Criticizing "hedonism" is its own kind of hedonism, or in common parlance, a first world problem. It is a luxury that cannot be indulged by poor societies.
The good news is, it took me nearly 20 years before I started taking hot showers for granted again. It really did make me very grateful for a lot of things.
But I’ve also had similar thoughts to you.
I watch a lot of hiking videos of the PCT etc as one day I’d like to walk it.
When I watch those videos, and when I see people on social media telling folks to “drop out of the system, be free.” I can’t help but wonder exactly who is going to prepare their dehydrated meal packs for them.
Absolutely nothing wrong with taking such trips, made me a better and more grateful person, but it’s not an alternative lifestyle.
Nobody is reinventing the universe, they just want a buffer.
A buffer is a well made item that you can repair yourself, so you're not forced to purchase a replacement.
A buffer is a shoebox with a lifetime supply of your favorite shaving razor.
A buffer is a garden, a pantry of canned goods, a few hens to lay eggs for you.
Each of these buffers insulates the bearer from the effects of supply chain disruption or even unemployment. Walmart could be out of eggs and razors -- but you'll be fine for quite some time, even if you didn't incubate your own chicks or make the razors by hand.
> farms get their input from the ground and sky, but this hasn't been true in centuries
Yes, industrial scales require industrial inputs, but a few hens will happily yield you a few eggs a day while living off your garden scraps and the insects they scratch up. And their waste returns nutrients to the soil -- a boone for a garden.
I don't think that's where we're headed, but I like imagining.
* https://promiseofjustice.org/news/louisianans-illegally-kept...
* https://www.corrections1.com/law-and-legislation/articles/re...
Maybe the number of sailors in deplorable conditions is equal to number of prisoners, worldwide. 0.2% of world population?
To me this vision of us being able to do whatever we want, while machines are available to take care of our necessities, to the extent we chose to rely on them, is almost heaven-like.
And for a prehistoric context, according to researchers such as James Suzman, earlier in human history, we were a lot closer to this ideal than we are now [0].
[0] https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/for-95-percent-of-human...
Or in other words, there were no automatic maintenance machines in the Star Trek universe at the time, it was all handwork still. Manufacturing and food prep was done by machines which solves some part of it I suppose.
Your future isn't realistic.
Just workers organization and democracy prevents it
It's like kink-shaming being someone's actual kink.
Criticizing "hedonism" is its own kind of hedonism because you are overindulging yourself in your own sense of pride and smugness for "being better than everyone else"
Not that the author of TFA is doing this, but claiming that you have overcome materialism while at the same time posting about it on instagram with your latest iphone, recording yourself on insta360 cameras, with your apple watch-recorded heart-rate superimposed on your videos is a bit silly.
> Criticizing "hedonism" is its own kind of hedonism
false dichotomy. Of course capitalism and our indulgence in material goods has gone too far. That does not mean we have to be totally pious in life.