October
14, 2004: As it happened – as it was meant
to happen – I’d just finished rereading Cat’s
Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut’s fable of science and technology
gone awry, when Eric Brende’s Better Off: Flipping
the Switch on Technology arrived in the mail.
“Busy, busy, busy,” as they say in Vonnegut’s
book when contemplating mysterious things going on.
Better Off is a young couple’s agrarian journey
through 18 months without electricity and the techno-gizmos
that are so much a part of our lives. Truth be told, when
this book first hit the stands I gave it a brief look and
moved on. Something of a Luddite who explored Henry Thoreau,
Jacques Ellul, Jerry Mander, Leo Marx, and their ilk years
ago, I regarded another back-to-the-garden book a little skeptically.
(Note: If Luddite is a term with which you are unfamiliar,
get this book.) But recall what they say about judging books
by their covers. This is really an engaging travel book.
According to Vonnegut, peculiar travel suggestions are dancing
lessons from God. Brende follows some peculiar travel suggestions
offered by a stranger on a bus, and proves to be a nimble
dancer. After a few pages describing his time as a student
at MIT, the author and his new bride pack up and move from
the electric atmosphere of the Institute of Technology to
an unplugged community in the hills of – well, he won’t
tell us.
The community members – cleverly termed “Minimites”
by the author – understandably want to keep themselves
from the cover of People magazine, but including more details
of the complexities of a simpler life would have made this
story better. Perhaps the style is directed toward an audience
who know nothing of agrarian experiences beyond “Green
Acres” reruns and watching Paris Hilton pose for American
Gothic. But for those who know a little of farming or who
live on the rural side, the holes in the fabric of Better
Off are as moth holes in a wool sweater. Likewise, one
will find neither index nor bibliography nor suggested readings.
Brende does mention a few sources of inspiration, but I expect
readers would welcome more.
As it happened – as it was meant to happen –
this morning a baker friend told me a story about an apparent
flaw in a bread oven design. Further investigation proved
it to be, in fact, not a design flaw but a symptom of a loss
of cultural knowledge. Practically as soon as the Brendes
start their life off the grid their neighbors help them to
grasp such distinctions, and the importance of handed down
wisdom -- the prerequisites to which, we learn alongside them,
are community and humility.
In Cat’s Cradle, a scientist’s son proclaims,
“No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat’s cradle
is nothing but a bunch of X’s between somebody’s
hands, and little kids look and look and… No damn cat.
No damn cradle.” Science isn’t what it claims
to be. As terrible and as global as Vonnegut’s apocalyptic
ice nine, the reductive way science encourages us to think
freezes our senses and sensibilities. The Minimite community
is informed by this awareness, and its actions are deliberated
and deliberate.
We quickly learn that Better Off is neither an anti-technological
screed nor a how-to book. No damn cat. No damn cradle. Counter
to its advertising spin, it is a story – very nearly
a mythic hero’s tale, complete with an earnest and inquisitive
young man, beasts to tame, violent storms, physical hardship,
dead ends, moral searching, love, sex, epiphanies, and a sort
of homecoming.
Thus Brende spends more time acquainting us with the thoughtful
members of the community than he does discussing technology
or the practice of living where technology’s level is
appropriate. The ghost of Ned Ludd hovers past only briefly.
Instead, we chase calves, hoe the pumpkins, raise barns, frolic
in the swimmin’ hole, and attend church service. We
get to know the Minimites, and gradually we see how their
humble and unhurried life might indeed leave us better off.
Better Off carries us across seasons literal and
figurative: planting, growing, and harvesting. When our heroes
pull up to their picturesque and well-tended new digs, the
sun breaks through the clouds and birds sing. Time slows and
expands. We enter a relaxed and almost jovial world of hand-powered
washing machines and horse-drawn cultivators, where mowing
the grass leads unavoidably to waxing philosophical. Embarrassing
mistakes are remedied or headed off at the pass by friendly
neighbors who seem to show up at just the right time. (Well,
except for that lazy afternoon when the doors were inadvertently
left open….)
Seeds are soon planted. As in any garden, times of exhausting
activity alternate with times of rest and rumination. The
plot thickens. Weeds grow between the pumpkins, and secrets
grow among the Minimites. Not all is cider and roses after
all, but the Brendes make it through an abundant harvest time
swimmingly. The two emerge from their odyssey as three.
Oddly, I sensed some bittersweet relief when their self-imposed
deadline passed and the Brendes drove back into the fast lane.
Fear not, they haven’t entirely abandoned the Minimite
Way, but the book’s abashed final third points to another
lesson, which I think the author realizes: the importance
of digging in. As much as slowing down and pulling the plugs,
living better on the land leaves us better off.
© Jake Vail 2004, Jake Vail is
a librarian, arborist, and member of The Land Institute’s
Prairie Writer’s Circle. He lives in Lawrence, Kansas.
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