Asklemmy @lemmy.ml

2w ago

What's a luxury that would break you if were no longer able to have it?

118 comments

Clean and well-tasting tap water. It sucks when I'm going to another country and they have chlorinated tap water
- Where in the world?
  
  We have clean water in Austria, directly from the mountains without adding anything (just cleaning it with UV light to kill potential bacteria in most regions, nothing else. Not even that in some regions).
  Some of the best and cleanest water worldwide, so whenever I go to another country I'm disappointed by their water quality.
  
  PC world.
  
  In the US. I feel the same about our well water. Completely untreated and so good.
- If it's that important to you then an RO filter would be a cheap solution

Electricity.
If you lose electricity most people lose access to:
Hot water
Running water (if you have a well)
Air conditioning
Indoor heat
Television
Internet
Indoor lighting
And hot meals if you don't have gas.
Losing electricity would cut you off from almost all of your luxuries as we've become completely dependent on it over the last century or so.
- it sounds like a necessity
  
  It's a utility and so I agree it's a necessity. A luxury would be some of the things electricity allows like Internet.
  
  Not necessarily, you could absolutely survive without electricity, I live in a predominantly Amish area that proves that.
  It just wouldn't be any fun.
- Yeah but no electricians no more electrocution... Think of the positives lol

Air conditioning. Near the coast in Texas it's more or less a lifesaver.

Air conditioning
Chocolate
Coffee
All 3 are things that are reasonably likely to have troublesome accessibility in my lifetime.
- oh
  a/c
  yep that's the one
- I think AC will be the most reliable if home solar takes off. The other two though...
  
  It's still prohibitively expensive to buy AC units in the first place though. Vast majority of homes do not have AC pre-installed.
- I can hear to say coffee, but AC is at the top. I live in a tropical country.
  Chocolate is nice, and I love it but I could drop it.
  
  We moved to a new apartment - and a big rent increase from 5 years of inflation-pinned rent to now c$4/sqft/mo - just for A/C . Would do it again.

Spices. Very much spices. If I was limited to like 5 good ones I'd make do but I have a drawer with like 50 spices in it I use regularly and it's my happy place.
- Same, one of the things that influenced my decision to buy my house was a long cupboard next to the hob that would be perfect for a 48 jar spice rack. The rack is now full and there's a small crate of miscellaneous spices sat on top of the cupboard.
  
  The only time I agree with the people going on about how we live like Kings in the modern world (absolutely fucking not) is about how many spices we can just have for cheap and not the cost of a horse.
- 100%
  It kills me when I go to someone's house and the only spices are black pepper and cinnamon. Salt does not count.

Hot showers and a bidet.
- We just finished a big holiday trip, 2 weeks visiting both sides of the family. Stayed with one family and then the other. After that....yeah...seriously considering getting everyone bidets next year for Christmas...
  
  We recently got a bidet ourselves. There are portable ones. Basically a water bottle with a pump and sprayer on it.
  
  Travel bidet

Music, without a doubt. Specifically, being able to choose particular songs to listen to. I'd get pretty miserable after a few days.
- Find a radio station you enjoy and experience new to you music
  
  No such thing anymore. 50% commercials, 50% whatever music the overlords want us to consume.

Toilet paper.
- (I'd argue that's more a necessity but) Bidet plus a a toilet rag covered in the stains from your previous toilet rag adventures?

Coffee. Can't even stop drinking it when I'm sick bc I feel like ten times worse.
- I gave up caffeine a few years ago and I was really surprised by how easy it was and how little I missed it.
  Maybe it's different for me but caffeine ended up being much more of a habit rather than something I thought I needed.

Housing. (Again)

Literally, depending on where you draw a line between luxury and important but not mandatory for most people, it's air conditioning. We have three people in this household that do very poorly once heat and humidity starts to climb, including myself. Plus, uncontrolled humidity in the south ruins things, so there's an increase in costs associated with whatever decrease in power usage would save. For us, AC is right on the edge of being a necessity, as in a medical thing.
But in a more literal luxury that serves only pleasure or want, chocolate. No nutritional necessity, and it isn't like we all can't do without it. But gods damn, it would hurt. A nice piece of good quality dark chocolate is the ultimate mini reward for me. Do something incredibly painful and time consuming, that bit of chocolate is enough to turn it from something that I'm weeping in pain trying to finish into something I'm able to get through before I break down. That's a luxury, but fuck me if it isn't something I lean on heavily as a crutch. I really don't know what I would use to coax myself through really bad days where I'm barely functional but still have to function.
- Man, I hear you. In tropical Mexico, whatever semi-dry goods we didn't use up by the end of spring will be ruined and moldy within three days of summer starting. Most seeds won't even germinate in like two months.

Break me? No. Really depress my mood? Probably no longer having Plex and my media collection. If my hard drives and back-ups all spontaneously combusted right after a trade war drove their prices through the roof x5 or something and I couldn't afford to replace (and/or couldn't find any to replace because of shortages) I would be quite sad. Additionally I've worked quite hard to curate my collection so losing it entirely in the first place would be depressing because of the amount of work required to rebuild it, encoding, scraping hard to scrape rarities, setting the posters just the way I like them, etc.
- I was going to post this exact reasoning but you beat me to it.
- I would be devastated. I have three backups at the moment, but thinking about a fourth.

Caffeine
- I'd be broken for a little while but tbh I think I'd be better off in the long run
- I would normally say this too, but it's surprisingly easy to get off caffeine. I've gone weeks without it, to usually slip up and start using it out of habit.... but I don't think I would miss it if caffeine suddenly just vanished from this world. I'd just slap my knee and say "huh, remember that weird drug we all used to take in the morning?"
- Around 5 hrs to fully metabolise caffeine. Physically you would be fine in a day.
  The habit, however would take longer to get over. That depends on your psychology, I know I can't just replace my morning coffee with tea, because it doesn't feel right.
  I usually have my last coffee at around 2pm, so by the time I get up in the morning, there is no caffeine in my system. The feeling of drinking coffee and tea is different for me, it's not just about the taste.

Clean water on demand
- Likewise, flushing the toilet and the shit disappears.

Private space. I used to share one room with my siblings. It was alright as a child, but I don't want to go back. And I know that many families around the world have very little space for two, three or four generations living under a roof.

While I am trying to use the internet less since the past 2 years or so, I will freak out if it ceases to exist completely.
- I wouldn't even call it a luxury. Hasn't been for years.
  
  I miss when it was a luxury. Pretty fun times if you ask me.
  
  You bring up an interesting point.
  Most people wouldn't consider a cup of tea to be luxurious at all. But if tea was scarce and you only got one cup a year, it would seem absolutely amazing, a special occasion and you'd really savour the experience.
  There's definitely something to be said for luxury which is much more about rarity or restriction rather than the experience itself.

Soap and clean water

Indoor plumbing and summer time AC

High-quality food. For me, food is one of the main sources of enjoyment, and if instead I'll have to shove something down my throat just to satisfy hunger, I'll get very depressed very quickly.

My headphones. I just love listening to music way too much.
- Well luckily for you, apparently it's now acceptable to just blast your music out loud in public.

I don't know, maybe oxygen.
- As a diving instructor once told me, Air is overrated.
- How does oxygen fit the definition of luxury?
  Though that's not really the point of your post is it? What you did was read and understand OP correctly but then thought, "won't it be so hilarious if I make a joke and answered with something that you LITERALLY can't live with out, instead of contributing to the discussion!?!?! Hahaha delightfully devilish, professorozone!"
  That your comment is upvoted is disappointing. It's Reddit tier crap.
  
  Yeah, that's exactly right. But also you missed the subtle undertones of how things are going so dystopian that soon oxygen may actually become a luxury.
  Not sure why that upsets you so much. Just sit on the floor, cross your legs Indian-style if you like and take in three big breaths of air. Wooosha. Wooosha. Wooosha. Like that. You'll like it. There's oxygen in the air. Kind of like a luxury.

Hot water!! I don't remember how I survived childhood
- We used to only have an outside toilet, covered in the fattest moths and spiders you've ever seen. We had a boiler that would cut out every fourth time it was used. I also don't know how I survived childhood. It's weird how what you get used to
  
  Oh man, that's a lot. At least our toilet was indoors, even if our plumbing was prone to breaking.

that picture exactly

healthcare

I genuinely think I'd go insane if I wasn't able to buy Brie or Blue cheese. I don't need it every day of course, but any less than once every two months would be unspeakable
- I have a bit of a compulsion to scan the grocery store for marked down fancy cheeses and bakery stuff. I've tried some pretty awesome stuff I never would have gotten otherwise.

Biggest one would be AC, followed by cheap electricity, and internet. Maybe frequent sex too. To quote that recent Mengzi post 食色性也
- Partner says filtered water. My more luxury item may be homemade seltzer water

Meat, specifically ground beef
- Just keep your beef in the fridge like a normal person.
  
  por qué no ambos?

Electricity

Cheese in general. Chocolate as well. Clean water is a necessity, but I guess hot water on demand? While I like eating beef and chicken I probably wouldn't be that sad overall if it went away.
- Hot water on demand. Coming in from the cold and getting a hot shower. That is so wonderful.

Contact lenses. I know I could use my glasses, but I put them down and can't find them half the time. I am blind enough to be absolutely useless in most situations without corrective lenses.

None that would "break me" if I didn't have them, but I spend the vast majority of my free time on my computer (by choice, I have friends and outside activities I can go to if I want), and whenever I've had to be away from it that's always been the toughest part.

Sharpening stones and files. I can't imagine using dull knives. I can't stand knives duller than hair popping sharp. I have excellent knives that hold a crisp edge and I sharpen those every 30 minutes of super fast chopping (10 seconds on a 9k stone).
Not just knives but scissors, trowels, shovels, cooking spatulas, dust pans, vegetable peelers, can openers, toenail clippers, all need to be sharp. Not being able to sharpen all of those would be a tragedy.
If you are delaying getting into sharpening, just do it. It will serve you for the rest of your life, and I sharpen every single day (I'm a woodworker). Its truly a luxury to have sharp tools, all the time. So satisfying.
Aside from that, chocolate. The cravings will never go away.
Air conditioning, but I would argue that is a very expensive necessity.
- Do you have some suggestions for a novice sharpener on how to get started?
  
  Coarse diamond stone and a thin cheap knife. The coarse stone is fast so you get immediate results and feedback, which is crucial for learning. You want to use a cheap knife since you can damage knives with bad technique. Cheap knives are also softer and sharpen faster
  Diamond plates are much more straightforward than waterstones. You dont need to soak it, water it, flatten it, etc. They aren't necessarily better, but they require much less maintenance
  Also I highly recommend freehand. Youll always encounter a knive that doesn't work with this, or that system, but you can sharpen every knife, tool, scissors, etc, on a normal sharpening stone.
- and I sharpen those every 30 minutes
  I'm sorry, what?
  If I sharpened my knives after every 30 minutes of use I wouldn't have any steel left after a couple of months, tops. My knives are shaving sharp, I use them for several hours every day.
  If your knives hold an edge and are profiled correctly, sharpening every 30 minutes (even a quick touch up) is entirely unnecessary. Professional meat cutters and fishmongers annihilate cutting for 10 hours a day and require razor sharp tools, and they don't spend even close to as much time as you've claimed touching up their edges.
  Don't get me wrong, I love sharp knives, but either you're exaggerating or doing it wrong.
  
  I use a 9k stone and sharpen for like 10 seconds, so its not that much material. I have an extremely high standard of sharpness.
  For the first 30 mins to an hour of work, the edge absolutely flies through food. (Hair whittling/hair popping)
  Afterwards its still very sharp and cuts very well ( clean shaving)
  Then it starts to struggle with tough skins and delicate foods (bell peppers, tomatoes, etc) this is usually where it stops shaving.
  I like to keep my knives so sharp that it flies through everything.
- Dull knifes are even more dangerous to use because they tend to slip in unexpected directions.
- I sharpen my knives about quarterly but I’m not cutting wood with them.

Private Space. My own private Bedroom Especially. Also, a good bathroom. Especially a good toilet and shower. Make them clean too.

Healthcare, condoms
- Its sad that health care is considered a luxury.
  
  Eh, what’s the alternative? Healthcare requires high level of education and expensive equipment. Similar to air travel.
  It’s a luxury due to high costs.
- Must be in the US if Healthcare is a luxury

Chocolate.
Proper chocolate, not the shit that Cadbury turn out since it was bought by the cheese people.
No wonder they lost their royal warrant. That's the first thing that Charlie has done since the Prince's Trust that has really impressed me.
- That's super interesting, I actually like him a bit now because of that

If there is a luxury whose absence would break you, then I would suggest you do a little "fast" from it, occasionally.
- 100%. For caffeine, I drop it on the weekends (much to the annoyance of my gf) and that monday morning coffee makes all the difference in the world. For cheese, I'm usually okay without for a few weeks.
- Not recommended for the people who wrote "housing" or "healthcare"

Good that OLED displays are no longer a luxury.

118 comments