Viewpoints p. 265

1.      Rural - Away from city, non-metropolitan areas where people live. Typically, agricultural, woodland, mountainous and natural settings.

Urban - City-like. From the Latin word "urbs", which means "city".

2.      The differences between rural and urban areas in Norway are not so large. We can settle in a rural area without being a farmer and we can visit the larger cities easily. The differences are not that huge, because we are rich and the cities are not that large.  In India, it is different; there the difference between poor and rich is huge. Therefore, they got huge cities with the newest high modern technology, but large parts of India is living in poverty. Which means the difference between rural and urban in India is great.

3.      The people living in industrialized countries consume enormous amounts to fulfill their demands. In addition, we would need eight planets if every single person were going to consume that much.  We who are living in the industrialized countries does not really think and understand how much poverty it is in this world when we are going on a shopping tour buying whatever we want. We just think of ourselves as lucky who are living in a rich country.

4.      The people who choose to almost go back in time and live as we did before; a simple lifestyle without modern technology, cars, machines and so forth. Why do they choose to live like this? The answer is probably that they are tired of the normal life nowadays. In addition, they probably liked it better the way it was before. They think it has gone too far and want to live simple and without all the mechanism.

5.      Rules for “Simple living”:

You don’t need belongings, just a few.

Food and water is necessary, but don’t be greedy.

A house could be good, but as long as you have somewhere to sleep, it’s ok.

Money is trash.

6.      Top 3 priorities of life:

·         Live a long life

·         Food

·         Do a lot of cool stuff, live the life to it’s fullest.