Usually, the feelings I have as I am shifting due to personal growth are intense, yet temporary—and I’ve changed myself a lot of times, so the temporary nature of those feelings seems to be a pretty well-established pattern to me. And the way that my ideas settle is always unexpected at first. Making a major decision during a transition could end you up somewhere you don’t want to be later.
I once read the story of a person who decided to become a vagabond. She thought it would be good for her, but people treated her like a homeless person, and she was technically homeless, so she started to feel like a homeless person… Homelessness was what her experience turned into.
I have a friend who travels the world and loves it. He decided to use a bicycle as transportation, catch his own fish, and sleep in a tent—but before he left, he saved $100,000 to make sure he wouldn’t be worried about money. When you’ve got 100k in the bank, you’re probably not going to feel as though you’ve turned into a homeless person, and that may be part of why things turned out well for him.
I can’t tell you what lifestyle to live. You have to know what you want to get out of it. Then you have to know the pros and cons of each lifestyle. I can tell you this, though: If you try the utilitarian lifestyle for a while, and don’t like it, you can always go back. Put your excess stuff in public storage for a few months and see if you like living without it. If so, you can call Salvation Army and they’ll take it away. If not, you can have it back.
If you’re going to go vagabond, it’s a lot harder to switch back. If there is some way of testing that first, I would test it before trying that for real.
I can tell you this, though: My traveler friend is not an altruist. He spends all his time doing outdoors activities like kayaking and hanging out on beaches. If you want to be an altruist, you have to consider how you will make a difference, and that’s probably not going to happen outside on a kayak. With no money to donate, no home office, and the random demands of survival disrupting your schedule, will you have the opportunity to make your most effective contribution to the world? Might having your needs met, like guaranteed food, shelter, privacy and office space be necessary to help others? They say “first help yourself.” so I suspect that a utilitarian lifestyle would be a better foundation for altruism.
Note: Quitting one’s job is not without risks, so trying the vagabond lifestyle might not be safe.
“Warning: If you quit your job and stay jobless for more than, say, a month, you will probably be discriminated against when you go looking for a job in the future. Some people who have an employment gap find it impossible to get employed no matter what they do, and employers are not going to take “I was trying out being a traveler” as a good reason for a gap.”
I would hate to live in a world in which this was true. If this in your opinion is true about our world, consider it an www.nickbostrom.com/information-hazards.pdf information hazard.
Thank goodness it isn’t true. Also, if it is true where you live, run, run fast, run far.
I can stand a world without a god, and with the kludgy, tinkered weird ways of blind evolution. I cannot stand the world described above.
Usually, the feelings I have as I am shifting due to personal growth are intense, yet temporary—and I’ve changed myself a lot of times, so the temporary nature of those feelings seems to be a pretty well-established pattern to me. And the way that my ideas settle is always unexpected at first. Making a major decision during a transition could end you up somewhere you don’t want to be later.
I once read the story of a person who decided to become a vagabond. She thought it would be good for her, but people treated her like a homeless person, and she was technically homeless, so she started to feel like a homeless person… Homelessness was what her experience turned into.
I have a friend who travels the world and loves it. He decided to use a bicycle as transportation, catch his own fish, and sleep in a tent—but before he left, he saved $100,000 to make sure he wouldn’t be worried about money. When you’ve got 100k in the bank, you’re probably not going to feel as though you’ve turned into a homeless person, and that may be part of why things turned out well for him.
I can’t tell you what lifestyle to live. You have to know what you want to get out of it. Then you have to know the pros and cons of each lifestyle. I can tell you this, though: If you try the utilitarian lifestyle for a while, and don’t like it, you can always go back. Put your excess stuff in public storage for a few months and see if you like living without it. If so, you can call Salvation Army and they’ll take it away. If not, you can have it back.
If you’re going to go vagabond, it’s a lot harder to switch back. If there is some way of testing that first, I would test it before trying that for real.
I can tell you this, though: My traveler friend is not an altruist. He spends all his time doing outdoors activities like kayaking and hanging out on beaches. If you want to be an altruist, you have to consider how you will make a difference, and that’s probably not going to happen outside on a kayak. With no money to donate, no home office, and the random demands of survival disrupting your schedule, will you have the opportunity to make your most effective contribution to the world? Might having your needs met, like guaranteed food, shelter, privacy and office space be necessary to help others? They say “first help yourself.” so I suspect that a utilitarian lifestyle would be a better foundation for altruism.
Note: Quitting one’s job is not without risks, so trying the vagabond lifestyle might not be safe.
“Warning: If you quit your job and stay jobless for more than, say, a month, you will probably be discriminated against when you go looking for a job in the future. Some people who have an employment gap find it impossible to get employed no matter what they do, and employers are not going to take “I was trying out being a traveler” as a good reason for a gap.” I would hate to live in a world in which this was true. If this in your opinion is true about our world, consider it an www.nickbostrom.com/information-hazards.pdf information hazard.
Thank goodness it isn’t true. Also, if it is true where you live, run, run fast, run far.
I can stand a world without a god, and with the kludgy, tinkered weird ways of blind evolution.
I cannot stand the world described above.