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Hi Saidso and Warmup,
Things are always a mix of motives. What's a luxury, what's a necessity, and who decides, and when you personally decide, who will side with you?
Esther Duffo researches just these type of questions. Look her up. She got interested when she noticed that some very poor people will buy a supposedly luxury item when they came into a bit of "extra" money.
I personally actively seek my peeps. For me, thinking is massive nouns (like city, rural, a particular media-generated identity like baby boomer) serves nothing. I read a life changing book in my twenties which set me on a calmer path. It pitched the idea that ones community is built from a spiritual level outward, rather from a materialistic level inward. Thus, when I turn off the news or wear clothes past their "season" I am reminded to not look about me in hopes of blending in. If I attune my senses I will be drawn to others with a thrifty bent and an inside-out path to connection. It's been decades since I read that book. After re-reading it a few times I put it in the used book bin. I'll spend some time racking my memory for it's title.
I'm reading Sylvia Adler's line-by-line interpretation of a Clifford Odets's play: Golden Boy. This choice and what it means for being the seeming larger culture vs feeling permanently outside it IS the theme of the play.
Survive the holidays,
Revu2
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