Fantasy

Sandra Dodd, 21 October 2015:

I came across "re-wilding," and it reminded me of "doing grounding inside."

***Adherents of “Rewilding”, as the movement is called, instead live in rural areas where they seek to subsist off the land, hunting and fishing and gathering wild plants for food, and build their own dwellings from materials they find there.***

I'll put a link below, but I want to say first that many people's back-to-nature jack-off book is On Walden Pond. It was not only fictionalized, he was going home to eat at least once a week, and his mom (who lived a couple of miles away) was doing his laundry.

Live in the real world, people! Be happy to live now, today, where you are. Visit the wilderness, take a hike, play in the dirt, but don't make a religion or an alternate fantasy life out of it. Not if you have children who want to grow up peacefully where and when they live.

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/.../what-it-means.../
I might not be able to restore this link; it redirects now, and facebook had shortened it.

-="jack-off book"=- Eeep! "go-to book" might have been a better choice there, Sandra.

"Words are all we have here, and each poster gets to choose words." ~Sandra Dodd
sandradodd.com/mindfulofwords

Sandra:

If you think "go to" would be a good replacement, you totally missed my point. I chose my words, and you seem to be using my own writing to shame me to change it.

People fantasize, in private at home, about things like Walden Pond, and Little House on the Prairie. They want to BE that person. They want to BE there. They forget (or deny or don't care) that the stories aren't honest portrayals of something that really happened, or the readers only choose the parts they like.

Are you sure my terminology wasn't appropriate?

I wasn't recommending that anyone go to that book, nor that it was a great book to go to. It was commentary on people's fantasies, in light of the reality that they live here, today, now, and that NOBODY (not Henry David Thoreau, not Laura Ingalls Wilder, not anyone) actually lived in an ideal, idyllic place or time.

-="you seem to be using my own writing to shame me to change it"=-

No, I thought you chose your words poorly and you might want to know about it. I do not think your terminology-- comparing the excessive admiration of a book, to a personal male sex act, was appropriate.

Women masturbate, too. "Jack-off' is not linguistically always about masturbation, either. And you still are misunderstanding the intention of my comment. IF someone believes falsehood to be truth, and focusses on lusting after and wanting to be that person, being that way, having that experience, WANTING it because they believe it, it is a pointless waste of time.

-=-No, I thought you chose your words poorly and you might want to know about it. -=-

I disagree with you. If you honestly thought I was using words I didn't understand or didn't mean to use, you could have written to me on the side. You wanted to shame me, it seems, or pressure me.

You thought I might like to know, in public, that you thought I chose my words poorly? Thanks, I guess. I consciously chose the words I used.

I believe that a focus on nature (often fantasy nature, as in Waldorf's magical forests) can have a detrimental effect on unschooling and on the relationship between parents and their children, when the children were born in the 21st century and would like to use the internet resources so readily available to them. Grounding, re-wilding, dancing with wolves, an "excessive admiration" of Walden Pond or Little House on the Prairie.... those things should be saved for single people or childless couples who won't be inconveniencing growing, learning children with it.

I learned the expression "wanker" to describe a lousy race car driver. It implies he's (because usually it's a he, but not necessarily) masturbating instead of driving well, but mostly it's to mean the driver hardly knows what he's doing.

It's a perfectly acceptable pejorative expression and is used (particularly in the UK) to describe people who are not race car drivers. But it really has little to do with the act of masturbation.

"Jack-off material" (whatever it is), is about using something to get a certain feeling - physical, emotional, or spiritual, I suppose. The elation that comes from fantasizing about how life can or should be. It's an expression that's related to, but is not specifically about, masturbation.

It might be a shocking way to refer to "excessive admiration" but the phrase is well-chosen, to me.

"Wanker" implies a sort of arrogant self-absorption and disregard for the needs of others, could be in driving, could be in conversation, could be in the way a person deals with their children.

We all are at risk of something killing us or harming us at any given moment. But it's important to weigh the pros and cons thoughtfully. Even IF there is an extremely small chance of getting cancer from wifi, does that outweigh the huge benefits of using it?

Most of us put our kids in cars every single day, even though they might die in a car crash. We limit the risks with car seats and attentive driving and not driving drunk. Some people get very passionate about using car seats safely. But I've never heard of anyone who bans their children from riding in cars, ever. (Except the Amish, but that's about religion, not safety, and I bet they even ride in other people's cars, on occasion).

Maybe the re-wilding people ban car rides. I don't know. But they put their kids in a different type of danger- wild animals, tetanus, foraging for native plants that might be toxic.

Weigh the pros and cons of any decision.

Be ye not full of shit.

I think that can apply to re-wilders or Amish or users of all the newest Apple devices.

The problem of "Unschool World"



Being present in the moment



Living in the moment