Authenticity cannot occur without choice. If you feel your choices are excessively restricted, that is the first problem to overcome.
Where, then, is the best place to start?
What are your choices?
In which areas of your life are you currently lacking options, and why?
When your options are limited, how do you know whether those limits are related to inadequate public policies or not?
If the associated public policies are inadequate, who is attempting to address that problem, and who should be addressing the problem but chooses not to do so?
You have apparently chosen to experience episode 17 in this series about authentic living.
Good training is necessary in any situation requiring it. Yet people cannot be properly trained in the art and science of well-informed kindness and authentically pleasant living unless they have already been adequately educated.
Such a prerequiste education includes the basic rudiments of civilised learning and civilised living.
How do you know you have already acquired such an education?
Do you have a comfortable seat and a cup of tea at present in your non-virtual experiences of the world?
What do you know about the cellar of Frugality Cottage?
What do you know about the attic of Frugality Cottage?
What is a proper home, from your point of view?
What is a proper community, from your point of view?
How do you think about the proper in terms of authenticity and ideals?
Frugality Cottage is a digital structure, of course.
The social and educational activities associated with this virtual
cottage have been digitally structured with appropriate dignity.
If you are yet to catch up with the earliest dozen episodes in this series, please do so now. There is much that you are likely to have missed:
- Authentic Living - Episode 1
- Authentic Living - Episode 2
- Authentic Living - Episode 3
- Authentic Living - Episode 4
- Authentic Living - Episode 5
- Authentic Living - Episode 6
- Authentic Living - Episode 7
- Authentic Living - Episode 8
- Authentic Living - Episode 9
- Authentic Living - Episode 10
- Authentic Living - Episode 11
- Authentic Living - Episode 12
How authentically do you express yourself digitally?
How do you attempt to maintain privacy when expressing yourself authentically?
Who is the real you?
Last year, you had the chance to explore those questions quite deeply here.
Did you do so?
If you did, what did you learn about authenticity in the sitting room?
What did you learn about authenticity in the attic?
What have you most recently been learning about authenticity in the library?How do you place value on the authentic in various situations?
How deeply have you thought about the importance of privacy?
A home means many different things to many different people.
What is usually the purpose of your visits to cottages and/or homes other than your own?
Do you mainly prefer to visit people or places, or even pets or wildlife?
What has motivated you to visit Frugality Cottage today?
Is it merely the chance to learn about intelligent frugality, conscious liminality and authentic living or something else entirely?
You may be aware that affordable housing is not necessarily the type of housing people would choose for themselves if they had the option. It may not be in a suitable location for work or study or social commitments, or even a preferred way of living or a practical place for sleeping.
You may be aware that alternative housing happens to be whatever is unusual from a cultural and legislative point of view in a particular location.
What is your knowledge of building codes?
If you are well-informed, you will be familiar with the concept of embodied energy.
Perhaps you live in an earth shelter.
Perhaps you live in a shipping container.
If you have ever been homeless, or ever been regarded as homeless, you may or may not have had difficulty nourishing your mind during that experience.
Perhaps you are happy with any sort of shelter in which to sleep, possibly including a tent or bivouac.
Perhaps you are a digital nomad.
Perhaps you feel at home wherever and whenever you have a comfortable seat and a cup of tea.
You may find it easier to sleep soundly in a tiny house immersed in nature than in a room in a 'deluxe' hotel skyscraper.
Perhaps you enjoy living on a boat, whether it is a houseboat or any other floating home.
Perhaps you are a telecommuter.
Perhaps you do not need a home much bigger than a beach hut or boat shed or summer house.
Perhaps you feel as though a recreational vehicle is more of a home to you than any immovable dwelling.
Perhaps you enjoy the life of a van dweller.
Perhaps you are happy living in a caravan or mobile home in any sort of weather.
Perhaps your immovable dwelling has recently floated away in a flood or landslide.
Perhaps your mobile home has been destroyed in a bushfire.
Even though the word 'cottage' has been transformed into a marketing
term through the tourism industry, a real cottage is mainly built of
local, natural resources, not imported ones or mass produced parts.
Like a vernacular language, a vernacular building is associated with a limited local area.
It is constructed from the natural environment.
It is transformed by that environment through time, and possibly through several centuries.
It is a place of change and adaption as its occupants change and adapt.
Do you associate the intertwining of a local environment and personal skills with authentic living?
An authentic cottage is a vernacular building.
This may be a good time to reflect upon your knowledge of authentic living.
For example:
How do you compare living in a cottage with living with a cottage?
How do you compare living in a cottage with visiting a cottage in terms of ways of living?
What have you discovered about the policies here in terms of the cottage and visitors?
Perhaps you yearn for the chance to spend some time with well-informed,
kind people in the sitting room of Frugality Cottage or in another quite modest venue,
especially if you are seeking help in resolving one or more problems.
There are many different ideas about what is appropriate behaviour and what is not.
There are also many different ideas about what is a superior idea and what is not.
There are even different ideas about what is clean and what is not.
Perhaps you prefer a sprig of rosemary in a cup of hot water instead of a cup of tea, especially after noon each day.
How much caffeine do you consume in an average day, and why?
What have you discovered in the past week about progress in relation to intelligently frugal pleasures and authentic living?
What value do you place on intelligently frugal pleasures?
- Intelligently Frugal Pleasures - Part One
- Intelligently Frugal Pleasures - Part Two
- Intelligently Frugal Pleasures - Part Three
- Intelligently Frugal Pleasures - Part Four
All reasonableness is contextual.
It is especially inappropriate to pretend to be charitable while mainly gaining privileges through exclusive social networking opportunities.
Empathy involves making life easier for everyone, not merely a select few.
Cleaning up politics should not be necessary. Unfortunately, political situations are often very messy indeed. They are usually contaminated by corruption and other selfishness, in much the same way as inauthentic activities claimed to be charitable.