Quote Originally Posted by catherine View Post
Yes, when people do radical things in their lives to make a point, I think it's so counter-productive to dismiss them without using their life lessons to examine if/how those lessons apply to you.
I think they often get dismissed because 1) they are impossible to apply to one 2) extremely inconvenient. The later one can reckon with and think over, the former is just well it doesn't go anywhere. I'm not growing my food living in an apartment with a few feet of dirt outside for which I shall put in most recently, a couple of native plants. And the gardeners may kill them as they are inclined to do with their illegal leafblowers ha, but that's the dice one rolls anyway. Extremely inconvenient would be say someone who takes public transit to work for 3 hours a day to reduce their carbon impact. It would be like: "Wow, that's admirable! I could do that. They are hard-core, I should do that but ... I like to sleep late ... I probably won't get up an hour earlier to do it, it's a never ending struggle to try to get to work on time as is due to my extreme morning adverseness ..." But it will nag at me, because it's something one can do. But growing food, yea I've gone with a renter life.

I don't have a problem with the guy though. But I'm only so obsessed with doing what I actually can't do, unless someone starts actively lecturing me: "renting an apartment is no excuse for not growing all your own food!!!" or something. Than it's like: "oh shut up". Actually I find I have to accept limits on even what I aspire to do, because I am at root perfectionist, but crash hard into my own real limits of time and energy. I like Thoreau, and he's a darn good writer as well, he wouldn't be as well known if he wasn't, but I'm not obsessed with literally imitating some guy from some 150 years ago, anyway I take much of it as social critique anyway, critiquing obsession with "progress" etc.. Who actually speaks to me now with moral clarity: Greta Thurnburg