Our whole education system is designed to turn out factory & office fodder who are also consumers. It's what keeps the whole economy going but most people don't realise it.

So true - I wasn't in college more than 2 years when I became dissolusioned with the system: yes, I finished just to say I got my degree and get what I once thought of as a decent job, but it wasn't long before I realized that I was acting as little more than a puppet to push other peoples products and ideas into the marketplace.

Thus the reason I moved out of the city and back to my little border town and, with the help of some associates, established an alternative socio-economic system - one that doesn't prize the production/consumption of products so much as the continued use of existing resources. None of of make all that much money (I get between $40 and $50 thousand on an excellent year), but barter and salvage goes a long way towards closing that gap. But our social order doesn't want people to realize this: should people come to the knowledge that they can live without excessive consumption, people wouldn't work so hard to generate the income used to purchase all those extra goods - goods that manufacturers tend to produce on the cheap and sell at inflated prices. Should people learn to be happy without the excessive consumerism, the whole mainstream economy would completely unravel!

I think the only way to be happy for a long span of time is to constantly make sure that tomorrow is somewhat different than today. People can enjoy a lot of earthly things, but they'll never feel satisfied without purpose, and purpose can only be maintained so long as you haven't achieved what you're aiming to do. That's why I think even the wealthiest and hedonistic individuals can feel completely void of meaning, simply because they have nothing new to aspire to (and it doesn't have to be more wealth, just something different).

Luckily, I take pleasure in learning as much as I can, and knowing the severe limits of my intelligence, I know I'll never run out of things to learn. I may not be as content or as happy as I'd like, but I will always have purpose.

Is Hugh Hefner happier than Bill Gates?

Have you seen the three women he shares his mansion with? He damn well ought to be!

Those who market the product don't care if you run that treadmill for the rest of your life; in fact, they're banking on us doing exactly that. As long as we keep buying, they'll keep telling us we need something, even if we already have a dozen of them. "Disposable culture" is an incredible oxymoron, but that's the reality we've come to face.

Our whole education system is designed to turn out factory & office fodder who are also consumers. It's what keeps the whole economy going but most people don't realise it.

While freedom is an invigorating feeling for me, isolation inevitably bores me.

Who said anything about isolation? While you may be living far from mainstream civilization, you're never completely cut off from other people (although there are some days I wish I could do that, but I digress...).

Plus, I don't find dependence to be in and of itself bad, nor do I think dependence is always equivalent to being controlled.

It is 9 out of 10 times - the less dependent you are on outside powers, the lesser the chance that a social order can get its hooks in you.

Personally, I don't make my philosophy to aim for happiness. I just sail by my windy whimsical nature wherever it goes, whether into storm or calm, horizon or harbor, Arctic or Tropics, etc. Bliss, hatred, depression, mania - I'll welcome it all, because why do any other?

To quote the cheshire cat "If you don't know where you're going, any path will get you there." While I do love the winds of chaos, I like to harness them to my own ends rather than get blown about by them.