What name would you give to a library that gathered together stories of unconventional ways of life?

thetedkarchive.com

Submitted by TheTedKArchive in lobby (edited )

I'd like to set up a new library to host the list of texts on this page linked below and build on it, but I'm still undecided on a name:

A Reading List of Unconventional Lives

Here are some possible options, so please let me know which one you like best or offer your own suggestion:

  • The Library of Unconventional Lives
  • A Library of Unconventional Lives
  • The Unconventional Human Library
  • The Library of Autonomous Lives
  • The Autonomous Human Library
  • The Library of Adventurous Lives
  • The Alternative Lifestyle Library
  • The Library of Human Agency
  • The Free Range Human Library
  • The Wild Human Library
  • The Free Human Library

Every name has it's pros and cons. Alternative lifestyle doesn't really encapsulate what stories I'd like to gather together because I'd like to for example include texts on unconventional work people do. Also, I think some of the most interesting stories are for example people who find themselves living a certain way simply because it was the only way they knew how to survive a tough childhood with their sanity intact. But, then again 'the alternative lifestyle library' might be the most popular name for drawing in interest and collaborators.

Finally, if you could magic an online library into existence, where all the work of tracking down texts from libraries and various corners of the internet, formatting and collating was already done for you, what would it look like? And what would it be called?

3

Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

Fool wrote

Superb Library of Terrific Housing (SLOTH)

Directory Enclosing Studies of Independent Residential Encampments (DESIRE)

Library of Humans Undertaking Modes of Unconventional Residence (Library of HUMOUR)

Free Outsider Occupancy Library (FOOL)

6

stagn wrote (edited )

Wtf, MOVE movement is with the bad near the nazis and ITS?

4

houdini wrote

Ishkah counts any anarchists of action as BAD, whereas any anarchist who 'unites the left' or votes for the 'least bad' political candidate is GOOD.

4

roanoke9 wrote

The good bad gray designation doesn't sit well with me, but I'm going to make my own distinctions. Most of the good list is gray in my book (and self reflecting, I am gray by my own metrics). Anything over like five people I know personally I would be averse to involvement anyway. The existence and accessibility of the list, I like, for my own use.

Nazis aren't even unconventional in my book, they're just peak western civ to me : the distilled ethos of witch hunter culture. They give this away all the time projecting their paranoia about any opposition as witchhunting THEM.

I don't know much about MOVE other than what I just read, but from that text I don't see why they were grouped that way.

4

stagn wrote (edited )

Overall I agree with you, how MOVE was categorized was just the thing that seemed most absurd to me on that list but certainly not the only thing I disagreed with

3

roanoke9 wrote

I agree with you too- just for consistency, if the linked article is representative of them, MOVE should be in the good list.

2

TheTedKArchive OP wrote

Yeah I forgot to get round to including a bunch of stuff, here's one essay to start with: Ex-MOVE members say they were raised in a ‘cult’ where abuse and homophobia ran rampant

1

roanoke9 wrote

Yeah that puts it in a different light.

My own position is anti-cult, which sounds like it is pretty uncontroversial, until I explain that I think most people were raised in a big psuedo-diverse socially accepted cult, popularly called civilization.

And my answer to this dilemma is not: just make your own cult. My answer is closer to: innoculate yourself to the extent that you can against cult tactics, maybe each person have an anti-cult with only themselves as a member. Don't lead, don't follow. The whole patriarchal nuclear family sort of makes every father a small-cult leader. And I oppose that.

1

MHC wrote

"Unconventional lifestyles library".

3