Comfort in a Post-Modern Age

Ernie · #1 02/28/10, 01:56 PM

You hear a lot in survival circles about comfort. The discussions talk around comfort foods, comfort fire or hearth, comfortable household belongings, and last but not least a comfortable house.

Comfort seems to be highly relative to culture. Other civilizations and peoples in various other times made do without upholstered furniture and indeed never seemed to feel the lack. Sleeping sprawled out in a patch of straw seems to be the norm for large portions of today's population, while here in America we take mattress purchases to a whole new level.

Look around your house today and start thinking about those comfort items which you will be making do without in the future, as well as those which you may have never realized actually have no point.

I leave you with the words of George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the German philosopher who said, "the need for greater 'comfort' does not arise within us, but is suggested to you by those who hope to make a profit from its creation."

ChristyACB · #2 02/28/10, 02:02 PM

Ernie - I think it is relative not so much as to culture, but to expectation in life as well.

Bottom line is that those who have things like mattresses, well balanced meals, soaps to clean their hair and bodies and those other "useless" things live longer.

They recover from stress, illness and injury better.
They maintain wellness.
They grow under more optimal conditions and therefore are stronger, more resilient, smarter and more likely to survive bad moments.

So many people nowadays on here are taking a very negative light and it confuses me. It isn't just about having another day to breath and eat. It is also about living with the expectation that the next day will be a little better.

Keep in mind that the human body was meant to last between 30 and 35 years as it is.

A good mattress alone is probably responsible for quite a few of those extra years.

Illini · #3 02/28/10, 02:33 PM

Does Survival and Emergency Preparedness now require posters to pass a "more-Spartan-than-thou" test? It is certainly possible to strip life of every last shred of comfort and joy and even hope. Whether such a life is worth living is for each individual to decide.

Cyngbaeld · #4 02/28/10, 02:57 PM

The main reason for prepping, IMHO, is not just to keep my head above water, but to be on high ground. In other words, I do prep a lot of beans and rice, but I have meat, spices, veggies and CHOCOLATE too!

Ernie · #5 02/28/10, 03:09 PM

I'm really curious why you take a sociological viewpoint against needless material comforts and act like you're being attacked personally. Is it the subject matter that bothers you all, or the bearer?

I'm sitting here on an upholstered chair typing this, sipping a cup of coffee, and in a heated home (not a mud hut). If you've got a splinter in your eye, I have a beam in mine. I'm less Spartan than others, however I do concede that there are many, MANY material comforts in my life which not only fail to provide me any pleasure, but actually inconvenience me as well.

I've started to notice the differences between those needless material comforts and real comfort in my own life, partly through contact with some heroic influences, and I'm encouraging others to do the same.

timfromohio · #6 02/28/10, 03:16 PM

I don't think Ernie is suggesting that we all abandon "comfort" items. Rather that we consider what we might have to do without and prioritize what things we might spend our time/energy on preserving in a TEOTWAWKI situation. Personally, I hope to "bug-in" and therefore continue to enjoy many comfort items mentioned like a good bed and woodstove. I have thought a great deal about life without electricity, and we're working towards being able to function without it - life certainly may not be as comfortable, but could be more satisfying. For example, it's might nice to have the electric well pump pressurize the household water system. If the grid goes down, I'll have to yank the pump and use a well bucket - won't be nearly as nice and comfortable (especially in NEOhio winters) but who knows - maybe we'll find it to be satisfying to provide for our water this way just as it's satisfying to provide our heat with wood that we harvested and processed. Anyway, if the events that we talk of here do come to fruition I'll be relying upon the Lord and hope to be like Paul ... "I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound"

TheMartianChick · #7 02/28/10, 03:43 PM

For my family, I try to prep for the necessities as well as the comfort items. In the event of an emergency, I'd rather have things remain as close to normal for us while we figure things out based on the emergency. I stock chocolate because it will help me to keep an even keel and make things a bit more pleasant for everyone involved.

Forerunner · #8 02/28/10, 04:56 PM

Voluntarily stepping a few rungs down the comfort ladder today will likely set you up to be able to sustainably live like a king, comparatively speaking, in the event your area, or the entire nation is required to take a major humbling.

glazed · #9 02/28/10, 05:00 PM

Hey, Ernie, what's wrong with a mud hut?

My dream is to live in a mud hut ... a minimalistic, voluntarily simplistic lifestyle in a mini-village of mud huts, actually.

AngieM2 · #10 02/28/10, 05:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Illini

Does Survival and Emergency Preparedness now require posters to pass a "more-Spartan-than-thou" test? It is certainly possible to strip life of every last shred of comfort and joy and even hope. Whether such a life is worth living is for each individual to decide.

No, no new requirements.

AngieM2 · #11 02/28/10, 05:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Forerunner

Voluntarily stepping a few rungs down the comfort ladder today will likely set you up to be able to sustainably live like a king, comparatively speaking, in the event your area, or the entire nation is required to take a major humbling.

But this sure would not hurt any of us. Then we'll be better ready in case something happens that throws a kink in our current life-style.

Cyngbaeld · #12 02/28/10, 05:07 PM

Comfort in a Post-Modern Age - Survival & Emergency Preparedness

I know that to most people today, the GD seems a world away. I was born in a coal miner's cabin (aka shack) in Alabama in 1952. These pictures are very like what I saw around me when I was very young. If you check the mortality schedule, it was pretty dismal. I may not live in the lap of luxury, but I would rather not live like that any more.

Forerunner · #13 02/28/10, 05:15 PM

People can choose to let circumstances dictate their outlook, or, they can choose to let their outlook dictate their outlook.
I choose to be a positive influence, and, despite the continual punches in the stomach that life can deliver, I choose to make the best of where I am, who I am with, and whatever I might find laying about that I might be able to use to make someone else
comfortable for a day. I don't care if I live to see tomorrow. I don't mind if I live another 50 years. It seems that some sort of quality of life expectancy has overshadowed our purpose to face whatever life gives us in the best possible way.
Cradle to grave comfort and convenience has done nothing but create a nation full of ignorant and dependent drones. Give me a challenge, and the freedom to meet it, every time.

glazed · #14 02/28/10, 05:24 PM

Give me a challenge, and the freedom to meet it, every time. - Forerunner

love, Love, LOVE IT!

wvstuck · #15 02/28/10, 06:00 PM

Me, I've already started cutting out the uselessness in my life, and my wife agrees with the same philosophy. We wake up on a cold winter morning, not to the sound of the magical heat pump and furnace unit running (sucking dollars through the electric meter), but to the sound of nothingness. In the dead of winter this house can cool to 55 degree's or less, if I decide to lay in bed too late in the morning... Heating solely with wood has been a great decision and one that has saved us boatloads of money for the past three years.

That's but one example of cutting back we have done, believe me... By next winter we will be cooking all of our meals on a wood cook stove once again, and enjoying every minute of it. If the coffee maker quits, why waste money on a new one... i can always use the old peculator. In this economy I wouldn't replace anything unless the replacement is of good old fashioned quality, something that will last a lifetime.

Chances are... I have much less stress in my life than people with monthly payments on the latest, greatest magic foam mattress and the upside down car payment book. I'm sorry but America is in the middle of a wake-up call... The excesses of living in debt to have the latest greatest creature comforts are coming home to roost... A good majority of those living on unemployment checks right now are going to start whining once they run out, because they didn't think to put up one red cent of any earnings... Being that we have an unemployment check coming in like so many friends and neighbors, I have noticed most continue tripping to Wally world and buying like there is no tomorrow.

Trust me, the Gloom and Doomers in this forum are really just folks mildly stating an obvious truth. Those that call it gloomy and doomy probably still have sand filled eyes from poking their heads in the ground.

ChristyACB · #16 02/28/10, 06:09 PM

No Ernie, certainly I wasn't taking it personally. It's just that the tone here for many posts and many posters is starting to be more "down" and pessimistic lately. And not entirely for useful reasons at times. Merely simply to point out failure, or somehow be..well, negative.

To a person in aboriginal Borneo living in a grass hut, the possession of a mud hut may seem extravagant.

To a person in a mud hut, living in a stone shelter like in the rural middle east may seem extravagant.

To a person in the stone shelter, living in a small American shack without power, but with a metal roof and a porch, with a well nearby may seem extravagant.

We could go on, up to the mobile home with power hookups and water, to the small old house with first time owners desperately trying to find the money to restore it, to the suburban home, to the brownstone in town, to the palatial residences that seem to hover outside of major towns to the trump tower.

Each one truly thinking how extravagant the next one up is and each one decrying that the next level up will only breed 'useless' and skill-less and lazy people.

Is it true? No. It isn't.

Whether or not I'm on that sagging old mattress I had for the first 10 years I was on my own that I got as a freebie or the handmade one I have now, I'm still the same person and just as capable.

And so is everyone else. We are what we were made to be by our parents, our early lives and then what we managed to overcome to become what made us happy later on. Rose and I and many others out there could have gone a very different way. Our upbringing didn't bring us permanently down.

And those who have received love and care and material goods aren't specifically ruined by that either. People who received materially fine lives have grown up to become great explorers who traversed the wilds of the north in search of the Northwest passage. They crossed the great oceans and landed on a land of endless and unpassable forests...and cut a life from it. They became great leaders in the field and lived there for years as well.

These cut and dried statements of the worthlessness of everyone just don't work. We are who we choose to become...whether we sleep on a mattress or no.

And assuming that anyone who has anything nice is somehow irresponsible? How? I pay cash for everything (or directly from my checkbook) so why shouldn't I have a decent bed? I use old fashioned things, but if I wanted to buy a better quality one, why shouldn't I? ::shakes head:: Not everyone is paying for previous bad choices. Not everyone didn't save. Not everyone is currently jobless. I'm doing well and I'm not going to live in a tent in my backyard to gain approval.

wvstuck · #17 02/28/10, 06:19 PM

Quote:

And assuming that anyone who has anything nice is somehow irresponsible? How? I pay cash for everything (or directly from my checkbook) so why shouldn't I have a decent bed? I use old fashioned things, but if I wanted to buy a better quality one, why shouldn't I? ::shakes head:: Not everyone is paying for previous bad choices. Not everyone didn't save. Not everyone is currently jobless. I'm doing well and I'm not going to live in a tent in my backyard to gain approval.

Living in debt to have these things are where people have gone wrong... Paying with cash keeps you free from burdens you can't afford when things go wrong. If you can afford it and are comfortable with it.... Good for you, you deserve it... You truly do!

I think living outside one's means is what everyone is talking about in most cases on these forums... And the content of Ernie's message wasn't about trying to shame anyone (at least not the way I read it) It to me was about living differently when the scenario of life changes, what creature comforts are we able to live without.

And besides, I don't think anyone wants to live in a tent, if things were than bad, they probably repossessed the back yard when they took the house :-)

Bonnie L · #18 02/28/10, 06:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ernie

I'm sitting here on an upholstered chair typing this, sipping a cup of coffee, and in a heated home (not a mud hut).

I'm sitting in a plain folding chair (the same type we've been using for close to 30 years), also sipping my coffee in a wood heated log cabin. Wood is our only source of heat.

We live simply by choice. If the SHTF I'll miss the Internet (& all you guys), hot showers, & my coffee, but a lot will stay the same for us.

Years ago I read this about Diogenes:

"If you would learn to flatter the king," said a friend of Diogenes, "you would not have to eat lentils." And Diogenes replied, "If you would learn to eat lentils you would not have to flatter the king."

I've never been good at flattering kings.

PhilJohnson · #19 02/28/10, 06:28 PM

I think comfort is essential to surviving in a post-modern age. I know I make much better decisions when I am comfortable, fed, and have a good shelter. In this country it takes very little money to live comfortably because so many people throw away perfectly good things. My upholstered furniture cost me nothing, my large collection of blankets also cost me nothing. In this day and age when comfort is available for next to nothing why suffer?

Ernie · #20 02/28/10, 07:04 PM

Well, a few of you get it. I'll try to clarify for the rest.

There are a certain number of "comforts" in our lives which are suggested to us simply by virtue of us being alive in this modern age. They serve no purpose other than in conspicuous consumption or possibly because we believe we need them.

One example I would like to hold up is the proliferance of "energy drinks". They are EVERYWHERE now. Grocery stores, health-food stores, gas stations, etc. These drinks are really little more than an array of sugars (simple and complex) in a fancy can. Were people really walking around before the past few years and the rise of the energy drink all depleted of energy and about to fall down? How did we manage to find the energy to colonize America, fight two world wars, and build up the infrastructure necessary to deliver those energy drinks WITHOUT the energy drinks? Energy comes from healthful food, not from a can.

That's one example of a frivolous luxury which seems to hold no purpose other than to suck income out of your wallet. In my first message, I was inviting you to think of other examples, not taking a whack at anyone. Clearly some of you have issues outside of the context of this posting that you've decided to take out on me.