Solar panels on the roofs of homes is a game-changed. It will cause a great number of people to consider that they can detach from the infrastructure of society and become self-reliant.
Once your mind becomes open to possibilities, anything can happen.
Step 1 – you imagine that your house can be anywhere, and not in a town or a city. Not plugged in. Especially in this wonderful new age, post-COVID, when many of us now have an option of working from home, regardless of where that home may be.
Step 2 – you consider the essentials of life and how you can provide them:
- water – comes from the sky, for free. In many locations it is sufficient for all of your drinking, bathing and gardening needs
- heating and cooling – modern home design, with simple solutions like insulation and double-glazing, combined with solar power, makes this quite achievable
- food – there are plenty of books and articles out there explaining how an ordinary backyard has sufficient space to grow all the food you need for a healthy vegan lifestyle
- communications – the ubiquitous internet, plus now Skynet, means you can communicate, and receive tv, movies, games, books and music remotely, from virtually anywhere, and quite cheaply
Step 3 – you look into the costs and viability. In many lands, especially rural America, shifting away from the city is substantially cheaper. Once you have got to this stage there is possibly no turning back. A tree-change becomes a compelling action, better in every way if you have the mindset of semi-detaching from the rigidity of society.
This what I call a first generation step towards rewilding (as in it will take three generations to complete the process). It allows those of us who chose it to take the first steps. But it is far from the end solution. By the time we get to the third generation we need to address the following:
- electricity – it is simply not achievable for rewilded humans. The components are not readily sourced, or easily sourced, locally, no matter where you live. Individuals or small groups are incapable of mining, of creating wires and batteries and solar panels. We need to revert to burning wood and becoming more personally resilient to heat and cold. Our distant ancestors managed it, and survived. We can be pragmatic and choose to live in lands with the most favorable weather, rather than where out Gods told us was our place.
- food won’t be a problem, but it will be significantly different and less varied. I tend to think along the lines of ancient meso-americans – tomatoes, corn, beans, chili peppers and maize. To me that is delicious but it might get a bit boring
- shelter – very few people who go self-sufficient today are building their own homes with out externalities. A future rewilded us won’t have nails or caulk or concrete. Think log cabins and no insulation. Think bugs getting in.
- communications will disappear. Riding a horse to talk to someone will be our peak ability to communicate. We won’t even have printing presses. Typewriters might exist for a few hundred years, if we are lucky. We won’t know what is happening on the other side of the mountain range and guess what? This is good. Less organization and less communication means less chance of “society” rising again. Or wars.
The negatives sound bleak for anyone who loves modern day conveniences (basically all of us). Eating the same food everyday, hours spent in the fields, not entertainment… but after a few generations it becomes normal and the past doesn’t even seem believable. We will be living authentic lives in tune with the rest of the planet. Knowingly. By choice. With reverence.
Even so, we have three generations in which to develop products that can make surviving much easier, and can be recreated without technology, and/or will last for millennia. It bothers me deeply that music and movies and books could be gone forever, but surely we can find ways to make them last.
Think of a turntable and record that are made of titanium or whatever, and can operate from being hand cranked. Making speakers that last might be the hardest part.
Imagine books that are made with durability in mind.
There is a lot to do. And the more inviting we make a rewilded human future, the more readily it will happen.