Thread #25214147
File: Walden.png (992.2 KB)
992.2 KB PNG
I lived like a luddite for many a year. I did not even have a smartphone, at one point, much to the amusement of the town's literati. What else would I do, other than scroll on my phone? I would read physical books, of course, and spend my evenings drinking wine and smoking, as was my custom, hand-rolled cigarettes. But I obviously have a computer now. I was gifted it by my mother. It is a workstation and handles games well, and now I am back in the webways that I swore I would never again use technology...
Luditism. That is my belief. We should go back to the time before we ever used electricity, before we ever dedicated our lives to worshipping 0s and 1s, electron-charge.
16 RepliesView Thread
Showing all 16 replies.>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
File: 1773798775009117.jpg (33 KB)
33 KB JPG
>>25214374
>>
File: 1707218796776030.jpg (16 KB)
16 KB JPG
>>25214374
>>
>>25214147
I did this for a few months when I was 18 and was shocked by how little I could actually do because so much was online. I feel like to do ludditism now you would have to either be "grandfathered in" or you would have to buy land, go off grid, hide your dwelling from the state so you cannot be drawn into the cash economy via council tax (tax is being made digital in Britain and you need an email address to get a job) or only have a computer gor tax/registration purposes.
-couldn't order food in restaurants (specifically went to pizza hut where I had not been in years, the waiters would not take my order and were only there to show people how to use the app).
-could not book train tickets
-found it hard to arrange things with friends. Friends had to arrange things with me in person which was awkward if say 40 of us wanted to meet up in a field to drink and have a bonfire. I was generally the last person to know if anything was happening because of this.
-People found it weird that I always paid in cash and either had none of it or a lot of it on my person at any one time.
-Working as a kitchen porter off the books. In part because I didn't like having to work somewhere where I had to give my national insurance number.
Ended up with the school forcing me to get an email address in order to apply to university. Later found out I could do this over the phone. I sometimes look back on that part of my life and think about Mishima's statement that "Diluted purity is not purity" but of course I recognise that that lifestyle would be very hard to recreate and that I will probably only be able go approach it as I approach middle age or retirement. I still aim to emulate the ideal form in a neo-platonic sense even if I cannot actually become the form.
I do view that period of life fondly though as it gave me the mental clarity to pursue exercise and stop being obese and to start learning a craft that is still with me and I am still learning/practicing (started learning how to make my own clothes) after reading some stuff on ghandi and his "Swadeshi" movement and autistically applying it to modern day England. Yes I have aspergers before anyone asks.
>>
>>25215166
*Side note I could not get train tickets because provincial stations in Britain are unmanned so you either book online in advance or pay by card at automated machines which do not take cash. I needed to use the internet to book online and did not use a bank account at the time for day to day stuff. I only got a savings account after my mother nagged me saying I cannot keep £5000 under my bed (it was not kept under my bed).
Nowadays I have both a savings and current account and I fucking hate Rachel Reeves because I was actually making decent interest before she fucked up the interest rates.