Pot meet kettle lol. People are making actual arguments about how a walkable city is better for every class of person, not just one specific class, and you’re throwing them all out, without entertaining the thoughts at all, and with a fair bit of vitriol.
Any situation where the average person doesn’t need any special equipment (a car) to get their things done is going to be better for everyone. As a off the top of the head example, when no one else NEEDS to drive, for instance, the people who do need to can more readily. Or they can utilize other, cheaper, specialized equipment, like powered wheelchairs more easily, because everything is within walking distance and the streets aren’t packed with people in cars.
I think the best solution, if we can redesign our cities, is to incorporate more mixed use buildings, or at least more mixed zoning. Why even have to have a bus if your building has a connected grocery and 3 other small shops on the same block.
These issues only really exist because everything is SO spread out. We have strict zoning regulations that mean having a grocery in a residential area is at best a challenge, and realistically impossible. This means we have to go further for the most mundane daily tasks, and this means we need more robust transportation, including cars.
ETA:rereading this it looks like I’m making an argument for no cars, buses or anything. I’m absolutely pro expanding public transportation, merely stating that if things were slightly different, you could eliminate the bus entirely from this situation specifically
Man. There’s a Korean drama on Netflix… I think it was All of Us Are Dead. The apartment building had a bodega-like grocery either on the first floor or connected to it. If we’re going to redesign, can it be like that, maybe?
I’m not against people making money, I’m against people making money hand over fist with the level of effort I exert taking my morning shit, off the backs of people trying to scrape by.
A regular guy who’s a landlord np. Once it becomes your primary investments vector and you’re NOT giving that little extra effort of moving stuff to the basement, once you stop being a person who is a landlord and just become Landlord, it’s shit.
I think you pretty well nailed my view of contentedness with your paragraph starting “if you’re lonely…”. That’s pretty much how I see it. It’s a state of being okay, despite some needs not being met in the moment. Tend to urgent needs, be ok with some less urgent ones sitting for a bit, accept things you have no control over, and work towards bettering your position overall, instead of sitting and wallowing in the self-pity mire.
Those items are a bit trickier for sure. There’s a biological need for them and so they can be pressing. There’s a certain bare minimum that yeah, you can’t just not have. Anything past that, though, past the absolute critical for life level, is something you can learn to be content with, learn to not desire more than, and instead just be thankful for the excess above starvation that you enjoy in this moment.
Feelings of extreme loneliness. Accepting that, despite having a very real need (community, belonging, connection) not being met at the moment doesn’t mean that it ever will be, and I can actually be okay being uncomfortable, but still content.
This isn’t exactly a formal writing space. I post almost exclusively from my phone. I’m a terrible type on my phone, freely admitted, but I do what I can to correct things. Sometimes it just gets missed, though. I make an effort to edit, but at the end of the day, this is just going to a bunch of dummies on the Internet, not someone who matters to my life. I’ll put in exactly what I feel is the appropriate effort.