Lifestyle?

Blessings, Darlings!

Pagan Lifestyle? Christian Lifestyle?  Gay Lifestyle? Heterosexual lifestyle? Hippy Lifestyle? Green Lifestyle?

Huh?

I can't speak for others, but I don't have a 'lifestyle', I LIVE a LIFE.  No, not just A life, I live MY life.

I'm a member of all sorts of affiliation groups, if you want to try to categorize me.  But the one that I most identify with is being an incarnate human being.  As such, I share a certain group of needs that must be met with the rest of the incarnate human beings out there.  I need to ingest a certain minimal level of nutrients.  I need oxygen.  I need my body to work well.  I have social needs.  I am a sentient being, and I use my big human brain to see how the environment around me can fill my needs now and in the future. 

To fill those needs, I live my life.  I make decision on what to eat, what and who to surround myself with, ways to fulfill my other needs and wants and desires.  These things make up my life.  Not my 'lifestyle'.

While I see humans as 'categorizing animals', who are genetically programmed to group things in categories and make generalizations/rely on stereotypes to lessen the amount of decisions we have to make - the categories implied when I hear folks talk of 'lifestyles' seem totally at odds with reality, and thus are counter to living the best lives we can.  I just don't see there being 'a pagan lifestyle', or even a 'Wiccan lifestyle'.  There isn't enough uniformity in the Pagan community.  Or the Wiccan community.  Or any other community that one usually hears/reads the term 'lifestyle' applied to.

An 'agricultural lifestyle' is totally different if you are talking about a 30 acre organic farm where a group grows some crops to sell, some to eat/preserve, a small amount of animals that keep them in meat/eggs/wool verse the lifestyle of migrant farm workers verses folks living on 3000 acres of monocropped wheat (and working a day job as well) verses folks with 3000 acres with meat cattle in Wyoming.

Humans have lives. Stereotypes/straw men have lifestyles.