Monday 17 May 2021

Authentic Living - Episode 20

Entirely new knowledge is discovered through research, creativity, synergy and serendipity, mostly through the investment of time in archives and/or nature and/or conversations and/or databases and/or through the development and use of knowledge-seeking technologies and/or in virtual and/or actual gardens and/or cottages.

Anything already known to have been published is likely to be discovered through one sort of library or another, at least if that documented knowledge has not been entirely destroyed in the meantime.

Much apparently new knowledge was known long ago but subsequently lost, either because it had not been documented or the knowledge was not passed on orally or the knowledge was disregarded as worthless or destroyed as dangerous.

Many local investments have been made from this part of the Internet, over many year now.

Many global investments have already been made from here, too.

But should those investments continue?

Have you ever discovered something no-one else has discovered before you? 

Few people have visited Frugality Cottage recently. 

Most people are probably uninterested in being here.  There is no gift shop associated with Frugality Cottage.  There is nothing to purchase here at all.  There are no celebrity events.  There are no media events at all.  There are only occasional tweets about the activities here.

Perhaps you are mainly interested in sentimentality and other forms of superficiality rather than a deeper understanding of authentic living.

Have you invested much time in experiencing the library here?

As you may have noticed, this is episode twenty in this series.

How have you been assessing your progress?

For many years, basic knowledge within the Adelaidezone Digital Arts Quarter remained relatively accessible to the ordinary, global, digital public, free of charge.

Yet acquiring that knowledge, on a personal level, required the investment of much time on the part of everyone involved, including the providers.

If you are seeking to invest in anything or anyone officially associated with this digital arts quarter, what is it you wish to provide, and for what sort of return?

How do you usually interpret the meaning of investing? 

Have you invested much time in experiencing the workshops here, and in gaining the eligibility with which to do so? 

How do you distinguish between preserving heritage collections, nostalgia-related clutter, compulsive hoarding and tools for creative problem-solving? 

What have you been learning from past and present cultural movements, and how, and why?  

What do you believe to be the reasons why you have been provided with virtually free access to Frugality Cottage, and by whom?

What do you believe to be the intentions of the provider(s) of this access?

If you are here as an ordinary virtual tourist, or even as a representative specimen of another variety of ordinariness associated with the global and/or local public, you may be yearning to upgrade your status to that of a highly respected community member.

You may not usually associate cottages with fashion.  Indeed, you may consider fashion itself to be problematic.  That would be a perfectly reasonable point of view.

You may be a devotedly anti-fashion sort of person though not necessarily in an overtly outlandish sort of way.

Greed is often associated with the desire to purchase expensive items of fashion and/or expensive items of heritage and/or expensive pieces of real estate and/or expensive pieces of art and/or other expressions of conspicuous consumption. 

Expensiveness itself is not a problem when it is ethically justified.  Yet greed is a cause of many problems in the world.  The greedy want to acquire and/or retain large amounts of money but they rarely want to be reminded of how unethically or randomly that money was gained.  Nor do they wish the public to know the truth.

How do you attempt to discourage the greed associated with financial crimes, executive bonuses and political corruption? 

Perhaps the authentic you would rather ignore such matters.  You may have convinced yourself that the greed of other people is none of your business, especially if you are greedy yourself and you run a 'successful' business.

If you are yet to catch up with the earlier episodes in this series, how and when and where do you intend to do so?

How, if at all, have you already responded to the first four episodes, and why?

 

 

If you are yet to catch up with all the earlier episodes in this series, please do so as soon as possible.  The chance to do so may not last long.

You probably have a considerable amount of catching up to do.

 

 

How do you intend to express yourself in relation to each episode in this series, and when, and where, and why?

 

 

Perhaps you are here for reasons of literary curiosity rather than as a provider of philanthropic necessities.

What is your awareness of the etymology of the word curiosity?

Perhaps you have never encountered an enlightened culture before your arrival here.


 

Here in Frugality Cottage, you are likely to experience many different thoughts and feelings.

What sorts of investments have you been making in terms of historical research, and why, and where?

What do you believe to be the importance of understanding history, philosophy, psychology and geography in relation to serious events in the news? 

The collective identity established and maintained within the Adelaidezone Digital Arts Quarter is one of enlightened self-interest and enlightened kindness. 

When people focus too much on physical or financial factors in relation to ideas and ideals, they habitually live beyond their means.  This is especially the case in Australia.

Perhaps you have imagined an Australian idyll through which to express your ethics:



Unlike the cruelty and deceptiveness of egotism, the philosophy of egoism encourages ethical and authentic living.  It does so through the moral filter of well-informed kindness.

Egoism therefore provides an informed basis for the practice of authenticity and genuine altruism.

What are you still seeking to know about Frugality Cottage, and why?

 

 

How do you usually distinguish between private investments, community investments and public investments?

Each Monday morning at 7am, local time, you have had the opportunity to experience a new episode in this series

If you remain fortunate enough to do so, you will continue to have access to this digital noticeboard for at least a little while longer.

Each episode in this series is also like a new chapter.

Do you usually regard each week of your life as a new chapter in your life story?

 

 

Who most helps you to be you authentic self, and why do they do so?

What have you been learning about authentic living from earlier episodes and chapters of your life, however long or short you regard those sections of experience to be? 

 

 

How have the previous episodes in this series informed your approach to this one?

You may or may not have been spending some time in the virtual library here, over recent weeks, learning about well-informed investing.  Most tourists lack an interest in that topic.  They are more interested in the immediate gratification of their curiosity and other desires.


 

Ordinary tourists are not interested in attending time-consuming online workshops.  Such persons are much more interested in quickly moving from one digital and/or physical location to another and/or lazing about between bouts of overindulgence.

Do you regard aggression to be a form of overindulgence?

You may have arrived at Frugality Cottage seeking to forget about conflict and aggression and other sources of negative emotions.

How do you know your intentions and expectations are not a cowardly form of escapism?

Perhaps you are seeking to live frugally is a little cottage somewhere, either alone or with one or more other people, or with one or more pets, as a way to escape from your feelings of social alienation and disillusionment. 

Perhaps you associate prosperity with grand mansions and tall towers and multinational corporations rather than little virtual cottages.

Do you usually associate libraries and kitchens with the good use of time?

Do you usually associate libraries and kitchens with the good use of money?

Do you have a library of books about kitchens or a library associated with the usual activities in kitchens?

Have you spent much time in the library of Frugality Cottage?

Have you spent much time in the kitchens of Frugality Cottage?

Cottages may or may not be available to local people as subsidised housing, even when second-home owners have bought up much of the local accommodation as an investment in tourism.

Most subsidised housing has no character at all, and probably deliberately so.  Its ugliness is enough to put off many people who would otherwise prefer to pay a lower price for their housing requirements.

Why is so much housing so ugly?  

Even new housing for relatively affluent home purchasers is often of no aesthetic merit.

The main digital doorway of Frugality Cottage has been virtually open to the ordinary online public for quite some time now, primarily for philanthropic reasons.

Each of these 'episodes' is no more than an outline of ideas and questions for further exploration. 

Do you prefer interacting with people as individuals, small groups, larger groups or crowds, or not at all?

That, in fact, is one of the most important questions in relation to authenticity.

The activities in Frugality Cottage are neither capitalist nor socialist.  Both economic systems contain considerable, unresolvable problems.

When inadequate legislation, inadequate compliance, inappropriate rules and considerable hypocrisy are associated with economic and political systems, those systems are corrupt.  They undermine human rights, destroy environments, ruin lives and fail democracy.

Sometimes, people have no intention of modifying their behaviours, however irrational those behaviours may seem to observers, and sufferers, of those behaviours.

You may have been attempting to encourage people to overcome unhealthy practices by helping those individuals change their behaviour through developing skills in diversionary craft activities, gardening, cooking, reading and/or through being actively involved in changing political and economic systems to align those systems better with the public interest.

Please be aware that no superstitious activities, pseudosciences or other unreasonable beliefs and practices are encouraged or permitted here though they are often studied in this digital vicinity.

If you have acquired subjective assumptions about such matters, please be willing to acknowledge that many other people are unlikely to share those assumptions.  The same applies to religious, political and economic beliefs, of course.

Whether a touristic visitor to Frugality Cottage is relatively local or not in relation to Adelaide, such a person is considered to be ordinary here, regardless of any fame or fortune that person may have acquired within a particular mass media or social media or physical locality, or even globally. 

Although no-one associated with Frugality Cottage wishes this digital location to be controversial in any way whatsoever, protecting the cottage and its garden from greedy exploiters has certainly been difficult at times.

Do you usually associate cottages with traditional ballads, impossible tasks, medieval trading fairs?

You have been offered the chance to learn about the cottage and kindness:


 

You have even been offered the chance to learn about the cottage and controversy:


The Cottage and Controversy
 

How honest are you about your investments, patronages and other societal practices? 

You probably associate honesty with authenticity.

What do you believe you already know about well-informed investing?

Enlightened beings are well aware that well-informed investing is associated with well-informed kindness.
 
Enlightened beings are never abusive though they do tend to express annoyance when people ignore dangers.

Where do you usually explore refreshing possibilities?


 

A desire for authentic living often arises as a consequence of uncomfortable experiences of cognitive dissonance.

Truly authentic living is not competitive or authoritarian.  It exists outside the competitiveness of social stratification.  It also exists outside the fake co-operation of coerced compliance.

When you identify and acknowledge the abusiveness of people and they fail to amend their behaviour, how do you choose to act subsequently?

In order to prevent abusers from being abusive in the future, identifying and acknowledging the features of abusiveness should always be a priority.

There is nothing authentic about a situation in which coercion is present.

Nor is there anything authentic about a situation in which groupthink is present. 

While abusers are likely to be authentically abusive, they are obviously not worthy of anything but rejection.

Abusers often resort to coercion after being rejected.  That is why their exclusion is urgently necessary in many situations.

Consent implies approval, but only in terms of what is already known and agreed.

Yet many people are coerced into expressing purported consent, primarily as a consequence of ignorance and/or ulterior motives and/or fear on their part and/or on the part of another party.

How do you usually make investments in your local district? 

If you are seeking a new locality for a physical home, why are you doing so?

How are you currently investing in your global home? 

How do you think about life in relation to local and global homes?

How do you think about life, including home live, in terms of quality?

One of the main barriers to healthy community life, and healthy family life, is egotism, in other words, a desire for an undeservedly high social status.  That desire is associated with the belief that other people are unworthy of the same social status as the self.

Egotism is often associated with cruelty, the brazen abuse of power, acting with impunity and the selfish expression of boldness.  It is also associated with a disregard for justice, civility and kindness.

What do you believe you know about the Adelaidezone Digital Arts Quarter and the Adelaidezone more generally, and how and where and when did you acquire that information?


 

There are many types of human behaviour, some of which are kind and some of which are abusive and some of which are neither. 

How do you know when claims of authenticity are spurious?

How much money have you paid to access this virtual noticeboard today, and to whom, and why?

How, if at all, does your access to money usually help you to enjoy pleasant experiences and forget unpleasant ones?

How, if at all, does your access to money usually help other people to enjoy pleasant experiences and forget unpleasant ones?

If you happen to have access to large amounts of money, how much of that money do you own, and why?

If you happen to have access to little or no money, why is that the case?

If you happen to have access to other assets, what are you doing with those assets, and why?

There are many quality opportunities here for persons of quality.

As an entirely virtual location, Frugality Cottage is an ideally picturesque digital venue for chastely elegant discussions, mutually useful interactions and other philanthropic practices.

Queen Adelaide is ethereally here whenever Her Majesty has a free moment.  After all, the Adelaidezone exists in the EverTime as well as RealTime.

Time is obviously one of the most important investments anyone can make, at least when fortunate enough to be able to do so.

How do you usually think about time in relation to scarcity?

In the contexts of particular lives, do you consider time to be a non-renewable resource?

In the context of chronic unwellness, do you consider health to be a non-renewable resource?

How do you assess the value of time in relation to emotions?

How do you assess the value of time in relation to money?

Most of the information about the virtual workshops and projects here remains unpublished.  It is, instead, suitably archived for future historians to examine, at the right time.

The remaining publicly-available notes are only presented here to help you catch up with the information you will require if you are to be a good community member here and elsewhere.

What sort of progress have you already made towards authentic living, and how have you measured that progress?

How much time have you already spent here today, and why?

How do you know you will still have access in a few moments, days, weeks and/or months from now?

Are you sure you are investing your time wisely?

Do you know whether you are investing in continuity appropriately?

As this is episode twenty in this series, there is obviously much time invested in its continuity.

Have you been spending any time thinking about the cottage and the mat of purported matter? 

Perhaps you spend much time sitting upon or lying down upon or kneeling upon or walking upon or standing upon or standing on your head upon a mat of purported matter. 

What is matter, in your view, and how do you know?

What matters, from your point of view, and why?

What is the matter, from your point of view, and why?

The truly free expression of authentic living can only occur through the practices of well-informed kindness and intelligent frugality.

Narcissists, psychopaths and other bullies are incapable of contributing to such practices with authenticity, anywhere at all.

When excessively ignorant persons express deference towards bullies, and even draft legislation in their interests, it is necessary to develop a peaceful and effective political movement to oppose dangerous ignorance and all forms of bullying.

How do you attempt to express your political views authentically?

How do you know you are not dangerously ignorant?

How do you know you are not a bully?

You may not necessarily be investing in reasonableness adequately.

What have you already discovered about Frugality Cottage itself, and how?

 

 

What have you already discovered about yourself, and how?

Have you been spending any time reciting poetry about rural depopulation and the consequences of the pursuit of excessive wealth?

Perhaps you would prefer to regard your experiences of poetry as investments in cultural capital.

Perhaps you would prefer to regard your experiences of thoughtfulness as the accumulation of intellectual capital.

Do you associate authentic living and intelligent frugality with appropriately useful industries at all?

 

 

What do you know about continuity in various industries, including the arts?

Do you usually regard the expression of artistry to be associated with authentic living?

Perhaps you associate arts industries, and cultural industries more generally, to be associated with following the money rather than following the imagination and expressing virtue.

Narcissists and egotists are often bigots.  They use dubious claims about tradition in order to treat people unjustly.  

With no evidence to support their views, they claim they possess virtues while claiming other people lack them.  As well as being deluded narcissists, bigots are usually hypocrites.

Some bigots even delude themselves that they hold left-wing beliefs when they merely seek admiring followers.  They are no more than egotists.

They may campaign to protect the interests of a particular group they claim is disadvantaged yet they ignore the needs of other disadvantaged groups.  They merely treat apparently privileged groups as the enemy.

People with a right-wing view claim to be the most suitable upholders of social order when, in fact, they usually want to shape society cruelly for their own benefit.

They want to attain or maintain privileges and deny those same privileges to other people.

They often fail to distinguish between rights and privileges and prefer to believe that both apply exclusively for the benefit of themselves and people they admire.

If you think you are adequately investing in honesty, how do you test your credibility in that regard?

What have you been learning about the cottage and freedom?

Are you investing in freedom wisely?

You may already be aware that the expansion of detrimental anthropogenic activities coincided with the exploratory greed of selfishly ambitious bullies in the 1500s and 1600s.

Those circumstances and circumnavigations ironically coincided with the rising influence of scientific knowledge and poetic accomplishments, especially as expressed in the English language. 

Here at Frugality Cottage, you are encouraged to develop your creativity, your kindness, your reasoning, your frugality, and an empirical basis for as many of your beliefs as possible.  You are not expected or encouraged to glorify empires of any sort.

What do you already know about the cottage and beliefs in terms of education, training and the development and maintenance of peacefully prosperous community practices?

What do you know about security and insecurity of tenancy?

You may be aware that local government authorities rarely have any respect for privacy, even for persons with significant concerns relating to personal security.

For example, when making a property development application to build or extend a dwelling, local government websites may include the names and contact details of the property owners.  Such information is likely to be harvested by marketeers and political parties and (other) criminals quite frequently, in much the same way as government registers of business owners and directors.

Authentic living is impossible when identity theft occurs.

Perhaps you feel as though you have nothing to lose by giving away your personal information.  That is unlikely to be a reasonable view, in any circumstances.

Even homeless people have their identity stolen by criminals. 

And in many societies, homeless people are treated as outcasts, and even as criminals themselves, even if they happen to be refugees or other victims of crime.

How carefully and cautiously and creatively are you investing in security, and how do you know?

How have you responded to the security measures taken here?

How have you imagined your various experiences upon entering this virtual cottage?

How carefully have you considered privacy in relation to security and mental health and creativity?

The activities in and from this ethereal cottage are always appropriately inclusive and appropriately exclusive. 

How do you assess appropriateness when investing in certainty to the best of your ability?

This episode of Authentic Living is intended to prepare you for the episodes ahead, and the life and legacy ahead of you.

Perhaps you are employed as some sort of inspector or researcher or examiner or expert.

You may even be employed as an explorer of some sort.

How do your explorations take privacy into consideration?

If you enjoy investigating in an exploratory way, whether locally or more globally, what are your reasons for doing so?

Do you spend much of you life in explorations of one sort or another?

Some people consider explorers to be heroes.  Other people consider explorers to be invaders.

How have you been investing in exploration this year, and for what reasons?

How did you invest in exploratory practices in previous years, and why?

How have you been investing in other practices, and where, and why?

Perhaps you will inform your most pleasant acquaintances of this online location today.  If so, what will motivate you to do so?

If you are seeking to evaluate something with the assistance of someone here, what is it you wish to evaluate, and what sort of assistance do you most definitely require with urgency, and from whom?

Perhaps you are seeking safe and effective therapeutic assistance to help you restore your feelings of confidence, certainty and security, particularly if your righteous indignation has overwhelmed your coping abilities far too many times.

Every activity in life is meant to be suitably therapeutic for the self, and for nature, including human communities.

How, if at all, have you been expressing freedom by investing unselfishly in exploring therapeutic possibilities?

 

  

How would you describe your cleanliness in local and global contexts?

What does a clean world mean to you, and how do you know you have a healthy approach to cleanliness? 

How are you willing to contribute to cleanliness here and in the community associated with Frugality Cottage?

What do you know about the projects here in relation to developing and maintaining well-informed kindness in the world?

How well are you already investing in well-informed kindness, and how do you know? 



 

What have you been reading in the library here, and/or elsewhere, about investing  in thoughtful reciprocity?

And what have you decided to do as a consequence of that reading?

How does your current view of thoughtful reciprocity relate to authentic living?

 

 

What is your understanding of job satisfaction, community satisfaction and political satisfaction?

Introverts are often happier in jobs they can do on their own.

Extroverts are often happier in jobs they can do as part of a group.


 

 

You have been invited to receive a brief new insight into Frugality Cottage each Monday morning at 7 o'clock, local time.

Perhaps you think of allegorical cottages as being timeless.

How do you usually try to understand allegories and their purpose?

What have you now discovered about the cottage and the key, and how do you know? 

As you have managed to make your way virtually through the digital doorway into Frugality Cottage, with or without using the key, how does that experience relate to your understanding of classical physics and modern physics?

How does it relate to your understanding of classical conditioning and instrumental conditioning?

How do you usually attempt to overcome the false consensus effect, with or without a little assistance from classical music and/or modern music?

How do you usually think about mass and volume in relation to physics and music, and in relation to your beliefs, knowledge, emotions and tastes?

What do you understand about the cottage and the mat of purported matter, and how and where did you acquire that understanding? 

When, if ever, have you examined the character and authenticity of people and places and ideas and objects through the harmonious interplay of beauty, understanding and magnificence?

Perhaps you usually associate marginality with liminality.

 

 

Do you associate this entrance and noticeboard with liminality?

Perhaps you regard your experiences here to be entrancing and possibly even enchanting.

You are most likely to seek to understand whatever you find fascinating.

 

 

Perhaps you are hoping to overcome feelings of confusion and disorientation.

Perhaps you are seeking to overcome the distress you often feel as a consequence of physical and/or mental shock, unpleasant surprises and the stunningly cruel encounters you have had the misfortune to witness or personally experience.

Perhaps you associate the word 'stunning' with ridiculous marketing terminology rather than unpleasant truths. 

What do you know about the philosophy of mind?

What do you know about the physical principle of locality?

What do you know about manipulative marketing in terms of psychological manipulation, media manipulation and market manipulation?

How do you attempt to understand the causes and consequences of heating oceans?

How do you attempt to understand the causes of revolutions, and the associated consequences?

How do you attempt to understand the causes and consequences of storms in one place or another?

How do you attempt to understand other types of storms?

How well have you been communicating geographical reasonableness recently, and to whom?

Are you sure you understand why people have unhealthy local environments?

Are you sure you understand why people have an unhealthy global environment?

Are you sure you understand why people have unhealthy habits? 

Here in Frugality Cottage, you may prefer to think in terms of peace and quiet and innocence and pleasantness and quaintness and prettiness. 

You may be hoping to learn more about crafts here, possibly including statecraft.

You may have virtually arrived here in or on some sort of imagined craft, hoping to learn about crafts of various sorts, or a particular craft of possible practical use, or of no use at all.

What are you seeking to know and why have you not found the required information elsewhere?

If you have been following the guide, you may be hoping to experience refreshing possibilities in the kitchens of Frugality Cottage, at least if you are a registered patron here.

You may have been exploring the library, either on your own or with the guide.

Possibilities relate to the past as well as the present.  But what relates to the future?

What will you be hoping to experience as part of the community of patrons associated with Frugality Cottage, at least if you ever acquire that honour? 

If you have been exploring future possibilities quite carefully, how sensibly are you investing in hope, and how do you know?

Do you have a seemingly endless supply of intellectual curiosity?

Do you have a seemingly endless supply of creativity?

If you are seeking to be an official guide here, please be aware that several projects are associated with that an activity.  There is also much training involved. 

How do you know you are suitably devoted to investing in curiosity appropriately?

If you are seeking refreshments, or ideas for refreshments, or refreshing ideas, especially if you are involved in a film, television or video production at present, please be aware that the craft services and creativity services here are for appropriately registered patrons only.

Indeed, all the workshops and projects here are for appropriately registered patrons only.

Please ask your guide for more details.

Some craft activities involve little creativity.  They mainly involve following instructions, like assembling flat-pack furniture.

While creativity is often pleasurable for the producer, it may not have an eager recipient beyond the producer.

What motivates you to produce anything, possibly including produce?



Do you have a capitalist, non-capitalist or anti-capitalist approach to curiosity, production and creativity?

What are your assumptions about creativity, kindness and science?

What are your assumptions about the visitors to Frugality Cottage?

Cottages are usually regarded as small dwellings.  They may even be regarded as overcrowded, especially if they accommodate a large nuclear family or more than one family or an extended family or a blended family or more than a few visitors.

How is it possible to be creative in overcrowded or otherwise confusing conditions?

How, in actual fact, are you investing in creativity, whether that creativity is your own or that of someone else or of a group of people?

What have you discovered about the cottage and competence in relation to authentic living and well-informed investing?

How is The Author meant to regard you, from your own point of view?
 
How do you regard The Author in terms of competence?

 

 

Psychological experiments have shown that obedience to cruel authorities is both common and dangerous. 

Throughout history, all over the world, laws and other rules have often legitimised cruelty rather than virtue, as have high status social groups.

The Big Bad Wolf of Authoritarianism, the Mad Wizard of Media Manipulation and the Wicked Witch of Speculation continue to be supported by, and provide support towards, armament manufacturers and government spending on military expansion.

Perhaps you have been earning a substantial income by writing books about witches and wizards and big bad wolves and/or the history of Wall Street and other financial centres.

Are you able to distinguish clearly between voluntary poverty and involuntary poverty?

Do you consider writing to be a craft or an art or both or neither?

Writing involves skill, of course, whether related to the sophisticated writing of poetry or literary prose, seemingly simple instructions or a scribbled list of jobs to do.

What have you already discovered about investing in The Author, and how have you acquired information about that highly enlightened investment opportunity?

How, and what, have you been investing in this series of episodes, and why?

How prepared do you consider yourself to be in relation to the episodes ahead?

Only suitably registered, adequately trained patrons may volunteer here, of course.

What do you already know about the voluntary activities associated with Frugality Cottage, including those associated with the library? 

Even before registering as a patron here, you are certainly most welcome to share a link to this information with persons you already consider to be essential members of your preferred community experiences.

You will probably prefer to do so mainly with your most noble, open-minded, courteous and community-minded associates, at least if you and they are adequately reasonable.

Reasonableness is very important here, as you are likely to be very well aware by now.

How well have you been investing in knowledge over the past few years and/or decades, and how do you know?

Perhaps you are seeking to learn how to make relatively safe and inexpensive cleaning products.

It is certainly a good idea to find practical alternatives to the dangerous substances wastefully presented to the public through advertising and supermarkets on behalf of multinational conglomerates of greed.

Please do your own research on all associated topics, with or without acquiring an advanced knowledge of biochemistry and microbiology. 

As with any craft or concoction, you may wish to experiment carefully with various methods, beginning with the simplest, safest and least wasteful.

Have you tried putting plain water on a slightly damp rag and wiping down surfaces methodically from top to bottom?

What do you know about deception and self-deception?

How have you imagined your entrance to Frugality Cottage today?

Perhaps you are having fun here.  Although that is obviously not the main intention of the guide, given the seriousness of the work ahead of you, the enjoyment of knowledge is certainly a reasonable experience.

How do you usually think about fun in relation to funding.

How do you ascertain the importance of functionality and beauty in relation to frugality?

Perhaps you misguidedly believe that access to borrowed funds in the only way to live comfortably. 

If you personally happen to have debts, what caused that misfortune to occur?

If you depend upon an indebted person for anything, how did that dependency arise?

Perhaps you enjoy making fun of overly powerful people through satirical means.

Several satirical publications are on display in the library here.

How have you been investing in fun for the greater good over the past few years?

Perhaps you prefer to distract yourself from problems you feel are outside your control.

You may often do puzzles or play games or play music or watch films or read exciting novels or seek money or seek fame or keep your mind busy in other ways in the hope that such activities will make a painful experience disappear from your consciousness for a while, or forever.

While distractions have their uses, addressing problems appropriately is an elegant craft in itself.

How much time have you already been investing in reading about history over the past few years?

What do you most value about reading, reasoning and guiding?

Here in Frugality Cottage, please consider your reasoning to be your most important activity.

Good patrons support the authenticity they value.  They may even have fun whilst doing so.

Do you usually regard good patronage to be a therapeutic experience?

If you are not yet appropriately registered as a patron of any part of the work here, or any part of the cottage and its gardens, that is likely to be very disappointing to the volunteers, the staff, the managerial supervisors, the trustees and the ethereal proprietor of the cottage.

Becoming a patron here obviously requires a prior demonstration of consistently intelligent frugality.

To be a patron within Frugality Cottage requires the consistent expression of well-informed kindness.
 
What, if at all, is your identity as a practitioner of patronage?

How do you interpret the word patron in relation to your moral values and moral choices?

How do you know you have been investing in appropriately good patronage?

If you are adequately dedicated to your patronage experiences, and you are properly registered as a patron here, you will have the opportunity to participate in several exclusive events, here and elsewhere, on the theme of authentic living.

Many activities and opportunities here are exclusively for registered patrons.

To register obviously requires the reasonable expression of authenticity, and possibly even generosity.  Yet privacy is also of the utmost importance.

How well are you investing in privacy, and how do you know?

The Author has provided quite a few investment notes to you in order to assess your ethics and authenticity with adequate accuracy, and with adequate respect for your privacy, and the privacy of everyone else.

While The Author is much more advanced in the study of enlightenment than most ordinary mortals, you are unlikely to have reached that level.  Perhaps you will never reach that level.

The volunteers here are mostly still at the lowest level of quaternary training.  For most people, that level takes approximately twelve years to complete.  The next level also takes approximately twelve years, too.  And most people are ineligible to begin the lowest level before the age of twenty-nine or thirty.

After completing the second level of quarternary training, students are eligible to begin the third level.  They may complete that level in around eight years or they may continue for the remainder of a lifetime.

Very few persons complete the third level.  Those completing it quite quickly then become eligible for the quinary level.

The Author is currently advancing remarkably rapidly through the quinary level, with the assistance of several extraordinarily advanced technologies.

Perhaps you regard The Author as somewhat aloof and unfriendly.

How do you tell the difference between an unfriendly person and an unwell one?

Sometimes, it is difficult to know the difference.  

The Author is unwell.

The only persons adequately qualified to begin a quaternary level of education and training are suitably committed to local and global peace.

What do you know about peacebuilding in relation to reality?

How do you know whether another person shares your view of reality or not?

Frugality Cottage is a seriously advanced educational, research and investment establishment, as you may have noticed.

How peaceful is your use of time?

How open is your mind? 

How honest are your intentions here?

How clean are your thoughts and fingertips?

How carefully and effectively are you investing in peace, and for whose benefit?

Real peace is the only reasonable measure of progress.

You are probably quite well acquainted, by now, with the relationship between the cottage and peace.

You are probably also quite well acquainted, by now, with the relationship between the cottage and simplicity.

Perhaps you are seeking to live in a peaceful, simple way in a physical cottage quite similar to Frugality Cottage, or possibly quite different from it. 

Where would your ideal place for authentic living actually be, and what would be its essential features?

Will you think about it not merely as a structure but as an environment and neighbourhood with a thriving local economy and reasonably peaceful political, cultural and interpersonal experiences?



Do you currently live both intelligently and frugally?

Do you have fun teaching people contextually about intelligently frugal pleasures they can easily incorporate into their own experiences?


 

Do you find frugality to be fun?

Are you sure you are investing in intelligent frugality properly?

How are your definitions related to your beliefs?

Definitional matters have been explored in the sitting room here on many occasions, and in the attic.

How do you usually define freedom and civility in relation to value and values?

How do you usually define philosophy and authenticity in relation to value and values?

How do you usually define intelligence and elegance in relation to value and values?

How do you usually define frugality and scarcity in relation to value and values?

To be local to the Adelaidezone is a philosophical, conceptual, imaginative sort of experience.  It is associated with affinity for the qualities most associated with this virtual vicinity, regardless of geographical factors in the non-virtual world. 

What are your beliefs about reality in relation to the philosophy of naturalism?

What are your beliefs about reality in relation to the philosophy of physicalism?

What is your philosophy of progress?

What is your understanding of the theory of mind?

What is your understanding of the philosophy of mind?

The introductory episodes in this 'Authentic Living' series have built upon the philosophical foundations developed here last year. 

Do you already grow and prepare food creatively, healthily and deliciously?

If you have experienced life in relative comfort and relatively good health, most relatively old cottages, in their original form, would probably have seemed to you more like rustic huts or animal barns.

Intelligent frugality provides people with economic freedoms and cultural capital they would not normally possess.

It supports the development of healthy self-esteem.

It lowers levels of unnecessary dependency and raises levels of self-reliance.

There are obviously quite a few rules here, for reasons of safety, civility and creativity.

All the rules are perfectly reasonable and in keeping with good public health practices, scientific knowledge and world peace. 

There are many important considerations in relation to human nutrition, and human health more widely.  Have you often taken those considerations for granted?

Your routine may have mainly involved cleaning, cooking, eating, sleeping, shopping and investing.

How well do you invest in a good cleaning routine?

How well do you invest in a good cooking routine?

What is your routine in relation to eating?

What is your routine in relation to sleeping?

What is your routine in relation to shopping?

What is your routine in relation to investing?

How, for example, are you investing in your own health?

How do you decide upon changes in your routines?

How do you tell the difference between a simple life and a boring life?

How do you tell the difference between a simple dwelling and a boring dwelling?

Frugality Cottage is certainly not an ordinary sort of location.

There is certainly no scarcity of opportunities here for successful students of the educational workshops and creative workshops.


 

How well have you informed yourself about the cottage and politics?

Do you gain much pleasure in kitchens or do you prefer to avoid such locations? 

Introverts take most pleasure in meals for one or two people.

Extroverts enjoy gathering en mass around large tables.

Do you consider your explorations of history to be associated with investing in pleasure?

Do you think there is anything odd or strange about quaintness or is it merely quite pleasant and unusually attractive and picturesque in a charmingly old-fashioned way?

If the authentic you feel emotionally attracted to the cottage and quaintness, why do you feel that way?

One of the pleasures of inviting people into a virtual cottage is that it provides more peace and privacy, and safety, than can be achieved by inviting them into one's real home.

This experimental facility is therefore highly convenient for the assessment of potential pleasantness, and potential problems.

Does your expression of authentic living have anything to do with simple living?

The liminal may involve a change from the dependent to the independent or the independent to the dependent.

In contrast, the intelligently frugal involves a self-disciplined attempt to attain and maintain independence.

Is authentic living only possible with financial independence or is authentic living only possible with independence from money itself?

 

 

You may be interested in a craft, an art, or a science, or another type of activity, mainly as a way to take your mind off emotionally painful memories, difficult interpersonal relationships or even the experience of physical pain.

Do you consider each of your interpersonal relationships to be goal-related projects or long-term experiences of thoughtful reciprocity?