We have a rare dis­ease. We call it Sat­is­fac­tion. Most of us con­tracted it in our early twen­ties, al­though it ger­mi­nated in many even ear­lier. At the time of pub­li­ca­tion, much un­cer­tainty ex­ists as to our abil­ity to live in close prox­im­ity to nor­mal so­ci­ety on a per­ma­nent basis. Our dis­ease is widely be­lieved to be con­ta­gious and the con­se­quence of God’s great dis­plea­sure be­sides.

Among the in­fected too there is de­bate on the mer­its of var­i­ous colony con­fig­u­ra­tions, but it is now clear to us that we must live to­gether. As for being con­ta­gious (prob­a­bly, hope­fully) and dis­pleas­ing God (cer­tainly we pro­voke wrath in the up­hold­ers of mod­ern so­ci­ety’s main tenets) these fac­tor into our de­ci­sion also, but our cal­cu­la­tion is dif­fer­ent. Our main goal is to in­fect. Don’t be shocked. Let me give a full ac­count of the dis­ease, its symp­toms, di­ag­no­sis, and prog­no­sis and you can judge for your­self.

Sat­is­fac­tion has its roots in mod­ern Amer­i­can com­forts. For the ma­jor­ity basic food and shel­ter were a given, elec­tric­ity and gaso­line did our heavy lift­ing and en­ter­tained too, a large num­ber of our gen­er­a­tion at­tended col­lege, we moved about the world at will. With these com­forts came mod­ern ex­cess — fierce com­pe­ti­tion amongst a pop­u­la­tion un­easy with the idea that there is no longer a fron­tier, the quiet iso­la­tion of sub­urbs cars tele­vi­sion and fear, ubiq­ui­tous pol­lu­tion, ram­pant obe­sity, com­mon cal­lous ex­ploita­tion.

Against this back­drop we set out with the nat­ural goal of every gen­er­a­tion, to have a bet­ter go of it than our par­ents did. The only dif­fer­ence for our gen­er­a­tion is the am­bi­gu­ity of what ex­actly bet­ter means. To at­tain a stan­dard of liv­ing with more ma­te­r­ial com­forts than our par­ent’s gen­er­a­tion we would need to make vast sums of money. It some­times seems that it would be bet­ter to have fewer mod­ern ills — but this line of rea­son­ing is con­tentious.

These ex­cesses are al­ter­nately blamed on ran­dom chance and touted as ab­solutely, sci­en­tif­i­cally (un­for­tu­nately) es­sen­tial to our stan­dard of liv­ing. The sug­ges­tion that com­fort might be weighed on a more ra­tio­nal scale against ex­cess is quickly shouted down. So our gen­er­a­tion set sail under the flag flown by the gen­er­a­tions be­fore us, but was trou­bled by the shadow it cast.

Often the first sign of a change in course, the first sign of in­fec­tion, is a sud­den out­burst of “Fuck it. I’m happy here.” This thought jumped out at me many times. The back­drop could have been one of sev­eral places in the South — the rhodo­den­dron over the rolling moun­tain­tops, the sand­stone bluffs, the rocky creeks they stood high above, or just a patch of sunny grass — but the friends were al­ways dear ones and the set­ting was al­ways beau­ti­ful. The thing you are dis­mis­sively curs­ing is harder to pin down, but in your mind the com­fort side of the scale is be­gin­ning to wob­ble off the ground. If these im­pulses go un­treated, the pro­gres­sion of the dis­ease be­comes sure and swift. Some­thing deep in­side of you shifts and re­set­tles. The scale now bal­ances freely.

Aldo Leopold ex­pe­ri­enced this shift watch­ing the pale green fire die (and re­al­iz­ing the wolf he just killed had an inner life which de­served ex­is­tence), Thoreau by idling while his beans grew be­side Walden Pond (and grow­ing his own inner life like corn in the night), and Abbey by (… well cagey old Ed never told any­one but prob­a­bly…) see­ing his first buz­zard soar over the desert (where he is today, ei­ther under the sand or rein­car­nate in the buz­zard).

The exact cat­a­lyst varies but the dis­ease is now en­trenched. Friends, time, beauty, love, sim­plic­ity, si­lence all take un­ques­tioned prece­dence over riches, so­ci­ety’s ex­pec­ta­tions, mod­ern wants. You take de­sires, dis­till down your needs, and skim off your wants. You lose your pos­ses­sive sense of places and they take up pos­ses­sion of you. You are sat­is­fied.

Our gen­er­a­tion is now ap­proach­ing full adult­hood. Many of them have gar­nered real jobs in en­gi­neer­ing, busi­ness, man­age­ment, fi­nance. They are poised to make the vast sums of money they will re­quire and are mak­ing names for them­selves. We, the in­fected, took sea­sonal out­doors work, in­tern­ships, artist-in-res­i­den­cies, trav­el­ing, jobs at tiny non-prof­its, more ed­u­ca­tion.

We too are mak­ing a name for our­selves, al­though it is too often mis­pro­nounced. Our par­ents have di­ag­nosed a bad econ­omy, wan­der­lust, a re­turn of the six­ties flower chil­dren, even sloth. Pun­dits group us in with the larger mass of ‘twenty-some­things’ or label us ‘green’. Sat­is­fac­tion is often mis­di­ag­nosed. (Fair enough. If it was a med­i­cine rather than a dis­ease the bot­tle might read: “Warn­ing: side ef­fects may in­clude mak­ing art, bi­cy­cling, knowl­edge of east­ern re­li­gious prac­tice, wak­ing up in the woods… ” and so on for at least a page.)

Sat­is­fac­tion doesn’t mean spend­ing our lives med­i­tat­ing in full lotus on a moun­tain­top, on our par­ent’s couch, or shop­ping at trendy or­ganic su­per­mar­kets. The hip­pies of the six­ties were “a gen­er­a­tion search­ing for the bars of the cage.” Fore­warned, we are ready with hack­saws. Lump­ing us with the bulk of our job hunt­ing gen­er­a­tion isn’t cor­rect ei­ther. Seek­ing a (high pay­ing) job or a (long dis­ap­peared) se­cure ca­reer is dif­fer­ent than seek­ing a (sat­is­fy­ing) vo­ca­tion. While the New York Times wor­ries that “so­cial in­sti­tu­tions are miss­ing out on young peo­ple con­tribut­ing to pro­duc­tiv­ity and growth,” we would rather con­tribute to some­thing more worth­while. La­bel­ing all of our ac­tions, mo­ti­va­tions, and thoughts as “green” is per­haps the most com­mon mis­di­ag­no­sis. Aye, we are peo­ple at home in the woods. We’ve read our Muir. We ride bi­cy­cles. We can cook a healthy meal from scratch. But our mo­ti­va­tion is dif­fer­ent than the “green” move­ment as mo­ti­vated by ad­ver­tis­ing-in­duced guilt to try and pro­tect “our” en­vi­ron­ment.

Enough about what Sat­is­fac­tion is not for now. It must be un­der­stood for what it is and where it is going, for in it we see the fu­ture.

With Sat­is­fac­tion comes the need to act. We must learn to set­tle the scale on a bal­ance be­tween the good of com­forts and the harm of ex­cess, to live health­ily with Sat­is­fac­tion. If hu­mankind ever had this knowl­edge we don’t now and des­per­ately need it. We spent so long strug­gling to sur­vive against na­ture that we didn’t re­al­ize we had made it and be­fore our think­ing caught up we had plunged ahead try­ing to con­quer na­ture, to our detri­ment. So it is our gen­er­a­tion’s job to bring hu­man­ity’s way of think­ing up to mod­ern re­al­ity, to put bal­ance to the test, and to teach what works well. Our gauge will be what pro­motes hap­pi­ness, ful­fill­ment, di­rect con­nec­tions to other peo­ple and the nat­ural world, and sim­ple beauty. Our met­ric will be what works not just for our gen­er­a­tion but will work for the fu­ture of the nat­ural com­mu­nity around us and for our grand­chil­dren’s gen­er­a­tion.

We worry, though, that Sat­is­fac­tion may be fleet­ing, that mod­ern so­ci­ety’s at­ti­tudes may spread like its strip malls over our souls be­fore we find our way. That with­out lots of en­cour­age­ment and in­spi­ra­tion from like-minded peo­ple, we will wan­der lost. So we have de­cided to band to­gether and form our own so­ci­ety — where every­one can pur­sue their own vo­ca­tions, un­der­stand their con­nec­tions to each other and the land, walk to see a friend, gather around a com­mon meal, test these wild ideas. We have no il­lu­sions of com­plete self suf­fi­ciency, com­plete iso­la­tion from mod­ern so­ci­ety, or com­plete ease in our world. We merely hope to bring more value to the world than we take from it, sup­port our­selves well, and so be­come con­ta­gious. Some­day we hope to see our chil­dren set off on long walks or bi­cy­cle jour­neys to like minded com­mu­ni­ties scat­tered across the land, and re­turn with sto­ries and ideas and news of how Sat­is­fac­tion is spread­ing.

A cold thrust of wind and rain lifted the tent off the ground. I clutched the top with my numbed fin­gers, find­ing pur­chase at the point where the poles crossed in the cen­ter. The tent went hor­i­zon­tal in the air, and I braced to keep it from fly­ing into the lake. I wres­tled it down when the gust slack­ened. It had been cold and rainy all day, as I hiked to over 10,000 feet in the wilder­ness of Ecuador. I man­aged to fix a bro­ken tent pole that night, crawl into my dry refuge and squeeze some emer­gency en­ergy gel into my mouth while thaw­ing in my cold-weather sleep­ing bag.

I’m not crazy. I did not have fun. Yet two more times dur­ing my five-week solo trip to Ecuador I re­turned to the wilder­ness to revel and roam in moun­tain land­scapes with­out en­coun­ter­ing any­one else for days. Ex­plor­ing na­ture wasn’t the cen­tral pur­pose of that trip. It isn’t even the cen­tral pur­pose of this story. What I re­ally want to tell you is how I got there. What made me cut my­self off and not look back to safety and com­fort when what I wanted to do was out there.

Two years be­fore Ecuador, I dis­ap­peared from my fam­ily and friends early in the sum­mer. Only a few months out of high school, I showed up to col­lege with only what I was wear­ing. I waited in line that first day to get my blood drawn, my di­men­sions mea­sured, and my head shaved. From the first shouted com­mands of the up­per­class­men, I learned how to tune out every­thing but the in­for­ma­tion re­quired to stay out of trou­ble.

I never fit into the mil­i­tary mold. I re­mained pen­sive be­hind the poker face of at­ten­tion and com­pli­ance. In­stead of work­ing out or study­ing, I did just enough to get by. I ded­i­cated my­self to per­sonal pro­jects like speed read­ing, com­pet­i­tive chess, or sneak­ing away with books that would broaden my per­spec­tives about the mil­i­tary. Al­though I ex­celled, I was un­happy that my fu­ture pur­pose was still un­known.

Fur­ther­more, I didn’t con­nect with the per­son­al­ity typ­i­cal of the place. I didn’t con­nect with the mil­i­tary’s es­capists ei­ther. Es­capists have the at­ti­tude of tol­er­at­ing things until the next chance to pre­tend to be nor­mal; that is, to get out and party. One week­end we were al­lowed out of the cam­pus gates, but I didn’t have any plans. I still felt the need to get away and I took the op­por­tu­nity, walk­ing out the gate with a small pack and an extra pair of clothes. We weren’t sup­posed to roam around town out of uni­form, so I used a bath­room in a mu­seum nearby to change. I then slipped under a bridge and along the water’s edge to stash my uni­form under some rocks. I en­joyed my week­end: walk­ing for miles, read­ing Cat’s Cra­dle and sleep­ing on the ground. I spent the first night in a park, where I had a sur­prise awak­en­ing when a dog sniffed out my lo­ca­tion on his morn­ing walk.

I de­cided that the mil­i­tary wasn’t the place for me, so I trans­ferred after my sopho­more year. Nor­mal col­lege drew me in. I was on board again with a le­git­i­mate or­ga­ni­za­tion that I had no reser­va­tions about. I was doing some­thing valu­able and re­spected by main­stream so­ci­ety. But I was still jug­gling per­sonal goals. I sped up my goal to learn a sec­ond lan­guage be­fore grad­u­a­tion. I looked up lan­guage schools in dif­fer­ent South Amer­i­can coun­tries and or­ga­nized my own trip. I talked on the phone with the head of a Span­ish school in Quito, and booked my flight.

I read up on the coun­try’s pol­i­tics and his­tory the week be­fore going and made my first friend in the air­port, wait­ing for the flight from Miami. On the flight over, I had to re­peat to the in­cred­u­lous tourist sit­ting next to me that I was nei­ther sight­see­ing with a friend nor re­ceiv­ing some kind of in­sti­tu­tional sup­port or class credit. I was on my own, push­ing my­self to learn out­side of my com­fort zone.

I’ll al­ways come home to recharge, to share ideas with my base of friends, and to build my con­fi­dence in more tra­di­tion­ally ac­cepted pur­suits. But to re­ally push my bound­aries out­ward I need to take a step back from com­mon ex­pe­ri­ence and ven­ture out into the world with a new vi­sion of what is pos­si­ble in life. Some­times wait­ing for the right op­por­tu­nity is just too nor­mal to work.

There oc­curred a sneaky move in the de­vel­op­ment of pub­lic trans­porta­tion in­fra­struc­ture in the United States around 1940–50, one that set us back con­sid­er­ably. But of course, at the time, those in­volved truly be­lieved they were look­ing out for Amer­i­can cit­i­zens, doing their part to im­prove our qual­ity of life, and es­pe­cially theirs. Could you en­vi­sion a rail-ori­ented struc­ture in our larger cities? How about a Los An­ge­les or De­troit that moves more like San Fran­cisco? It is safe to say there was no sin­gle cause in US his­tory that ma­nip­u­lated our sys­tem to be so auto-de­pen­dent; the rea­sons are var­ied and nu­mer­ous. How­ever, there is one event in par­tic­u­lar which could be ar­gued to be the cat­a­lyst of the au­to­mo­bile trend while help­ing erase the pos­si­bil­ity of pub­lic rail tran­sit as a vi­able form of trans­porta­tion.

The Great Amer­i­can Street­car Scan­dal was ex­e­cuted with such a swift and dex­ter­ous hand that even the US Supreme Court even­tu­ally no­ticed. The list of play­ers is im­pres­sive: Na­tional City Lines, Amer­i­can City Lines, Pa­cific City Lines, Stan­dard Oil, Fed­eral En­gi­neer­ing Corp, Phillips Pe­tro­leum, Gen­eral Mo­tors, Fire­stone Tire, and Rub­ber and Mack Man­u­fac­tur­ing. Their ul­ti­mate goal, which they ac­com­plished, was to buy out all of the street­car com­pa­nies in major US cities and dis­man­tle the in­fra­struc­ture, clear­ing the pub­lic trans­porta­tion slate and lay­ing the foun­da­tion for a sys­tem re­liant al­most en­tirely on com­bus­tion en­gine mo­bil­ity. It was clear they were in ca­hoots and were all con­victed of crim­i­nal con­spir­acy in 1950. Forty-five cities that all had sys­tems com­pa­ra­ble to San Fran­cisco were af­fected, in­clud­ing: Bal­ti­more, Cleve­land, De­troit, Los An­ge­les, New York City, Oak­land, Philadel­phia, Salt Lake City, St. Louis, and Tulsa.

This event pre­cip­i­tated the no­to­ri­ous pat­tern of de­vel­op­ment that dis­tin­guishes the US from all other de­vel­oped coun­tries in the world and played a huge part in our re­source-con­sum­ing lifestyle: sprawl­ing sub­di­vi­sions, count­less miles of im­pres­sively en­gi­neered free­ways, acres of park­ing lots, and drive-through restau­rants; a world molded by the needs of the car. What is im­por­tant to note is that this oc­curred so early in our de­vel­op­ment as a na­tion (mid 1940s) that we don’t re­ally have a col­lec­tive mem­ory of an es­tab­lished sys­tem ex­ist­ing be­fore the au­to­mo­bile; there is noth­ing to miss nor any ro­man­tic yearn­ing for how things used to be. And the street­cars of San Fran­cisco seem to us a taste of Eu­ro­pean cul­ture, an ex­otic nov­elty that is ap­pre­ci­ated, but no doubt out of place in our idea of Amer­i­can cul­ture.

Though this event is, for the most part, lost in our so­ci­ety’s col­lec­tive mem­ory, there is a clas­sic 1988 movie that clev­erly de­liv­ers the story: Who Framed Roger Rab­bit. For those of you who have seen it, there is no for­get­ting Judge Doom, the movie’s main an­tag­o­nist. He plots to de­stroy Toon­town, a car­toon world rem­i­nis­cent of Amer­ica’s ro­man­ti­cized “Main Street”, with DIP, a deadly com­bi­na­tion of paint thin­ners. In its place he en­vi­sions a free­way, and the par­al­lels be­tween Judge Doom and GM (with Fire­stone and Stan­dard Oil) are un­mis­tak­ably clear. Doom says, “… I see a place where peo­ple get on and off the free­way. On and off, off and on all day, all night. Soon, where Toon­town once stood will be a string of gas sta­tions, in­ex­pen­sive mo­tels, restau­rants that serve rapidly pre­pared food. Tire sa­lons, au­to­mo­bile deal­er­ships and won­der­ful bill­boards reach­ing as far as the eye can see. My God, it’ll be beau­ti­ful!” Eddie, one of the pro­tag­o­nists, is a pri­vate in­ves­ti­ga­tor hired to find out who killed the owner of Toon­town. When he hears of Judge Doom’s plans, he re­sponds, “No­body’s gonna drive this lousy free­way when they can take the Red Car for a nickel.” The “Red Car” being Los An­ge­les’ prof­itable and re­li­able pub­lic rail sys­tem be­fore GM gained own­er­ship and dis­man­tled it. By the end of the movie, the good guys pre­vail, as one would ex­pect in Hol­ly­wood; Judge Doom is de­stroyed, the free­way never gets built, and Toon­town and its res­i­dents live hap­pily ever after. Un­for­tu­nately, in the real world, the bad guys got away with a nom­i­nal fee after being con­victed of con­spir­acy and still got to build their free­ways.

To all those who make con­scious choices to aban­don the ve­hi­cle when not ab­solutely nec­es­sary, we are un­plug­ging, lit­tle by lit­tle, from the pow­er­ful reign of the auto in­dus­try. But the more im­por­tant mes­sage here is that we are plug­ging back in to the idea of Toon­town; of a bustling com­mu­nity where peo­ple bump into each other on the street, where strangers share their per­sonal space with the world around them. In­stead: car­pool, take the bus, take the train, ride your bike, roller skate! When and where pos­si­ble, re­move the bar­rier that iso­lates you from your sur­round­ings and be open to meet­ing a stranger and hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion that seems to be just the right ex­change at just the right mo­ment.

North­ern Al­abama drips in the sum­mer heat. My par­ents ride bi­cy­cles four miles to the river after din­ner. They come upon friends along the path, and fly along in a swoop­ing wasp-like pack. The green­way runs along a drainage creek, wide enough that they ride in side-by-side pairs talk­ing, or peel off and go on ahead, watch­ing for a heron and lis­ten­ing to the wall of in­sect sound. The sum­mer’s new bik­ing friends seem in­ter­est­ing from the news that trick­les across the coun­try through the phone lines. One cou­ple shares with neigh­bors their mar­garita ma­chine, an ap­pli­ance as large and com­plex as an espresso maker. An­other man is sev­enty-five and has al­ready ac­com­plished his re­tire­ment goal of rid­ing 100,000 miles. My par­ents and their new bike friends have din­ners to­gether and take dri­ves to Mis­sis­sippi and Geor­gia to ride the rail trails.

To keep cool my dad rides in a wicker mesh gar­den hat. Here is a man whose daugh­ters once had to coax him away from the tele­vi­sion to go on a walk; now he coaxes his wife to ride in the heat of the af­ter­noons, not want­ing to wait even for the rel­a­tive cool of after din­ner. One week­end he went with the sep­tu­a­ge­nar­ian to Geor­gia and rode sev­enty-two miles in one day. Could I be­lieve it? Boy, was he sore after, but it felt… good.

They took their bikes with them to Florida and rode along the open roads, en­joy­ing the beach winds. The cars and RVs that lum­bered by did so in ac­cor­dance with the state park’s speed limit, my mom re­ported tri­umphantly. It was re­ally nice.

But then, last week Mom boasted that they’d biked all the way across town to have din­ner with my sis­ter, a 28-mile round trip. I found my­self imag­in­ing the route. Did they re­ally bike on Bob Wal­lace? My par­ents, rid­ing their low-to-the-ground re­cum­bents?

Last year a car a hit a cy­clist on sim­i­lar road nearby. A friend sent me the ar­ti­cle in which most of the on­line com­menters blamed the vic­tim. “Even chil­dren know not to ride their bikes in the street for fear of being hit by a car.” “Save your b.s. about the ve­hi­cle op­er­a­tor being at fault. If peo­ple want to ride their bikes on busy pub­lic streets they’re tak­ing their own chances.” An­other com­menter noted that “Re­gard­less of the laws, its kinda hard to see a bike in that kinda traf­fic esp in the dark with the head­lights shin­ing in our face.” In Al­abama, “the streets are made for CARS AND TRUCKS!” they said, and bike rid­ers de­serve what­ever they get.

Some peo­ple gen­uinely feel that they should not ever have to move over or slow down to pass a bi­cy­cle on the road. I could just imag­ine the “bro” bear­ing down on my par­ents (he would be dri­ving a lifted truck with a mud­din’ snorkel). In the cold cal­cu­la­tion in his face, there would be a right­eous glint in his eye as he got ready to give them a lit­tle scare. My dear sweet par­ents, bik­ing on the road with those heat-crazed ma­ni­acs?

Wait a minute. My par­ents are bik­ing. They are ex­er­cis­ing, being so­cial, spend­ing time out­side, watch­ing less tele­vi­sion. Let’s talk about my dad, com­pare the risks of being hit by a car while bik­ing with what he was doing be­fore. Which life choices are bet­ter for his health?

Amanda Hein­bockel

My dad is an en­gi­neer, a mas­ter of mak­ing com­plex draw­ings on the com­puter, a man who can build any­thing. After dri­ving his 30-minute com­mute, he crunches his 6’4” frame into an of­fice chair for eight hours, then dri­ves the half hour back home. He pro­ceeds to watch (by his own es­ti­mate) an av­er­age of four hours of tele­vi­sion per night: keep­ing up with at least twelve shows (plus the Braves) on the gi­gan­tic flat screen that dom­i­nates the liv­ing room. Four hours a day? That’s less than the na­tional av­er­age, but still the time equiv­a­lent of work­ing a sec­ond part-time job. A full time job, an hour com­mut­ing, and a sec­ond part-time job com­mit­ted to tv-watch­ing. My dad is a busy man, but he spends a lot of his time pas­sively being en­ter­tained. He does not have a lot of time left over for sleep. Or ex­er­cise, or time with friends, or time out­doors.

Could bik­ing be a way for my Dad to re­dis­cover what he ac­tu­ally likes doing, re­con­nect with him­self and find some ad­ven­ture? He and my mom bike for an hour and a half every evening now. Nearly every day, for the past six months. And my dad, my dad, is the di­rect mo­ti­va­tor, en­cour­ag­ing mom to brave the heat and bike down to the river. They started slow and have moved to longer rides, bik­ing forty or fifty miles along trails. My dad’s emails con­tain a new sense of pride, a sur­prised hap­pi­ness that his body can do such things on its own. His knees feel bet­ter since he started bik­ing. He’s talk­ing about long bike tours next, overnight tours.

They’ve made new friends, and started in­ter­act­ing with na­ture with an in­ten­sity I haven’t seen in them since my child­hood camp­ing trips. Where they live is built around the au­to­mo­bile and the tele­vi­sion and the air con­di­tioner. There is no mass tran­sit, things are spread out way be­yond walk­ing dis­tance, and there are few good gath­er­ing places. You see your friends in the aisles of Wal-Mart and catch up briefly, and then re­treat to the next re­frig­er­ated box. It’s a sys­tem that is hard to es­cape.

Yet they’re doing it. They rode in Crit­i­cal Mass last month. My dad now knows about Warm Show­ers, and he watched that viral video of Am­s­ter­dam and found out that streets and even street lights just for bi­cy­cles exist. He’s read­ing blogs by peo­ple who are tak­ing a while to bike across coun­try, and mak­ing plans for next sum­mer.

There is some mea­sure of peace to be found by bik­ing down to the water, a self-suf­fi­ciency in find­ing your body can go places under its own power. They are mak­ing them­selves happy, their daugh­ters proud. Still the pic­ture of the grin­ning good-ole-boy bear­ing down on the two lit­tle re­cum­bents on the road lingers. I’ve learned in pub­lic health classes that peo­ple tend to be bad at es­ti­mat­ing risk. Any­thing that is in­vol­un­tary, rare, or fear-based seems more risky, while things like car wrecks and heart dis­ease seem al­most nor­mal. We can’t for­get that sta­tus-quo has risks as well, and that peo­ple chron­i­cally un­der­es­ti­mate the risks of the things they al­ready do.

Do not fail to un­der­take new ad­ven­tures be­cause they might be risky. What you are al­ready doing might be risky. If you live a seden­tary lifestyle and pick up bik­ing, your over­all risk of death de­creases. The crazy-eyed SUV dri­ver is out there and so are other ob­jec­tive haz­ards: par­al­lel cracks in the side­walk, rail­road tracks, and the door zone. But you’re ex­er­cis­ing and so­cial­iz­ing and prob­a­bly get­ting hap­pier, putting you at less risk for obe­sity and car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease and the other re­ally big killers in the US.

And why talk just about death. Maybe in­stead we can give a nod to the emerg­ing field of he­do­nis­tic psy­chol­ogy and talk about hap­pi­ness right here and now. Why not ride down the hill with the wind in your hair and go on long bike rides through the town and coun­try­side and eat at din­ers and swim in rivers or go raid dump­sters at mid­night and ride through the streets stuff­ing rolls in your mouth and howl­ing at the moon. So what if cars have to go a lit­tle slower, and you have to keep your wits about you to avoid the right turn­ers and cell phone talk­ers on your morn­ing com­mute. At least you ar­rive awake, and full of en­ergy, re­turn home with the stress burned off. So I can’t wait to see where my par­ents go next. Es­pe­cially if it’s on the road.

“It’s like a bal­let. They move around in uni­son, and then there’s drama when the hawks come. It’s unique. It’s bet­ter than TV,” said Maren, my de facto tour guide to the vaux swift watch last Thurs­day night. We walked on the side­walk ap­proach­ing the Chap­man School lo­cated in North­west Port­land, Ore­gon. Our necks craned up­ward as the con­cen­tra­tion of tiny black birds in­ten­si­fied.

The des­ti­na­tion for these birds was a brick smoke­stack, a relic of the early twen­ti­eth cen­tury school build­ing. No longer used for its con­structed pur­pose, the smoke­stack now serves as the nightly rest­ing place of more than twelve thou­sand mi­grat­ing swifts dur­ing the month of Sep­tem­ber. Every year since the early 1980s, the swifts have come to roost to­gether in the brick col­umn.

As I walked up the hill, a crowd of sev­eral hun­dred Port­landers emerged. Hold­ing binoc­u­lars, sip­ping on root beer, and sit­ting on blan­kets, they watched as the birds formed a giant cy­clone, spi­ral­ing into the chim­ney. “The birds are com­ing from the clouds in Port­land and going in there!” one five-year old boy ex­plained to me as he pointed to the chim­ney.

Sev­eral green-vested Port­land Audubon mem­bers walked among the crowd to an­swer ques­tions. Rob vis­ited my group, ex­plain­ing the lifestyle of a swift. He de­scribed how swifts never stop dur­ing the day. They can’t. Their feet are tiny gar­den rakes, stiff and in­ca­pable of grab­bing branches. Their heart rate, only sur­passed by hum­ming­birds, does not allow them to rest until night.

The dom­i­nate ques­tion in­volved the tor­nado of swifts tak­ing part in their bed­time rit­ual. “They talk to each other and cre­ate this vor­tex. It’s a rit­ual they go through every night. The vor­tex is the most ef­fi­cient way for them to get into the small hole,” Rob said.

Just then, a pere­grine fal­con erupted from the chim­ney empty handed. Screams and gasps from the crowd in­ter­rupted the ca­sual evening con­ver­sa­tions.

The vor­tex dis­si­pated and formed a new cloud. Thou­sands of swifts chased the fal­con. The new cloud be­came a ser­pent in the sky as it twisted and coiled to fol­low the preda­tor. Some call it self-de­fense and oth­ers call it lib­er­a­tion the­ory. Ei­ther way, their plan did not work. The fal­con, in­dif­fer­ent to the thou­sands of angry fol­low­ers, looped around for an­other go.

“He got one!” yelled a spec­ta­tor. His tone was a mix­ture of sad­ness and ex­cite­ment. “You dirty bug­ger!” he con­tin­ued.

As night fell and the final swifts found their place, the crowd grabbed their blan­kets and re­trieved their bi­cy­cles. I walked back to mine, con­tem­plat­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of the evening. The night had a dizzy­ing elec­tric­ity to it. My psy­che buried it­self in un­di­vided fas­ci­na­tion as I tracked one bird after an­other.

Above all else, I loved how the swifts have found a place for them­selves in the mod­ern land­scape. They could have found a hol­lowed out tree like their an­ces­tors had been doing for thou­sands of years, but they chose a smoke­stack in­stead. The end re­sult: the masses re­sponded pos­i­tively, wel­com­ing change to their Sep­tem­ber evenings.

Is the choice of the swifts un­re­lated to the ques­tions we face in our world today? The temp­ta­tion is to lead a life of crit­i­cism, start over, and build a new com­mu­nity. But maybe such a re­treat an­swers the wrong ques­tion. The ques­tion is not, how can we sep­a­rate our­selves and make our world pure? The ques­tion is, can our worlds har­mo­nize?

The un­plug­ging move­ment rep­re­sents more than the main­stream as­sim­i­la­tion of mod­ern en­vi­ron­men­tal­ism. The trend to­ward in­te­grat­ing green con­scious­ness into the pop­u­lar dis­course is a step in the right di­rec­tion. Yet, the no­tion that ma­te­r­ial cul­ture can at­tain ex­is­ten­tial sal­va­tion by buy­ing or­gan­ics in re-us­able bags leaves me un­sat­is­fied, unin­spired, and im­pa­tient. The con­sump­tion of feel-good-about-your-pur­chase la­bels pack­aged around mar­gin­ally bet­ter goods and ser­vices only raises ques­tions about the mar­ket­ing cam­paign and a hol­low feel­ing. After decades of hard-fought bat­tles, we are toast­ing vic­tory from a wa­tered-down ver­sion of con­ser­va­tion, sus­tain­abil­ity, and so­cial jus­tice.

Al­though good has come from the green move­ment, con­sumers still con­sume more than ever. Re­new­able en­ergy, ef­fi­ciency stan­dards, and pub­lic pol­icy hold promise for re­duc­ing the im­pact of our lifestyle, but one sim­ple nat­ural law trumps these well-in­ten­tioned ef­forts: if you cre­ate more, peo­ple will con­sume more. If more food is avail­able, a species’ pop­u­la­tion will grow until it ex­ceeds car­ry­ing ca­pac­ity. When the pop­u­la­tion ex­ceeds car­ry­ing ca­pac­ity, it has to shrink until it reaches sus­tain­able lev­els.

This logic ap­plies to us as well. Our cul­ture de­mands that we find a way to con­sume more. More re­sources, more en­ergy, more con­sumerism is the sure­fire mod­ern recipe for per­sonal suc­cess and a grow­ing econ­omy. Tech­nol­ogy may allow us to do more with less, but it doesn’t get at the heart of this prob­lem.

We must sim­plify our ma­te­r­ial de­mands and take pos­ses­sion of our own iden­ti­ties. Re­duc­ing our de­pen­dence on the in­dus­trial life-sup­port sys­tem for in­di­vid­ual pur­pose, col­lec­tive iden­tity, and sus­te­nance is the most re­li­able way to at­tain equi­lib­rium with the planet and our­selves. Much more cer­tain than wait­ing around for fu­sion-pow­ered fly­ing trac­tors har­vest­ing local heir­loom or­gan­ics (al­though that would be cool).

Many ma­te­r­ial, eco­nomic, and socio-po­lit­i­cal ob­sta­cles stand in the way of mass sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of our ma­te­r­ial lifestyles. What do I have to give up? Where would I live? What would I eat? Are there cars? What do I do for work? Is there even money? Are you sug­gest­ing we aban­don it all and live like cave­men? These are worth­while ques­tions.

How­ever, this isn’t where the rapid and spon­ta­neous dis­man­tle­ment of the cur­rent sys­tem (the Great Un­plug­ging) be­gins; not with pon­der­ing the phys­i­cal form of the fu­ture and doubts about mea­sur­ing up to aus­ter­ity. It starts with one ques­tion: “Is your soul pre­pared for dras­tic change?”

Win peo­ple’s souls and their minds will fol­low. Win peo­ple’s minds and their bod­ies will act ac­cord­ingly. The best way to mo­bi­lize peo­ple to solve our pre­sent cri­sis is to get them ex­cited about an­swer­ing “Yes!”.

If suc­cess or fail­ure of this planet and of human be­ings de­pended on how I am and what I do... How would I be?
What would I do?

Buck­min­ster Fuller

There is a tribe of no­mads and trav­el­ers orig­i­nat­ing in the moun­tains of West­ern Mon­go­lia and Cen­tral Siberia with pock­ets in the Pa­cific North­west and as far as New Jer­sey and Al­abama. These ex­plor­ers travel light and carry lit­tle. Their largest bags are those filled with their sto­ries, their mem­o­ries, and their Love.

They are sus­tained by a dy­namic bal­ance of Com­mu­nion and Au­ton­omy, of Sup­port and Free­dom. To them it is as nat­ural and nec­es­sary as breath­ing — com­ing to­gether, let­ting go, com­ing to­gether, let­ting go.

When two such no­mads meet each other, after briefly paus­ing to honor the Mys­tery of Change, they hug em­phat­i­cally. The cer­e­mony is a reaf­fir­ma­tion of the par­a­digm that sus­tains their re­al­ity — com­ing to­gether in Com­mu­nion, then let­ting go in Free­dom.

Rid­ing across the Gobi desert to­wards the Cen­ter of En­ergy last sum­mer, our small van packed with pil­grims popped a flat. While the dri­ver put in the spare and we idly watched camels roam along the hori­zon, a young boy, who was study­ing to be­come a shaman, taught me the rit­ual.

We marked par­al­lel lines in the dry earth, and stood op­po­site each other.

“This is the Panok-la, or Path of Now, sym­bol­iz­ing the gap be­tween Per­cep­tion and Aware­ness, from which New­ness emerges. As we ap­proach one an­other along the Path, be filled with the Wind of Mys­tery, and open to your yearn­ing for Com­mu­nion.

“When we reach One Place on the Path, we hug. Be That Hug — a whole greater than the self.

“As you let go,” the boy ex­plained, “let In­tel­li­gence bow to the Di­vine Imag­i­na­tion, and set me free. At the same time, you set your­self free.”

Com­mu­nion and Au­ton­omy, as nat­ural and nec­es­sary as breath­ing. But Time is not only a sus­tain­able cir­cle, it is also a line that ac­crues. The most in­sid­i­ous ma­te­ri­al­ism is the karmic ma­te­ri­al­ism, the ma­te­ri­al­ism of doing.

“Do you own this Hap­pen­ing?” the ris­ing full moon asks me, when the dew freezes and re­flects the re­flec­tion, as I bivy alone in an alpine meadow in New Zealand.

The back­pack full of sto­ries and mem­o­ries is al­ways the heav­i­est. Who are you? Can you let it go? Can you die to your Self? Even the wis­est no­mads I’ve met strug­gle to lighten the load. Bur­dened, we suf­fo­cate. We fall to­gether, then fall apart. Fall to­gether, fall apart.

Only our Love Suit­case is weight­less.

A Video News Re­port from 2030....

An­chor: Tout­ing their move­ment as a com­bi­na­tion of the eco­nomic the­o­ries of Ma­hatma Gandhi and the po­lit­i­cal sci­ence of Buck­min­ster Fuller, the Un­plugged have now re­duced the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact of the United States of Amer­ica by 8 per­cent over their 15-year pro­gram.

Op­po­nents of the move­ment call Un­plug­ging an un­sci­en­tific and cult-like po­lit­i­cal move­ment, but pro­po­nents say that "Un­plug­ging" was the best de­ci­sion they ever made. Let's hear from Jack Hous­ton, a for­mer in­vest­ment banker...

Cuts to video

[Screen opens to Jack Hus­ton, a mus­cu­lar early-40s New Yorker.]

Pre­sen­ter: Jack, could you ex­plain what Un­plug­ging did for you?

Jack: Well, first we've got to cover briefly how Un­plug­ging works. The core of the the­ory is that we can all live off the in­ter­est gen­er­ated by our sav­ings, or the prof­its from our in­vest­ments, if we pos­sess enough cap­i­tal - and gen­er­a­tions of Cap­i­tal­ists have dreamed of "get­ting off at the top" - mak­ing enough money to cash out of the work­place and live as they like for the rest of their lives.

Pre­sen­ter: But what does that have to do with liv­ing in a hous­ing pod in the mid­dle of Ore­gon?

Jack: Well, it comes down to the na­ture of cap­i­tal. Wealth stored as dol­lars was es­sen­tially a share in Amer­ica's na­tional econ­omy - a credit note backed by the US Gov­ern­ment. But Buck­min­ster Fuller showed us that wealth-as-money was a spe­cial­ized sub­set of Wealth - the abil­ity to sus­tain life.

To "get off at the top" re­quires mil­lions and mil­lions of dol­lars of stored wealth. Ex­actly how much de­pends on your lifestyle and rate of re­turn, but it's a lot of money, and it's volatile de­pend­ing on eco­nomic con­di­tions. A crash can wipe out your cap­i­tal base and leave you help­less, be­cause all you had was shares in a ma­chine.

So we Un­plug­gers found a new way to un­plug: an in­de­pen­dent life-sup­port in­fra­struc­ture and fi­nan­cial ar­chi­tec­ture - a so­ci­ety within so­ci­ety - which al­lowed any­body who wanted to "buy out" to "buy out at the bot­tom" rather than "buy­ing out at the top."

If you are will­ing to live as an Un­plug­ger does, your cost to buy out is only around three months of wages for a fac­tory worker, the price of a used car. You never need to "work" again--that is, for money which you spend to meet your basic needs. How­ever, there are plenty of life sup­port ac­tiv­i­ties to keep you busy, and a lot of basic re­search and sci­ence to do. Un­plug­ging is not an off-the-shelf so­lu­tion, it's a re­search ca­reer!

Pre­sen­ter: So tell us about your house over here? It looks pretty weird!

Jack: Un­plug­gers don't have our own man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ties for these yet, so we shop them out to fabs in Turkey. The shell is alu­minum and aero­gel, 50 per­cent col­lec­tor pan­els, 12 volt ap­pli­ance wiring, super-in­su­lated win­dows with liq­uid crys­tal shades for in­ter­nal tem­per­a­ture con­trol. Heat comes from ei­ther a wood stove or a peltier solid state heat pump run­ning off ground heat, de­pend­ing on how much power we need. Cool­ing, sim­i­larly. We cook in the solar oven on the side some­times, but mainly on woodgas or in the mi­crowave.

The houses - or "Pods" as you call them - have a rep­u­ta­tion as being "one size fits all poorly" but, in fact we found that 90 per­cent of peo­ple got on very well with one of three basic de­signs. The economies of scale made mass man­u­fac­ture of those mod­els more cost ef­fec­tive but peo­ple still do cus­tom work for about one unit in ten.

We're work­ing to­wards local fabs for a lot of this stuff now, but that's hard to or­ga­nize with­out wind­ing up with in­ter­nal in­dus­tries which run on grid power and com­mer­cial sup­ply chains, both of which are no-nos for our way of life: you can't be an al­ter­na­tive if you still rely on the in­dus­trial in­fra­struc­ture for your basic daily lifestyle needs. So we build the hous­ing pods in Turkey as part of the "Final Pur­chase" process - where a per­son be­com­ing an un­plug­ger buys their home, tools and land, to sup­port them and their fam­ily for the rest of their life, and then dis­con­nects from the na­tional econ­omy.

It's not per­fect. We're still using the re­sources of the in­dus­trial world to dis­con­nect from it. But until we have green fabs for the col­lec­tor pan­els and other ne­ces­si­ties, it's what we have to do.

Pre­sen­ter: Can you ex­plain what this has to do with Fuller and Gandhi?

Jack: Gandhi's model of "self-suf­fi­ciency" is the goal: the free­dom that comes from own­ing your own life sup­port sys­tem out­right is im­mense. It al­lows us to dis­con­nect from the na­tional econ­omy as a way of solv­ing the prob­lems of our planet one human at a time. But Gandhi's goals don't scale past the lifestyle of a peas­ant farmer and many west­ern­ers view that way of life as un­sus­tain­able for them per­son­ally: I was not going to sell my New York condo and move to Ore­gon to live in a hut, you know?

Pre­sen­ter: Ok.... with you so far.... what about Fuller?

Jack: Gandhi's Goals, Fuller's Meth­ods, if you like.

Fuller's "do more with less" was a method we could use to at­tain self-suf­fi­ciency with a much lower cap­i­tal cost than "buy out at the top." An in­te­grated, whole-sys­tems-think­ing ap­proach to a sus­tain­able lifestyle - the houses, the gar­den­ing tools, the mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems - all of that stuff was de­signed using in­spi­ra­tion from Fuller and later thinkers in­spired by ef­fi­ciency. The slack - the waste - in our old ways of life were con­sum­ing 90 per­cent of our pro­duc­tive labor to main­tain.

A thou­sand dol­lar a month com­bined fuel bill is your life en­ergy going down the drain be­cause the place you live sucks your life way in waste heat, which is waste money, which is waste time. Your car, your house, the por­tion of your taxes which the Gov­ern­ment spends on fuel, on elec­tric­ity, on waste heat... all of the time you spent to earn that money is wasted to the de­gree those sys­tems are in­ef­fi­cient sys­tems, be­hind best prac­tices!

Pre­sen­ter: Wow! So tell us about the Hu­mane Human Foot­print.

Jack: The Human Foot­print is sim­ple: it's the share of the world's re­sources you can use with­out re­ally harm­ing any­body sim­ply by ex­ist­ing. We call it the Human Foot­print as op­posed to the In­hu­man Foot­print. You take the sus­tain­able har­vest of the earth - the bounty we can con­sume with­out re­duc­ing next year's har­vest or re­duc­ing the re­silience of the earth in other ways - and your share of that is one Human Foot­print. The earth's Wealth - its life-giv­ing power - is like a trust fund split be­tween seven bil­lion hu­mans and a gazil­lion other liv­ing crea­tures. That which con­sumes more than its share is de­fraud­ing all the rest of their right to life. And this isn't re­li­gion, this is com­mon sense: if there are win­ners and losers, we're in a race for sur­vival. If there are only win­ners, we're all artists, sci­en­tists, lovers and schol­ars.

I know how I want to live.

Pre­sen­ter: So how close to your Human Foot­print are you, Jack?

[Jack looks un­com­fort­able.]

Pre­sen­ter: I've heard five times over is a typ­i­cal num­ber for Un­plug­gers...

Jack: Well, it de­pends how you mea­sure it but yes, about that. I have three chil­dren, so my fam­ily foot­print is about 11.2x HF but my per­sonal foot­print is about 7.3x. I'm work­ing on it, though. It's hard to make the ad­just­ment, and we only have a few tens of thou­sands of peo­ple at 1.0x or lower.

Pre­sen­ter: So let's talk pol­i­tics. Un­plug­ging is also a po­lit­i­cal move­ment - you your­self are mayor of a town­ship here, and your "town" is the local Un­plug­ger pop­u­la­tion plus a few hold outs in ghost sub­urbs east of here. Why play at pol­i­tics if all you wanted to do was drop off the Grid?

Jack: Be­cause po­lit­i­cal as­sump­tions wire every­thing. Build­ing codes dic­tate how you can build, which dic­tates the size of your hous­ing cost, which is the pri­mary fac­tor in your Un­plug Cost. Our san­i­tary sys­tems are greatly more ef­fec­tive than those of the Grid but, be­cause we fer­til­ize food with human waste after ex­tract­ing what en­ergy we can from it, some say our food isn't suit­able for human con­sump­tion - even though, in fact, there is no sci­en­tific ev­i­dence what-so-ever of any dis­ease or­gan­isms in the fer­til­izer stream. Just the idea of fer­til­iz­ing using processed human waste freaks peo­ple out, even though it is how hu­mans al­ways lived. And this pat­tern re­peats for water, our med­ical prac­tices, all of it. You would think that pre­ven­ta­tive med­i­cine was a crime!

Be­cause we are dif­fer­ent, the ex­ist­ing legal in­fra­struc­ture works against us at every hand and turn. To cre­ate change, we have to play pol­i­tics. But we are care­ful to sim­ply use our small-but-grow­ing clout to open doors for our cho­sen lifestyle, not to close doors on other peo­ple's choices. We aren't ecostal­in­ists. Gandhi's ap­proach: vol­un­tary en­list­ment in the army of truth, if you want to think about it that way, has proven to be the only ef­fec­tive model of po­lit­i­cal change which is con­sis­tent with all of our shared val­ues. We em­brace some parts of Gandhi's model more than oth­ers - as with Bucky - but you can't argue with the his­tor­i­cal suc­cess of his ap­proach: India, South Africa, Amer­ica, Poland, Mex­ico... the list goes on.

Pre­sen­ter: Even my kids have an Obey Em­peror Gandhi bumper sticker. What's that about?

Jack: It's an Un­plug­ger joke. We call Gandhi "Em­peror Gandhi" be­cause in our way of look­ing at things, he was the po­lit­i­cal leader of India - a net­work of King­doms - and there­fore tech­ni­cally he was an Em­peror [laughs]. In that role, he or­ga­nized col­lec­tive de­fense against the in­va­sion of India by rais­ing a vol­un­teer army of peo­ple who bought noth­ing from the in­vad­ing colo­nials, made salt, and got beaten while main­tain­ing rigid dis­ci­pline - just like an army. All they did not do was leave home or use vi­o­lent meth­ods to re­sist their in­vaders. The fact Gandhi him­self didn't own much of any­thing and ad­vised self-re­liance as a key­stone of free­dom makes him the John Locke of our move­ment. But we don't take the Em­peror Gandhi thing se­ri­ously, you know. It's just a bit of our cul­tural humor.

Pre­sen­ter: The threat of "Mom, keep yelling at me and I'll get a job de­liv­er­ing chi­nese food and then Un­plug when I've saved up!" has kept many a par­ent up at night...

Jack: Un­plug­ging isn't re­ally some­thing you can sus­tain from youth­ful re­bel­lion: kids who don't choose this way of life for them­selves as adults are usu­ally re­ally poor Un­plug­gers - they don't take soil met­rics se­ri­ously, they don't re­ally un­der­stand the in­vest-in-your-lands model of labor, and so on. It's not re­ally some­thing for punks and an­ar­chists, even though there is su­per­fi­cial ap­peal.

Pre­sen­ter: There's a lot of sci­ence here!

Jack: Oh yes. We mon­i­tor every­thing we have proved pays, and more: soil bac­te­ria ge­net­ics, nu­tri­ent lev­els in the soil, ne­ma­tode pop­u­la­tions, you name it. We have such ex­cel­lent yields and pest con­trol be­cause we don't move around much - we get to know our land as sci­en­tists and artists and de­sign­ers - we share knowl­edge and mod­els.

Of course, not every­body con­tributes equally to this knowl­edge base - I have a neigh­bor who is a mol­e­c­u­lar bi­ol­ogy pro­fes­sor by (for­mer-) trade and, well, I use his num­bers a lot [grins]. But we all do what we can, and the re­sults are proof that our farm­ing tech­niques - "high mon­i­tor­ing bioin­ten­sive agri­cul­ture" or "Tech­ni­cal Per­ma­cul­ture" de­pend­ing on where you live and which school you fol­low - our farm­ing meth­ods work, and will con­tinue to work for at least a few hun­dred to a few tens of thou­sands of years.

And that's enough for us: leave it to our chil­dren to fig­ure out how to get their own lives to be even more in­te­grated morally, eth­i­cally and so­cially.

Pre­sen­ter: Some say that Un­plug­ging is a cult be­cause of your "Un­plug­ger Morals" doc­trines...

Jack: Act­ing as if the god in all life mat­tered is rad­i­cal pol­i­tics. But we have peo­ple from every faith and tra­di­tion liv­ing as Un­plug­gers, as well as those with no be­liefs but a deep moral con­vic­tion that this is the right thing to do. But as with Satya­graha - Gandhi's so­cial change ap­proach - this takes every­thing you have and more and you can't do it with­out a solid in­ter­nal frame­work, a deeply per­sonal com­mit­ment to this as Right Ac­tion in a Bud­dhist sense, as Dharma from a Hindu per­spec­tive, as The Life Di­vine if you are a Chris­t­ian. We have rad­i­cal Bene­dic­tine monks - on the edge of get­ting booted out of the Catholic Church - who have up­dated the lifestyle passed down from Bene­dict him­self to use Un­plug­ger Farm­ing and who be­came part of the Un­plug­ger Com­mu­nity as a re­sult. But we also have an­ar­chosyn­di­cal­ist athe­ists.

All it takes is a be­lief you can act on which helps you make per­sonal changes for global rea­sons. And a po­lit­i­cal faith isn't usu­ally enough to do that, but it can be. Re­li­gion has proven over time that it can move peo­ple in ways that noth­ing else can, and Un­plug­ging is the biggest change a so­ci­ety can make.

Liv­ing up to your val­ues is hard. Faith helps some peo­ple do it, so we tend to see more of those kinds of peo­ple mak­ing the switch. It's just a se­lec­tion bias.

Pre­sen­ter: What do you mean "a change that so­ci­ety can make?"

Jack: Un­plug­gers now con­sti­tute 5 per­cent of the United States pop­u­la­tion. At first, we were the very ide­o­log­i­cally mo­ti­vated, and there was a lot of in­ter­face with older com­mu­ni­tar­ian groups and prior gen­er­a­tions who had at­tempted to make this tran­si­tion.

But as we be­came more de­fined, and our thinkers elu­ci­dated our case more clearly - as our farmer-sci­en­tists began to re­ally get the yields pre­dicted in the­ory, on a per-square-foot basis... it be­came clear that we were talk­ing about a par­tial so­lu­tion to the prob­lems that have faced the human race from the be­gin­ning of time: how do I live my­self, and how does my fam­ily live.

And a so­ci­ety is just in­di­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies, and some­times fam­i­lies of fam­i­lies, all the way up to States and Gov­ern­ments and the In­ter­na­tional Agen­cies and so on. If you solve the prob­lem for a sin­gle fam­ily, and it's some­thing which can com­pete in the evo­lu­tion­ary mar­ket­place of ideas, then even­tu­ally you can solve the en­tire prob­lem.

You know why GDP has gone down 20 per­cent be­cause of Un­plug­ging? Un­plug­gers are en­tre­pre­neurs. We used to start busi­nesses be­cause we wanted to buy out at the top of the game, now we usu­ally buy a fairly lav­ish Pod, and some re­ally, re­ally good qual­ity land, un­plug by 30, and some of us ex­pect to spend the rest of our lives learn­ing, teach­ing and ex­plor­ing what it is to be alive. Farm­ing five or six hours a day seems like a lot of work, but you do it with friends, and you're doing sci­ence and re­search some of the time, and you eat what you make. The basic ac­tiv­i­ties of life are so much more sat­is­fy­ing that earn-and-spend-and-eat-carry-out when you ac­tu­ally re­spect them as basic human ac­tiv­i­ties, as links we share with every­thing that is alive.

Pre­sen­ter: Tell me about the En­dow­ment.

Jack: The En­dow­ment is how we help the poor to Un­plug, and it is eas­ily the most con­tro­ver­sial part of our pro­gram. We en­cour­age the de­vel­op­ing world to Un­plug as the ul­ti­mate form of Leapfrog­ging: skip hy­per­cap­i­tal­ism and an­ar­chocap­i­tal­ism and de­mo­c­ra­tic so­cial­ism en­tirely and jump di­rectly to Un­plug­ging. Many Un­plug­gers take their ex­cess cap­i­tal, keep in­vest­ing it in the sys­tem, and use the pro­ceeds to fund pri­vate Un­plug­ging pro­grams. Oth­ers sim­ply took their cap­i­tal and added it to funds man­aged by a Grameen-bank like in­sti­tu­tion called the Un­plug­ging Bank which lends peo­ple money to un­plug, and has them pay for their Pods by sell­ing ex­cess farm goods and teach­ing agri­cul­ture for us. The lever­age of these ap­proaches has yet to be ver­i­fied but - judg­ing by the po­lit­i­cal re­pres­sion of Un­plug­gers in China and India and some parts of Africa - judg­ing by that re­sis­tance, I think we are going to be suc­cess­ful.

As the Ma­hatma said: "First they ig­nore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

Soft­ware used to be an in­dus­try, you know?

Pre­sen­ter: Thank you, Jack, for telling us about your life.

Early this fall I un­plugged for three weeks. Turned off my phone, took a Face­book sab­bat­i­cal, squashed my com­pul­sion to check email, and bade my friends farewell while I hiked, danced, climbed, am­bled, dined, spec­tated, and con­tem­plated on my own terms across three states and one province.

In the cor­po­rate Amer­ica where I typ­i­cally spend 40-plus hours of my wak­ing life each week, ar­rang­ing such a long respite is con­sid­ered a feat. A sam­pling of re­sponses among the peo­ple I told of my plans: “Who ap­proved that?!” “Wow, I wish I was your age again!” “That’s a once-in-a-life­time op­por­tu­nity. Good for you!”

Per­son­ally, I’m under no delu­sion that a few weeks of North Amer­i­can travel is akin to re­treat­ing to the far-flung ex­oti­cism of Lom­bok or the pu­ri­fy­ing in­ten­sity of an ashram stay in a re­mote cor­ner of India. Hardly.

As some­thing I craved in order to col­lect, re­con­fig­ure and ori­ent my­self in the midst of what has been a tu­mul­tuous year, the three-week break suc­ceeded enor­mously. Par­a­digm-shift­ing? No. Sim­ply con­struc­tive? Yes. That’s all.

But the real story goes back to those re­ac­tions.

That tak­ing a few weeks off to re­con­fig­ure elicited such won­der is it­self a won­drous thing. Is so­ci­ety re­ally so en­slaved to the idea of ca­reer, rou­tine, fam­ily, friends, and money that any at­tempt to dis­tance one­self from that — even for a pal­try three weeks — is now met with sheer awe by other peo­ple?

In their re­ac­tions I sensed an at­ti­tude of: “Well, good for you. I wish I could do that but I need to stay put and focus on my job-fam­ily-mort­gage-school-dog-fa­vorite TV se­ries.”

These days, to un­plug, whether for just a few weeks or in­def­i­nitely, is to put the Amer­i­can Dream on hold. It is a sign of list­less­ness or self-doubt. It is a lux­ury re­served for a few, mostly the young, seek­ing a forum for le­git­imiz­ing their aim­less­ness. It is ei­ther for the yup­pie, the trusta­far­ian, or the trendy ide­al­ist.

How un­for­tu­nate that a hum­ble de­sire to shift one’s stance or adopt a new per­spec­tive through re­ject­ing, or just briefly paus­ing, so­ci­ety’s live-to-work men­tal­ity is seen as un­at­tain­able or viewed skep­ti­cally by oth­ers. It should be in­te­gral to the Amer­i­can Dream (the idea that each of us can har­ness our unique, un­lim­ited po­ten­tial to achieve suc­cess), not an­ti­thet­i­cal to it.

The prac­tice of dis­cern­ment, of re­treat, of carv­ing out the space to build and prac­tice an in­ten­tional life has turned into a for­eign con­cept.

I’m be­la­bor­ing this idea be­cause it’s the as­pect of un­plug­ging that I’m most con­cerned with. At once I am both a work­ing pro­fes­sional, deeply en­gaged in the day-to-day af­fairs of my ca­reer, friends, fam­ily, hob­bies, and the like; and I am also a cul­tur­ally crit­i­cal per­son fight­ing an up­hill bat­tle to cre­ate an in­ten­tional, cre­ative, spec­tac­u­lar life amidst a con­sump­tion-dri­ven so­ci­ety.

I sus­pect you, dear reader, share this mind­set and this chal­lenge. So what to do?

As much as I’d love to up­root and move in­def­i­nitely to a Dan­ish com­mune, set up a pro­duce stand in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, or bounce from vil­lage to vil­lage in Guatemala, that kind of un­plug­ging is not re­al­is­tic for me or most peo­ple. Cap­i­tal­ism’s hold on us is too great. At some point a bill will ar­rive and the ex­pe­ri­ence will fall apart.

Marx’s idea of his­tor­i­cal ma­te­ri­al­ism cor­rectly ac­counts for the econ­omy’s func­tion as the basis for all as­pects of so­ci­ety. Sad but true. We can­not es­cape that. Short of dis­cov­er­ing a suit­case of money or scor­ing an out­size parental sub­sidy, our re­al­ity is at its essence based on the ful­fill­ment our basic eco­nomic needs (such as food and shel­ter). This ma­te­ri­al­ism is the root of our so­cial ex­is­tence, which in turn de­ter­mines our con­scious­ness, says Marx.

Deb­bie Downer would point out, and I would agree, that sooner or later, the com­mune will fall prey to un­paid taxes, the pro­duce stand will be made ir­rel­e­vant by the ar­rival of a nearby gro­cery store, and the sav­ings used to fund that Guatemala vil­lage hop­ping will run dry.

Then what? Game over; back to the rat race — prob­a­bly in a weaker po­si­tion than be­fore you left. Of course, most peo­ple never leave to do some­thing like this in the first place out of, largely, fi­nan­cial fear. At the end of the day, peo­ple in most places of the world are hemmed in and gov­erned by the mar­ket’s in­vis­i­ble, dis­pas­sion­ate, pow­er­ful hand. My pes­simism on this sub­ject pre­vents me from tak­ing that quixotic leap to Guatemala.

But I ac­tu­ally don’t think such dras­tic leaps are nec­es­sary in the first place.

We all pos­sess, right now within our­selves, the con­sti­tu­tion and tools re­quired to achieve con­tent­ment. Leap­ing from one lo­ca­tion or vo­ca­tion to an­other doesn’t change that fact — and may ac­tu­ally ob­scure it, pro­long­ing that end which we seek.

Sim­ple, un­plugged, in­ten­tional liv­ing is at­tain­able through small ges­tures that are com­pat­i­ble with the con­tem­po­rary urban lifestyle. And it should not be seen as an out-of-grasp lux­ury re­served for the new age gra­nola crowd with too much time on its hands.

A week or two of travel. A do-it-your­self phi­los­o­phy. Bi­cy­cling. Tak­ing a new class. Let­ter writ­ing. Shop­ping local. Aim­less walk­ing. A week­end-long email break.

These are all easy, achiev­able ways to de­tach from busi­ness as usual, re­fresh one­self, or sub­vert dom­i­nant par­a­digms. Doing these things should not elicit awe among your per­sonal net­work of peo­ple; rather, they should be seen as com­mon­sense and or­di­nary as brush­ing your teeth. Surely a stag­nant life is as bad as a cav­ity, right? Well, you cer­tainly wouldn’t think so based on how lit­tle at­ten­tion peo­ple de­vote to self-as­sess­ment and carv­ing out the space re­quired for it.

If we are to do the es­sen­tial work of dis­cov­er­ing our own true selves and cre­at­ing a mean­ing­ful ex­is­tence, then we must un­plug. Van­ish. Re­treat. Upend our con­ven­tions.

This should hap­pen in two ways.

First, lit­er­ally un­plug. Tech­nol­ogy’s firm grip on us has un­leashed enor­mous gains in pro­duc­tiv­ity and knowl­edge over the past 20 years, but its ugly side–a crush­ing over­load of in­for­ma­tion–has be­come in­creas­ingly ap­par­ent.

At­tend­ing to the con­stant stream of texts, phone calls, emails, news ar­ti­cles, videos, music, tweets, and sta­tus up­dates that is pushed in front of us each day is a nearly im­pos­si­ble task. Sud­denly, we spend each day in a re­ac­tive mode, sort­ing through what’s been pre­sented to us, rather than in the cre­ative, proac­tive mode nec­es­sary to em­power se­ri­ous dis­cov­ery and in­ven­tion.

Sec­ond, once those in­ces­sant con­tent streams are gone, we can come to un­der­stand and deal with our ma­te­ri­al­ism. By iden­ti­fy­ing and de­con­struct­ing our at­tach­ments — to money, ca­reer, cars, food, sta­tus, power and even friends and fam­ily — we start to un­leash our au­then­tic cre­ative being. This process is ab­solutely es­sen­tial for cul­ti­vat­ing con­tent­ment, self-suf­fi­ciency, and con­fi­dence.

In break­ing through ma­te­ri­al­ism we are up against a pow­er­ful force. “The deep­est crav­ing of human na­ture is the need to be ap­pre­ci­ated,” said William James. Ma­te­ri­al­ism tends to be our go-to at­tempt at nur­tur­ing that crav­ing, and it usu­ally suc­ceeds wildly. We grow ac­cus­tomed to our in­come, house, ego, so­cial life, etc. and find it hard (or, after a while, un­nec­es­sary) to let go or se­ri­ously ques­tion them, for fear of what lies be­yond that tran­scen­dence.

But ques­tion them we must, for, as the urban shaman Gabrielle Roth notes, “… the se­cu­rity of de­pen­dence is ac­tu­ally the in­se­cu­rity of not con­trol­ling your own life, or being your own per­son.” It is my be­lief that through small, oc­ca­sional acts of un­plug­ging we can begin to see the truth in this idea and fi­nally sum­mon the courage to con­front our own ma­te­ri­al­ism to con­trol our own life.

I had three weeks to do this, oth­ers can spend three years, and oth­ers might have 30 min­utes. The du­ra­tion isn’t es­pe­cially im­por­tant; the will to un­plug is. At the very least, sim­ply paus­ing once each day to ques­tion a rou­tine be­hav­ior or think in­ten­tion­ally be­gins to build a self-aware­ness that chips away at ma­te­ri­al­ism, in­creas­ing one’s au­ton­omy and cre­ative power.

This dis­cus­sion can­not end with­out ac­knowl­edg­ing the Amer­i­can tran­scen­den­tal­ism es­poused most fa­mously by Emer­son and Thoreau.

Speak­ing at Har­vard in 1837, Emer­son prod­ded the stu­dents to make a clean break with Eu­ro­pean tra­di­tion and cus­tom in order to forge ahead in defin­ing Amer­ica’s dis­tinct, unique char­ac­ter. In­stead of tak­ing the well-worn path, he urged the stu­dents to take on the cross of self-dis­cov­ery and in­de­pen­dence in spite of the “net­tles and tan­gling vines” that get in the way of self-di­rected peo­ple.

What is the ben­e­fit of doing this, de­spite the strain of in­vok­ing so­ci­etal skep­ti­cism? Be­cause that per­son, he said, “… is to find con­so­la­tion in ex­er­cis­ing the high­est func­tions of human na­ture. He is one, who raises him­self from pri­vate con­sid­er­a­tions, and breathes and lives on pub­lic and il­lus­tri­ous thoughts. He is the world’s eye. He is the world’s heart. He is to re­sist the vul­gar pros­per­ity that ret­ro­grades ever to bar­barism, by pre­serv­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing heroic sen­ti­ments, noble bi­ogra­phies, melo­di­ous verse, and the con­clu­sions of his­tory.”

Later, he con­tin­ues, “In your­self is the law of all na­ture… in your­self slum­bers the whole of Rea­son; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all.” Ex­plore–begin to call out into your­self, and let the echo se­duce you fur­ther in.

The most fa­mous in­stance of the un­plugged, off-the-grid life is Thoreau’s Walden Pond ex­pe­ri­ence. His ob­ser­va­tions re­veal that our con­tem­po­rary con­cerns ex­isted in his time as well:

“Most men, even in this com­par­a­tively free coun­try, through mere ig­no­rance and mis­take, are so oc­cu­pied with the fac­ti­tious cares and su­per­flu­ously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits can­not be plucked by them. Their fin­gers, from ex­ces­sive toil, are too clumsy and trem­ble too much for that. He has no time to be any­thing but a ma­chine.”

More than one hun­dred and fifty years later, re­sist­ing the ma­chine con­tin­ues to form the basis of our post-mod­ern ex­is­ten­tial con­flict. We can learn much from Thoreau’s ex­pe­ri­ence and apply it today.

How­ever, al­though Thoreau’s ex­pe­ri­ence was cer­tainly trans­for­ma­tive and yielded the in­cred­i­ble in­sights that form a clas­sic book, we have to re­mem­ber that his re­treat was not re­ally that dras­tic an un­der­tak­ing. He lived in his cabin for just two years, the whole time lo­cated only two miles from the near­est town. He had reg­u­lar vis­i­tors.

Let go of your image of hav­ing to quit your job, sell all your be­long­ings and move to a shack in Africa in order to re­al­ize a spir­i­tual reawak­en­ing or break from nor­malcy. If some­one has the time and money to do this, ex­cel­lent. I envy that per­son and sus­pect that great truths will be re­al­ized in such an en­deavor. But for those of us for whom some­thing so grand and se­vere is not a vi­able op­tion, we can have sim­i­larly trans­for­ma­tive ex­pe­ri­ences on a smaller scale.

Seek out, take ad­van­tage of, and pro­tect what­ever lit­tle mo­ments and ex­pe­ri­ences you can to build space in your life for re­flec­tion and thought­ful ac­tion. They are es­sen­tial, not op­tional or un­at­tain­able, for our self de­vel­op­ment.

Doing this is pos­si­ble; it is man­age­able. And it is within reach for us all right now.