On the suggestion of Maggie who reads this blog, I recently read The Way Home: Tales from a life without technology by Mark Boyle. Those of you in the UK may recognize Boyle as the Moneyless Man when he made an attempt a number of years ago to live for an entire year without money. In The Way Home he gives up technology.
Of course giving up technology is a tricky thing because where do you draw the line? Everything made is a kind of technology after all. Boyle chose to draw the line to exclude all digital technology, anything powered by electricity or fossil fuels, and anything made of plastic. In addition, he attempts to reuse, salvage, and scavenge as much as he can. So, for instance, the lumber for the small house he built came from scrap boards at a nearby farm and the rafters were trees cut from the woods.
When he embarked on the project, The Guardian got wind of it and asked him to publish a regular column for their website, which created a special problem. Boyle would only write on paper with a pencil and could only send in his columns by post. He could not reply to comments to his articles online or be otherwise engaged with his audience unless he received things in the mail. I’m not sure why he couldn’t use a manual typewriter or at the least a fountain pen, but as I mentioned before, it is difficult to draw a line—why one thing but not another?
When he decided to turn everything into a book, he was forced to borrow a computer to type up his manuscript. He considered paying someone to type it up for him but decided that paying someone to do what he wouldn’t was not an ethical choice.
I enjoyed the book in spite of its many flaws. While it ostensibly takes place over the course of a year, Boyle at this point has lived his off grid no tech existence for nearly ten years. And so he makes many of the things he does sound really easy and no big deal. Coming upon a still warm deer that had been killed by a car, he takes it back to his cabin and butchers it while marveling over how he used to be a vegan and animal rights activist but this dead deer represents food that will nourish him and keep him alive. How did he know about butchering? And of course he saved the skin and knew exactly how to use the brains to tan it. None of this is something you easily learn how to do after only a few months.
He owns the smallholding in Ireland on which he lives. How did he acquire this? No idea. He seems to know his neighbors from the start, has friends who have smallholdings or houses in the area whom he meets at a pub every week or so. He also has the use of a horse and buggy/wagon but does not go into any kind of detail about it. He walks most places, but also bikes. Sometimes he leaves his house to go visit his parents or his girlfriend’s family in distant towns and to get there he hitchhikes, which, if you are giving up technology, seems rather like a cheat for travel. He doesn’t own a car but he not once seems to have any qualms about riding in the cars and trucks of strangers. I found this odd since at one point he is talking about doing maintenance on his bike and worrying about the technology of the bicycle and how it is dependent on industrialized processes.
What I wanted and didn’t get was the struggle to live a low/no tech life, the trial and error of learning new skills and ways of being in a developed western culture that looks upon such a way of life as backwards. Nor did I get much in the way of explanations about why he found this kind of living satisfying. He tells the reader over and over again that it is, but the manner in which he says it is unsatisfying because we have to believe what he says instead of being shown it. There is also a lack of emotion even when emotional things happen like when his girlfriend, whom he thought he would marry one day, leaves him.
What I did enjoy about the book is the reaction of people to his chosen way of living. When he tells his friends and family and other people, they just don’t understand how anyone can do it or would want to. It’s like when I tell people I don’t have a television and the look of wonder that elicits, only for Boyle it is magnified since when I say I can stream video on my computer people relax and feel much better about my lack of TV. Boyle doesn’t even have a computer. And I laughed when a hurricane blew through and everyone lost power, and his neighbors, who obviously didn’t know he lived without electricity, kept asking if his power was back on yet.
I also enjoyed that Boyle wove in the history of the area around his smallholding, the farms and early settlements, the effects of industrialization and urbanization, and the ways digital technology and cheap and easy to get online things are destroying local culture—why go to the local pub for a pint when you can buy more and cheaper beer online and have it delivered? Or why go to the pub to listen to mediocre local musicians when you can stream the top 40 songs on your phone from the comfort of your own sofa?
Why indeed. Boyle makes clear how technology and our current way of life is destroying rural communities and asks us to consider if we are really willing to lose them. He writes at the beginning of the book
Throughout most of my life, for reasons that made perfect sense, I chose money and machines, unconsciously choosing to live without the things which they replaced. The question concerning each of us then, one we all too seldom ask ourselves, is what are we prepared to lose, and what do we want to gain, as we fumble our way through our short, precious lives?
Because technology of any kind has trade-offs. And as we rush after the new and shiny, are seduced by sexy products with big promises that may or may not be real, we don’t stop to think about what we might be losing in exchange and whether it is worth it. I mean, is it really a good idea to delegate the reading of bedtime stories to Alexa so mom and dad get an extra few minutes to check their email or load the dishwasher? We are told progress is good, that all this tech is progress, so therefore all this tech is good. Boyle says that people often warned him to not romanticize the past, but he rightly warns, we should be equally as careful to not romanticize the future.
Interesting. Of course, as someone from a rural community, I am here to tell you that if we were not using technology we would not be gathering for square dances every weekend.
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You are quite right about that Jeanne! It was kind of strange because Boyle seems to have had lots of time to do leisure stuff it seems. Maybe he just talked more about that than about all the work he did. Or maybe since he was aiming only for subsistence, he didn’t have super long hard days every day?
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Boyle certainly sounds interesting. His experiences seem like they are well worth reading about. With all that, I think there is a happy median between being too acquisitive about shiny new things and what the author did.
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It was definitely interesting Brian Joseph and certainly a first world problem trying to escape from technology.
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Very intriguing but I do not think it is possible to live completely without technology or if it’s even something really worthy! In countries like mean internet has made education possible and opened up the world to those distant and remote locations where children had limited educational opportunities and that too at a great cost. I understand living with low technology . I too do not have television; did not have one since I left grad school and I totally understand what you mean when people give you looks about not having a television and the Laptop streaming makes you more “normal”. However I do think attempting to live like this is commendable and while I am not sure it’s for me, there is something to living with basics for sure!
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Boyle’s is definitely a first world dilemma and he always had the option to move back to a city and buy his food at a grocery store. Technology, as you indicate, has made a lot of things possible for people with limited opportunities. I think it’s about finding a balance of some kind. Or maybe it’s about making room in developed countries for people who choose to live without the latest in digital tech. Have to give him credit for making me think about it!
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Although the same things would probably bother me that did you- being told, not shown, not having certain things explained, wondering how he learned the skills- I think I would like this book. It must be hard to live a life like that, surrounding by everyone who indulges in technology. I follow several blogs of people who homestead and do without things like central heating, or a clothes dryer and television. It’s harder physical work to live like that I think, but must be a lot more satisfying in some ways too.
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I think you would find the book really interesting Jeane. I think ultimately what Boyle is searching for is a meaningful life and satisfying work, something we all want.
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I don’t buy into the idea that all technology is bad. Medical diagnostics for example have brought huge advancements in early diagnosis. Fir sure we could cut down our usage and cut out some applications – the whole Alexa thing is ridiculous – but technology is now so woven into the fabric of our lives that it would be impossible to live entirely without it.
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Boyle doesn’t think all technology is bad BookerTalk, not at all. His focus is more on personal use of technology, smartphones, video games, social media and how those things come to exert a certain control over us if we are not careful. It is possible to live without digital technology, Boyle manages it, and it is possible to live without most of industrialized society, people are doing that too whether by choice or not. But I think Boyle is trying to force us to look at how we use technology in our lives and make conscious decisions about it instead of going along with it by default.
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I’d clearly misunderstood his point sorry. He wouldn’t find much disagreement from me about the need to re-evaluate use of social media, a term I find ironic because it’s making us even less social. If you’re in a pub and see people out together fir the evening instead of talking to each other they’re engrossed in their phones and busy texting
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One of the saddest sights is seeing a couple or group of people out together and all of them absorbed by their phones instead of relating to each other.
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Couldn’t agree more. Feel like shaking them sometimes….
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Great review Stefanie. I would be so curious to know how he learned the skills he has, such as the thing with the deer. Seems kind of like an important omission.
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Thanks Laila! He does mention having a book on butchering but even with a book, it’s not going to go smoothly unless you’ve done it quite a few times. He managed an organic farm for a number of years so that at least explains how he knows how to grow all his food.
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Ours is a society of fusion, everything is connected. The publishing of his book involved technology even if he writes with a fountain pen with nib dipped in ink. I know though, especially with the newest generation of young parents, the trend now is back to some very basic way of childrearing such as no screen time, no plastic toys, and when it comes to gift giving, I was advised no material gifts but experience gifts. Which is all very meaningful. But wait till they go to school, everything will be geared towards STEM and technology. I think the way to go is to find a balance and use technology to enhance humanity. Instead of throwing the baby out with the bath water.
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Oh yes Arti, he was quite torn about publishing his book but decided it was more important to publish the book so people could potentially learn something. Because we are human we make things so we will always have technology in one shape or another. I think you are right, it’s about balance. And I think he is right in saying we also need to pay attention and make conscious choices about it instead of accepting everything without question.
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Hi Stefanie, I’m thrilled that you took my recommendation!
I very much enjoyed the book: it’s a part of the world I know and I suppose I’ve long had a daydream of having my own small-holding there, and instead I live centrally in a very large city! Sigh, so it was a wee bit of wish fulfilment. The book does have an episodic and almost dreamlike quality to it, given the way some thing just seem to happen, particularly as regards his girlfriend (struggling to avoid spoilers!).
I can vouch for the fact that if you lived in that place and made even a little effort, you would get to know all your neighbours pretty quickly and they would willingly share what they had with you. One of the very sad things about the book for me was the absence of younger people, in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and children from the area.
I was willing to accept his miraculous building skills (a hot tub? really?!) but things that bugged me throughout were (1) where was he getting the money to go to the pub? (sounds like a great pub!) (2) what contraception where he and the girlfriend using? Without being prurient, if you reject birth control technologies the result tends to be lots of babies. This didn’t happen so either they were very chaste or …… maybe it’s not a question I have a right to ask. But it perhaps raises interesting questions about the boundaries of tech.
Overall I loved the book and found it very evocative, so I repressed the voice inside my head that was tutting and saying it was all very well *for a man*. Ahem ahem.
One distinction I find useful, but I’m not sure if Mark Boyle touches on, is the difference between “warm” and “cool” technology. As I understand it, warm technology is a tool that assists you in doing something better, say a hand-turned grain mill, as opposed to the cool technology of automation. A book is the most fabulous piece of tech going, an improvement on handcopied parchments! Bedtime stories read by Alexa probably qualifies as a cool technology: not doing the job better but replacing a significant part of the human element.
All good wishes and fond greetings to you and Bookman, the cats and the Dashwoods for this festive season and new year.
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Oh Maggie, I have long daydreamed of a small farm too and also find myself in the middle of a city and that is unlikely to change which makes me ever so sad sometimes. I really enjoyed the book so thank you for the recommendation! And thank you for the extra insight into what the area he lives in is like! And thank you for the video! That was awesome to see! I laughed because as I was admiring his wood pile I remembered what he said about wood piles in the book 😀
Ha! I didn’t think about contraception! I assume they were using it, that kind of technology is not something you want to give up in my opinion! It is sad that there were so few young people. He talks about that a lot. And it is probably one among the many reasons the pubs and other local shops were going out of business. A lack of young people is something that rural towns around Minnesota are also facing and government farm policy is making it worse and worse.
I wondered too where he got the money for the pub! Then I made up a story about how he used the money he got from writing books and articles. Heh.
His building skills were impressive. I thought the hot tub not such a complicated undertaking though since it was cob building which is rather free-form and, I have heard, pretty easy when you aren’t building a house that needs a roof.
Boyle does not talk about warm and cool technology, but what an interesting way of looking at it! I just borrowed a book from the library called Twelve by Twelve by William Powers who was a successful doctor and decided to build a 12×12 foot off grid cabin and create a permaculture farm in North Carolina, maybe a kind of American counterpart to Boyle? I am looking forward to diving in to it. But I also want to know, why is it always men? Are there no women doing this kind of thing? And if not, why not? I wonder about these questions a lot.
Happy New Year wishes to you too!!!
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I’ve just found the short piece of film, you can see Mark Boyle, his cabin, his garden, the surrounding landscape, and hear his voice. I love it!
GAA stands for Gaelic Athletic Association = intense local sporting rivalries and loads of chat!
https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2019/0424/1045504-mark-boyle-life-without-technology/
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