5 minutes ago, KJW said:

So, what illegal things do you want to do in the Amazonian rainforest that you can't do in the privacy of your own home?

In my case it's mostly being able to build shelters without having to pay for the land

Like make nice camps, make fire, sleep there...

Fish without needing a license...

Edited December 29, 2025Dec 29 by raphaelh42

12 minutes ago, raphaelh42 said:

I guess we all have things we want to do when living in society but are not free to do because it's illegal

Offhand, I can't think of many illegal things I'd like to do if it was made legal for me just one time. Certainly nothing that would harm somebody else. Break a big plate glass window? Mildly interesting. Steal a bunch of money? Perhaps, if it was from one of those private equity firms that have been bleeding us over the last 40 years or so.

I can't think of anything, not one thing that would make me want to give up living with others because it's illegal. I can't imagine what you want to do.

5 minutes ago, raphaelh42 said:

In my case it's mostly being able to build shelters without having to pay for the land

Like make nice camps, make fire, sleep there...

Fish without needing a license...

Since public lands are available for this, I have to assume you're talking about wild camping on someone else's property. It's a bit ironic, seeing as how the best way to get permission to camp on a stranger's land is to engage them socially and be nice about it, the very thing you seem to want to avoid.

I'm not sure I'll ever understand your stance fully. It would seem to be much more efficient and less work to lobby for more public lands, or make friends with a landowner, rather than to retreat from society altogether and eke out a minimum subsistence on your own.

13 minutes ago, raphaelh42 said:

  13 minutes ago, KJW said:

So, what illegal things do you want to do in the Amazonian rainforest that you can't do in the privacy of your own home?

In my case it's mostly being able to build shelters without having to pay for the land

Like make nice camps, make fire, sleep there...

But if you're relying on remoteness to be able to illegally occupy land, how is that "freedom"?

12 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

Since public lands are available for this, I have to assume you're talking about wild camping on someone else's property.

I wouldn't want to sleep in a forest owned by an individual, in France where i live there are public forests (either managed by the government, either by the municipalities), and it's forbidden to sleep there with a tent

In some rare places, you're allowed to "bivouac", you have to pack up your stuff before like 8AM, and not allowed to deploy before like 9PM, and you can't do it more than like 2 days in a row

I guess I don't need to precise if making a campfire is allowed or not, neither if you are allowed or not to cut trees to build shelter...

I made some researches, these laws seems to be applied by all governments worldwide

In fact it gets more clear to me now, I guess people don't give a damn about practicing that, so for them, freedom occurs obviously in society, like everything else

fate made me take some marginal path, it has pros and cons

7 minutes ago, KJW said:

But if you're relying on remoteness to be able to illegally occupy land, how is that "freedom"?

I can just enjoy remoteness while there is still some

Edited December 29, 2025Dec 29 by raphaelh42

28 minutes ago, raphaelh42 said:

  8 minutes ago, KJW said:

But if you're relying on remoteness to be able to illegally occupy land, how is that "freedom"?

I can just enjoy remoteness while there is still some

That seems a little abstract to me. For example, one can live in a location with a great view, but once the novelty wears off, what else is there? You can't live on a great view. Similarly, you can't live on remoteness.

I feel that you are just substituting one lack of freedom for another. You have not convinced me that you would be any freer in a remote location without money than in society with money.

However, I do agree that governments tend to impose excessive restrictions on people, and in particular that the restrictions tend to increase over time.

Edited December 29, 2025Dec 29 by KJW

1 hour ago, KJW said:

You have not convinced me that you would be any freer in a remote location without money than in society with money.

In fact it's simple, what do you think is more free, a wild animal or a human in society?

With knowledge, and remoteness, a human can live like a wild animal

i'm not saying to be free you have to spend your life alone in the wild, i'm saying that to reach pure freedom, you need to be able to do it

that wouldn't prevent you from going in society when you want to to enjoy what it has to offer

that wouldn't prevent you from staying all the time in society if you prefer to be in it

23 hours ago, raphaelh42 said:

If we all 8 billion suddenly wanted to go in the Amazon rainforest to do that yes i agree that would be a problem but that is not the case, most people want to live in cities and villages

I think it’s rather more than that.

You described going for two weeks; that’s a vacation. It suggests you have the means and opportunity to go and do that. A lot of people in the world don’t, so this is a view from privilege.

People who lack the money for travel, or can’t afford to step away from the way the put food on the table because they’re barely eking out an existence. Some depend on others and some have others who depend on them; you can’t go off for two weeks and leave your kids alone, or your frail mother, etc. People have obligations, that aren’t always by choice.

Lots of people have to live where they live. Whenever there are discussions relating to “why didn’t they just leave?” for whatever event is causing an exodus there’s often disregard for how difficult that actually is, depending on your circumstances, and insisting that it’s not difficult shows a lack of awareness or empathy.

2 hours ago, raphaelh42 said:

what do you think is more free, a wild animal or a human in society?

During a thunderstorm, or even just heavy rain, I'm usually indoors and can look out a window to see wallabies sheltering under trees. I'm perfectly dry inside a house while the wallabies have to put up with whatever limited protection a tree can give. I often wonder what the wallabies in the yard are thinking when they see me drive down my driveway in the car and then enter the house through a locked door with a key. I don't know if they are at all jealous of me, but it makes me feel a little bit superior to them. I'm certainly not jealous of them.

A few days ago, I opened the door to my car when a small lizard ran from the gap between the door and the chassis to somewhere inside the car that I could not locate. As far as I could tell, that was a fatal mistake the lizard made.

The wallabies can do pretty much anything they like, but my life is certainly richer¹ than theirs. And the lizard's free choice most likely ended its life.

¹ There's more to the enjoyment of life than freedom.

2 hours ago, raphaelh42 said:

to reach pure freedom

There's no such thing as "pure freedom". Constraints take many forms, but they are always there. For example, if I get seriously ill, I can go to a hospital and my chances of survival are vastly improved. An animal in the wild would inevitably die from such an illness. I get to drink clean water from a tap or from a shop. An animal in the wild has to drink from sources that may be contaminated by whatever. A person may have to spend several hours a week in servitude of other people. But an animal in the wild also has to spend a substantial amount of time in search of food, water, and shelter, as well as avoid predators.

@swansont You forgot to mention the people in wheeling chair who can't do it either

3 hours ago, KJW said:

The wallabies can do pretty much anything they like, but my life is certainly richer¹ than theirs.

I think your life is richer in art, goods, services, entertainments, yes

3 hours ago, KJW said:

There's no such thing as "pure freedom". Constraints take many forms, but they are always there.

I don't consider the need to breath to be a barrier to freedom, unlike the need to have money to eat

I said all I had to say regarding about how to reach what is in my opinion the best/raw/pure freedom

I wish you all happiness

Edited December 30, 2025Dec 30 by raphaelh42

22 hours ago, raphaelh42 said:

Yes unfortunately even with just a disabled arm, i don't think you could achieve the concept of freedom i evoked

I know if you can somehow hack your brain/convince yourself of something, nothing is more powerful than that

In my case i'm not interested about that, i think if tomorrow my body got very damaged,i would not be interested in living anymore and i would try to intentionally die, if i have the chance to even be able to move to achieve it. If i had children, i would probably want to stay alive to still try to help them

There you go again, assuming that your "concept of freedom" differs from anyone else's. If you have to have specific condition's in order to achieve peace/freedom then your imposing prison on yourself.

22 hours ago, raphaelh42 said:

I guess i should have say the "raw" freedom instead of "real"...

Now, I have no idea what the "raw" freedom means. My best guess is that the "raw" freedom is death, i.e., freedom from absolutely everything.

Edited December 30, 2025Dec 30 by Genady

8 hours ago, raphaelh42 said:

  12 hours ago, KJW said:

There's no such thing as "pure freedom". Constraints take many forms, but they are always there.

I don't consider the need to breath to be a barrier to freedom, unlike the need to have money to eat

Do you really think you can get a meal at lower cost living in the jungle than I can living in suburbia? For example, for about half an hour of devotion to an employer, I can take the money they gave me, spend about ten minutes driving to a nearby Chinese restaurant, order a very nice takeaway meal, wait about ten minutes for that meal, spend another ten minutes driving home, eat the meal over a period of about half an hour (or maybe a bit longer to savor the meal), spend a few minutes washing up, and I am fed. So, for under two hours of my time, I had a meal containing lamb, rice, broccoli, carrot, onion, and a whole bunch of other things too numerous to mention. Furthermore, I could depend on getting that meal, or at least something similar. For two hours of time in the jungle, could you possibly and reliably obtain a meal of similar quality in terms of the variety of ingredients in the meal?

Edited December 30, 2025Dec 30 by KJW

9 hours ago, raphaelh42 said:

I said all I had to say regarding about how to reach what is in my opinion the best/raw/pure freedom

So you were just soapboxing about your stance, and don't want to listen to those who want to persuade you that there may be problems with it? Doesn't sound like discussion to me.

1 hour ago, Phi for All said:

So you were just soapboxing about your stance, and don't want to listen to those who want to persuade you that there may be problems with it? Doesn't sound like discussion to me.

Thought this thread reminded me of another recent one hashtag solipsism

I think therefore you aren't there

On 12/29/2025 at 10:10 AM, raphaelh42 said:

Did you have a bag full of tools like i had? In that case, I agree it can be quite accessible to spend the time comfortably

If you didn't, i would love to hear about how you did meet your basic needs

The 3 times I ever did "survival" was a very long time ago, twice as a Boy Scout and once for an outward bound program at school. Each of us was allowed a knife, fire starter and canteen of water for the three (Boy Scouts) or seven (outward bound) day sessions. Being such a short period of time kind of skews things because one could easily survive, even for a week, with no food and minimal water, so there isn't as much pressure on success. Having said that, I am pretty confident that I could survive for quite a long while anywhere in North America where there is potable water, especially if I can take an array of tools with me. The trick is knowledge of local flora and fauna combined with survival skills, especially fire-starting and shelter building. As a teenager with not much better to do, it was kind of fun and very informative but I haven't felt any overwhelming urge to do it again in the half century since.

14 hours ago, npts2020 said:

The 3 times I ever did "survival" was a very long time ago, twice as a Boy Scout and once for an outward bound program at school. Each of us was allowed a knife, fire starter and canteen of water for the three (Boy Scouts) or seven (outward bound) day sessions. Being such a short period of time kind of skews things because one could easily survive, even for a week, with no food and minimal water, so there isn't as much pressure on success. Having said that, I am pretty confident that I could survive for quite a long while anywhere in North America where there is potable water, especially if I can take an array of tools with me. The trick is knowledge of local flora and fauna combined with survival skills, especially fire-starting and shelter building. As a teenager with not much better to do, it was kind of fun and very informative but I haven't felt any overwhelming urge to do it again in the half century since.

He has no real concept of a freedom that lies outside of comfortable, banging one's head against a brick wall, is a fundamental freedom he can't understand.

He's the sort that complains about his, perfectly acceptable holiday, bc the sheets had a slight stain; I paid for a perfect holiday and I only have two week's in which to enjoy it and that stain... grrrr...

dimreepr you are mistaken about what you just said

but maybe you are right, and i don't want to see the truth, maybe i prefer to lie to myself, to feel less sad and less afraid

maybe i'm just a frustrated person, and you, you are better than me, you, you know the truth

On 1/3/2026 at 11:23 PM, raphaelh42 said:

dimreepr you are mistaken about what you just said

but maybe you are right, and i don't want to see the truth, maybe i prefer to lie to myself, to feel less sad and less afraid

maybe i'm just a frustrated person, and you, you are better than me, you, you know the truth

Aren't we lucky???

We have the freedom to express an opinion... 😉

Make the most of it, while it's still fashionable.