How To Drop Out

Discussion in 'Back to Basics' started by melbo, Nov 24, 2007.


  1. melbo

    melbo Hunter Gatherer Administrator Founding Member

    This will be recognized by at least one here.

    How to Drop Out

    by Ran Prieur
    http://ranprieur.com/essays/dropout.html

    Introduction May 2006. I don't eat from dumpsters any more -- I'd like to, but I spend most of my time in cities where there aren't any good ones. Even in Seattle they've been drying up because of this "security" fad. So having to buy all my food, my yearly expenses are now more like $3000. I still dodge rent by housesitting and staying with people, and in case that dries up, I got lucky and bought a good piece of land, which you can read about on my landblog. When people email me all excited about dropping out, I often find myself talking them down: The goal is not to get out of the prison, but to get out in a way that enables you to stay out. Be patient. Think ahead. Getting free is not like walking through a magic doorway -- it's like growing a fruit tree.


    I didn't even start dropping out until my mid-20's. Unlike many outsiders and "radicals," I never had to go through a stage where I realized that our whole society is insane -- I've known that as long as I can remember. But even being already mentally outside the system, I found it extremely challenging to get out physically. In fourth grade I wanted to blow up the school, but I didn't know how, and even if I had done it, it would not have meant an endless summer vacation. In high school, inspired by Bill Kaysing's The Robin Hood Handbook, I wanted to go live off the land in the Idaho wilderness, but actually doing it seemed as remote and difficult as going to the moon. (Kaysing later wrote the book We Never Went to the Moon.) So I continued to bide my time and obey the letter of the law, like the guy in the Kafka parable (link). In college, when Artis the Spoonman performed on campus and told us all to drop out, I thought that was ridiculous -- how would I survive without a college degree?

    A few years later, with my two college degrees, after jobs operating envelope-stuffing machinery and answering phones in a warehouse, I was finally nudged toward dropping out by the Bush I recession and my own nature -- that I'm extremely frugal, love unstructured time, and would sooner eat garbage than feign enthusiasm. More than ten years later I'm a specialist at eating garbage -- as I draft this I'm eating a meal I made with organic eggs from a dumpster, and later I'll make a pie of dumpstered apples. I live on under $2000 a year, I have no permanent residence, and moving to the Idaho wilderness now seems like a reachable goal -- but no longer the best idea.

    Getting free of the system is more complex than we've been led to believe. Here as in so many places, our thinking has been warped by all-or-nothingism, by the Hollywood myth of the sudden overwhelming victory: Quit your corporate job this minute, sell all your possessions, and hop a freight train to a straw bale house in the mountains where you'll grow all your own food and run with the wolves! In reality, between the extremes there's a whole dropout universe, and no need to hurry.

    In my case, as I understood what I had to go through to make money, I stopped spending it. I learned to make my meals from scratch, and then from cheaper scratch, making my own sourdough bread and tortillas. I stopped buying music and books (exceptions in exceptional cases) and got in the habit of using the library. When I crashed my car, I kept the insurance money and walked, and then got an old road bike. I took a road trip by hitchhiking, but it was too physically taxing and I got sick. Like many novice radicals, I got puritanical and pushed myself too hard, and finally eased off. I temporarily owned another car and lived in it for a couple months of a long road trip. In the Clinton economic bubble, I got a job that was much easier and better paying than my previous jobs, and built up savings that I'm still living on.

    The main thing I was doing during those years was de-institutionalizing myself, learning to navigate the hours of the day and the thoughts in my head with no teacher or boss telling me what to do. I had to learn to relax without getting lethargic, to never put off washing the dishes, to balance the needs of the present and the future, to have spontaneous fun but avoid addiction, to be intuitive, to notice other people, to make big and small decisions. I went through mild depression and severe fatigue and embarrassing obsessions and strange diets and simplistic new age thinking. It's a long and ugly road, and most of us have to walk it, or something like it, to begin to be free.

    A friend says, "This world makes it easy to toe the line, and easy to totally **** up, and really hard to not do either one." But this hard skill, not quitting your job or moving to the woods or reducing consumption or doing art all day, is the essence of dropping out. When people rush it, and try to take shortcuts, they slide into addiction or debt or depression or shattered utopian communities, and then go back to toeing the line.

    The path is different for everyone. Maybe you're already intuitive and decisive and know how to have fun, but you don't know how to manage money or stay grounded. Maybe you're using wealth or position or charm to keep from having to relate to people as equals, or you're keeping constantly busy to avoid facing something lurking in the stillness. Whatever weaknesses keep you dependent on the system, you have to take care of them before you break away from the system, just as you have to learn to swim before you escape a ship. How? By going out and back, a little farther each time, with persistence and patience, until you reach the skill and distance that feels right.

    At the moment there's no reason to drop out "all the way" except puritanism. I hate civilization as much as anyone, but in these last few years before it crashes, we should appreciate and use what it offers. Sylvan Hart (his given name!), the 20th century mountain man who even smelted his own metal, still traded with civilization, and once carried a sheet of glass 50 miles through the woods so he could have a good window. (See Harold Peterson, The Last of the Mountain Men)

    Some of the happiest people I know have dropped out only a short distance. They still live in the city and have jobs and pay rent, but they've done something more mentally difficult -- and mentally liberating -- than moving to some isolated farm. They have become permanently content with no-responsibility slack jobs, low-status, modest-paying, easy jobs that they don't have to think about at home or even half the time when they're at work. Yes, these jobs are getting scarce, but they're still a thousand times more plentiful than the kind of job that miserable people cannot give up longing for -- where you make a living doing something so personally meaningful that you would do it for free.

    "Do what you love and the money will follow" is an irresponsible lie, a denial of the deep opposition between money and love. The real rule is: "If you're doing what you love, you won't care if you never make a cent from it, because that's what love means -- but you still need money!" So what I recommend, as the second element of dropping out, is coldly severing your love from your income. One part of your life is to make only as much money as you need with as little stress as possible, and a separate part, the important part, is to do just exactly what you love with zero pressure to make money. And if you're lucky, you'll eventually make money anyway.

    But how much money do you "need"? And what if the only jobs available are low-paying and so exhausting that you barely have the energy to go home and collapse into bed? These questions lead to my own level of dropping out, which is to reduce expenses to the point that you shift your whole identity from the high-budget to the low-budget universe.

    In a temperate climate, you have only five physical needs: food, water, clothing, shelter, and fuel. (If you're a raw-foodist and don't mind the cold, you don't even need fuel!) Everything else that costs money is a luxury or a manufactured need. Manufactured needs have fancy names: entertainment, transportation, education, employment, housing, "health care." In every case these are creations of, and enablers of, an alienating and dominating system, a world of lost wholeness.

    If you love your normal activities, you don't need to tack on "entertainment." If you aren't forced to travel many miles a day, you don't need "transportation." If you are permitted to learn on your own, you don't need "education." If you can meet all your physical needs through the direct action of yourself and your friends, you don't need to go do someone else's work all day. If you're permitted to merely occupy physical space and build something to keep the wind and rain out, you don't need to pay someone to "provide" it. Expensive health care is especially insidious: not only is our toxic and stressful society the primary cause of sickness, but the enormous expenses that have been added in the last hundred years are mostly profit-making scams that cause and prolong sickness far more than they heal it.

    This is the low-budget universe: I ride around the city on an old cheap road bike, in street clothes, often hauling food I've just pulled out of a dumpster. Sometimes I'll be on a trail where I'll invariably be passed by people on thousand dollar bikes in racing outfits. Why are they riding around if they're not carrying anything? And why are they in such a hurry?

    I used to be envious of those suckers: I have to ride my bike to survive and they're so rich they do it for fun. But what is this "fun"? I get everything -- exercise, getting from place to place, meaningfulness, the feeling of autonomy, and doing what's necessary to survive -- all with the same activity: riding my bike. They should be envious of me: my life is elegant and theirs is disjointed and self-defeating, making money which they have to turn around and spend on unhealthful restaurant food because they don't have time to cook, on cars because they have too many obligations to get around by bicycle, and then on bicycles or health club memberships to make up for sitting in their jobs and cars all day, and even then on medical "insurance" (a protection racket which for most people costs more than uninsured care -- or there would be no profit in it) for when their fragmented poisonous life makes them sick.

    How do you get out of this? One step at a time! Move or change jobs so you don't need a car, and then sell the damn thing. Get a bicycle and learn to fix it yourself -- it's not even 1% as difficult and expensive as fixing a car. Reduce your possessions and you'll find that the fewer you have, the more you appreciate each one. Get your clothing at thrift stores on sale days -- I spend less than $20 a year on clothes. Give up sweetened drinks -- filtered water is less than 50 cents a gallon and much better for you. If you have an expensive addiction, pull yourself out of it or at least trade it for a cheap one.

    Probably the most valuable skill you can learn is cooking. For a fraction of the cost of white-sugar-white-starch-hydrogenated-oil restaurant meals, you can make your own meals out of high quality healthful ingredients, and if you're a good cook, they'll taste good. I eat better than anyone I know on $100 a month: butter, nuts, dates, whole wheat flour, brown rice, olive oil, all organic, and bee pollen for extra vitamins. From natural food store dumpsters I get better bread, produce, meat, and eggs than Safeway even sells, but if this is impossible in your city, or you'd just prefer not to, you can still eat beautifully on $200.

    The foundation of all this is to cultivate intense awareness of money. It doesn't grow on trees but you have millions of years of biological memory of a world where what you want does grow on trees, so you need to constantly remind yourself that whatever you're thinking of buying will cost you an hour, ten hours, 100 hours of dreary humiliating labor. Your expenses are your chains. Reducing them is not about punishing yourself or avoiding guilt -- it's about getting free.

    If you continue to reduce expenses, eventually you'll come to the proverbial elephant in the parlor, the single giant expense that consumes 50-80% of a frugal person's money, enough to buy a small extravagant luxury every day. Of course, it's rent, or for you advanced slaves, mortgage. The only reason you can't just go find a vacant space and live there, the only reason another entity can be said to "own" it and require a huge monthly payment from whoever lives there, is to maintain a society of domination, to continually and massively redistribute influence (symbolized by money) from the powerless to the powerful, so the powerless are reduced to groveling for the alleged privilege of wage labor, doing what the powerful tell them in exchange for tokens which they turn around and pass back toward the powerful every month and think it's natural. Rent is theft and slavery, and mortgage is just as bad, based not only on the myth of "owning" space but also on the contrived custom of "interest," simply a command to give money (influence) to whoever has it and take it from whoever lacks it.

    Fortunately there are still a lot of ways to dodge rent/mortgage other than refusing to pay or leave and being killed by the police. For surprisingly little money you can buy remote or depleted land and build a house on it. (see Mortgage Free! by Rob Roy, and also Finding and Buying Your Place in the Country by Les Scher) If you don't mind starting over with strangers, you can join an existing dropout community. (See the Communities Directory.) You can live in a van, camp in the woods, or look for a caretaker or apartment manager job. If you're charming, you can find a partner or spouse who will "support" you by permitting you to sleep and cook someplace without asking for money. And if you're bold or desperate, most cities have abandoned houses or buildings where you can squat. Mainly all you need are neighbors oblivious to your coming and going, a two-burner propane camp stove, some water jugs and candles, and a system for disposing of your bodily waste. If the "owners" come, they'll probably just ask you to leave, and in some places there are still archaic laws from compassionate times, making it legally difficult for them to evict you.

    I squatted a shed for two weeks in December 2002 and if necessary I'll do it again. Also I have enough money saved to buy cheap land -- the project is just too big for me to do alone. Also I'm slowly learning wilderness survival -- which is iffy since wilderness itself is not surviving. But I spend most of my time surfing housesits and staying with friends and family.

    To drop out is to become who you are. Do not feel guilty about using strengths and advantages that others do not have. That guilt is a holdover from the world of selfish competition, where your "success" means the failure or deprivation of someone else. In the dropout universe, your freedom feeds the freedom of others -- it's as if we've all been tied up, and the most agile and loosely tied people get out first, and then help the rest.

    But what if they don't? What about people who are outside the system but still hyper-selfish? These people are not what I call "dropouts" but what I call "idiots." The view of this world as a war of all against all, where your purpose in life is to accumulate "wealth," zero-sum advantages and scarce resources for an exclusive "self," is the view of the elite. The only reason to think that way is if you are one of the handful of people in a position to win. For everyone else, the value system that makes sense is that you are here to help, to serve the greatest good that you can perceive. Yet in America, rich and poor alike are raised with robber baron consciousness, to turn us against each other, to keep us exploiting those below us instead of resisting our own exploiters, to keep all the arrows going the right way in the life-depleting machine.

    The frugality that I'm talking about is the opposite of ungenerosity, because it frees us from a scarcity-based system in which we cannot afford to be generous. For all our lives we've been trained as prostitutes, demanding money in exchange for services that we should be giving free to those we love, because others demand the same of us. In this context, the dropout is a hero and a virus: if you no longer need money, you can give others what they need without asking for money, and then they no longer need money, and so on. In practice it's still sketchy because there are so few of us, but the more of us there are, and the more skills and goods and openings we offer, the better our gift economy will work. And if we do it right, they won't be able to just massacre us or put us in camps, as they've always done before, because we will have too many friends and relations in the dominant system.

    For strategy I look not to political movements like revolts or strikes or radical parties, but to cultural movements like gay liberation or feminism or pagan spirituality. First define a clearly understood identity, then proudly claim that identity, then build public acceptance through entertainment and by each of us earning the support of friends and family outside the movement. I'm envious of gay people -- I've spent years mastering written language just to halfway explain myself, and all they have to say is "I'm gay."

    If we had a word, what would it be? In a recent family bulk Christmas mailing, I was "living the bohemian lifestyle," but I don't go to poetry readings or hang out in coffee shops. "Anarchist" smacks of ideology, of people who bicker endlessly about abstract theory, although maybe we could adopt an insulting term used by theory anarchists, and call ourselves "lifestyle anarchists." "Voluntary simplicity" is too tame and politically correct, suggesting aging yuppies trying to save the world by reducing households to one car -- plus the life I advocate is not at all simple, just unstressful. I'm too politically ambitious and forward-looking to be a hobo or a tramp. In Eastern tradition I could be respected as some kind of monk or holy man, but I don't want to get "enlightened" -- I want to make the whole world wild and free.

    The word I've been using, "dropout," is a good start but it has the same deep flaw as "primitive": it places our dominating, parasitic, and temporary civilization in the fixed center. We've got it inside out. On the physical plane, nature is the center that holds, and "mainstream" society is the falling apart, the irresponsible life-wasting deviance. What I'm trying to do -- and what we're all going to have to do in the next few decades if we survive at all -- is drop back in.
    <hr>related links
    My own recommendations of books to drop out with.

    A page about Jeffrey Sawyer, who has gone way farther out than I ever did.

    Appendix 1: Having Kids
    For very young people there are also two universes. Squatting over a tub of warm water is a much cheaper and healthier way to give birth than lying on your back in a harsh hospital room where the high priest will take the infant away from the mother to teach it alienation, and inject it with toxic vaccinations to make it stupid and sick so it will grow into a docile worker who pumps money back into the medical system -- and don't forget the surface goal, that vaccinations enable human beings to live at the socially and ecologically destructive densities that make infectious disease a "problem."

    Then you can buy a stroller and a crib (more alienation practice) and expensive baby food, or do like most nature-based peoples and carry your baby against your body and breast-feed it for the first three to four years (reference) (reference). You can send it to day care (practice for later institutions) so you can go to your job that pays only slightly more than day care costs, or you can raise the kid yourself. And the idea that a kid needs a "nice" upper-middle-class-style physical environment is worse than false. A "dirty" environment strengthens the immune system, and if I were a toddler again, I'd much rather live in a cool abandoned house or junkyard or shack in the woods than in a sterile room with a television where I wasn't allowed to touch anything.

    The little problem here is that raising kids with dropout values is marginally illegal, and you risk having them kidnapped and reprogrammed by the authorities -- the same as they did to the Indians.

    And the big problem is that, while the financial requirements for having kids are completely artificial, the mental/emotional requirements are real and more difficult than we can imagine if we haven't tried it. To "raise the kid yourself" must be something like three full-time jobs that you can't quit. The mother needs at least one other person capable of taking care of all her needs so she can devote complete attention to the child, and ideally she needs a whole "tribe." Babies are super-adaptable -- it's the mother who needs a level of comfort and stability that's hard to achieve without money -- and a level of emotional health that's hard to achieve with money. Otherwise the baby will adapt itself for compatibility with a hostile, empty, stressed-out hell-world.

    I'd love to have a couple kids, but I won't do it without a physical location that's owned and paid for, and without someone besides myself to help out the mother, and without the means to dodge the institutions, whether through excellent legal help or through the institututions breaking down.
     
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  2. Tango3

    Tango3 Aimless wanderer

    Thanks; Ilike Ran Prieur's writingsI understand this style of minimalism is now tagged ""freeganism"I'll be looking this up, I agree with a lot of the anti-consumerism movement(guess that makes me an enemy of the "materialistic corptocracy").Or just lazy...what ever yourtake.[lolol]

    more info:: freegan.info
    Anti-materialistic
    but by limiting our financial needs, even those of us who need to work can place conscious limits on how much we work, take control of our lives, and escape the constant pressure to make ends meet. But even if we must work, we need not cede total control to the bosses.
    counter-economy
    people oriented
    "thoreauvians"
    anti-corporation
    bums, losers,drop outs, whatever your take....

    This"jeff sawyer page"found in the link from above is a pretty amazing journey, reminds me of"into thewild" (the Chris Mccandless story now out in theatres. I enjoyed the book, loaned it out never to be seen again( dontcha' hate that?)I'm a little unsure as the movie version was written and produced by Sean Penn...(so I'm sure there'll be politics strewn through out when Mcandless's original philosophy of the journey "eschewed" politics.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 28, 2015
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  3. Brokor

    Brokor Live Free or Cry Moderator Site Supporter+++ Founding Member

    Good stuff.
     
  4. RobertRogers

    RobertRogers Monkey+++

    Very good information. I like the way you write. And your points are all valid IMHO. Thank you very much!
     
  5. Motomom34

    Motomom34 Monkey+++

    Great essay. Gives one lots to think about where you can start changing your life. The author talks of letting go of the life many of us are leading but don't really have their hearts in it.
     
  6. Seawolf1090

    Seawolf1090 Retired Curmudgeonly IT Monkey Founding Member

    An interesting insight into the Uberlib side of frugal living, rather like the bums and hobos of old with a severely socialistic attitude. Kind of the opposite from our current model of conservative preppers.
    I see this same sort of dichotomy in the Vandweller lifestyle - extremely liberal/socialistic on one side and more sensible conservative pragmatism on the other, both extremes living side-by-side. Broadly similar lifestyles but done for wildly differing reasons and philosophies.
     
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  7. nathan

    nathan Monkey+++

    I wouldn't mind living somewhere in the middle of his lifestyle and mine. He gives me ideas to further my plans. Hope to find more of these writings
     
  8. vonslob

    vonslob Monkey++

    Good read. Much of what he says I believe. I have been setting up my life so that I can "drop out". But you can not do it without money. I guess I am dropping out gradually. Like the article says it is about not spending .
     
  9. techsar

    techsar Monkey+++

    I seem to be in the minority on this, as I see him as more of a leach, living off of the scraps of others, than a self-supporting person. Oh well :p
     
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  10. Brokor

    Brokor Live Free or Cry Moderator Site Supporter+++ Founding Member

    I disagree with you ; he's far more of a conservationist than anything else. His focus is on using the waste of those who live empty lives -if it's in the garbage, he is not "leeching" from anybody. If he is squatting, he is simply occupying the space which isn't being used. If he is camping in the wilderness or his own vehicle, he's mobile and efficient. The entire focus, from my understanding, is framed on being content in this life without having systematic restraints holding you in place with a life going nowhere. Lots of folks are perfectly content with working at a job they hate in order to pay bills they really can't afford and buy junk to fill their energy inefficient home and then waste time watching brain numbing television until they grow old and die, only to pass on this senseless belief to their children. Dropping out of the system can be fun and deeply motivating for the soul and can unlock many treasures in the form of philosophical wisdom, spiritual awakening, physical well being and more.
     
  11. arleigh

    arleigh Goophy monkey

    In the old days we called them hippies, now days we call them liberals.
    If the system did not exist, neither would his lifestyle exist .
    As the economy begins to crumble he will find life harder to manage no reserves and no one to fall back on.
    Living out of dumpsters depends of the waste of others, and that is diminishing out of necessity.
    People becoming more careful about what they buy and how much is wasted.
    Hippies that survived, many changed their tune and became part of the establishment they hated.
    Can't live on hand outs forever, unplugged and off the grid .
    I can agree that it is good to get out and find what life is like with out all the frills and responsibilities ,and while it may sound good initially , in the long run, when life is done, it is a selfish existence ,a legacy of easily forgotten influence, having meaning to no one but them self.
    If you want to find out what life is like with out all the establishment support, go live in Venezuela a while.
    I have been off grid and living on what I could find, and it's not fun , if any thing, one becomes more dependent on the generosity of others rather than being independent actually .
     
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  12. BTPost

    BTPost Stumpy Old Fart,Deadman Walking, Snow Monkey Moderator

    Many of us had our "Hippy" phase... I know I did, and it coincided with my "Liberal" phase.... when I was 19 - 24 Years Old.... Learned a lot about myself, and Life, during those years.... Lived in a Commune, & spent two years in then Mountains of Northern Washington State. Still keep those Friends close, though I rarely see them. Still have fond memories of those years.. Then I got married, and grew up.....
     
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  13. arleigh

    arleigh Goophy monkey

    I had several friends that didn't get a chance to grow up , after drug abuse.
     
  14. Tevin

    Tevin Monkey+++

    I got the same impression.

    With two college degrees and a prior history of employment, he's proven that he's quite capable of working and making something of himself. That he is proud of being a "dropout" and lives the life of a homeless bum while wrapping it in some F'd up sense of virtue does not impress nor fool me. I'm calling him what he is: A piece of shit.

    On top of that, he has the nerve to say those of us who work for an honest living are the "suckers" and we should be envying him! Of course, without working people, he would not be able to pursue his dream of being an unmotivated drifter. Leeches need a host, but the host doesn't need the leeches.

    About the best I can say about this guy is, while he doesn't contribute anything to society, he doesn't take much out of it, either. At least he won't until he needs medical treatment or runs out of people to host a leech. Then he'll become a devoted Bernie Sanders apostle, although I suspect he already is.

    It's disappointing that so many Survival Monkey members are taking the bait and think this dude is onto something. He's right about one thing: There are suckers out there, and a few of them are members of this forum.

    A lazy homeless scumbag who has two college degrees and spouts philosophy is still a lazy homeless scumbag.
     
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  15. ghrit

    ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

    The updates to the original post are revealing of some re--thinking.
     
  16. Ganado

    Ganado Monkey+++

    Name calling is useless and childish. Until you have walked in someone else's shoes you cannot know what their life is like. Name calling on the internet of a person that 1) can't give their own reasoning and 2) you have no impact on their life to try and change it is.... childish and immature.... grow the fuck up!

    not everyone is geared to work 9-5. I'm not geared for 9-5 so I figured out how not to have to .... just because we live in corporatism doesn't mean everyone fits the mold.

    I have an ex husband that due to PTSD untreated 35 years after Vietnam, can't work more than 4 hours at a time. I have no patience for idiot posts like this and I can only stand it so long before I have to say something.


    Is this still a preparedness site or have we now become a political conservative agenda site where everyone vents their anger and hopeless hapless idiots that the news media posts online for all to ridicule?

    IF this is what this site is becoming then I am saddened.
     
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  17. John Grit

    John Grit Monkey

    Most restaurant dumpsters nowadays are locked. They have a fence around them and a lock on the door. This is for an obvious reason.

    I would say the only way to escape "big brother" would be to first have lots of cash buried somewhere and live in the woods. You would go into town only when you had to and you would own only a bike for transportation. Someone in Maine went into the woods as a teen and lived in tents for decades before being caught breaking into a camping resort or something like a boy scout camp. He had been stealing things he needed the whole time. If he had only a few thousand a year worth of savings (30 years times $3,000 - less than $100,000) he might still be out there because he wouldn't have had to steal. He wasn't stealing much, a little food and camping equipment, so $3,000 a year may have been enough. He obviously didn't eat much. He claimed he had seen only one person in the woods all those years.

    They reported he might have mental problems. Well, a teen going into the woods to live alone for decades? Yeah, he might have problems. Anyway, he could teach people a few things about surviving in the woods. He survived the cold Maine winters not by keeping large fires, but simply by putting stolen sleeping bags in other stolen sleeping bags until he was warm. He had only a radio for entertainment and news.

    I know "dropping out" just to avoid working for a living and hiding from the government are two different things, but they are related in many ways.
     
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  18. BTPost

    BTPost Stumpy Old Fart,Deadman Walking, Snow Monkey Moderator

    Then there is the Idiot from Kommiefornia, that came to Alaska to "Drop Out" in the Alaskan Bush, out of SquareBanks.... He lasted two Summers, and ONE WINTER, before he got so Hungry, he ate the wrong Plant, and Poisoned himself.... We have his Journal, to document, his lack, of Bush Smarts.....

    Then there is that Great Bear God, Timmy Treadwell, that loved to live with the Bears, up on the Alaskan Peninsula. He would "Drop Out" each summer, to go live with the Bears. Worked for a while, until he ran into a Grumpy OLD Bear, and got himself MUNCHED, along with his GirlFriend... Another of the Long Lost Losers, that think Alaska is a Good Place tho "Drop Out"
     
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  19. kellory

    kellory An unemployed Jester, is nobody's fool. Banned

    Reminds me of the Monk of the Lake. (Iirc)
    Spent his time alone in the words, surviving by breaking into cottages and stealing what he wanted. Nothing noble about living off the scraps of others, taking anything not nailed down, and eating other people's stored foodstuffs.
    He did more damage to the property of others in his thefts, than the food and property would have cost!
    It is not a symbiotic relationship, it's a parasitic one, and the parasite can kill the host and just move on to the next.
     
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  20. mysterymet

    mysterymet Monkey+++

    if people don't work 9-5 and survive without stealing from others then go right ahead. In the original article he states that he squats in other people's houses, buildings and sheds. Squatters generally destroy the houses they squat in a poop throughout the place. When he mentions dumpster diving for food that still makes him just as dependent on the system if the shtf as the other sheeple. If the grocery stores are empty they aren't throwing stuff in the dumspter. There goes his food plan.
     
    Tevin and Gator 45/70 like this.
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