But i gotta say, living off grid is fundamentally solipsist. Abandoning society rather than attempting to live well within society will always be a dead end. Imo. It’s easy to say you’ll go it alone, but staying and improving it for not just yourself but for everyone else is more valuable.
> Because of the decentralized nature of our work, this has to be spelled out quite clearly: Preparing for impending apocalyptic events should mean _collective action and structural reform_, not individualism and isolation.
Resilience and survival are social pursuits.
But then they have in fact not abandoned society.
> As such it's an empty pursuit.
What do you believe that they are pursuing that you think is empty?
And obviously, like, they go to places and talk to people and buy equipment etc.
There’s a whole gamut of failure modes for tech from “total civilizational collapse” down to “cell tower is down”, and time periods from “forever” down to “a couple of days”
People doing this sort of lifestyle but sharing findings and ideas and ultimately maybe pointing out how more can be done with less is part of us building up knowledge together isn’t it?
These people aren’t completely offline even! They blog and post online!
I find interesting that from the perspective of sustainability, the opposite actually holds true - trying to have a sustainable life in modern society is a dead end; even a very modest life ends up being globally unsustainable.
(I'm not implying that either way is right or wrong).
Having said that, they haven't entirely abandoned society; they do socialize somewhat, for example:
> In comparison to the past few months spent mostly on our own, we've had a very social August. It seems our friends made it up north all at the same time, it has been nice to run into familiar faces, meet some new ones, and fill our days wandering in the woods catching up on the time we spent apart.
They have a “flag-stop” Alaska Railway line somewhere close-ish to them that they use to ride into the nearest town to buy crates and crates of supplies. Basically a personal freight station.
How much of this is sustainable living vs massively subsidised (and unsustainable) LARPING?
People living “off-grid” often seem still dependent on society in ways that are uniquely unsustainable and/or subsidised.
I've thought about living like that and more remotely where land is actually affordable and have found that not only has society been making it less and less possible. It's made less and less posible mostly by people who are all about "improving it for not just yourself but for everyone else"
Everyone else includes endless migration till I feel like a weirdo for having retained cultural elements (which are seen with a bit of a double standard) and incapable of owning a bit of forest and land. Improving it includes pushing insulation standards that make it so you for example can't save glass from the landfill to build a small unheated conservatory due to insulation standards and making it so owning a few farm animals becomes increasingly impractical.
I can go on and on endlessly but I've come to feel like those (usually)well meaning society centric people are the hardest and most frustrated to argue with to work togheter to that aim. I've found many are so convinced of the moral highground, suprisingly unempathic to others contrasting lived experience if there's no ethnic element and such strong adherents of change with no endpoint that it feels useless. Pasolini was on to something.
It isn't very hard to reinterpret this critique as a kind of crab bucket mentality. God forbid someone goes off on a crazy boat trip for a few months without first consulting with "society".
> Because of the decentralized nature of our work, this has to be spelled out quite clearly: Preparing for impending apocalyptic events should mean collective action and structural reform, not individualism and isolation.
Because their resources are limited, they use them very careful. Because the open sea and the weather are unforgiven, they help the others unconditionally and proactively, it's the duty, not emotion.
They contact to earch other everyday by many means, e.g. on long range radio to help alert about weather, emergency...
That is the difference lifestyle, not isolation.
Devils Advocate: Various religious societies such as monestaries and nuneries have been doing this for centuries, and appear to do rather well (if religion is your thing).
That said there is an appeal to retreating to one of those and live a simpler life dedicated to one thing. Religion isn't for me but I'm sure there's something like secular monestaries out there (that aren't suicide cults).
No perfect solutions, I've found it is usually just people trying to do what they think is right/better way to live in whatever ways they can.