the really simple life

now here is an inspiring example of simple living... looks more like camping year round! don't think it would work too well with kids though. also a little too cold in canada; but well worth the read.

"We must achieve the character and acquire the skills to live much poorer than we do. We must waste less. We must do more for ourselves and each other. It is either that or continue merely to think and talk about changes that we are inviting catastrophe to make."

Wendell Berry, from the essay "Word and Flesh," What Are People For? North Point Press, 1990

Living Outside the Box

simple living

reading this post about facebook vs. myspace over at tim's blog got me to thinking. all these people living so much of their lives online. if they don't yet have a second life, they still invest a lot of time publishing their thoughts & stuff. why don't i? sure i blog, but it's fairly sparse and short. mostly we blog to post pix of the kids (but that's pretty sparse too).

it's kind of strange, being an electronics engineer at a semiconductor company - ooooo the technomages themselves - and yet take me away from professional life and something strange happens. i like to go outside. i like to walk. i like to read books - the paper kind - philosophy, theology, technology, astronomy, engineering, woodwork, fiction, whatever. sure the internet is great for research, but if i'm really interested i'll buy the book (or at least print the article off).

i'm very interested in unplugged life. unplugged from utility companies, media conglomerates, advertising, retail thieves, most of modern life. i tried to find a term that would apply to my attitudes: luddism, anarcho-primitivism, anti-modernism. none of them fit. but simple living seems to work.

technology is useful, a means to an end. but not an end in itself. maybe i'm an old-worlder, but i'm still firmly in meat-space.... until i start my real second life!