01/WHAT I REALIZED After Decades of Work + Travel — ELEMENTAL LIVING

Elemental Living is fresh air, silence, privacy, sunlight + nature — so is deep-relaxation, enjoying a nice view, laughing, dancing, good conversation, intellectual stimulation and sex.

Music, literature, poetry, attending gallery openings, museum exhibits, enjoying outdoor sports (hiking, biking + beach volleyball) & streaming filmed entertainment (live sports + movies) are democratized — so throw that in too.

Do You See? EVERYTHING YOU NEED to live a good life is elemental or democratized, yet we over-complicate our lives, entirely dominated on a day to day operating level from our early 20’s to gain advantage + material wealth in order to impress our partner, family & friends, becoming obsessed with control and power — a better quality of life exists!

02/YOU NEED SOME KIND OF A MINIMAL SETUP OF YOUR OWN — Our Awareness [Visual + Sensory] Has No Limits Once You Have the Requisite Time & Space

I believe in a minimal elemental life for myself, not imposed on others because it’s entirely situational what is deemed minimal. Why? Lower your cost of living is, the less dependency you have thereby more flexibility & space — optimal conditions for living a high-quality life!

I don’t have kids, never for one day have I woken up in the morning filled with regret for not having kids, but if you have kids, that’s wonderful and if you don’t that’s also wonderful!

Go further: if you have good taste and an instinctual sense for the art of living, then you don’t need a lot of money, so focus on a minimal elemental life: fresh air, good view, music, art, photography, literature, poetry, beach hikes, food & wine/beer, laughing, dancing, good sex and so on.

At some point, you realize once you reach a certain minimal elemental living level — entirely situational —then no limits exist for moments of bliss or ecstasy.

Critical to note: my realization is not that you don’t need any money to live but rather that you can have a higher quality of life, much higher I would say than someone making literally 5X/10X or however many times more because that’s how dramatically shifting to a minimal elemental life affects your flow on a day to day level.

Reflect on this: elevated moments don’t change between generations or geo-locations, even though the set/setting does along with the means + methods — learn from history! People that were cool/intellectual with good taste 50 years ago or 200 years ago discovered the same flow that we roll with today — expansive awareness.

03/CRITICAL TO DROP OUT OF FOLLOWING THE NEWS CYCLE ON AN EMOTIONAL OR ENGAGED LEVEL — Today’s Fragmented News Media Has Devolved Into Eunuchs At the Capitalist Harem

Let’s start here: human consciousness in the mid-1960’s was for the first time definitively opened up by our predecessors and explored via LSD — a massive generational shift happened; before then, without exaggeration, human beings as a mass populace hideously stagnated by not tapping their collective intellectual capacity, thereby existing for thousands of years as ignorant, violent/cruel, anxiety-filled beings. Before the Civil Rights Movement that began in the late 1960’s, no doubt women, blacks & minorities were second-class citizens — inferior in standing + available opportunities.

I won’t go on a long walk down history but it fascinates me (utterly blows my mind) as a critical data point for historical context that the Civil War over slavery was from 1861 to 1865; we’re only 159 years removed, 2 lifetimes ago (avg. life expectancy of 76x2) slavery existed and was vehemently defended to the death to keep it going. People have an extremely short memory of history (head in the sand or up their ass so to speak) but it’s critical to understand human evolution because you see the roots of ignorance & cruelty everyday in the news cycle.

I don’t spend more than 10 minutes per day perusing the news cycle, began this practice starting in 2020. Why? It’s a negative utility to deep dive the news cycle because this is how reporting works: everything you need to know is either in the headline or the first graf, rest of the piece is reactions and spin. So in less than 10 minutes, I skim the headlines, sometimes read the first graf and have an overview of what’s happening without any emotional burden. It’s helped me a lot because I consider myself an emotional being who is affected by injustice and human cruelty.

When you drop out of the news cycle, what happens over time is you become an independent observer completely liberated from day to day noise — a big deal, life-changing. This is coming from someone who used to be a long-time New York Times subscriber and read it at least an hour (usually more) everyday while starting every morning with NPR radio — no longer! To be fair, NYT has quality pieces in Arts, Film & Literature but the false equivalency of the politics coverage on the front page is what made it I’ll pass.

Now consider this: what we have to work with historically over time is radically different but the flow or vibe we get into is the same — emerging from planes of consciousness. On any given day, we have a wide range of stimuli we can choose to tune into, but you need to drop off noise and distractions in order to have the necessary space or clarity.

Everywhere, throughout human history, we wake up to start the day with an aperture of sunlight!

04/MY VANTAGE — Local Vibes Affect You Deeply