Hi, I’m Tyler.

I split my time between California and Alaska, write about how to chase stoke at the end of the world, make a podcast, build DIY off-grid ecopunk-ish stuff out in the desert, and sometimes go on longish trips via a two-wheeled contraption of one sort or another.

My aim is to decouple human dignity and flourishing from high levels of resource consumption. I want to help cultivate human culture that is not founded on consumerist ideologies.

I test my ideas on my own life first. For example, between 2020 and 2023 I reduced my annual lifestyle expenditures from $70,000/yr to $10,000/yr, and my overall life satisfaction increased. (This isn’t to say that simply reducing your expenses will increase life satisfaction: how one goes about reducing cost of living matters a great deal. This also isn’t to say that everyone ought to spend $10,000/yr or less. That’s just what I’ve been able to get my cost of living down to within the context of my unique circumstance, privilege stack, safety nets, etc).

Deep Response

I think about the intersection of climate change, resource scarcity, ecosystem/biodiversity destruction, globalization, and the limits to growth on a finite planet. I study these issues and I think to myself: “Okay this is heavy stuff. But, like, what can I do about it? Like actually, as in next Tuesday?”

I’ve spent a lot of time coming up with an answer to that question that I’m happy with. So far, this is what I’ve got:

  • Learn how to live a great life without needing to spend very much money.

  • Develop a habit of Renaissance skill acquisition.

  • Internalize systems thinking and apply it to the operation of your own life and household.

Repeat these behaviors over a long enough period of time and certain desirable effects begin to emerge in your life:

  • Increased freedom-of-action.

  • Increased household resilience/ruggedness

  • Increased adaptability.

  • Increased alignment of behavior with values and core desires.

  • More equitable consumption of finite resources.

This practice is not the end, this is the beginning.

The point isn’t to become resilient, or to find that you’ve accidentally solved money forever and don’t need to earn more income if you don’t feel like it, or to make all your dreams come true.

Those are incidental yields - side effects of behavior aimed at the cultivation of individuals equipped to show up for and help construct the successor cultures that are even now arising out of the ruins of the current arrangement.

It’s how to navigate the current maelstrom in a way that enables you to deploy your gifts in the world, which is my current understanding of The Meaning Of Life.

I’ve been trying to figure this stuff out my whole life. Mostly I faffed around and got nowhere.

I finally caught a break in early 2020, connected some dots, figured out my own personal “what to do next Tuesday” list, and I was off to the races.

I’m still piecing it together as I go, exploring and iterating and growing. But I do now feel like I’m on the right path, and this conviction is new. Until 2020 I was fumbling around in the dark.

This website is my public notebook where I attempt to document what I learn, including mistakes and dead ends. I wish someone had handed me a book when I was 25 pointing me in the right direction, but as far as I can tell that book doesn’t exist.

So I wrote it.

I published Deep Response: An Emergency Education in Post-Consumer Praxis at the end of 2024. Here’s all of Chapter 1.

Start Here