Monday, 27 December 2021

Reflection

The volunteers and other patrons here are preparing for the year ahead.

Everything remains clean and fresh, as usual.

If you intend to join any of the activities here in 2022, how will you prepare for that privilege?

Monday, 20 December 2021

Next Year Here

If you are hoping to experience next year here in Frugality Cottage, please ensure you are registered in time as one of the patrons.

What have you already discovered about the cottage and visitors?

What have you already discovered about the cottage and patronage?

What have you already discovered about the cottage and volunteering?

What do you already know about the culture associated with this location?

Perhaps you are yet to be aware that the work here is devoted to intelligent frugality.  It involves cultural practices in keeping with respectable and responsible affluence, not impoverishment.

The culture and community here supports good health, in all its aspects. 



Historically cottages, by their very nature, were not built or decorated by design but evolved with their environment, and with changes in cultural practices.

Except in times of war, famine, epidemics and other disasters, for many centuries, most changes in most people's lives were relatively slow and predictable in comparison to those of the last fifty years.

You may consider cottages, including virtual ones, to be part of the cultural heritage of a community and/or region, reminding people of a comforting continuity with the past.

How well acquainted are you with various economic systems and other cultural systems in relation to peace and conflict? 

How do you prefer to explore the history of cultures, including emerging cultures, and why?

What do you know about cultural analytics, and how do you know it?

In different cultures, comfort is more or less associated with social experiences, depending on the context.

How would you describe a comfortable culture, from your own point of view?

How would you describe an uncomfortable cultural experience, and the associated emotions?

How do you ascertain whether a practice is appropriate and therefore adequately sensitive to needs and rights? 

How global is your attitude towards cultural practices?

What do you know about the cottage and time?

What do you know about the cottage and crafts?

Frugality Cottage exists within the Adelaidezone.

More specifically, Frugality Cottage exists as a small, ethereal, vernacular structure of unique and irreplaceable, intangible cultural heritage.  It is metaphorically located within a large virtual garden of sustainability, next to the Social Media Quadrangle in the Adelaidezone Digital Arts Quarter. 

How do you define existence?

How do you define Adelaide? 

What, if anything, do you own in relation to the Adelaidezone?

How do you usually assess matters in relation to ownership, and a lack of ownership?

Are you wondering whether it is worth your while spending time in the sitting room here over the next few minutes or hours or days or weeks or months or years?

Perhaps you are seeking to enter the kitchens.

What will you be seeking to know here next year, and why?

Monday, 13 December 2021

Authentic Living - Episode 50

Welcome to the final episode in this series.  Will it be grand, in your view, or quite plain and ordinary?

Will it provide an overview of the entire series and/or a surprising conclusion?

Will it include a progress report?

Will it present something to entice the patrons to want more?

Perhaps you have been expressing your authenticity this year mainly through your practical skills and/or social skills.

How do you intend to express it next year?

What have you been learning about yourself this year through the practice of various crafts?

Perhaps you have been learning about yourself mainly through gardening, cooking and possibly even through home renovations, or building a home.

 


How have you been learning about your interpersonal relationships this year, and what have you discovered about reality along the way?

What have you discovered about refreshing possibilities, and how?


Monday, 6 December 2021

Authentic Living - Episode 49

Welcome to the penultimate episode in this series.

The patrons are looking forward to experiencing your contributions.

When will those contributions happen, and where?

Perhaps all your episodes in this series are still in the pre-production phase.

Perhaps you are still wondering how best to express yourself authentically.

How has your home environment of the past year compared to your experiences here at Frugality Cottage?

Which of those experiences have you regarded as most authentically reflecting the real you?

What did you learn in and through the cottage last year to prepare you for this year?

And how are you already preparing for next year?

Do you usually associate authenticity with preparations or are you a more impulsive and haphazard sort of person?

Perhaps you have mainly had a focus on authenticity in relation to sustainability, and/or creativity, and/or kindness, and/or competence.

 


How have you attempted to fund each episode in your creative production, and how sustainably and successfully?

Whose money have you been using for each pre-production and production process?

Perhaps you have produced poetry and/or music in a podcast to express your authenticity.  But how much of your life is really and truly authentic, and suitably consistent?

Perhaps you have produced a blog or website or gallery exhibition of your photography to express your authenticity.  But does it truly show the everyday experience of being you?

Perhaps you have produced a play or film or vlog reflecting your experiences of authentic living.  But is that really an expression of naturalism rather than authenticity? 

How does the editing process affect the authentic expression of living creatively, sustainably, kindly and/or competently?


 

Have you ever associated authenticity with reality television?

Have you ever associated authenticity with income-earning activities or do you mainly think of authenticity in relation to non-income earning activities?

What is authentic about your real life, and how do you convey that authenticity through a series of shared insights?

Perhaps you do so with a slice of life approach, or not as the case may be.

Do you associate authentic living with vignettes or epics?

You may regard your authenticity as expressing a particular mood, or many moods.

 

 

When has your authenticity clashed with other people's beliefs, particularly in relation to political matters and other controversies?

Perhaps you would rather express your authenticity by ignoring conflicts rather than highlighting them.

Monday, 29 November 2021

Authentic Living - Episode 48

Are you well acquainted with authentic Adelaide?

Do you authentically uphold the public interest, in any part of the world?

Have you frequently conducted authentic investigations to uncover societal truth?

Do you genuinely enjoy storytime in the virtual library here?

Unless you are one of the registered patrons here, you may soon be unable to visit the library.

How can you prove you have been genuinely investing in simple living over the past few years?

What have been your most authentic experiences of investing in magnificent maturity?

The patrons genuinely hope you will virtually join them in the digital garden and in the relatively exclusive areas of the cottage quite soon.

 


Where have you presented your versions of earlier episodes in this series?

How have you assessed the characteristics of your audience?

And which industries did you encounter during the pre-production, production and post-production experiences?

How have you assessed industries in relation to authentic living?

 


In which format(s) are your episodes in this series presented, and why?

How have you developed the narrative of each episode in relation to the given themes?

How educational is each episode, and for whom?

 


If you have been providing an episode in this series each week for your audience, how long has each experience been, on average, and why?

How carefully have you considered privacy in each episode?

How carefully have you reflected on privacy in the private sphere, privacy in the public sphere, and privacy during community experiences?

How carefully have you incorporated the themes of the investment notes into each episode, as appropriate?

Monday, 22 November 2021

Authentic Living - Episode 47

Do you associate authentic living with a bohemian existence or a peasant existence or an indigenous existence or another type of existence?

Do you associate authentic living with political pleasantness?

Do you associate authentic living with public interest journalism?

You may associate cottages with peasants.

What do you know about the history of peasant foods?

Perhaps you are interested in learning more about the cottage and cookery.

 

 

How have you been thinking about food in relation to authenticity?

How have you been thinking about character in relation to authenticity?

 

 

Perhaps you associate cottages with witches.

What do you know about authenticity in relation to witchcraft, statecraft and other crafts? 

 


What have you discovered about intelligent frugality and liminality in relation to authenticity?


 

What do you know about deities in relation to authenticity and liminality?

What do you know about liminal deities in various past and present cultures?

Monday, 15 November 2021

Authentic Living - Episode 46

Do you associate living authentically with a storybook sort of life in a quaint and peaceful cottage, far away from the problems of the world?

Perhaps your idea of living authentically is entirely different from that scenario.

Perhaps you want to confront the world's problems directly.

Have you been reading the notes in the library here?

Monday, 8 November 2021

Authentic Living - Episode 45

As you have now reached episode 45 in this series, perhaps you are ready to give clear, honest answers to a few more questions.

For example, is your idea of authentic living quite dramatic or more like light entertainment or is it serious yet undramatic or is it simply peaceful and gentle without much triviality, drama or heavy seriousness?

Is much of your focus local or do you prefer a more global outlook?

Perhaps you are mostly interested in food and kitchens and cooking. 

Perhaps you especially enjoy growing food, or foraging for it.

 


You may be interested in learning more about the cottage and cookery.

 

 

But does your expression of authenticity ever reflect controversy?



How do you think about authenticity in relation to your dietary habits?

Perhaps you do not make the time to cook good food.

Perhaps you have other interests.

 

 

 

Monday, 1 November 2021

Authentic Living - Episode 44

How do you know your ideas about authenticity match reality adequately?

What have you discovered about the relationship between the cottage and peace in terms of reality?

What have you been learning about the cottage and simplicity in terms of authenticity?

You may think about this virtual cottage in various ways, possibly with the assistance of the guide.

How do you usually make comparisons to help you decide on the person you are meant to be?

How have you gathered knowledge and other resources to help you understand possibilities in relation to an Australian idyll or any other idyllic way of life?

 

 

While thousands, and possibly millions, of people allow strangers to observe accurate and/or inaccurate images of their private lives through screens, sensible people do not. 

There is a considerable difference between living privately and sharing knowledge and skills through community practices.

Community is a liminal experience between the public and the private.

 

 

How do you select the activities to share in privacy, in community and publicly?

What are the activities you will to experience virtually, vicariously or in other ways here? 

 


A life observed through a screen is not a real life.  It is an edited performance, no matter how real it may seem.  It is merely a fragment of a life, and possibly a work of fiction.

Monday, 25 October 2021

Authentic Living - Episode 43

If you wish to retain access to at least a small part of Frugality Cottage, there are several ways to do so.

What, if anything, do you consider to be special about Frugality Cottage, and why?

Answering that question will provide you with possible merit when seeking to enter here in future.

How do you usually attempt to access peace?

Monday, 18 October 2021

Authentic Living - Episode 42

Authenticity is most healthily expressed through interpersonal compatibility.

Differing personalities are often incompatible in their expectations of situations, and in their appreciation of peace.

If you do not seek more peace in your life, why not?

If you do not help other people to find more peace in their lives, why not?

Perhaps you express your authentic self easier online than in other contexts.

What have you been learning about the cottage and peace in your explorations here?

Are you sure you have a peaceful investment strategy?

Truly useful cultural capital does not require much economic capital or social capital or even talent.  It requires the determination to identify, develop and maintain an authentic identity, respectfully and responsibly.

How, then, is your acquired cultural capital consistent with your personality, your personal needs, and your preferred cultural identity? 

What do you know about personality psychology?

Monday, 11 October 2021

Authentic Living - Episode 41

Perhaps you would prefer to regard authenticity as being similar to the rediscovery and recovery a long-lost landscape and even a long-lost landscape garden.

Perhaps you would prefer to regard authenticity as a restored and restorative dwelling place. 

If you are mainly seeking to satisfy your curiosity at present, how will you know when it has been satisfied?

How do you tell whether any investment, investor, patronage or patron is genuinely devoted towards a worthy cause or not?

How do you try to ascertain whether investors and/or patrons are hypocrites?

Who is a good investor and who is not, in your view, and how do you know?

Perhaps you associate abundance with wastefulness and extravagance.

How can you be sure you are not wasting your time here?

How do you usually express your authenticity if not through your patronage experiences, whether as a supplier of patronage or as a recipient?

Do you usually take information at face value or do you seek evidence?

Perhaps you are usually too busy to seek evidence.

Perhaps you often fail to assess whether evidence is authentic or not.

What do you currently know about necessary journeys and unnecessary ones, and how do you know it?

What do you currently know about necessary expenditure and unnecessary purchases, and how did you acquire that knowledge?

Do you think there is ever any point in investing in the past? 

Why do you do so little to support economic systems based on intelligent frugality instead of greed?

How do you know your investments in fun do not encourage and possibly even exacerbate corruption?

Do you have a relatively high standard of living?

If so, how was it acquired?

Regardless of your standard of living, how are you currently investing in appropriately high standards?

How well are you investing in quality of life, and how do you know?

How often do you think about the relationship between knowledge and quality of life?

What is wonderful about you, really and truly, and who is qualified to verify that claim?  

How do you usually explore imaginations, including your own?  

How do you usually explore motivations, including your own?

What has motivated you to experience this episode of Authentic Living?

How do you know you have been truly wonderful and kind on a daily basis over the past few months?

What do you believe to be appropriate cultural practices, and how do you promote and protect them?

How do you prevent inappropriate cultural practices? 

What do you produce, and why, and when?

What do you know about childhood development in humans?

How do you reflect upon your own development as a person?

How do you distinguish between development and decline, if at all?  

How do you distinguish between the development and decline of people, places, purposes and possibilities?

Any permanent or semi-permanent dwelling, other than a cave or rock shelter, is probably unsuitable for a well-informed life on the move from one food source to another.

Building and maintaining a permanent or semi-permanent dwelling would probably be a waste of time and other resources when local food and/or water supplies are absent. 

How do you usually try to understand people's needs and wants, including your own?  

How do you assess the quality of your ongoing investments in relation to heritage, in both its natural and cultural varieties? 

How do you know whether you can afford to pay a premium price for a premium product or high quality experience?

How do you know when a place is special?

How do you know when a resources is valuable?

How do you know when an opportunity is wonderful?

How do you examine moral values in relation to economic values?

Where and how do you usually learn about value, and from whom?

What do you value, and why?

Who do you value, and how? 

Perhaps you do not reflect upon such questions particularly deeply, even when thinking about the meaning of authentic living.

What do you already know about your authentic expressions of wisdom, and how did you gain that knowledge?

How consistent or otherwise are your expressions of wisdom?

How carefully do you define the meaning of free products, free services, free access and free societies?

How carefully do you assess the intentions of the suppliers of free access to a place, a resource and/or an opportunity?
Whenever you are overly excited or overly anxious, you are unlikely to have the ability to express wisdom.
 
Whenever you are overly tired or overly depressed, you are unlikely to have the energy to express wisdom.
 
Indeed, adequate calmness and adequate rest are necessary before the expression of wisdom can occur.

When feeling unwell, adequate calmness and rest are absolutely necessary for a relatively natural recovery, along with suitable nutrition and well-informed kindness.

How do you invest in natural certainties?
 
How do you invest in cultural certainties?

How have you invested in certainty at various times in your life?

How will you make decisions in relation to achieving future access here?

Perhaps you do not value access to this location highly enough.

How authentic is your approach to caution?

How authentic are your expressions of respect?

How authentic is your approach to money?

When do you know that claims of economic conservatism are inauthentic?

When do you know that claims of economic conservatism are cruel?

How do you prefer to seek help in answering your questions?

How do you identify unkind people and other nuisances and seek to exclude them from your life as reasonably as possible?

How do you identify the wonderful in people and seek to include those individuals in your experiences of life as reasonably as possible?

Monday, 4 October 2021

Authentic Living - Episode 40

Have you reached the age of 40 and possibly lived beyond it?

If so, do you regard yourself as fortunate?

If you have not yet reached the age of 40, how do you imagine your life when you reach that immensely important age?

Regardless of your current age, if you already have an authentic identity, it will be consistent with your natural characteristics rather than the expectations formerly imposed upon you through other people's cultural practices.

The wise expression of authenticity is conveyed through carefully considered moral choices.

Each week, since the beginning of the year, you have had a chance to experience the outline of each episode in this important series.

The responsibility for filling out that outline into something more substantial has been your own, in accordance with all reasonable and relevant laws and courtesies.

How have you been investing in thorough assessments this year?

How do you usually assess needs in relation to investing?

How do you usually assess trustworthiness in relation to investing?

How do you tell the difference between a door, a lock and a handle?

How do you tell the difference between a key, a guide and a product of nature?

Have you been wondering what to do about your most disastrous investments in travel, tourism and the mass media?

Have you been wondering what to do about your other disastrous investments, speculations and gambles?

Have you made any appreciative comments on any of the investment notes carefully produced and presented in the library here for your philanthropic benefit?

How do you know your expectations here are neither unrealistic nor cruel?

Good investments always require clear distinctions between one thing or person and another.

Have you ever contributed to the destruction of a much-loved world by increasing the likelihood of catastrophic events immensely detrimental to it?

Have you ever knocked down a much-loved cottage, or even an entire village, in order to build an airport runway, or a holiday resort, or a grand hotel, or a car park,or to participate in the latest trends in landscaping, road building, power generation, mining, shopping developments, sporting facilities and/or water storage?

How do you usually assess the effectiveness of your investments?

How do you invest in understanding your emotions?

Do you consider yourself to have high standards?

If you have direct investments in businesses, what is most worthy about those businesses, and your investments in them?

How well have you offloaded your unethical investments and other unethical sources of income?

Are you a successful investor in socially and environmentally responsible practices?

Do you know how to tell the difference between a patron and an investor?

You will probably already be aware that there is no point in raising funds for unworthy pursuits.

How do you usually assess worthiness?

Investments are not necessarily associated with competition.

 

 

There are many different ways to assess value.

Do you consider your acquisition of knowledge to be a pleasure or a burden?

 

 

How do you usually measure relative intelligence?

How do you usually measure adequate thoughtfulness?

How do you attempt to combine such measures?

Have you recently taken a virtual tour around Frugality Cottage and its ethereal garden?

 

 

Are you adequately acquainted with the EverTime?

Do you consider authentic living to be mostly related to time or place or purpose?

Perhaps you associate authenticity with history.

Perhaps you would prefer your life to be an accurate re-enactment of a particular time in history, possibly from a specific socioeconomic, political, cultural and/or geographical perspective.

Is your acquaintance with history mainly a reflection of epistemology, ethics, aesthetics or metaphysics? 

How do you prefer to acknowledge, and reflect upon, episodes of authenticity within your own mind and in your experiences of the world?

When have you experienced episodes of authentic living in your life experiences?

When have you experienced authentic interpersonal relationships, and how do you know?

In which climates do you prefer to be outdoors?

Perhaps you prefer staying indoors.

Do you usually associate authenticity with tragedy or comedy or neither?

When, if ever, have you attempted to restore the authentic you?

How do you know your curiosity about anything is adequately connected to your intelligence? 

How do you usually think about curiosity in relation to authenticity?

Perhaps you have rarely reflected upon such questions, at any time, in any place.

Perhaps you would prefer to think of authenticity as making your physical existence to be the place and time for authentic experiences of timeless wisdom, possibly through the harmonious interplay of beauty, understanding and magnificence. 

If you are new here, please catch up with this series as soon as you can.

Here are the outlines of the earliest episodes:

 

 

Monday, 27 September 2021

Authentic Living - Episode 39

In this series, you have been invited to answer many important questions with honesty and sensitivity.

Perhaps your authentic self is not particularly honest.

Perhaps your authentic self is not particularly sensitive.

Who sets the time limits associated with your activities, and why?

Why do some people feel rejected by society?

Perhaps you do not spend much time thinking about such questions.

How do you decide whether expressions of fun are appropriate or not?

Are you sure you know the difference between well-informed kindness and predatory activities? 

What do you value?

What are you seeking to change?

What are you seeking to protect and conserve and restore?

How do you intend to change the situations you are hoping to change?

How do you think about patterns of conservation in relation to patterns of consumption?

What do you feel it is your duty to conserve, and why?

How do you think about freedom in relation to such matters?

How do you respond when you perceive wastefulness?

Corruption causes cruelty.

A dead world is a cruel world.

Corruption kills.

What do you know about corruption in relation to conservation and its absence?

How do you know you are not investing in corruption?

How do you know you are investing in conservation as reasonably as possible? 

Do you usually associate consequentialism with corruption and/or conservation?

How much of your own decision-making has been consequentialist over the past twenty years, and how do you know?

Addressing ignorance helps to prevent the four biggest dangers in the world, namely infection, contamination, pollution and corruption.

Those four dangers are often related.

Solving a problem at its source is always necessary.

Ignorance is the first problem to solve.  When people become aware of their ignorance, they also tend to become aware of their arrogance. 

Arrogant people are always the most ignorant of all.  They are particularly ignorant of the causes and consequences of suffering.

What do you believe to be an authentically good business?

You may already know that good business practices are always associated with mutually beneficial pleasantness of the non-corrupt variety.

Mutually beneficial pleasantness is an end in itself.  It benefits everyone except the corrupt and otherwise cruel.

Helping a culture of well-informed kindness to arise must begin by counteracting destructive cultural influences as appropriately as possible.  

How do you tell the difference between real freedom and fake freedom?

How do you tell the difference between real security and fake security?

How do you tell the difference between real certainty and fake certainty?

What have been your experiences in relation to homesteading, smallholdings and crofts?

Monday, 20 September 2021

Authentic Living - Episode 38

Perhaps you think investing in simple living mainly involves sitting in front of a screen watching a soap opera or game show or computer game or sporting competition or action film or music video.

But how is it possible to combine simple living or complicated living with sustainable living?

What have you discovered about sustainability?

Perhaps you associate simple living with retreating from the state, and society. 

Monday, 13 September 2021

Authentic Living - Episode 37

What makes art relevant if not authenticity?

Are you able to distinguish clearly between ordinary experiences and luxury experiences? 

Have you ever been treated as though you are undeserving of necessities?

Do you think art is necessary?

Do you think art is ordinary?

Perhaps you think art is a luxury.

How much do you value non-corrupt cultures?  

How do you define corruption and its absence?

How do you prevent yourself from being corrupted?

Perhaps you mainly measure value in terms of money.

How do you attempt to tell whether people are devout or deluded?

When is one form of devotion any better or worse than another?

Perhaps you prefer to express authenticity by avoiding all individuals and organisations and media outlets encouraging unreasonable beliefs.

How do you know when someone is deluded?

How do you know you are not one of them?

How do you attempt to help people to become more reasonable?

If you do not associate simple living, intelligent kindness and importantly useful information with nation-states, or even societies, that is understandable.  States tend to be corrupt.  Societies tend to be overly complicated. 

There is no point in attempting to live simply, calmly and authentically with aggressive neighbours, whether on a local scale or an international scale.  To do so would be complacently dismissive of appropriate responsibilities.

If you believe yourself to be relatively reasonable, you may assume other people are either equally as reasonable as yourself or not reasonable at all.

How do you know whether a person is more reasonable than yourself in a particular situation?

What is reasonable about opinions?

What is reasonable about perceptions?

What is reasonable about authenticity?

What is reasonable about investing in social research?

Perhaps you would rather not answer questions about your experiences of authentic living.

How have you been responding to earlier episodes in this series, and other opportunities to learn in and from Frugality Cottage?

Monday, 6 September 2021

Authentic Living - Episode 36

Do you usually associate authentic living with your lower needs or your higher needs, or both?

Perhaps you have spent most of your life wondering what your higher needs might be.

Or perhaps you have been so involved in meeting your lower needs that you have forgotten you have higher needs.

Genuine friendships and authentic patronages can both involve investments in simple living, suitable independence and appropriate interdependence.  Both involve a shared history and possibly even the shared exploration of history.

What have been your questions about Frugality Cottage and how well have the volunteers answered those questions? 

Good friends support the continuity of a valued private relationship.

Good patrons support the continuity of a valued cultural practice.

As a friend, a patron, a volunteer, and through your other social relationships and roles, how do you know you are adequately open, honest and clean?

When people are desperate for money and/or attention, they are more likely to behave immorally.

When people are bored, they are more likely to behave immorally.  That is especially the case when they have more money than sense.

Both poverty and fame make people vulnerable, but so does surplus wealth, or any wealth at all for that matter.

When people are vulnerable, they are less able to express themselves authentically.  They are also less able to meet their needs satisfactorily, whether at the basic level or the higher level.

How often have salespeople treated you as a means to an end?

When, if ever, is it possible to be ethical as a salesperson?

If you have ever sold anything, possibly including your labour, how did you prevent yourself from being exploitative and exploited?

How do you usually identify means and ends?

How do you know you have invested your time well over the past twelve years, and especially over the past twelve months?  

Are you an experienced practitioner in the art and science of thoughtful reciprocity? 

Are you sure you are not particularly ordinary and therefore not particularly arrogant and ignorant? 

If you have only just joined this series of episodes, welcome.  This is probably a good time for you to go to the beginning and start again from there.

If you have been following this series but have missed a few, this may be a good time to go back to the beginning, too, to refresh yourself and catch up in your own time.

 

 

Monday, 30 August 2021

Authentic Living - Episode 35

Have you been thinking much about whether your idea of authentic living is associated with Enlightenment or Romanticism?

Perhaps you are hoping to experience a romantic fling through your experiences in Frugality Cottage quite soon.

Do you usually associate authenticity with strong, mutual attraction of one sort or another or another?

Perhaps you associate authenticity with non-mutual attraction.

Perhaps you are here mainly as a virtual tourist.

If so, what draws you to Frugality Cottage as an attraction?

How do you ascertain your interest in a place or person or practice or possibility?

How do you assess attractiveness or cuteness or quaintness from your own point of view?

 


How do you prefer to communicate your authentic feelings?

When have you most feared doing so, and why?

Perhaps you feel as though you can only express your authentic feelings when under the influence of an intoxicant of some sort.

Perhaps that is an indication of your fear of the real you as well as your fear of honesty, and the world.

Yet intoxicants cannot provide sensitivity, and all authentic living, if it is to be lived well, is adequately sensitive.

Do you usually associate authenticity with cultural and/or geographical origins?

How do you think about authentic living in relation to investing in simple living? 

When have you realised that a wonderful opportunity has passed you by?

What do you know about authentic dignity?

What do you know about authentic persuasion?

What do you know about authentic frugality?

What do you know about authentic simplicity?

You may have noticed that the word "you" forms the first three letters of the words "young" and "youth".

Regardless of your current age and reputation, how authentically are you investing in magnificent maturity?

How do you know you are authentically and magnificently mature?

Do you associate that maturity with intelligent frugality and well-informed kindness?

Every risk is associated with potential problems.

Please be aware that irresponsible risk takers and other selfish persons are not welcome here.

Are you dangerously yet pleasurably excited by risks?

Do your expressions of authenticity ever cause harm to anyone or anything? 

Preventing harm is obviously a responsible sort of practice.

How authentically are you investing in trustworthy collaborations, and for what purpose?

How authentically do you prevent harm?

Do you ever associate authenticity with expressing your mind without considering the consequences?

Do you ever associate authenticity with acting in accordance with your own free will, without considering the consequences?

Do you ever associate authenticity with impulsivity?

Do you associate authenticity with indulging your appetites whenever and wherever they arise?

How trustworthy are the people you consider to be family members and/or friends and/or colleagues? 

Who do you consider to be trustworthy, and why?

How do you define usefulness in relation to trustworthiness?  
 
Do you start a new episode or chapter of your life each week or do you consider the shape of your social and creative existence in a different form or format?

How do you usually think about fortune in relation to life itself?

How do you usually think about fortune in relation to authenticity?

How do you usually think about your social life in relation to fortune and authenticity?

How do you usually think about your creative live in relation to fortune and authenticity?

What do you believe investing in peacefully authentic living means in practice?

Do you find it easier to be yourself in private or in public or in a particular social or community setting?

Do you usually associate privacy with solitude?

The authentic you, as the selfish you, is reflected in your ego.

The authentic you, as the well informed, kind and considerate you, is reflected in your soul.

What is good about you, and how do you know?

What is not good about you, and how do you know?

How easy or difficult is it for you to be yourself?

How easy or difficult is it for you to experience privacy?

Perhaps you associate virtue with self-denial rather than self-expression. 

What, to you, is virtuously authentic living?

How do you experience authentic living in relation to nature?

How do you experience authentic living in relation to culture?

How do you, in fact, invest in authentic living?

Monday, 23 August 2021

Authentic Living - Episode 34

If you have been interpreting each episode of this series as though it represents one year of your life from the very beginning, how did you spend your childhood up to the beginning of adolescence?

 

 

How do you usually think about beginnings?

As you are apparently still alive and generally well enough and capable enough to read these words, though not necessarily accurately, how do you usually think about childhood as an investment?

If you rarely invest time in thinking about your own childhood, why not?

Perhaps you cannot remember much about the very young you.

Who, then, holds the memories of your childhood, and why do they do so?

What have they collected as souvenirs of that time in your life, and why?

Whose perceptions of your childhood have shaped the person you have become, and why?

How old are you now?

Perhaps you are not yet thirty-four years of age.

What were the greatest achievements of the first twelve years of your life, and from whose point of view?

And how did you change through the early years of adolescence?

 

 

Who consistently invested in you during the first fifteen years of your life, and why did they do so?

If no-one consistently invested in you, who did so over a relatively brief time or perhaps occasionally?

If you feel as though no-one invested in you at all during your first fifteen years, why do you feel that way?

How do you define the meaning of personal and interpersonal investments?

Regardless of your current age, how well have you invested in reflecting carefully on the first fifteen investment notes, carefully composed and presented by The Author for your philanthropic benefit in the library here?

 


How old were you when the first note was written?

Who is the real you at present?

You may or may not be aware that all real investments are didactic experiences.

The notes to you in the library are not necessarily in the belles-lettres category of literature though they are certainly noteworthy as works of art.

What have you been learning through your investments, particularly your investments of time?

What have been the most important lessons you have learned over your lifetime, and at what ages?

What have you discovered about politics in relation to investing, and at what ages did you make those discoveries?

Perhaps you regard politics as one of the decorative arts rather than as a science.

Perhaps you consider it rather ridiculous to regard politics as either decorative or scientific.

Perhaps you have a utilitarian approach to politics and investments, and possibly even towards life itself.

Or perhaps you mainly follow fashions without thinking particularly deeply about why you do so.

Perhaps you have not even read the guidebook here.

 


 What will you be reading before the next episode in this series, and why?

Monday, 16 August 2021

Authentic Living - Episode 33

It may not have occurred to you that Frugality Cottage is mainly an investment hub.

People with a propensity to made bad investments do not know how to find good ones, hence they do not know how to recognise good investments even when those extraordinary opportunities are right under their noses.

Foolish persons mainly associate investments with numbers.

Very foolish persons indeed also associate investments with emotions.

You are invited, yet again, to rethink your investment habits:

 

 

 

 

You are apparently still a member of a throw-away society.

You seem to be unable to establish the value of anything properly.

You may even be confused about the meaning of an Australian idyll.

 

 

If you are pushy or otherwise arrogant, you may be living authentically, from your own point of view, but you are also living obnoxiously from the point of view of more reasonable, respectful and responsible persons.

You may understand nothing about liminality in relation to this virtual cottage, regardless of the information provided on the subject here.



Investing well is an art as well as a science.  It obviously relies on respect for science yet it also relies on respect for art as art.

Most ordinary mortals do not have such respect.  They regard both science and art to be in the service of money, regardless of the consequences.

Perhaps you are seeking to know more about the cottage.  You have provided no indication that you have acquired the knowledge already provided through the information here:

 


If you are authentically unpleasant rather than authentically pleasant, that is obviously a considerable problem for everyone, possibly including yourself.

You have been offered many chances to experience refreshing possibilities within and through this virtual venue.



What have you been discovering in the little library here, especially about yourself?

Perhaps you do not take this digital noticeboard seriously.

Perhaps you do not appreciate your current access to the library.

What do you know about science for the sake of science?

What do you know about art for the sake of art? 

What do you know about history for the sake of the future?

How do you prefer to explore possibilities?

Perhaps you have been exploring here attentively and conscientiously with your allocated guide.

For the first time in history, a century has arisen in which possibilities can be explored quite easily by most people, with the assistance of their own imaginations, especially with the help of their own intellects and access to the Internet.

Yet possibilities are not necessarily opportunities.

Each Monday morning, Adelaidezone time, you have had a chance to discover, through this remarkable noticeboard, ways in which the possible and the probable can be better distinguished from one another.

Opportunities arise from the probable, not the possible, even though the possible can, with effort, become more probable later.  Yet many efforts are detrimental in the longer term.  They destroy opportunities rather than create them.

That is why it is urgent for you to understand the difference between the possible and the probable.

Authentic living, through well-informed kindness, is based on living in accordance with the probable.

It is possible that you may have access to this noticeboard next week though is it probable?

Do you look at trends and mistake the possible for the probable by failing to notice the collision between expectations and the unexpected?

Have you failed to learn anything from anomalies?

Have you often failed to detect anomalies in time to deal with them appropriately?

Perhaps you regard Frugality Cottage as an anomaly.  You may expect an investment house to be housed in a large office building, though large office buildings are obviously a bad investment in terms of energy efficiency, transportation, disease control, aesthetics, ethics and resource intensity.

Foolish people also often fail to distinguish clearly enough between an investment house and speculations in a booming housing market.  That is why they throw far too much time and money into the latter, with or without the motivation of ridiculously generous (and wasteful) government subsidies.

If you think you are investing in a house, or part of a house, or another type of dwelling, why do you think that way?

While investment companies claim to invest other people's money in securities, this investment house uniquely invests in real security.

Perhaps you will turn up here next Monday morning, hoping to learn more.

Monday, 9 August 2021

Authentic Living - Episode 32

If you have only just arrived here for episode 32 in this series, you obviously have much catching up to do.

The preparations began about eighteen months ago.

What do you already know about this location?

 

 

Where do you usually learn about authentic living?

Where do you usually practice authentic living?

Monday, 2 August 2021

Authentic Living - Episode 31

Do you have much experience of gleaning?

Do you forage for wild foods?

Do you gather if not hunt?

Do you salvage otherwise wasted foods?

Do you reuse and re-purpose most non-food items instead of buying new?

Do you usually associate living authentically with courage?

Do you usually associate living authentically with virtue?

Are you aware that living an authentically virtuous life can be dangerous in corrupt societies?

What have been your experiences of scarcity in relation to authenticity?

What do you know about fans of authenticity? 

What have you discovered about crafts in relation to authenticity?

What do you know about progress in relation to authenticity?

What do you know about Frugality Cottage in relation to authenticity?


Monday, 26 July 2021

Authentic Living - Episode 30

It is necessary for everyone to have adequate patience and cleanliness at present, as it has been for several weeks now.

Yet patience and cleanliness have always been necessary, especially when cooking.

 

 

Are you spending any time writing poetry or reading poetry at present?

Do you consider cookery to be like poetry?

You may know a little poetry about patience and cleanness, and about the more the merrier.

Are you seeking an expert guide here at present to inform you properly or would you prefer an opinionated braggart to match your biases?

Perhaps you are an authentic bigot.

What do you know about property investment in relation to authentic living, and its opposite?

What do you know about this virtual cottage in relation to authentic investments?

 

 

Having something to eat and somewhere to sleep form the basis of most experiences of living.

Monday, 19 July 2021

Authentic Living - Episode 29

Do you feel most authentic when you are practicing crafts or when you are interacting with fans? 

Do you feel more authentic with one or more people or when you are alone?

Do you consistently practice intelligent frugality on a personal level already?

Have you ever tried to encourage intelligent frugality at a political level?

How have you responded to the first four episodes in this series?

 

 

How have you responded to the subsequent four episodes here?

 

 

How have you assessed your social capital?

How have you assessed your social and political power?

How have you assessed your taste? 

How have you thought about the philosophy of identity and compared it with the politics of identity?

How is identity politics related to psychological stress, the acquisition and accumulation of capital and the prevention of authentic living?

 

Monday, 12 July 2021

Authentic Living - Episode 28

Being well prepared is the essence of intelligent frugality.   It involves making proper provisions for every circumstance that nature, politics and society may present.

Being well prepared makes calmness more likely.  

Since this series began, how have your views about frugality developed?

How have your ideas about intelligence developed during that time?

How do you usually think about the public and the private?

How do you usually think about the interpersonal and the personal?

How do you usually think about the political?

How do you usually establish relevance, from your own point of view, and from the point of view of other people?  

If the words 'quaint' and 'cosy' spring to your mind in connection with a calmly inviting cottage, do you also think of the Danish and Norwegian word 'hygge'?

Do you spend much of your time knitting in the sitting room of a little cottage somewhere, authentically discussing history, politics and philosophy with anyone? 

Do you associate authentic living mainly with the past rather than the future?

You may have noticed that this is episode twenty-eight in this series.

Do you associate authentic living with progress?

Do you prefer your meal times to be calm or lively?

Calmness not only encourages a pleasant sense of unity with humanity but unity with nature, unity with time and timelessness, and unity through cosiness.

You may associate the convivial with over-indulgence rather than intelligently frugal cosiness and calmness.

Do you associate authentic living with being honest and open?

In many reasonably healthy minds, a feeling of cosiness, rather than elegance, is likely to be appreciated as nurturing and comforting, especially when it is associated with pleasant companionship and/or a peaceful retreat from the world and its problems. 

Hotel rooms are rarely cosy.  Even the grandest of them are merely hotel rooms, and many are not even conducive to a good night's sleep.

In a similar way, restaurants are rarely cosy.  They are merely places in which to eat and possibly also talk, or shout if the place is noisy.

Of course, in tropical parts of the world, cosiness, calmness, friendliness and safety may require provisions for coolness as well as cleanliness.

If you are appropriately registered as one of the patrons here, you may have recently been leading yourself, with or without a group of followers, on a winding garden path through the Frugality Cottage gardens, to a lovely little summer house enclosing a composting toilet, even though it is wintertime here in the Adelaidezone.

How much do you value the chance to experience any or all of the virtual workshops here in the cottage itself, and/or in its outbuildings and/or garden areas?

Do you often enjoy investing time in gardening and/or cooking and/or maintaining a cosy home and/or acquiring and/or reading gardening books and/or cookery books and/or various other books to help you become more self-reliant and/or capable of using practical skills in a wide range of situations?

Do you enjoy developing your moral character that way?

 

 

Perhaps you value such moments deeply.

Perhaps you even genuinely appreciate the relationship between intelligent frugality and liminality.



If you are relatively enlightened, you will be aware that a seemingly unfriendly person may merely be tired and in need of quality time alone, possibly in a cosy cottage with a cup of tea and a chance to rest in peace and quiet.

The library here is usually very quiet indeed.  It is not a place for friendly chatter.  It is a place in which to find enlightenment.

Much self-directed learning can be achieved through books and online and through quietness and rest and through careful observations of nature and people.

A character cottage is a place in which being alone does not feel lonely.

The character of Frugality Cottage makes it friendly and inviting, even for a person arriving alone.

You may associate simple, peaceful, cosy living with 'hygge' and similar concepts.

Similar words to 'hygge' in other European contexts are usually associated with egalitarian gatherings, a sense of belonging and warm friendliness in pleasantly inviting environments.

You may associated 'hygge' with relaxation. 

How do you attempt to understand concepts like 'hygge' in various non-Scandinavian cultural contexts?  

Perhaps you have noticed that the word 'cosy' is textually located in the word 'ecosystem'.

In Dutch culture, a similar concept to 'hygge' is found in 'gezelligheid', which is associated with an individual and shared feeling of well-being in a family gathering or with old friends though it does not necessarily imply cosiness.

There is also an opposite term, 'ongezellig' which refers to unfriendly people and uninviting places.

While coping is difficult with problematic social, political, financial and environmental experiences, especially when also suffering from ill health, the factors contributing to well-being should, ideally, inform public policy appropriately, in the public interest.

You may be aware that social movements and political movements achieve little of lasting value until they become cultural movements of lasting value. 

Acceptance within a community is associated with a feeling described in German as 'Gemütlichkeit'.

Strangely, there is no equivalent term in English.

Unfortunately, achieving that feeling of acceptance in Germany may require a person to spend time quite frequently in a beer garden or beer hall.  Such a location may possibly have loud music and inebriated crowds.

The Anglo equivalent is time spent regularly in a pub or bar and/or shouting loudly as part of a group of sports fanatics.

Similarly, quite a few cultures associate alcohol with a sense of community, and possibly even camaraderie and loudness.

There is nothing elegant, peaceful, respectful or respectable about loudness.

Perhaps you have mainly been having fun here in Frugality Cottage.

Perhaps you want more hugs and hygge and laughs in your life.

Are you attempting to bring more hygge into the world, with or without being able to provide affectionate hugs to the people and/or animals and/or plants you love?

Frugality Cottage is virtually open to you this year to assist the expression of your authentic self, wherever you may currently be located in the physical world.

Cottages and character may not necessarily be associated with hygiene, especially if there is a dirty pot-holder or oven glove.

The volunteers take hygiene very seriously here.  They also take all other forms of safety very seriously indeed.

How well do you keep locations clean, and how do you define cleanliness and hygiene, and upon what evidence?

Are you competent at preparing hearty peasant foods without giving anyone food poisoning?

Do you know much about urban poverty, rural poverty and suburban poverty?

Do you know much about the feminisation of poverty?

Have you properly acquainted yourself with the basics of human ecology?

Have you properly acquainted yourself with the basics of human rights?

Have you properly acquainted yourself with the basics of institutions?

Urban and suburban life can often be far from idyllic.

Even rural and remote life can often be far from idyllic.

The pastoral aesthetic has nothing to do with the reality of managing herds of animals.  It may, however, have something to do with escaping from hordes of people. It may possibly help people to cope with unrequited love, emotional abandonment, lack of money, loneliness, and the lack of opportunity to live a more pleasant existence.

Perhaps you have attempted to escape from unpleasant experiences by searching for treasure hoards. 

Perhaps you express your authentic self by hoarding food and/or other items.

Perhaps you have been excessively hoarding items and/or panic buying and/or feeling cluttered and/or overcrowded.

Perhaps you are a compulsive hoarder.

Are you capable of deciding for yourself which items are essential to you and which are not?

Are you capable of deciding how to distribute your surplus items appropriately?

Are you capable of deciding for yourself which information is essential to you and which is not?

Are you capable of deciding which aspects of yourself are authentic and which aspects are not?

Have you fully explored the lovely patronage opportunities offered to you throughout Frugality Cottage?  

Are you devoted to expressing enlightened patronage and political pleasantness? 

Are you interested in experiencing an Australian idyll, whether virtually or otherwise?


 

How do you compare lovely opportunities with lost opportunities?

How do you know when a lovely opportunity is an almost lost opportunity?

Perhaps you delight in experiencing progress in your own understanding of authentic living.

The appropriately qualified patrons here have a lovely range of workshops and projects to consider and subsequently experience, if they so choose.

If you would like to know more about well-informed kindness, do please book a place on one or more of the lovely virtual tours around here, and from here, at your earliest opportunity, if you are eligible to do so. 

Perhaps you will subsequently wish to share the experience vicariously with your fans and your entourage.

Whether you are in such a position of influence or not, what do you believe will be the future of love in its various forms? 

What have been your experiences of falling in love and falling out of love?

What have been your experiences of developing an interest in anything, and losing interest?

How wisely have you been investing in love, and how do you know?  

Through your most appropriate expressions of patronage, you will have the chance to access many lovely opportunities through Frugality Cottage, with or without access to money.

What do you know about quality of life in relation to abundance and scarcity?

Are you often unaware of scarcity as a consequence of not really experiencing it much in your own life?

There are many different beliefs about investing in life.

What are your beliefs on the subject?

Perhaps your life already has an abundance of everything you consider worth having.  But how would you cope if that abundance vanished overnight?

How, if at all, do you ensure your way of life is not associated with overconsumption in any way whatsoever and simultaneously not associated with the perpetuation of unmet needs?

You may be willing to accept that even with an abundance of information in the digital world, there is a lack of understanding.  That lack of understanding causes much confusion.  It gives rise to the effectiveness of propaganda and other misinformation.  It also gives rise to dangers disinformation.

While egotism expresses excessive self-love, victims of cruelty may unfortunately develop self-hatred.  Yet excessive self-love is a form of self-denial, in much the same way as self-hatred.  Both are unreasonable.  Both fail to acknowledge the true self. 

What have been your experiences of the first twenty episodes in this series?

 

 

And where have you presented your own versions?

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