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Six ways to coexist with your neighbors

October 29, 2025

OPINION by GARY KIRKLAND

The following are six ways one may use to coexist happily with one’s neighbor, three honorable, two dishonorable, and one partly honorable.

One honorable way to deal with the neighbor is to just live with whatever the neighbor is doing. A second honorable way is to buy the neighbor out. If one cannot afford to buy the neighbor out, maybe one could get other neighbors to chip in funds.

A third honorable method to deal with a irritating neighbor is to move away.

A rather drastic dishonorable way to deal with a frustrating neighbor is just kill the person. This method may not only be drastic, but also illegal.

The second dishonorable method to deal with a recalcitrant neighbor is to run off to a heavy handed government to deal with the situation.  I have observed this to be the most popular way to deal with neighborly problems.

The partly honorable way to solve this sort of problem is to find something that annoys this sort of problem and start doing that. If the target objects negotiate. “I will stop doing what annoys you if you stop doing what annoys me.”

Be a good neighbor.

Gary Kirkland is a retired teacher, an Atascadero resident, 35-year-old stockholder in the Atascadero Mutual Water Company and president of the San Luis Obispo County Libertarian Party.

 


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Sorry Gary, my nearest neighbor is about a mile away and I think the land has been bought by a corporation. Unless someone visits (usually raccoons, possums or the dreaded feral pig) I rarely see anyone, which is how me and the dogs like it.


2

Step 1: Place NRA Member stickers on all vehicles


That is all


1

Leviticus 29:18


0

Typo, make that 19:18


3

Actually, L29:18 contributes quite well.


-1

Can’t find THAT verse; if you mean the Czec fighter, mebbe only for the very worst neighbors! ;0


-1

Regrettably, there is a great deal of truth to this commentary and even more so the further down one finds oneself on the socioeconomic ladder. Near the bottom rungs, where neighbors with the weakest and least amount of problem-solving and coping skills are expected to coexist in cramped quarters, the heavy-handed apartment managers, law enforcement, and community leaders that are to be the appointed heavy-handed problem-solvers, kind of flake out and adopt the common attitude of: “These bastards should just feel grateful to have a roof over their heads.” “Oh, and thank god it’s not in my back yard.” So, if you are one of these peace-craving neighbors on the lower rungs of society simply trying to coexist but finding it ever increasingly impossible due to the reality that in the end you are out there alone, on an island, yes, learn quickly Gary Kirkland’s sixth and saddest option. He calls it “finding something that annoys them”. I call it “speaking their language”.


2

What?


6

After reading this, I suspect most here would agree, which is rare, that we are glad you are not our neighbor. And yes thinking of killing your neighbor, legal or not, is bad. Highlighting that is a tad creepy.


15

Add 20 more ways to coexist for Trumps 2nd year. That’s how bad it will be.

The 3rd year? Fo’getta about it. We will be in a civil war under his destructive war path.

4th year? World war 3 with Trump.


-24

You already tried the “Civil War” and the “WWIII” bit during his last administration. Didn’t work out, like, at all, for you. The “No Kings” attempt is funny though, so if you wouldn’t mind, please keep coming up with these humorous whining things. Much more entertaining.


3

That sounds like an HOA handbook.


7

How about this….significantly reduce the risks of run-ins with neighbors by not moving into a low quality, overpriced, overtaxed, HOA / nimby controlled neighborhood where your bathroom window has a perfect view of the bathroom window next door, and where you have to negotiate 10 tight, unnecessary roundabouts on narrow streets just to get out of said “neighborhood”.


14