ranting here because i saw these on main and i don't want to explode directly at these people
yesterday i saw an anticonsumer thread where the op was talking about cancelling all your subscriptions, buying all your clothes secondhand, dumpster diving for what you need, and growing and foraging ALL of your own food to avoid paying large companies. this is fucking impossible for most of the population because you can't just eat the plants out of a community garden and expect to be healthy. you need either meat or equivalent proteins from certain plants (most that the average person can't grow in their backyard) in order to get the right proteins for your insides to actually function. you also can't just stop using soap/shampoo without making yourself and everyone around you sick. we're social animals, we're not designed to get every resource we need ourselves.
beneath that comment was someone proudly taking the diogenes stance and saying all you actually need is edible plants, a jug of water, cloth to protect from the elements, and a safe place to sleep, and that everything else was artificially added to the list of needs by capitalism. this is the biggest fucking load of giant steaming horse shit i have seen all fucking goddamn month and i cannot stress how many studies i could shove in this person's face showing that any animal more intelligent than a paramecium needs stimulation and variety. base survival mode is terrible for a person's mental health. hell, it would be terrible for the mental health of my fucking guinea pig. (and also, diogenes threw out his bowl when he realized you only needed your hands to scoop up water, so get that dumbass jug out of the equation.)
in a related thread someone said "humans will invent the atomic bomb but no mouse would ever invent a mousetrap." NO. STUDY ANIMAL BEHAVIOR PLEASE. a mouse would absolutely invent a mousetrap if it had the intelligence to. again, anything more intelligent than a paramecium is going to be consciously competing for resources. sometimes animals are bonkers clever about how they prevent the other members of their herd/flock/group from getting at food just to hoard it to themselves. be an animal lover, not an animal romanticizer. nature is cruel.
i just can't figure out how these people function when they know so little about how their own species works.
I see these kinds of discussions happen all the time, and they really do perplex me. Like dont get me wrong, I hate capitalism too, I hate that we're often priced out on the basic needs we have. But I live in the real world, theres just some things you cant deny without like you said, hurting yourself. It's already a struggle sometimes having a healthy amount of food in, trying to go out and fend for yourself in a sense is just dumb. I think people just get an idea in their head, but never stop to think further into how it would play into actual life before throwing it down someone elses throat to feel superior.
Like me personally, I dont want to go through those hoops, i dont want to grow and hunt all my food. I just want to afford the things i like and live my life with those closest to me and be happy. I mean so many of us live in places where growing shit is just impossible, I live in a city! Most of us dont even have gardens in this area, and the ones who do are all dangerous with pests.
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