways to uncouple the notion of "earning a living" from "has a 9-to-5 and a paycheck' and instead connect it to "being alive and connected to your community in meaningful ways".
ReplyDeleteI can buy that one in ten thousand people can come up with a technological innovation that can provide food, shelter, medical care, and personal amenities for the rest. I cannot buy that one person can come up with a technological innovation that can provide child care for the rest. But of course, when people talk about "earning a living," they are rarely considering child care... :(
ReplyDeleteWhat if that tech breakthrough meant the folks who needed childcare because they had to go to work could instead hang out and care for their kid?
ReplyDeleteVivian Spartacus True, though I'd add a caveat: Child care could become a thing done when it is desired, as opposed to when it is mandated. That is, at any given time, there are probably enough people who want to watch after the number of babies and children. So, let them.
ReplyDeleteMeguey Baker Right, the other problem is the hedonistic treadmill. The 1960s were a fabulously wealthy time compared to the 1910s, and a fabulously poor time compared to now. At some point, enough needs to be enough.
ReplyDeleteGranted, there's also been more discrepancy between rich and poor, but the urge for more, better, comfier continues.
William Nichols While on its face, I would agree with that statement, in practice it is a slippery slope. The idea that child care is desirable and fun, and is more akin to leisure time than work, devalues the actual work of child care. This becomes, particularly, a gendered argument, as moms are expected to always enjoy child care and to be happy to forsake other pursuits to be with their children at all times. The fact is that a) no one wants to do child care 24/7 and b) child care 24/7 is hard work.
ReplyDeleteLooking at other countries where care for young children is more valued, you find places like Denmark, where each parent gets something like 18 months off with pay, and the parents can alternate who stays home. And while we're dreaming, we could dream of a society that values fathers being home with kids and therefore breaks down the gendering Vivian Spartacus is so accurately mentioning.
ReplyDeleteVivian Spartacus Yep, and I could feel the limb not quite supporting the weight. Given his time and place, Fuller was probably not particularly aware that the work women do is often not paid -- and is still work.
ReplyDeleteand, frankly, i don't want robots to replace moms and dads and aunts and uncles and friends. We just need to give those other groups more of the responsibility -- though, I haven't done a lot to take care of neices and nephews, so I'm as guilty as anyone of perpetrating that.
"Granted, there's also been more discrepancy between rich and poor, but the urge for more, better, comfier continues."
ReplyDeleteI have too much stuff. I would love to have the 1/3 of the stuff in my house I don't need disappear. I don't need more better/comfier, I need more authentic/connected/meaningful. Instead, we get marketed to so intensely that we overbuy all the damn time, because we are trained to be good little consumer-bees that make sure there is "demand" so that everyone still has a "job".
Meguey Baker Yeah. My wife and I do a continual cleansing, where we get rid of things we haven't used in the past year. There's only a few exceptions.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised that you fall into the consumer trap. I guess the Hoarder playbook isn't far from home?
It's more having kids at different times of the year with different growth patterns so not a whole lot can be handed down each year. Add in the leftover psychological bits from all the grandparents who were children of the Depression where you rinsed out plastic bags and washed tinfoil, combine that with kids having their own money to learn about buying for quality and durability, and mix in a healthy dose of omg-we-are-a-crafty-bunch, and we have our weaknesses. Mostly books and LEGO and craft supplies :)
ReplyDeleteWhen I actually stop and think about it, our consumer-ness is not huge, I'm just continually aware of the pressure to consume more. Hoarding horrifies me. Keeping things that are useful or beautiful and have a place, ok. Keeping piles of unopened junk mail? }Shudders{ I'd a thousand times rather have experiences than stuff.
Ogre and I are working at de-crapping our lives, because I come from hoarding parents, and I do not want to end up with my nephew resenting the fuck out of me when he's 40 and I have too much shit for my 84 year old ass to cope with. So lately we've been going through our shit with an iron fist. The worst part is getting rid of books, because on some level it hurts me so much to get rid of them. For long stretches at a time they were pretty much my only friends. I'm trying to be brave and tell myself that selling them to used bookstores means that other lonely kids can find and be saved by them, too.
ReplyDeleteAnd we would, ultimately, like to move into a smaller place closer in to the city, or at least in a more walkable area so that there is a motivation for leaving the house. I can take a shitty commute if I don't then also have to commute to have fun.
I've noticed we buy much less stuff now that we don't have regular television.
Mickey Schulz have you thought about using Bookcrossing to deal with your books? Register them, write the info inside the cover, include an explanatory bookmark (which you can download for printing), and release them into the wild.
ReplyDeleteI think you do not comprehend the magnitude of books we are talking about.
ReplyDeleteYou know those great big Ikea "Billy" Bookcases? 6 of those back to back, And 4 slightly smaller bookcases in the same room, Another Billy bookcase in the living room, and two waist high bookcases in the bedroom. Oh, and the 6x6 foot shelving unit of gaming books, and the waist high bookshelf full of gaming related fiction in the garage.
We have a lot of books.
This is what happens when two formerly lonely, nerdy readers get married, and one of them goes to grad school.
Maybe just for the ones you find most difficult to let go of.
ReplyDeleteI purged my physical library about 2.5 years ago when I found out I would have to move from MD to NOLA. I already had everything catalogued on LibraryThing, so I moved everything that needed to go into a new list, then offered the list up on my social media accounts, with the caveat that whoever wanted something was responsible for making the arrangements to get their books.
You could do something similar with photographs of the shelves detailed enough for the titles to be readable.
What works for us: The actual public library. We're two blocks from the main branch of the library, and they have taken on many of our books. That's all I got on getting rid of books.
ReplyDeleteMeguey Baker At least those things are ostensibly useful, yeah. Add in shifting needs of multiple people as they grow, and its a lot harder to keep the stuff down.
I think this thread (and the prior one of the woman with the crazy house) has suggested something. Namely, books and children have some similarities: they are valuable. They are considerably more valuable to those that posses them than to others. And, ultimately, they are both luxury goods.
ReplyDeleteI had over 1000 books, now I have 20. I'm happier, lighter, better read and better informed than when I had shelves full of books. Our house feels better too.
ReplyDeleteThere were reasons why I had all those books, but with very few exceptions those reasons weren't about the books themselves. They were things like:
- fear of not having access to good reading in the future
- pretending confidence by showing off how many interesting books I read/have
- attributing the feelings I had when I read those books to a place on a shelf (rather accepting them as part of me)
When I really looked at it (helped enormously by Karen Kingston's great book on clutter clearing), my 1000 books were there as cover ups for unfaced fear and insecurity.
It was too much to move them all on at once, but the more I did it , the easier it became - and, in the process, the fears and insecurities these books were holding in place drained away.
It does take compassion for your feelings to start moving books (and other things) on form you life. But the rewards of doing so are enormously worth it.
(If you want a place to start, Karen Kingston's book and online courses are excellent https://www.spaceclearing.com/web and, I'm sure there are plenty of other resources out there, just search for clutter clearing and go from there.)
Michael D Yep, I found the desire for possessions is almost always psychological -- we crave the things because we thing they give life meaning. And study after study says the opposite.
ReplyDeleteThe hard part is letting go of the past selves and past dreams that are connected to the things.
ReplyDeleteMeguey Baker That. It got easier when my mom started accidentally buying me the same gifts because she couldn't bother remembering what she'd already got me. There's issues. Ohhhhh, so many issues.
ReplyDeleteWell, that and cleaning out their house and helping them pack to move. I have never so hated everything material I have ever owned in my life.
I cleared out my grandparent's house after they died. They had lives there for 50 years, and I sorted the whole house into rooms marked Keep, Donate, and Sell, and filled a dumpster with trash. It took me four days, during which I was also tending my three kids ages 6 mos, 5, and 8. The simplicity with which they lived was profound - library for nearly all their books, hobbies were bird watching, crosswords, and service organizations, clothes down to a very comfortable minimum, no games or excess stuff anywhere. The contrast to my own overstuffed house really started me on a path of de-cluttering, but there's four other people to take into account, and not a lot of time to spend just on getting rid of stuff.
ReplyDeleteEverything you move on, however minor, clears some space in both your house and your being.
ReplyDeleteMoving just one thing a week adds up to 52 things gone every year - and once you get the process going it gets easier and faster.
As for other people's stuff - the space you clear starts to make a difference for them too, and their reasons for keeping stuff may be even deeper than yours. They may not have the same enthusiasm, they may live with levels of stuff you couldn't bear yourself, but each thing you move will still make a difference to them. Give them the space to move at their own pace and when they're ready what they clear may surprise you.
Not only that, Michael D , but remember: Part of why we all need to work is so we can all collect stuff. The stuff -- and the space to store it! -- costs us hours. It costs us our lives.
ReplyDeleteAnd this we come full circle to the original quote - we don't need half the stuff we have, and if we understand that, we don't need half the job we have either.
ReplyDeleteExcept, y'know, health care kicks in at 38 hours / week. And retirement. So yeah, the system is built on us all being good wage-earners and wage-spenders.
Meguey Baker Yeah. We've moving towards a system where you don't need to be a full time wager earner, but we aren't there yet.
ReplyDeleteWhat do i mean? The ACA makes it easier to get insurance without working full time, if you either have very little money or can afford health insurance. With a rothira, you can at least put some money towards retirement. And, if you have considerable 1099 income, it can make sense to incorporate and grant yourself a full 401(k). The tools exist, but they require serious income to make sense.
Patreon is -- hopefully -- working as a platform to link income with artist and community expression, though getting full income from that seems really rare.
We're not there yet, but i have some hopes we'll get there.