Is self sufficiency sustainability?

[Blackbird]

Gosh, what was that quote, something about common sense and nature will do a lot to make the pilgrimage of life not too difficult?

 

[Occamstazer]

Self sufficiency is in the end, selfish.

I disagree with this part. Taking care of myself means I put no burden on others to do so, and if I have cared for my own needs, I am in a better position to help others.

This.

 

[cmjust0]

cmjust0, here is the problem.

You are taking "self sufficency" LITERALLY AND STRICTLY as a term, and assuming that eveyrone else ought to be using it the same way. That is, you are saying that to be "self sufficient" requires one to not have any truck with any goods or services produced by someone other than oneself.

This is a logical interpretation of the term, up to a point anyhow.

However it is NOT WHAT ANYONE HERE IS TALKING ABOUT when they use this phrase.

It's the only logical interpretation I can think to assign the phrase within the context of growing one's own food, cutting one's own firewood, canning one's own veggies, etc..

I mean...if we open the door to the possibility of bartering and buying things we need...well, hey, most of us are already self sufficient.

That is to say....I don't need charity to live my life, do you? If not, and if all it takes to attain self sufficiency is not needing charity and being able to find some way to provide for oneself, then you're just as self-sufficient as the guy who only has to buy yeast once a year to make ethanol to run his homemade DC generator.

So what you are criticizing/debunking/making-fun-of... DOES NOT EXIST, well, is not something that anyone here is advocating anyhow.

So what about you set aside your straw man and listen to what people on this list actually MEAN by "self sufficiency", i.e. various degrees and types of "doing things yourself, and in simpler ways, and less".

A strawman is when you assign someone a position they haven't taken. If, however, the person has actually taken the position you're assigning...but won't admit it....it's not a strawman anymore.

That's when a strawman becomes an exercise in pointing out the obvious.

And what's obvious to me is that most everyone here strives for self sufficiency by saving seeds, gardening at home, hunting, fishing, "putting by," and doing as much as humanly possible to keep from having to run out and acquire everything they need...

Now, just because someone else comes along and points out that it's dangnear impossible to carry that all the way through to the ultimate goal of total, actual, real self-sufficiency doesn't make it a valid argument to simply change the definition of the very phrase itself and claim that's not what any of us had in mind.

It's still the goal.

If we could achieve it, we would.

It's OK to say "I won't achieve that; therefore, I'll just do what I can and feel good about it."

But don't call that self-sufficiency. It's not.

Those things DO, fairly often, lead to a more sustainable lifestyle/society/world.

And to answer your question -- you don't have to OWN all the screws you would need in a postapocalyptic world, silly -- you go around and scavenge for them, disassemble things and root through peoples old collapsed cellers and such. Foraging is probably the oldest human activity, and still a most useful one to cultivate, collapse of civilization or not

I agree with this.. In a SHTF scenario, it's going to be less about having things in advance and more about knowing how to acquire things.

 

[Bubblingbrooks]

Self sufficiency is in the end, selfish.

I disagree with this part. Taking care of myself means I put no burden on others to do so, and if I have cared for my own needs, I am in a better position to help others.

This.

I am referancing more what so many seem to think it should be.
Today, it is expected to be insular, rather then communal.
Even from family.
So, many think that being self sufficient means removing yourself from society.
That is just the perception many have gotten from it.
But at the same time, sustainable is hard to wrap around as well, because of how that term is being shaped today.

 

[cmjust0]

ETA: My definition of self-sufficiency is that I know that I can depend on myself to be able to provide food, clothes, whatever for my family without a significant reliance on others.

I work for a living, and my job pays the bills and buys the stuff we need.

Would you consider me to be self-sufficient right now, because frankly...I don't.

At least, bot in the sense we're talking about here, anyway, whether people wanna own up to the kind of self-sufficiency most of us are actually talking about or not.

 

[Blackbird]

How very anal.

You ought to take that up with the creator on this website and ask if he will rename it for you.

In past discussions, most of us have agreed that it is IMPOSSIBLE to be completely 'self sustainable', many of us simply wish to be as much as possible. That a crime?

 

[cmjust0]

I am referancing more what so many seem to think it should be.
Today, it is expected to be insular, rather then communal.
Even from family.
So, many think that being self sufficient means removing yourself from society.
That is just the perception many have gotten from it.
But at the same time, sustainable is hard to wrap around as well, because of how that term is being shaped today.

FWIW, I don't think that being self-sufficient means removing yourself from society.. I simply think it means having the ability to remove yourself from society, if necessary.

And I think that because...yanno...that's actually what it means.

 

[cmjust0]

How very anal.

You ought to take that up with the creator on this website and ask if he will rename it for you.

In past discussions, most of us have agreed that it is IMPOSSIBLE to be completely 'self sustainable', many of us simply wish to be as much as possible. That a crime?

No, actually. Far from it. Indeed, that's been my point for the last umpteen posts.

Ironic, huh?

 

[Bubblingbrooks]

How very anal.

You ought to take that up with the creator on this website and ask if he will rename it for you.

In past discussions, most of us have agreed that it is IMPOSSIBLE to be completely 'self sustainable', many of us simply wish to be as much as possible. That a crime?

Me?

This is where everyone starts. How far one takes it, is up to each person.
Lord willing, we will go all the way next year, when we make our big move.

 

[Bubblingbrooks]

I am referancing more what so many seem to think it should be.
Today, it is expected to be insular, rather then communal.
Even from family.
So, many think that being self sufficient means removing yourself from society.
That is just the perception many have gotten from it.
But at the same time, sustainable is hard to wrap around as well, because of how that term is being shaped today.

FWIW, I don't think that being self-sufficient means removing yourself from society.. I simply think it means having the ability to remove yourself from society, if necessary.

And I think that because...yanno...that's actually what it means.

I think we are on the same page