Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Mon Mar 27, 2023 10:40 pm
I'm finding the same myself. All my hobbies are in front of a computer or at a desk, and yet I know I feel much better being outside, running, opening my lungs, feeling the elements
Recently we came up with cheap electric run scooters and bikes. So, many people who would have walked or biked with their own steam now use these electric driven devices. So, we used freedom to go beyond our biology in a new way - of course the human-powered bike is tech also - and this has a kind of short term benefit - you don't have to work - and a lot of long term drawbacks on both physical and mental health. There are some side drawbacks too. The scooters are rented, for the most part. You're done with your ride, you just leave it anywhere. And while the companies do send people around to get them, they are often in the way, sometimes dangerously, usually just annoyingly. People also ride them on sidewalks more than bikers tend to, and they do it fast. Most bikers who bike on sidewalks bike like they are the intruders they are and do it cautiously. People scoot like quick idiots.
So, here we have us using freedom to at least broaden the cause and effect chains we can be a part of, that I don't think is particularly good for us overall. A net loss.
Why do I think it's a net loss?
In part because we thrive on doing stuff with our bodies. We feel better after and during being active.
Cultural concepts of status, leisure time and the good of reducing 'labor' play a role here.
Now our nature includes also the love of fun, and those scooters are fun. Our nature also includes not liking chore-like work and a lot of walking or biking can seem like a chore.
I see people electrically scoot to the gym. Which is really hilarious and then also sad. Once there they'll hop on a treadmill with their ear buds blasting.
But that's 'a workout', whereas the trip to the gym, that's something like commuting in their brains.
Call it a mix between nature and culture, this choice.
But overall I am looking at this choice to be freer that is sometimes great - I'm glad I'm not washing clothes on rocks in the river. But often I think marketing, culture, not really thinking at all, not really feeling into things at all, leads us to freely choose to increase our choices and these choices actually make us less happy because they do not fit our bodies.
Where I am the main car owners, ironically enough, are immigrants. A vastly higher percentage of the people with foreign backgrounds drive cars in this city. They're on welfare, they get a car. They have some shit cleaning job, they get a car. In their cultures it is still a status thing without as much guilt. Many have no experience with bikes - this is a biking city. It's also part of the culture to drive the wives to stores, which in the end, as one example, is worse for her health than walking, more stress - parking, traffic - for the husband, much higher monthly bills and so on.
None of this goes at the issue of are we ontologically free.
But I realized that there is this odd, almost teenager-like attitude that even most adult-humans have. If something makes us 'more free' it's good, even if it isn't. We all sneaking our parents cigarrettes and whisky. We're all driving too fast. And so on.