Interesting book
My friend Jo recently loaned me Eric Brende's "Better Off." (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/B000FTWAYU/ref=cm_rev_next/103-9649686-7958247?ie=UTF8&customer-reviews.sort%5Fby=-SubmissionDate&n=283155&s=books&customer-reviews.start=11 This is also available at the Athens Public Library if anyone is interested) It's a pretty interesting premise. An MIT masters student who is studying technology's effect on society decides to see how much modern technology he can live without. He and his wife go to live in a settlement of religious/amish-like people (not actually the amish, the people come from several different religious backgrounds, although all are christian, but all came seeking a strict lifestyle) without electricity or running water. The book was frustrating to me at times, because the author wouldn't acknowledge some of the contradictions inherent in choosing that life in today's society. He and his wife put their car in storage for the most part, but took it out for "emergencies." One such emergency was that they weren't paying attention to their pumpkin crop and had to move all the pumpkins in one day. They did this by loading the car for multiple trips. Pulling your car out to make up for your own procrastination hardly seems in keeping with his experiment, but I suppose I should be happy that he at least reported his mistakes instead of glossing over them. But that was one of my issues with it. He claims that he worked fewer hours tending his pumpkin and sorghum patches than he would have with a typical 9 to 5 job. But he took shortcuts (like the car) when he got in too deep, and he clearly had more help from his neighbors than he was able to give back. He made a big deal out of riding bicycles everywhere, and yet I couldn't stop thinking about how those bikes were manufactured products. Lightweight, modern aluminum frames, rubber tires, precision cut gears. This is a machine that a blacksmith could put together, or if one could, then I guarantee that it would be alot harder to pedal uphill. The same with their clothes. His wife started sewing them; oneof their neighbors fitted her modern machine with a treadle foot. So it ran on foot power, but again was a modern, manufactured machine. There is no mention of anyone keeping sheep, or spinning, or weaving cloth. So we all know where the cloth comes from. So while I applaud his willingness to give up tv, running water, electric lights, and the telephone; I have a hard time recognizing his experiment for what he thought it was. He as an individual might have been able to give up technology, but but he (and his community) did not have the skills to be self sufficient. And yet he constantly described the various families in the community that way. To me, their way of life is only possible because there are others not living it. He also does point out that they sell their produce to the "city folk" who come to the town looking for homegrown vegetables. Again, they do need money to buy the things they can't make, and they rely on people from outside the community to drive to them and purchase their goods.
All of my frustrations aside, the author raises some good points. One of them being the cost of maintaining a car. What we spend on gas, insurance, repairs, and the cost of the car itself is a good chunk of our paychecks. There are places you can get by in modern life without a car. New York city is often cited as an example, although the cost of living is so very high as to equal the cost of keeping a car elsewhere. I spent a year in Athens without a car. I wasn't in school at the time, so I found a job within walking distance of my apartment (1/2 hour one way if you are curious). I managed to buy a bike which cut my commute down to 15 minutes. I also walked/biked to the grocery store (1/2 hour to 45 minutes depending which one I went to. There was absolutely no point in buying frozen food as it would not be frozen by the time I got home. I didn't buy many soft drinks either, because they were heavy. The milk was usually verging on warm. Grocery shopping really was easier in the winter. You would think that I saved a ton of money during this time, but I didn't. I was making minimum wage at my job, and it was eaten up by rent, groceries and utilities. I didn't have cable or internet (I didn't own a computer at this time). Not that I would have cared too much at the time, it was 1996 and I hardly used email. So that was my own low tech period of time. Was I happier? Not really. I was stressed trying to the make the bills on my low pay, and my job was pretty miserable (I unloaded trucks at kmart). According to the author, I should have been relatively carefree and happier to be doing manual labor. We later got a car, Eli and I moved to a different part of town (after a brief time in Atlanta), and soon after is when I drove to Oregon to work for a summer. So there you go. The vehicle made it possible for me to have one of the best summers of my life. I didn't continue in wildlife, but my career would never have started without some form of transportation. And there is probably the basic problem with going back to an earlier lifestyle. I know about the world beyond my little corner of it. I want to travel and see it. This religious sect that the author joined had their own school, their own society, and little influence from the outside world. And maybe that's the only way to be happy. One of the community leaders even says it; if they had time to read books, then they would become something else, so they discourage it.
So here I am, wanting to be a good environmentalist and give up my car (never mind that I can't afford the rent within walking distance of my place of work), but the car also represents freedom. The irony of driving to a hiking trail in another part of the state isn't lost on me, and yet being stuck at kmart and seeing only my coworkers and my roommate for a whole year was a kind of hell. It very nearly destroyed my relationship with Eli. My existence boiled down to a crushing monotony. And maybe that's why the internet has become what it is. It is an escape, maybe not as satisfying as going to another country or a trip to the beach. But we get online, and play our virtual selves in games and we escape from going to work and doing the same motions every day. So what is the happy medium? Would I be happier if I stopped playing on the internet? Maybe. I always complain that I don't have enough time, and yet I manage to play guild wars usually at least once a week. Do I really need to see what everyone in the knitting community has made today? I could be knitting my own projects instead of checking out theirs. Wouldn't I rather hear my friends stories from their own lips rather than reading about them on lj?
So while the book was flawed, it did get me thinking about what I really need. And while I don't have that figured out yet, it is good to at least think about it.
All of my frustrations aside, the author raises some good points. One of them being the cost of maintaining a car. What we spend on gas, insurance, repairs, and the cost of the car itself is a good chunk of our paychecks. There are places you can get by in modern life without a car. New York city is often cited as an example, although the cost of living is so very high as to equal the cost of keeping a car elsewhere. I spent a year in Athens without a car. I wasn't in school at the time, so I found a job within walking distance of my apartment (1/2 hour one way if you are curious). I managed to buy a bike which cut my commute down to 15 minutes. I also walked/biked to the grocery store (1/2 hour to 45 minutes depending which one I went to. There was absolutely no point in buying frozen food as it would not be frozen by the time I got home. I didn't buy many soft drinks either, because they were heavy. The milk was usually verging on warm. Grocery shopping really was easier in the winter. You would think that I saved a ton of money during this time, but I didn't. I was making minimum wage at my job, and it was eaten up by rent, groceries and utilities. I didn't have cable or internet (I didn't own a computer at this time). Not that I would have cared too much at the time, it was 1996 and I hardly used email. So that was my own low tech period of time. Was I happier? Not really. I was stressed trying to the make the bills on my low pay, and my job was pretty miserable (I unloaded trucks at kmart). According to the author, I should have been relatively carefree and happier to be doing manual labor. We later got a car, Eli and I moved to a different part of town (after a brief time in Atlanta), and soon after is when I drove to Oregon to work for a summer. So there you go. The vehicle made it possible for me to have one of the best summers of my life. I didn't continue in wildlife, but my career would never have started without some form of transportation. And there is probably the basic problem with going back to an earlier lifestyle. I know about the world beyond my little corner of it. I want to travel and see it. This religious sect that the author joined had their own school, their own society, and little influence from the outside world. And maybe that's the only way to be happy. One of the community leaders even says it; if they had time to read books, then they would become something else, so they discourage it.
So here I am, wanting to be a good environmentalist and give up my car (never mind that I can't afford the rent within walking distance of my place of work), but the car also represents freedom. The irony of driving to a hiking trail in another part of the state isn't lost on me, and yet being stuck at kmart and seeing only my coworkers and my roommate for a whole year was a kind of hell. It very nearly destroyed my relationship with Eli. My existence boiled down to a crushing monotony. And maybe that's why the internet has become what it is. It is an escape, maybe not as satisfying as going to another country or a trip to the beach. But we get online, and play our virtual selves in games and we escape from going to work and doing the same motions every day. So what is the happy medium? Would I be happier if I stopped playing on the internet? Maybe. I always complain that I don't have enough time, and yet I manage to play guild wars usually at least once a week. Do I really need to see what everyone in the knitting community has made today? I could be knitting my own projects instead of checking out theirs. Wouldn't I rather hear my friends stories from their own lips rather than reading about them on lj?
So while the book was flawed, it did get me thinking about what I really need. And while I don't have that figured out yet, it is good to at least think about it.