Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> Homesteading is but a partial answer to the quest for maximal personal 
> freedom. 

It is that.  But to my thinking it's a matter of the odds.  To illustrate, a 
couple of weeks ago I was sitting down on the "gathering benches" around the 
firepit close to the county road.  None of our farm buildings, house, or 
gardens are close to the road.  Anyway, I found myself down there when a 
local 
fellow I did not know stopped on the road to chat.  Not unusual here nor 
considered 
impolite.  The conversation turned and twisted until it came to the theme of 
politics and economics, more the latter.  To the notion that we'd largely 
dropped out of the socio-economi juggernaut he remonstrated that no one could 
and 
proceeded to the 'argumentum ad absurdum' that I had to pay, for example, 
property tax so I was just as much a part of society as anyone else.  (By 
'society' here I mean the pejorative idea of a decaying one).

I pointed to his car and asked him if he needed gas in it tomorrow to which 
he affirmed that he did, he had to go to work.  I told him I didn't ... go to 
work or need the gas, take you pick as one is the illustration of the 
other... 
tomorrow, anyway.  Or the next day.  Or the day after that, or the nest week, 
or the next month.  In the next six months, I'd have to go off the place to 
earn some money for my wants (electricity, internet, salt, bottle caps for 
the 
beer),  I could choose when I went, under what circumstances, and I had a 
wide 
latitude in that I could make use of the trip tomorrow or I could delay it 
for 
many weeks.  He, my conversant across the fence, was by no means an utter 
thrall to the system and I was not absolutely free of it.  But the difference 
between our levels of freedom was vast.

Some freedom, even for such lunatic fringe as I, just isn't worth it.  I 
could do completely without electricity.  We'd not be cold, be able to cook 
our 
food, and have enough lighting.  But we'd not have the freezers, pump in the 
cistern, nor the computer.  The price of freedom from electricity compared to 
my 
paultry electric bill just isn't worth it.  I could also forge some of my own 
tools.  I've got the anvils and tools from my great-grandfather's smithy.  
But 
so long as I can buy tools made of good tool steel (which I could never 
duplicate), that's a dependency I can live with.

As far as food, water, beer, clothing, fuel, tools, and all such base 
essentials, I'm flush.  That means I've got time to think and plan and make 
use of 
opportunities as they arise.  I don't have to rush off tomorrow to heart of 
Babylon to work so I can pay the mortgage, buy this week's food, get this 
week's 
gasoline, keep the heat pump turned on.  

So I'd say that's quite right.  Homesteading is a partial answer to the goal 
of personal freedom.  And it's also only "an" answer.  There are others.  And 
the maximum freedom is realized when we embrace what freedom we can when we 
can rather than waiting for that fantastic moment when we have every detail 
worked out to be utterly free.  It never happens.  And who'd want it if it 
did 
happen.

James