Tyler J. Disney

Hi, I’m Tyler. I used to be really stressed about the state of world, my personal life was kind of a mess, and I felt like my best efforts were just a fart in the wind.

Then I took my life apart and rebuilt it based on autonomy, sufficiency, skills, and honest self-understanding. I now enjoy a remarkable level of freedom, resilience, and capacity to participate in building the kind of world I want.

(You can read more about that journey here or in my books.)

This is what I think:

1. 1

   The world is in crisis in large part due to cultural programming that equates the good life with boundless material consumption, but I’ve discovered that

2. 2

   It’s possible to build rich, free, rugged, vibrant lives by playing by a different game, a game that recognizes a realistic level of material sufficiency as “enough”, and that beyond that level there are whole worlds of human flourishing to explore that don’t require ever-more inputs of resources, and that

3. 3

   This different game, this understanding of the world that rejects boundless material affluence, is a prerequisite for any long-term viable society on this planet of ours, so along with whatever else we have to do to navigate our unfolding crises, learning to live and think and build with this new understanding is a necessary component.

More and more people are recognizing that the dominant way of arranging our societies is a dead end, and we’re exploring the alternative landscape. This leads me to the fourth thing I think, which is that

4. 4

   As individuals free themselves they tend to find each other, encourage and support each other… and then they begin to build together. They begin to build the seedpods of a viable society in the nooks and crannies of the present moment. At least, the people interested in that sort of thing do. I happen to be one of those people.

In other words: put your own oxygen mask on first, then help your seatmate get theirs on. Work together to rig up some parachutes and gliders and whatnot, then blow the hatch and throw the horns on your way out.

This vision excites me more than I can say, and is what I’m still in the process of orienting my life around. This website chronicles my journey.