Originally Posted by
Andy BB
Hah! Treehuggers latest attempt to deny civilization
Just wait until the economy shrinks due to lack of energy and see their dole cheques disappear as tax revenues collapse!
Ah - so many false assumptions in such a short space! Is it civilised to want more than 10% of babies born survive to their 2nd birthday? Count me in - I'll take all the modern advantages of medicine, transport, food, communications, shelter, support for those who need it (and even some who don't!). (Actually, with my second replacement hip operation coming up in a month's time, I'm particularly fond of the medical bit - bone-on-bone grinding gets a bit of a pain after a while!)
If being a a bushcrafter means preserving the "old ways" over the new, guess I'm not a bushcrafter. Learning some of the skills that our ancestors had to make do with out of necessity is a different matter - I find it fascinating, and most of all its fun. Otherwise, why would I do it, with all the other calls on my time?.
But above all, one needs a sense of perspective. There's 60+million people in the UK - most of them in England. And - under the "old ways", it could probably only support 2-3 million of those. "Living the dream" of total self-sufficiency is just that - a dream. Sure, some may be fortunate enough to have sufficient funds to buy property and land that will allow them to be relatively self-sufficient for food and water. But you can bet your bottom dollar that they'd be the first to use the telephone to call in the emergency helicopter if they - or their family - fell ill.