Flipping the Switch on Technology (P.S.) - Better Off

If you're wondering what to read next, wondering what will be a tremendous read crafted by a master wordsmith and storyteller, you'll want to put this book at the top of your list! Eric and Mary Brende's 18-month venture into a technology-free environment among a community of what he calls Minimite farmers is riveting! I'm obviously not a writer, but I do love a good read: I could hardly put down the book as Eric describes his and Mary's adaptation to a life without electricity or running water to one of plowing behind a horse, and carrying water to the house, by two city-born and -bred college graduates. A degree never prepared them for escaping an angry bull on foot or learning from a farmer's young son how to plow. Through it all, Eric maintains a sense of humor, and humility, finding a place within the community as he proves himself willing to dig in and perform very difficult chores, gaining a place for himself a kinship among the men who bond through working together in barn raisings and wheat threshing. I think they respected his not giving in, his determination to do the job and to do it right.

I stopped several times, thinking, "Oh, I wish I had written (could write) that sentence, that paragraph!" He does with language what we would all love to. Well, I don't have that gift, but I can appreciate the best when I read them, and this is the best. Have a wonderful read!

Better Off made me consider how much I really depend on modern gadgets to make my life easier. For about two weeks. Then I forgot.

If you want an easy read that incorporates a healthy dose of humor along with real human emotion...well, like I tend to say, "this may be the book for you". I found the novel extremely entertaining, and while it never made me feel guilty for using electric gizmos, I did truthfully consider my awful dependence on them. Just try going a week without a cell phone. Then imagine what Eric Brende went through.

Eric Brende manages to give insight, humor, historical and social perspective to the advantages of living a simple life in this delightful book. I would recommend it to anyone looking to add more peace to their lives. It's a great exploration of intentional living.

More interesting than eye-opening, but it gave me a whole new perspective on the advantages and disadvantages technology can have on our lives.

I would like to think that this book will influence me to change my behaviour, but sadly I doubt it will.

I enjoyed this book a lot, especially after buying it from Eric's wife at the St Louis market they sell their soaps at. My favorite thing about the book is Eric's attitude- he is not just making an academic exercise out of the question, but he actually tests his hypotheses by living them out in his own life. His opinions are backed up by experience. Throughout the book Eric describes the challenges he and his wife faced during their time away from the "modern conveniences" most people take for granted. Anyone interested in exploring alternatives to consumerism and materialistic culture should check out this book.

I loved the premise of this book, the modern spin on classic Thoreou with more exploration of the concept of community and I admire the author's grit and determination (with a more-than-healthy dose of literary ambition and academic arrogance)to come down out of his academic tower of abstract ideas and romantic ideals and attempt to really live them out.

They (or I really should say he, since it is made clear in the course of the book who really runs the show) go about it in a half-hearted way, though. They keep their car, for one, which would be understandable if it was stored and used only for emergancies, but instead they use it pretty much whenever they feel like it. They leave the farm on several road trips and take off whenever they want to travel across the country or shop at Kmart for baby items.

With only a few months left in their experiment they abruptly "realize" that the car is the worst technology of all and decide to get a horse and buggy. The author tries to disguise it in several pages worth of his characteristically awkward, sometimes bordering on purple, prose, but he leaves us with several clues as to what really compelled him to give up his car.

"A Sherriff's deputy, all polite and smiles, appeared out of the blue to inform us he had seen us in our car with the out-of-state license plate..."

"The state we lived in also required insurance..."

Hmmm.

This isn't the first or the last time they bend their own rules to suit themselves.

He has absolutely no compunction to set aside his ideals, exploit the love of his wife and the polite hospitality of their neighbors and their children for his own ends.This is then brushed away by the author as he feels he is doing all these hardworking, earnest non-Amish a favor, since his experience of manual labor is so refreshingly pleasant, he is merely spreading that joy around by allowing these kind people the opportunity to do his work for him.

I find it interesting, also, that although he goes to great pains to describe every shaft of light and every menial task of homestead life in the same glowingly romantic prose, it doesn't take him long to tire of it and begin a slow creep back into technology. By the end of the book he is driving a motorized rickshaw and/or old SUV through the heart of St Louis, shopping at the grocery store, carrying a cell phone, making photocopies, borrowing power tools, using the internet, watching TV at friend's houses and dining out once a week. So much for his glowing appreciation for the "peace and quiet" and "heaven" of the country. So much for his uplifting, beautiful experience performing manual labor.

Not only does he no longer farm or even grow most of his own food, he gave up the "good life" completely to live in a sprawling 2,600 sq ft home in the heart of the city! Not exactly my idea of living "minimally".

The book is light, easy reading, and the subject matter fascinating, but unfortunately that is overshadowed by one of the most gratingly misgynist, irratatingly socially oblivious narrators imaginable. His views on childbirth and the roles of women and his complete lack of awareness are at times inintentionally comical, and his descriptions of other people reveal way more about himself then they ever do about them.

It's still worth a quick read for fun, but don't expect much in the way of life-changing revelation.

I'll leave you to savor some of our favorite neo-Thoreau's pearls of wisdom...

"I looked at Mary. Didn't she know that baby items were the mother's responsibility? 'Can't you use your credit card,' I asked."

"...never was there a society in which female, or womanly, values so dominated. Nurturing...deferring to the wishes of others, not having to get ones own way." and then "The entire audience was letting out a sigh of approval at my words..."

"While we adjusted to the new routine...[the pseudo-Amish neighbors and their children] cleaned up the house, mowed the yard, chopped the wood, transplanted spring greens in the garden, baked bread, washed diapers and clothes, fixed the gate...Mary and I appreciated the extra time..."

So, this middle-class, urban couple decides to move to Amish country as an "experiment" to "study" them, and live like they do--except that they keep getting the Amish folks to do their work. The whole time I was reading it I kept thinking these people were straight out of Stuff White People Like. As a native of Central Pennsylvania who has Mennonite ancestors, I was offended by the way that he portrayed the Amish people as some sort of quaint freaks. Also, he keeps mentioning the little half-smiles on their faces. Yeah, Dude, they are trying not to laugh at how pretentious and pathetic you are.

When I saw this book, I bought it immediately. The premise is excellent - take an MIT grad student and put him among the Amish/Mennonites to evaluate how much technology we really need to live a full life.

Unfortunately, the author is quite bias. In the first chapter we learn that he is a liberal arts student writing an anti-technology thesis. What a great book this would have been had he been a pro-technology engineering student!!

The author settles into life with his hard-working wife at his side. He's helped at every turn by the community he's in. His remarks about how easy life are pretty ironic since he is making his living selling cash crops (pumpkins and molasses) at a road-side stand where "city-folk" are buying his wares. Where would he be if this was a truly rural community cut off from city/suburban interaction?

My other complaint about this book is that the author really didn't do any sort of assessment of the toil of women and children in this society. Though he acknowledges women work very long hours in comparison to men - I have to question how "easy" this life is for those that are not male. He rather arrogantly dismisses this as he equates the Amish religion to everyone being feminine in nature. Really quite illogical and mystifying.

Finally, <and I won't spoil this for those who haven't read the book> if he'd been an engineer then he wouldn't have left for the reason he stated. Biodiesel in 4x4 ATV -- wouldn't that be almost like a horse?? But then - I wasn't convinced that was the real reason they decided to leave.

While there are definitely some very valid points in the book, the author's opinions and prejudices overshadow what could have been an excellent field experiment.

He gives us another way of thinking about the world without being on the grid. Eric Brende also discusses some of the challenges he and his wife faced while being off the grid. Awesome book and opens your mind up to new ways of living.

I agree with the previous reviewers in the sense that this is a fascinating and highly readable account of a young couple who decide to try "living off the grid" for 18 months. However, I would have liked it better if the wife (Mary) had been allowed to give her own input. Everything we know about the experience, and Mary's reaction to it, has been written by her husband who, I got the impression, was more gung-ho about the whole thing than she.

There were some parts of the book where I developed an actual dislike for the author, or at least for his actions. At one point he screams (his own term) at Mary for not having dinner on the table when he returns from the fields, and her meek reply makes me wonder if she freely chose to participate in this experiment or if she was coerced (or bullied) into it by her stronger-willed husband. I also disliked his blythe dismissal of pre-natal care for her prior to the birth of their first child (he seems to imply that life-threatening complications only occur in unhealthy women). He also says that they "decided" not to use any unnatural "gizmos" for birth control, and that they have thereby managed to space their subsequent children by 2.5 year intervals. Considering their age, Mary could easily have 10 kids by the time she reaches menopause, but he doesn't discuss the implications of this for her (who is responsible for home-schooling the children in addition to her numerous other household duties).

He also takes a rather patronizing tone towards Mary when he mentions how she often comes home very late in the evening because she "gabs" so much (it doesn't seem to occur to him that maybe his wife needs to get away from their three small children for a time). And the part where they go to K-mart to buy baby supplies and he expects her to pay for everything on her credit card because baby things are the wife's responsibility - huh? I also didn't care for his dismissive attitude towards "The Feminist Mystique" - he seems to think that Betty Friedan and her like would have been fine if they had simply been given a few acres of fields of plow and weed. These parts of the book (and several others) are sure to enrage any feminist, as they did me.

I notice that the jacket-cover blurb about the author tells you a lot about his numerous ivy-league academic accomplishments, but says absolutley nothing whatever about his wife's. In fact, Mary seems to be treated as a person of secondary interest throughout the book, instead of being the true partner that she assuredly must be.

All in all, I think the author paints an overly-rosy (though certainly interesting) picture of their experiment, but I suspect his wife, if given the chance, would write a very different account.

Late in "Better Off" the author laments how his feelings were hurt by off-hand jokes and dirty looks from the old order Mennonites with whom he labored at harvest time and barn raisings. What should an over-educated, upper-middle-class Baby Boomer living among Anabaptist farmers expect? Sometimes he looks to be humbly seeking a beautiful alternative to city life, and sometimes he looks like a clueless moral tourist-- he sentimentally patronizes his neighbors while he seeks spiritual thrills. His quest for rural Narnia is unintentionally funny-- Mennonite community as outdoor mental hospital, right down to the Forrest Gumps in broad straw hats. Is the author remote from the affluent suburbia he deplores? He's as showy with his aesthetic sensitivity as any software developer with a new SUV. And he takes his emotional temperature on every page, so often in fact it would make a housewife addicted to Oprah blush. His critique of technology is shallow and cliché-- if you want depth read George Grant's "Technology and Empire". Or if you want to go really deep, read Rene Guenon's "The Crisis of the Modern World" and Jacques Maritain's "The Dream of Descartes". His account of farming life and the importance of rural traditions is also shallow and marred by his relentless self-concern. The best current general treatment of the subject is Allan Carlson's "The Agrarian Mind". The best current memoirs on the subject are Gene Logsdon's "You Can Go Home Again" and Roger Scruton's "News From Somewhere" .