Poverty: A New Invention

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There is no clear definition for the term poverty. Generally, it is a lacking, as in needing something in your daily life. Whether it is a lack of food, or a lack of electronic devices, is not established. Those considered poor in one land, may be considered rich in another land. [There is no doubt, however, that poverty in basic human needs is indeed actual poverty.]

A tiny house on wheels. Trailer life.

Before humans turned sedentary, the only kind of poverty imaginable was of basic human needs. And that, only possible when the natural environment receded enough to cause drought or famine, naturally.

When humans learned to master tools for working the land, they quickly began shaping their environment to their immediate benefit. Less forests meant more field crops. Less wild animals, meant less predators, and especially less competition over crops from grazing animals.

An expected long-term result of this sedentary human culture is human-made poverty; drought and famine, caused by human endeavor. A less expected long-term result was the advent of more sophisticated technologies, that would later on replace how we interact with our environment and peers.

A home today, has a variety of tools that have become fundamental to us. Communications through phones and the internet. Devices that cook and clean for us, controlled by microchips. Vehicles to reach remote places, now to be considered near-by. Screens & speakers that mimic socializing and social integration.

Because of these, it has become all too easy to be poor. Lacking a vehicle or communications, may leave you separated and alone, even though you have neighbors. You might have a house sheltering you, but without air-conditioning, it will turn too cold or too hot, and dreary.

This is a well evident fault of modern society. It will be a great task to solve it, without giving up on the benefits we have become used to.

How Farming Failed Humanity

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People, like other apes, used to roam the land and forage their food and water. Life in the jungle, for the experienced hunter, has all the comforts we need. Although most people live off farming culture - industrial-farming today, there are still many jungle-folk who keep the old ways, showing how it all works.

Farming has its benefits. Planting, harvesting, and storing food, give people security and abundance. Nature can be erratic, and farming lets people tolerate it better. Especially so in the drylands of the Middle-East, where agriculture became wide-spread.

On the other hand, the cost of stored foods is your freedom. Once a farmer, you must guard your storage, and continue working the fields. You could revert into a foraging lifestyle in theory, but in practice this is not possible, in most places.

Mushroom Foraging.
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Not only are you unskilled in foraging, everyone around you are farmers, occupying all the lands near-by. Forests, which are crucial for foraging, are normally felled by farmers - in order to vacate new lands for farming.

(Look in Google Maps, Satellite view, and notice how many lands are squarish farms - useless to a forager.)

Also, storage allows taxation, which means that any attempt to revert into foraging, will leave you nontaxable. And a person who does not pay his taxes, gets treated very badly, indeed. Even an attempt at mixing the two lifestyles is likely to leave you without enough to pay taxes.

Vacant land has also become inaccessible, as it is either held by those who tax you, or they require great payments and taxes, for anyone to live on it. Even the raising of animals & grazing are now taxable, and require costly licensing, and so on.

You must not become dependent on the charity of those who have food, when you do not. The freedom of having your basic needs is at the core of all freedom.

Practice finding & eating edible plants around you. Learn how to process them, if necessary, and do it.

Practice some basic survival skills, like rope-making, and shelter building. Spend regular periods out in the wild, getting familiar with raw nature, removing false biases about being outdoors.

Nobody has to give up modern life, to become a good forager. It is a skill worth having, and a skill as fundamental to your freedom as much as reading & writing, or swimming.