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People have been arguing what it means to live a good life basically since there's been people and we've been killing each other over it for just as long. In my mind that disqualifies their opinions on the topic, but it makes sense that we've been thinking and arguing about it with such gusto for so long. Your life is everything you have and the only thing you have and in today's society it feels like we spend most of our time just trying to get by and don't get to use any of our time to plan for the future or think about what we want. Give society a week off to think and I'm sure this would be followed by a bunch of ended relationships and exciting moves. To avoid ending up at the bad end of life1 I'd like to lay out certain principles I'd like to order my life by to keep myself on track and not wondering where all the time has gone.
Individualism has pretty definitively lost the battle vs collectivism. In their defense, it was 2 (or 3 or 4 or 5 or) on 1, they really didn't stand much of a chance. The individualist forgets that the only thing better than an individual is two individuals. Ran Prieur and Margaret Killjoy have both spoken at lenght about the utility of being around other people. If you're on your own you have to solve everything which you will not be able to do. Having someone on your side is almost always a benefit. Humans are social creatures, we did not evolve to rent $1200 studio apartments, we evolved to rent group houses and argue about dishes. For that reason my focus in the next few years will be to strengthen the group of friends I have, organize more sustainable housing and better methods for getting shit done, as well as making that group productive for the larger community, using our space as a venue or otherwise providing value to those who live outside it.