In Praise of a Nomadic Life

https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-praise-of-a-nomadic-life-1490582016

by iwh • 9 years ago

18 13 9 years ago

temp246810• 9 years ago

>>I kept pinning my happiness on future events.

This is true. I don't think you have to go to the extreme of living a nomadic life to address it, but I definitely feel where the author is coming from.

The first time I realized this, in conjunction with how much of what my expectation of happiness comes from media, it was a really jarring experience.

carsongross3• 9 years ago

Nor will we have children

This is no way to run a civilization.

ThrustVectoring• 9 years ago

There's no moral obligation to help run civilizations.

drdeadringer• 9 years ago

How might I be incentivised to have children?

carsongross3• 9 years ago

If I were in charge I would institute a basic income for all citizens over the age of 18 (no additional money for children) and would make each child someone had a significant tax break against income. People who could afford them would be incentivized to have them.

vivekd• 9 years ago

I traveled around for a period, and my feeling is that any joy to be found in a nomadic lifestyle and travelling cannot compare to the feeling of belonging and connectedness that being a part of a real physical community gives you.

brm• 9 years ago

Nomadism is lovely but I believe that natural comfortable state for humans is to be Migratory. Find several comfortable places that you belong in specific seasons and move amongst them. You can develop ties and a sense of ritual belonging while having most of a benefits of a nomadic life.

Snowbirds, Celebrities, Jet Set, Aristocrats, Fashion industry have all figured this out as the most comfortable form of human life at some point or another.

cprayingmantis• 9 years ago

While the nomadic life does sound appealing to me I see it as the ultimate form of instant gratification. You sacrifice all stability and ability to effectively change the world around you in order for some momentary pleasure and as they say in the article they just seem to keep pinning their happiness on future events. It seems to me that pinning your joy on future events is a sure way to accumulate happiness debt (much like tech-debt) that you're effectively unable to pay down.

borplk• 9 years ago

What do people think about a real solo nomadic life?

I'm a huge introvert and used to being alone and lonely all the time yet I cannot quite imagine myself enjoying being a moving ghost from an exotic location to another alone and getting much out of it.

I hear people talk about finding local friends and so on however I cannot imagine that is going to be that satisfying or practical. Making some broken language hello-how-are-you conversation and never seeing them again.

I think the feeling of not having someone to share any of the experience with would overwhelm me and dominate my experience.

I see people talk some feel-good stuff about learning to enjoy things on their own and so on but I don't really see practical examples of it. And as I said, if there was one person who would be comfortable spending time on their own that would be me, yet I don't find the idea of solo nomadic life appealing.

The few people that I have seen appear to be homesick and isolated they claim they are loving the solo trip but in reality they seem to be desperate to share it with someone and they seek that on Twitter and Instagram and on their blogs.

In Praise of a Nomadic Life

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