September 2019
People for a long time lived in open spaces, we had simple lives, contemplating nature, which made us enjoy tranquility – in some occasions, some societies were lucky enough to develop a deep spirit of love and freedom. Life was hard too, we had to work long days for food, shelter, and even worst, every so often a more powerful and greedy being (sometimes in the name of god), or even a diseases/natural disaster, could appear and without much to be done, we were gone.
But by the beginning of the XX century, we started gathering in bigger communities, they became “cities”, it made a lot of sense: food, energy, shelter, health and security were more available. In very few decades we became more comfortable, open minded, and we fought for people’s rights as never before. Technology is so accesible that develops a sense of abundance of our dreams, but that abundance is making us more alienated to nature, other beings and in the end very isolated and stressed.
I think it’s time to find a balance between those two lifestyles and reshape civilization, we need to develop a space were we can enjoy the peace and harmony of nature, while we can also take advantage of the collective intelligence of the world. Today, we have the opportunity to find accesible, efficient and low maintenance technologies to provide food, energy and shelter, while we can also develop specialization and teamwork remotely. Even better, we have the chance to gather in small groups for fast decision making, while we also assure safety and cooperation.
I’m going through that journey, living on the grid for knowledge, but off the grid for mindfulness. There’s much I’ve learnt and many more ahead, and although it might not be the option to everyone of us, I believe that while things get more confused, degraded and hopeless, this might be an alternative to explore.