Start learning how to THINK … so that you don’t need the best of anything, but you can always make the best of whatever you have.

It takes a LOT of money to be STUPID … or to put that another way, if you are constantly worried about not having enough money to be able to afford things that you are worried you might need, well, then … you are a MORON … and you’re probably a W2 slave or a 1099 contract professional scrambling to earn enough money to pay the cost of being STUPID.

The main requirement for being stupid is worrying that you don’t have money … because throughout your existence, you have never learned how to just make do … you are convinced that you NEED a place to live in, you NEED utilities, you NEED your refrigerator and pantry stocked with food, you NEED your conveniences, you NEED your vehicles and assorted mowers, snowblowers, leaf blowers and everything else about your noisy, consumptive lifestyle. You NEED your professional healthcare options and full healthcare insurance. You NEED everything that you can imagine, because you cannot imagine not needing shit.

This is why most affluent Americans are hopelessly filled with worry, anxiety and depression … it’s because they genuinely NEED to be NEEDY. They have never figured out how to just make do with what they have AND TO be happy with that.

Those who can just make do do not need ANY money any more.

When you have learned how to artfully upcycle, ie to not only make lemonade from any lemon that comes along, but also ensure that you have turns those lemons into the most spectacular lemonade ever … you make a LOT better use of what you already have AND you stop being a needy prey animal who has to squander money on what PROFESSIONALS recommend because prey animals simply cannot ever trust their own strength, toughness, resilience

If you want to stop being a prey animal … you have to start learning how to THINK about the advantages in any situation, rather than false conspiracies, so that you NEVER EVER need the best of anything, but are always able to make the best of whatever situation you find yourself in.

There’s even a role in the upcycling economy for the dumb kid in the class, ie that generative AI stuff that halluces the worthless CoPilot suggests or cliche answers which should be laughed at… precisely because much of the upcycling process is about finding old manuals and design artifacts to recover the cliche designs that were popular but now we’ve forgotten about. Because it’ll be 1984 all over again … we could just use old NNTP Newsgroups like back in the day, but now we’ll have to make new Facebooks and re-learn the old cliches that some cliche-meister has already sold up, just at 1000X the cost.

Upcycling is a FIGHT… or an outright WAR, if you will … AGAINST the evils of engineered-in FALSE obsolescence.

Converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of better quality or a higher environmental value is MASSIVELY less wasteful than landfilling the old junk and mining cobalt and lithim for brand new solar panels. The carbon footprint of making new stuff is why China and India now are in the role of being the world’s biggest polluters … because the materials are processed in China and India and the finish goods or components are exported to the “clean” economies.

Fixering and re-hacking refurbed crap could be done as the basis of a SOCIAL NETWORK … or, more correctly, a social EDUCATION network … there’s more to than just straightening bent nails from a torn down corn crib. There’s a lot of knowledge in old junk, especially old junk that was sold five or ten years ago … this KNOWLEDGE leads to troubleshooting and hacking and makering … which is an important meta-SKILL [which is about not quitting or giving up and just getting out the credit card … if COMMUNITIES can learn together how to upcycle things that somebody bought new five or ten or 25 years, they can GENERALLY always be improving their lifestyles ON THE CHEAP …making things better than they were before, for one-tenth or one-hundredth of the cost of buying new stuff.

Upcycling ALSO applies to HEALTH … and why atrophy is the biggest killer of lazy old people … who don’t shovel snow, even when their shoulders are still good … if you want to stay health, you don’t need a gym membership or Peloton clothes drier – you need to USE your body to lift things, to dust and vacuum, to clean up stuff and generally stay physically active doing chores that idiots get iRobot spysystems to do. So RATHER than jumping in a car and driving to the big box store and getting a giant ass culvers hamburger and extra rich shake on the drive-thru, the UPCYCLERS of the world actually slowcook their own food [and heat their homes].

MOSTLY, the upcycling mindset is about realizing that you will be BETTER OFF than being JUST FINE … because, until the end … which is hopefully, sudden, swift and therefore KIND [rather than a suspended hell-on-earth in professional care]… there’s always going to be way to work through the issues, learn something from the pain and upcycle something new.

Start learning how to THINK … so that the end of your human existence is a KIND transition to higher level of upcycling.

The distant future really is a much better place IF YOU CAN THINK IN THAT REALITY …the zombies will be gone, there will be no more room obsolescence and it will be all upcycling. The entire Universe is still being created for us and it will be there for the upcyclers to EXPLORE.