"Now 26, I moved back to L.A. to publish a magazine and go to grad school and write a book ..."
I'm embarrassed to be a little jealous. I grew up in a similar place, albeit more like "Trailer park boys" and "Gummo" than a romantic western. And, the best outcome one'd hope for a school's valedictorian is to not die of opioids or poor health before they're 26.
Anyway, I'd love to read similar types of stories from other countries. For instance, how about a Chinese boy who abandons his studies at Peking University in Beijing to move to Xinjiang and back again. Is there such a thing?
The US may be one of the places which make it uniquely easy and attractive. There are ways to make decent money without maintaining a career if you're not afraid of hard work (fishing boats in Alaska etc.) and also there are places which are dirt cheap with good climate, so that you can live in a shack and not freeze in winter or spend a fortune on cooking. If I were to try to do it in Poland, I see at least a couple obstacles:
- the country is relatively densely populated. It's not easy to get a dirt-cheap place where you can settle (legally). Also, the construction code is strict so it's very hard to go low budget by doing unconventional things (like living in a yurt etc.)
- the winters make a lot of those unconventional solutions less applicable anyway - you need a decent heat source and a house that has some level of insulation
- Manual labor doesn't pay too well and you work with alcoholics and people with terrible personalities. Although arguably, after joining the EU, you can go for temp jobs in EU countries and make money that will last you for months of frugal living in a Polish village
- the people in the countryside are often backwards, alcoholics and have a mentality of a serf (Poland had serfdom until mid XIX-century, and also the Communism treated people like serfs, so a lot of people exhibit traits of learned helplessness, have no initiative and expect to be taken care of by some institution - when it doesn't happen, they just get bitter and complain, but are unable to take any initiative). They're the opposite of the rugged, self-reliant American farmers, and would unfortunately make for a poor company or even neighbors - e.g. expect them to steal stuff from you.
> They're the opposite of the rugged, self-reliant American farmers
To be a farmer you must have money, land, equipment, likely history of family farmers, technical agricultural know how, a government that protects and promotes your farm. Oh also old farming lobbies to twist the legislatures arm and a Government that uses their trade/military clout to push your products into developing countries - which the WTO seems not to care about.
If Polish people dont have these things readily available, I guess yiur statement about them might be a tad harsh.
Yes, they're definitely a victim of circumstances. Like I wrote, they were literal serfs until 1863 - somewhere between a free man and a plantation slave (for example, the lord could torture or kill them without any consequences).
After serfdom was abolished, these people mostly hard very little capital and no education (illiteracy was the norm). Over generations, they tried to slowly crawl out of their miserable state (incl. millions who emigrated to US around the turn of the XX century). but it was not easy in a country that was, until 1914, partitioned by foreign powers who didn't want to invest in local population and were happy to keep them weak and ignorant. Add two absolutely brutal world wars on top of that, the great recession between them (Poland was one of the hardest hit countries in the world, through the thirties constant hunger was a sad norm across the country), and later Stalinism and less ominous forms of Communism, which, while lifting people out of the depths of misery, planted some very harmful ideas in their heads along the way.
After all that, came 1989 and introduction of radical free-market ideologies straight from Chicago School of Economics (as advised by Washington "consultants"), killing state-run mass agriculture which was the only employer in many rural regions of Poland. The people who worked there mostly never recovered and are those angry, resentful, ignorant alcoholics that could be your neighbors if you move there. Of course it's not their fault, they were just unlucky to be born in a shitty place at a shitty time - like the majority of regular people throught the history of humanity.
Thanks for posting this link - I resonated with the writing and his experiences.
The story brought back memories of my own wandering days, struggles learning to love, the American land and people I met along the way. There were real feelings and insight in his words, like listening to a weather-worn man telling his life story by a camp fire.
Here are some books by Mark Sundeen:
- The Unsettlers: In Search of the Good Life in Today's America (2017)
- The Man Who Quit Money (2012)
- North by Northwestern: A Seafaring Family on Deadly Alaskan Waters (2011)
Slightly off topic, but I was listening to a piece of music[0] yesterday which starts with a sample of someone saying "I knew these people. These two people." followed by another voice repeating this, over and over, becoming increasingly manic towards end. And today I read this story, and find that "I knew these people. These two people." is from the film "Paris, Texas". Odd co-incidence, although I'm sure there's a perfectly rational explanation involving probability and so on, rather than any deeper significance.
I was looking for more practical tips and challenges related to alternative housing but most of the article is about the author's love life. So the title is a bit misleading IMO. For me, it wasn't really worth the read.
Hm, this is interesting and a little unsatisfying.
The guy can't seem to let go of the idea of being a particular kind of character and it's aggravating to watch him acting how he thinks that kind of character should act. Or, you know, write. Tersely. In the desert. In a trailer. $300 a month.
A little more classical literary touch really wouldn't hurt here.
Don't you think that's the point? His writing is an act, his life is an act. Although he eventually became what he acted. That is how he writes and that is how he lives.
Trying to pack heat and be on the right side of the law on a motorcycle/bike/ATV results in some really weird stuff because of distinctions between open carry and concealed carry and the surrounding case law and relevant state laws.
Well that's wasn't even a comment about gun laws or anything like that, just that kind of "raw" mentality of "I need to display a weapon on my motorcycle openly to be respected" is straight out of Mad Max, where cars and motorcycles are adorned with weapons and spikes to strike fear and respect in your enemies. At least that's how I read it.
Fair, but... I always wondered how people in Seoul could deal with living so close to North Korea, with artillery pointed at the city perpetually.
But then in europe people would ask me "Aren't you worried about getting shot in America?"
And I'd say no, not really. But I guess now I understand how many of the South Koreans deal with it, they just don't think about it. Gun violence is really quite high in every state and every major city in the US. Mostly we don't think about it.
> Gun violence is really quite high in every state and every major city in the US. Mostly we don't think about it.
That really isn’t true though. There is huge variation between states and cities in the USA; eg California has much less gun violence than Wyoming, and LA is a lot more safer than St. Louis.
In my mind those are entirely reasonable trade-offs in exchange for hundreds of millions of human beings being free and allowed the power to defend themselves and their loved ones. If anything that shows how insanely responsible the overwhelming majority of gunowners are, that there can be hundreds of millions of guns in the hands of hundredss of millions of people, and that it makes such a small difference in the number of gun deaths compared to countries with draconian laws.
If you have a gun at home you and your family are at significantly higher risk of injury or death due to guns. That's not just true of America, it's true of any country where owning guns privately is legal.
So If anything, you're doing your family and loved ones a disservice by owning a gun. It's just such a cowboy wild west idea that you'd "defend" your family with a gun. Maybe you would. But most people would just completely lose their shit if they were confronted with a criminal, who - in US - is also statistically far more likely to own a gun.
It's like.....in principle, I love the idea. I really like the idea as you are saying - that by owning a gun, I can protect my loved ones from harm. Who wouldn't want that? It's great.
But, statistics are ruthless - gun ownership is strongly linked with your family being a victim of gun violence, and singular examples of people defending themselves from robbers and kidnappers are not enough to make the trade off worth it.
Also - obviously looking at gun deaths is not enough. There are gun injuries. There are psychological problems where people are afraid to go to places or do certain things because they might get shot. Kids learning to live in a society where having policemen and metal detectors at schools is completely normal because there might be a shooting. Whether that fear is justified is another question entirely, but it's a thing. What kind of damage does that do to society?
Or maybe differently - if US was anywhere between 2 and 10 times worse in car accidents than the nearest 1st world country(and it actually is, but that's beside the point) , would it be a "good trade off for freedom(to travel and move)"? Or a sign that maybe the American system of driver training and car ownership is flawed if it consistently kills more people than anywhere else?
Yes, but those numbers increase rapidly in other states. If you think 3.4 is bad, Alabama’s 22.2 deaths/100k is really scary. Massachusetts is a bit worse than Switzerland, Alabama is similar to a war torn third world country.
In some states, like Wyoming, almost all of the deaths are suicides, so you are unlikely to be victimized by gun violence by someone else (the same is probably true with Switzerland, suicides were a big problem when I lived there). So feel free to visit Yellowstone, but maybe avoid that vacation to Alabama you’ve been dreaming about.
There is an order of magnitude difference between 3 and 30. And even at 30 you are unlikely to experience gun violence first hand, which is often situational anyways (people looking for trouble find trouble).
If you move to the states, choose a good state and a good city, and you and your family will be ok. The USA is not homogenous with respect to violence, it’s actually a very large country in that respect.
> I always wondered how people in Seoul could deal with living so close to North Korea, with artillery pointed at the city perpetually.
When was Seoul actually shot at, though? Perhaps a better comparison would be Israel, which is a first-world country that actually has rocket attacks against its citizens weekly.
The rockets are only reaching a veryimiysd diatance.
Israel is a whole military state though, led by hardliners with a clear militaristic perspective on things. Everyone does military service. The whole country is modern and tech-heavy but this idea of constant war and the fear of the Palestinians fighting back against Israeli oppression and land theft (or if you believe the right-wing narrative of just defense) is shaping the entire narrative. They could have chosen peace a few times..
The key difference is still that this is perceived as an external threat. You are not scared of an average Israeli/Palestinian walking by, you are scared of 'the other'. In the US you can get shot by someone with road rage.
It's down to the news and media we get across the pond; school shootings seem to be common, films and TV shows depict that gunfights are common, etc.
I mean the US could choose to go for a better world image, but they like the image that everybody has a gun and they have the Greatest army and all that.
Joke's on them though, China has a lot of influence on some US made films nowadays, so Hollywood blockbusters is not only American but now also Chinese propaganda.
Meanwhile in Europe we get err. idk. Scandi crime dramas?
probably, but from the outside looking in its what i see.
I don't get that feeling from most other 1st world countries. hell, I've been through a few south American countries like Argentina and Ecuador without any real concerns.
America as a whole seems to have values that just dont sit comfortably with me.
Understand the issue about generalizing. Doesn't change my gut feels though.
When I moved from the US to Hungary it took a year maybe for me to really relax and realize for the first time how much stress I'd been carrying - all around guns.
If you had tried to talk to me about it before I had lived here I would have told you that you were crazy and that the US is really safe. And in a lot of ways it is safe, but the emotional reaction is legitimate and completely understandable.
The first time we took our kids back, one night we were out front of the house we were staying in. A truck drove by on the street and the girls kind of huddled together. I said, "What's wrong?" They said, "We don't want to get shot."
When you live in an environment where the idea of just any random person having and using a gun is close to unthinkable, shifting to an environment where anyone could have and use a gun at any time is stressful.
I’ve lived in the west and south all my 50 plus years, with a couple years spent overseas, and I’ve never seen a gun drawn or shot in anger.
I spend zero time worrying about gun violence because there is no rational reason to.
Now, I’ve lived in suburbs (no gated communities, just straight middle class) instead of large metros, though I’ve worked in plenty of the same. I’ve felt unsafe in those metros, but it had little to no relationship to guns, just people who acted out in the train or bus or aggressive in their panhandling.
I’m no gun fanatic- been to a few events hosted by friends where I shot their guns at targets, but never have owned one. But unless you live in Baltimore or similar environments, the US is absolutely safe, statistically, for one to work/play/live in without spending any thought to protecting yourself from gun violence.
> But unless you live in Baltimore or similar environments, the US is absolutely safe, statistically, for one to work/play/live in without spending any thought to protecting yourself from gun violence.
Your mileage may vary:
My high school, in a nice safe San Diego suburb, had a mass shooting a few years after I graduated. One of my favorite teachers retired that year because he couldn’t go back to the place where a student had bled out in his arms while he was trying to tourniquet him.
I met the Aurora, CO movie theater killer when he was a UCSD student working on our lab cluster. Good thing I never WONTFIX-ed his support tickets… In what is possibly the most American game of small world, a now-coworker used to go to the late show at that theater often but not that night.
A friend of ours had a close call and lockdown due to a disgruntled employee bringing a gun to his office (past armed guards!), a mile from where I work.
My wife’s school had a full hostage negotiation one afternoon when a student made a threat. They talked him out of it but … it’s not exactly hard to imagine that it could have gone the other way.
Nobody I’ve met from outside of the U.S. has even one story like that, even the ones from countries we look down on.
“ “We are selling five times as much as in a normal March,” said Gabor Vass, who runs three gun shops in the Hungarian capital, including the one where Rostas bought his gas pistol.”
That article proves my point. They are taking about people buying air guns that fire rubber bullets.
In 2019 the rate of gun deaths per 100000 people in Hungary was 0.61 and in the USA it was 3.96
There are things I worry about but mass shootings like those that happen in the US on a regular basis are not one of them. Violent crime in general is very low here.
1) Even 5x as normal is probably what your average Walmart sells in a day? (I'm paraphrasing, no idea how many guns walmarts actually sell)
2) I don't know about Hungarian gun laws, but I imagine you can't just go in and buy a guy without a permit? Also, are handguns permitted? Gas pistol implies like a CO2 powered air gun?
> 2) I don't know about Hungarian gun laws, but I imagine you can't just go in and buy a guy without a permit?
Yes, you need a permit, though illegal gun ownership is somewhat of an issue. Getting a permit isn't easy, from what I hear.
> Also, are handguns permitted?
Yes.
> Gas pistol implies like a CO2 powered air gun?
No, they're guns that shoot tear gas and the like, and can often also be used for launching small pyrotechnics. The barrel is usually obstructed to make sure they can't be used to shoot projectiles. Theoretically, they could be manipulated to fire projectiles, but it's complicated, difficult, illegal, and probably easier and cheaper to just buy the real thing.
However, even small weapons not requiring a license can be very dangerous in the wrong hands, given that even non-combat gas pistols can be lethal at close range. And Vass, the gun shop owner, said the interest does not stop there.
I'm embarrassed to be a little jealous. I grew up in a similar place, albeit more like "Trailer park boys" and "Gummo" than a romantic western. And, the best outcome one'd hope for a school's valedictorian is to not die of opioids or poor health before they're 26.
Anyway, I'd love to read similar types of stories from other countries. For instance, how about a Chinese boy who abandons his studies at Peking University in Beijing to move to Xinjiang and back again. Is there such a thing?