On the other hand, you'd be surprised with how little you actually need in order to survive and live a peaceful, happy life. Building regulations are fine - if

On the other hand, you'd be surprised with how little you actually need in order to survive and live a peaceful, happy life. Building regulations are fine - if you wanna be a normal, living a normal life, in a normal society. But the world is a pretty big place. We don't all need these norms. You might have a morally authoritative view on just what basic needs a human has, and certainly can justify these requirements with a human ideal forged in your own social context, but the real honest truth is, most of those ideals are arbitrary. A lot of people can live without windows, especially if they're surrounded by nature 100% of the time, anyway. Plumbing? Who needs it if the rest of your property is set up for it - not everyone needs to live a decadent western lifestyle where running water is on demand within a few feet of your sleeping area, etc. A lot of the world survives just fine without all of these requirements, and from that perspective this "romanticism" is less of a fantasy, and more of a "what if .. we could live simpler lives, instead of more complex ones" - and that is the real merit of articles like this. To push us outside the "glass-half-empty/-full" norms that, ultimately, a lot of us are trapped in. ("Normal people use the word 'love'": Please tell me, what is normal. Because I don't believe you have a large enough sample size, honestly, based on your professed view...)