[shillster]

He's only a burden in as much as the fall in his personal consumption reduces the overall demand for things he might have purchased. In other words, its no sweat off of anyone's brow. Being individually resourceful doesn't increase the burden on anyone else.

[vinceguidry]

It's wasted potential. The modern world and all its conveniences and all its resources didn't just come about. It was built up, out of nothing, by people who saw how shitty the world looked then and wanted to live in a better one. A better world is not being built by dumpster divers. It's certainly not being built by dumpster divers managing to convince other people that dumpster diving is somehow noble.

Every age had its dumpster divers, its people who, rather than to throw their weight behind efforts to create better institutions, to better understand the world around them, decided a better world wasn't worth the hassle. That this world, with all these things that all their ancestors spent their lives building, is stupid and should be renounced. These people are absolutely a burden, and should not be listened to.

It made sense in a weird sort of way when the Jains were doing it, religious renunciation is sometimes the only way you can make a political statement without getting killed, but it didn't take long until they had made their point but kept on doing it after it stopped actually being noble.

Yes, there's a lot of crappy things about the world. Roll up your sleeves and help fix them!

[shillster]

I wouldn't be so quick to cast anyone off, especially someone who undertakes personal initiatives such as this to ensure their own survival. The "economy" might suffer if more people adopted this attitude, but its hardly the end of the world. It is not our position to judge if this person's potential is wasted or not, you can't really be any more subjective.

[snikeris]

I think this guy would probably take issue w/ your use of the word better. If one man's better is another man's worse, perhaps "better" exists only in your head.

Also, this quote comes to mind:

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

- George Bernard Shaw

[balabaster]

The fact that there are dumpster divers points to there being wasteful behaviour in our society. If the shit being thrown out is of use to someone, it should be recycled and reused instead of filling landfills of waste, only to be replaced with the next thing the media tells us we need. If we weren't being wasteful, there would be no dumpster divers.

The dumpster divers are doing the environment a favour. They are recycling what would otherwise be needless waste.

The modern world's conveniences were built up by people who saw how shitty the world looked and wanted to change it. Yes. I agree 100%. The modern world's conveniences are amazing, useful and provide us with a far greater standard of living. What is shit though is the constant treadmill of planned obsolescence, designing for a shelf life, goods that are designed only to last as long as their warranties before they are replaced. We used to live in a society where things were made to last for a lifetime, to be passed on to our heirs when we're gone. Heirloom furniture that can be passed down for generations over hundreds or thousands of years. This has been replaced by pressboard furniture that we're lucky if it lasts for 5-10 years before it's thrown out and replaced. That is what's shit about society, accumulation of the same shit quality stuff, paying over and over again to replace things that don't last. Things that could and should last, just because of what? Planned obsolescence.

He found something he didn't like about society and he found a way to fix it. He helped fix it by not contributing to it any more. In addition to this, he is living on the waste of society - the bits that weren't good enough for you and were heading to an eyesore of a landfill somewhere that got carved out of the landscape damaging the environment.

It's funny how the hip thing right now is "reduce, reuse, recycle". If you're the guy showing a viable way for every family to do this without any emotional discomfort and you're a hero. But the second you dig through other people's trash and do the same thing, you're a pariah.

The fact is capitalist society does have a problem, we're extraordinarily wasteful and we're chasing constantly unattainable happiness. It's unattainable because our happiness is based on the constantly turning wheels of capitalism. We spend money emotionally because the media feeds our need to buy stuff because: "We deserve it", "it'll make us look better", "it'll give us a 6 pack", "it'll help us lose 50 lbs in 6 weeks", "it'll make us more desirable to the opposite sex", "it'll make us feel better", "it'll do whatever it is we need it to do to make us feel better than the last thing we were told to buy that also promised to make us feel better but only worked as long as we didn't realize this other shinier more expensive thing came out."

So someone who can come along that can take the waste and repurpose it into something useful and spare the environment in the process is noble. That's not to say that you're not noble, perhaps what you throw out is genuinely of no use to you, perhaps the bit you didn't throw out was genuinely useful to you and you used it for a noble purpose. Perhaps instead of throwing it out, you could trade it with someone who has use for it that has something that would be of use to you?

And nobody suggested renouncing all of our ancestors work... but renouncing the bits that don't work is healthy. We no longer allow slavery in the West; women can vote; we offer support to those trying to quit drugs, alcohol and smoking; same sex marriage is starting to become widely acceptable; we can touch a piece of glass in our pocket and talk to whole communities of people scattered to the four corners of the earth, the list goes on. There is much about society that we can be really proud of. But there's nothing wrong with renouncing the bits that don't work, nor is there anything wrong with taking steps to mitigate them in your own life and being vocal about them to help mitigate them in other people's lives.

"Be the change you want to see in the world" - Gandhi

[jerf]

True, but only on a limited basis. It's not scalable, and in keeping with the GP's point, it's important not to draw too grandiose a claim out of this. It doesn't take too many people trying to do this before it would stop working and become much less like "scavanging off an affluent society" and much more "nature, red in tooth and claw". To those who are willing to do this, god-speed, but you haven't found a universally better lifestyle that all should look at in awe and agree that it's a trenchant criticism of the unnecessary nature of the rat race of society or something; you've just found a niche that works for you, but you're still consuming the output of the "rat race" and you really shouldn't forget it.