{"id":7857,"date":"2015-05-05T06:26:09","date_gmt":"2015-05-05T11:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7857"},"modified":"2015-05-05T06:26:09","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T11:26:09","slug":"find-freedom-in-a-tiny-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7857","title":{"rendered":"Find Freedom in a Tiny House"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/permaculturenews.org\/2015\/04\/30\/find-freedom-in-a-tiny-house\/\" target=\"_blank\">Find Freedom in a Tiny House<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What is a house? I feel this is a dangerous question, which holds within it the seeds of a disruptive innovation, so read on at your own risk.<\/p>\n<p>Rethinking what a house is could change your life, and perhaps the world. Let me explain through my own experience.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Voluntary simplicity<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When I was an intellectually promiscuous doctoral student my eyes happened to fall upon a copy of Henry Thoreau\u2019s, Walden, a fiery \u201csimple living\u201d manifesto, first published in 1854. This book, like no other before or since, ignited in me a shift in consciousness that I can only describe as an earthquake of the soul.<\/p>\n<p>It shook me awake from a deep slumber, opening my eyes to how consumerist cultures were foolishly celebrating a mistaken idea of freedom, leaving people materially rich but too often empty and twisted inside.<\/p>\n<p>Thoreau\u2019s writings also offered poetic insight in the alternative way of living now known as \u201cvoluntary simplicity\u201d, a living strategy that seeks to minimise material needs in order find enrichment and purpose in non-materialistic sources of meaning and satisfaction.<\/p>\n<p>The ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, advised that \u201cHe who knows he has enough is rich\u201d, with Thoreau arguing a similar line that those of us who have enough, but who do not know it, are poor.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The real price of houses<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What struck me most about the writings of Henry Thoreau was his penetrating analysis of housing. \u201cMost men appear never to have considered what a house is,\u201d he declared, \u201cand are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbours have.\u201d What was he getting at?<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Find Freedom in a Tiny House What is a house? I feel this is a dangerous question, which holds within it the seeds of a disruptive innovation, so read on at your own risk. Rethinking what a house is could change your life, and perhaps the world. Let me explain through my own experience. Voluntary [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[338,5191,5190,5192,5194,5193,5189],"class_list":["post-7857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-survival-2","tag-freedom","tag-lifestyle","tag-living-standards","tag-simplicity","tag-small-house","tag-smallness","tag-tiny-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7857"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7858,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7857\/revisions\/7858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}