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Even if you are a self-made billionaire you still need to pay for things to be made and then pay for that to be shipped over the ocean and to your house and then pay for someone to take away all the garbage packaging. Isn't this also a kind of servitude to money?

So here's an alternative understanding of "Freedom". It's not the ability to "Do what you want." or "Buy what you want." but about *understanding* each step of the process, knowing how the sausage is made.

Understanding is freedom because it means you are not beholden to another. If your survival depends on a black box of black boxes of black boxes the only thing you can do is spend money to have someone ELSE fix it.

Money, at the end of the day, is a representation of life energy, even if you've gained it through massive amounts of leverage or are spending someone else's life energy at the end of the day there is a non-zero amount of human energy in it.

When your life depends on black boxes, you have to constantly exchange life energy and put yourself at the mercy of someone else.

this is why people who love $ also love markets. markets provide the liquidity of labor so that money IS power/freedom. In a small town, if I can't build a house I HAVE to be friendly to the housemakers. In a city, I can have them fight over a contract.https://twitter.com/a_yawning_cat/status/1341269411638886401 …

The Marie Kondo method minimizes your life to increase the ratio of understanding to black box. When you're surrounded by things that you love and have built or have a hand it, your "environment" (and thus YOU) feels *Very* different.

Note that with this understanding you can avoid certain traps of "Minimalism". e.g. a super fancy Ultra Gadget that replaces 10 things but you don't know how to fix is against this spirit. As is having to look behind 10 cupboards to find anything b/c everything looks the same.

It also helps against knee jerk "Angry Responses." Like a dog going "Wait...I'm a (love) slave??? well I'm going to just go out into the woods and STARVE!! (to protest, plz come save me though)"

Money more often than not dehumanizes and creates inhuman situations (especially credit) but so have sharp edges drawing blood. Does that mean kitchen knives should be banned? Maybe archery and hunting and soldiers and cops and lions and cats too.

For all the cat's lamenting about freedom every cat knows that they have a good deal. no non-masochist stray would ever give up a chance at pseudo-domestication. only a dog can be a rebel without a cause. cats are pragmatic. you scoop the poop. I headbutt you. fair is fair.

The question isn't is "How do I become free." but "How much freedom do I want to handle." This is a deeply personal and subjective question. All relatively objective secular things like money, power, status, etc.. have nothing to do with how YOU want to live.

"How do I become free." is a question asked by dogs who have never been in the wild and have had to deal with rabies, rotten meat, turf wars, and constant paranoia. they easily romanticize the truth to be something beautiful than something ugly.

what is imagined in the MIND and thus NOT real is perfect and beautiful. To believe that the perfection found in the MIND can BE in reality is to be the little boy or girl still imagining Mama and Papa as Goddess and God.

This is easier if one feels "Orphaned". This is the Harry Potter effect where one's Real Parents are Somewhere Out There. This maintains the illusion of a beautiful truth and cannot be broken since that would involve finding something that DOESN'T exist!https://twitter.com/a_yawning_cat/status/1324069431975141377 …

Want freedom and truth? Stop walking backwards. Accept the fear as yours.https://twitter.com/a_yawning_cat/status/1324462513426100224 …

and then maybe you'll have a chance at courage.https://twitter.com/a_yawning_cat/status/1354120667625472001?s=20 …