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In article .com,
wrote:

My annoyance with that silly Mark Twain quote prompts this post.

Although casting off everyday cares to go cruising sounds ideal to
many people, I have to wonder about people aspire to it with intense
zeal. I wonder if they have so little to offer to humanity that they
would abandon society for such a narcissistic goal.

They aren't abandoning humanity or society. The cruising community is
its own society: different, but not nothing. I could easily argue that
it's a more humane society than what we see on shore.

From what I've seen, cruisers tend to contribute more to the communities
they find themselves in than most people could comprehend. As a minor
item: When I'm travelling back and forth to work each workday, I'm
usually too "busy" to help stranded motorists on the side of the road.
When we're cruising, we go investigate boats that might be broken down
and help one or two a season. Stories of cruisers helping the
disadvantaged that they contact are legion.

And I find most people in the workaday world have narcissistic goals,
though they're expressed in socially acceptable terms. Most are
basically drifting on autopilot, and very *BUSY* doing it.

If you spend all of your time cruising, you essentially give up
making any difference to the rest of humanity.

Not true.

My personal belief is that each of us has some unique skill that
could somehow be of use to humanity. Unfortunately, very few people
ever discover this skill, but I think you ought to give it many real
tries before giving up and going off cruising.

Most people don't have unique skills. They're essentially cogs in the
wheel throughout their lives.

That said, I know I have a few unique skills that I've utilized
successfully over the years, whether I've been paid for them or not. I
can point to a few people who changed careers to match their real
abilities due to my input. But that was "luck".

I get paid to utilize other of my skills to allow people to do their
jobs more easily, but when push comes to shove, I wonder whether their
jobs are really worth doing in the first place.

I understand your viewpoint, but you're assuming others have your
ability level, and that's not true from what I've seen you post.

I have no problem with people who retire and then go cruising, they
have already made their contribution. My argument is with people who
aspire to cruising as their life goal.

That's assuming that retirement, or cruising, is the end of contribution
to society. I find that's not true.

-----

One part of our considerations is that we tread quite a bit more softly
upon the Earth in our boat than we do in our relatively modest house.
Treading more softly would be a considerable accomplishment in my mind.

-----

BUT what's wrong with our deciding that we've contributed enough to
society if we can maintain our desired lifestyle with our available
resources?

--
Jere Lull
Xan-a-Deux ('73 Tanzer 28 #4 out of Tolchester, MD)
Xan's Pages: http://members.dca.net/jerelull/X-Main.html
Our BVI FAQs (290+ pics) http://homepage.mac.com/jerelull/BVI/