What's wrong with being a drifter?

[attackfighter]

Things are either right or wrong, good or bad depending on the context in which they are understood. How often in stories is it that the character you're supposed to root for is a sleazeball? Han Solo for instance... It is not necessarily a bad thing to be called a drifter and I will thank you for not being angry with me when I call you one.

Life is nothing but stories we invent. Stories, or narratives, are merely primitive human tools that put things into feasible perspective. Existence as it really is entails planets circling stars at hundreds of kilometers a second, galaxies flying around everywhere at similar speeds, and so on. These things are incomprehensible in their actual extent. They must be broken down and summarized through language, in terms which do not relate actual understanding but only abstract understanding.

 

[Bugfatty300]

Now for the mandatory thought exercise: If you sealed a Greedo in a lead-lined refrigerator with a Han Solo...

Spoiler :

they'd both suffocate and die

Discuss results with class.

 

[Smote]

Pretty much. There's nothing right or wrong or good or bad or just or unjust or moral or immoral, inherently. These words all signify positive/negative judgements.

Someone could define these things based on what's socially acceptable, but I think the term socially acceptable covers that better. This is the best definition to assume when you're talking to someone you don't want to act disrespectful towards, if you don't understand the speaker's meaning of the word.

Others think that some abstract "The Good" exists apart from human judgement. Others think God exists and link goodness to God. I don't think these things are true.

 

[Borachio]

I suppose there's nothing particularly wrong with being a drifter.

It just doesn't show much engagement, commitment, or gratitude to a society which is larger than oneself.

 

[Old Hippy]

I suppose there's nothing particularly wrong with being a drifter.

It just doesn't show much engagement, commitment, or gratitude to a society which is larger than oneself.

In Australia it's a right of passage to buy a caravan and travel around the place at retirement, to see the other side of the black stump

We call them Grey Nomads, and convoys of them are found all over the place, my parents did it in their mid 70's, it was a real worry for us kids knowing they were probably 500K's from help, as My dad said "payback time"

now they take Cruises around Europe and are once again respectable members of society

 

[Borachio]

Ah well. That's more like taking a holiday from society. I can see some value in that from time to time.

 

[warpus]

Nothing wrong with it, but it isn't an easy lifestyle, so it's not something I would actively encourage to a young child or person who might be tempted to listen to my advice.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Nothing wrong with it, but it isn't an easy lifestyle, so it's not something I would actively encourage to a young child or person who might be tempted to listen to my advice.

Agree with part one, however I still recommend it highly.

 

[Perfection]

What you do impacts others. You have an opportunity to use your impact to produce good. Drifting often squanders that opportunity. Good men act with purpose.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

What you do impacts others. You have an opportunity to use your impact to produce good. Drifting often squanders that opportunity. Good men act with purpose.

Has it occurred to you that drifting might be a purpose in itself? And that fulfilling that purpose may in itself produce good?

 

[Perfection]

Aimlessness is not an aim.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

As someone already pointed out, being adrift is in no way easy. If you aren't aiming you won't hit it.

 

[BvBPL]

The problem with being a drifter is that, despite knowledge of where one has been, one does not know where one is going. As a result, the drifter keeps searching for an answer, but never seems to find for what he is looking. Ironically, the drifter knows only one road, a lonely street of dreams. As such, the drifter becomes a heart in need of rescue by others. The problem therein being that the drifter, like the hobo, was born to walk alone.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The problem with being a drifter is that, despite knowledge of where one has been, one does not know where one is going. As a result, the drifter keeps searching for an answer, but never seems to find for what he is looking. Ironically, the drifter knows only one road, a lonely street of dreams. As such, the drifter becomes a heart in need of rescue by others. The problem therein being that the drifter, like the hobo, was born to walk alone.

There's a flawed assumption here; that the drifter seeks something. Everywhere I go I have everything I need, so I'm not seeking anything...but nothing I need is tied to any particular place.

That's what makes being a drifter challenging, because it is astoundingly easy to convince oneself that property is a necessary hedge against the uncertainty of the future. Even though it doesn't really work.

 

[BvBPL]

It's hard to talk loud or be proud when you are scrounging for your next meal. No one teaches how to live out on the street, and it takes some getting used to. That's true even if one has been to the finest schools.

Perhaps you can tell us how it feels to be on your own.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

First off, I did not achieve my current girth by scrounging for meals. I seem to have far too little difficulty staying fed, despite the fact that if you asked where my next meal is coming from I could speculate with good odds but I am well aware that it isn't guaranteed. The difference between a drifter and a not drifter, in my opinion, is that I don't pretend to have or need that guarantee.

I have no guarantees about roof overhead, but I haven't lacked for one in...I dunno, a couple decades. When I want something I generate something to trade for it, either directly or by use of currency. It has again been decades since I wanted anything for more than a day or two without getting it. I recognized that 'getting stuff' is often an 'achievement in itself' on some level of the human mind, and that that level is not really satiable anyway no matter how much stuff. Since then I've had a lot less 'earn that thing' moments.

As to being 'loud and proud', I am seldom loud and don't really have a desire to be proud because I tend to get arrogant really easily. But I do have an impact on people around me. I often ask questions. Like any time I hear someone say they 'don't want to xxx' when they are about to do xxx I ask if it is really true, and when they claim that it is I ask them why they do it. The answer is almost always centered in "I have to" which is demonstrably false. They usually try to fade to "But everybody has to", which is even more demonstrably false since I apparently don't have to and usually they have to laugh at that point. They also usually toddle off to do whatever it is that they "have to" do. But sometimes they think.

 

[BvBPL]

That sounds like some kind of wonderful with a number of magic moments.

I worry that were I a drifter, I wouldn't find anyone to stand by me, someone who will save the last dance for me and to have some fun under the boardwalk.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

That sounds like some kind of wonderful with a number of magic moments.

I worry that were I a drifter, I wouldn't find anyone to stand by me, someone who will save the last dance for me and to have some fun under the boardwalk.

Not being a drifter guarantees you those things?

If yes, are you interested in a wager?

 

[gay_Aleks]

Aimlessness is not an aim.

Besides, it's self-defeating. If you're aiming to be aimless, then you've already messed up.

 

[Borachio]

The call of the open road is an eternal one, but I'm a stop at home soul.

And here's why:

There was a naughty boy,
And a naughty boy was he,
He ran away to Scotland
The people for to see-
There he found
That the ground
Was as hard,
That a yard
Was as long,
That a song
Was as merry,
That a cherry
Was as red-
That lead
Was as weighty
That fourscore
Was as eighty,
That a door
Was as wooden
As in England-
So he stood in his shoes
And he wondered,
He wondered,
He stood in his shoes
And he wondered.

I've lived in the same house for more than 30 years, and I'm still discovering pieces of lint and flakes of old plaster that I've never noticed before.