While I am digging up files that may or may not be backed up, let me ramble on Living Successfully versus Successfully Living. Successfully Living means you managed to survive something. Living Successfully means you are thriving. Successfully Living is something we do every day. For some, it is a lot of work, but it's something everybody does. Living Successfully require something more. From the aspect of choosing your housing, let's look at lifestyle models of human society in four parts.
The Nomad Model:
The Nomad lifestyle model is characterized by temporary and movable structures and no embedded infrastructure. They succeed on poor land because their living quarters are cheap to build and or movable. When the grazing land is used up or the herds they are hunting move, they fold their tents and move on. They recognize that acquiring too much stuff results in waste, because it has to be left behind or will incur a substantial cost to move it. If any infrastructure is built at all, it little more than a well.
The biggest nomadic achievement is probably the Mongol Empire. It sprang from a band of nomadic herdsmen in 1206 AD and in 73 years it conquered 1/6th of the planet and 100 million people. It stretched out and touched lands from Korea to Poland. It stands as the single largest empire to be ruled by a single government ever. 15 years later it broke into 4 parts and proceeded to go into free fall.
Modern Nomadic structures range from tin shacks thrown up in a shantytown using whatever materials that can be found, to travel trailers, to motor homes. Motor homes and travel trailers come in various qualities. Most travel trailers are like the Prowler that The keeper of the mountain bought. Their frames are of wood that is stapled together, wrapped in aluminum, given maybe 2 inches of insulation, lined inside with cheap wood facing, and sold by slick salesmen who want you to think you actually like the boxy styling and ugly paint. Your better motor homes and travel trailers are made of buses and transport trucks. These have welded or riveted metal frames as well as a metal exterior. Even on these, installation tends to be skimpy, because installation is space hungry and they are usually driven to mild climates by people on vacation, not lived in for years in hot or cold environments such as where I live.
If you earn your living working for someone else, with little or no warning you could be dismissed from that job. Does your company promise lifetime employment? Lifetime Employment promises proved to be empty for many Japanese. Are you the third generation that is working for the same company? General Motors has had such workers, and many are now looking for work in the region with the worst unemployment rate in the nation. Finding another position may mean you must relocate. This places you squarely in the position of being a modern nomad. You need a house you can pack up in a day and drive away without leaving anything behind.
To be continued.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment