I feel like the caption doesn't summarize the spirit of the quote. The indigenous folks cooked, told stories, made art, danced, fell in love, made enemies, had sports, and formed various unique cultures. There's a lot of "doing" in a that. For me this reads as you don't need to grind to make other people wealthy and collect a lot of plastic bullshit that Instagram convinced you was necessary for happiness. But like we're all slowly, collectively realizing this right?
As a not very well-traveled American, I definitely read this as the US and our indigenous peoples. I suppose only the speaker truly knows who they were referencing. Or it's intentionally vague to be relatable...
To me, the quote is another way of saying our ‘purpose’ is to be sensory organs for the universe: life is how the universe experiences itself.
The more you do, the more richly you contribute to that experience, but the caption’s take is also valid in that ‘being’ also contributes, if that makes sense.
We also do all that, the problem is that it's all commodified, advertised, ultracompetitive, conspicuous and repackaged, like we need to relate to each other and nature through something that has come out of a factory or a pr firm. There are ways to escape this, but it comes at a social cost, but it gets better if you find others.
Don't lose heart. The kids already think Facebook is lame, X killed itself, most folks on the street have heard "if you aren't buying anything you're the product", influencers are as frequently pitied as admired. I see glimmers of the needed changes in these things.
I already banned people in this thread, but I didn't remove the comments as they were part of a discussion that was at least in part not total trolling.
Being alive for the sake of being alive doesn't do much to reduce infant and maternal mortality rates. Those are down from pre-industrial levels because incredibly smart people have worked incredibly hard over the last few hundred years.
Yeah, I'm inclined to generally agree with this; what she left out is that now most people can live past 30 now and not die from a bacterial infection after scraping their leg.
I would add that the ideal is likely somewhere in the middle between the extremes of "living off the land and using every part of the bison" and "grinding away your soul until you collapse on the Walmart floor." Both are too far towards their respective ends of the spectrum.
That's a rather empty way to live one's life. While purpose isn't an objective mandate from the heavens, it can be found within oneself, and struggling towards that ideal is where human beauty truly lies.
So like, is there some place I can go too live like that? One that isn't private property or owned by the government, etc? I live in a place that is mostly open, mountainous areas, but they're surrounded by barbed wire and 2nd Degree Tresspassing is a felony.
Sure. To the land of Britain. Read up on the Druids and go dance around Stonehenge or something.
I have a soft spot for Wicca despite knowing it was mostly made up by white British people. Because it's a deliberate mindful attempt to recapture the old ties between white British people and their land and ancestors that lie underneath sixteen hundred years of Christianity. And that's worth doing.