Dear J,
We live in a society defined by industrial consumerist logistics. Our food, shelter, transportation, information, and governance systems all exist within a system that runs on the logic of industrial consumerism.
Those of us who see the terminal problems of industrial consumerism seek to build/cultivate a different, post-consumer lifestyle and society. It seems largely impossible — or at least enormously difficult — to create a bubble society or a bubble life that is entirely dissociated from industrial consumer society. At the very least there is no way to escape being within the claimed jurisdiction of systems of power associated with industrial consumer societies.
The vision of the future is a post-industrial-consumerist world. But we happen not to live in that world yet. This can make living inside of industrial consumer society distressing.
Instead of thinking that the ‘best’ life is one that is entirely decoupled from industrial consumer society, accept that it’s virtually impossible to pull that off at this time in history and seek instead to Pareto decouple.
Pareto Optimization is a process of designing a system with multiple objectives where you can’t move towards one goal without moving away from another.
Reject the 80% that is insane and toxic, keep or tolerate the 20% that isn’t such a big deal – or would be a Sisyphean feat to roll back, or is unavailable to people living in the 21st century.
For example, it might theoretically be possible to 100% decouple your food from industrial society. You might go neoprimitive and hunt and forage with stone age tools you build yourself… but most of our wildlands won’t even support that because they’ve been depleted by modernity already so it isn’t a universalizable choice.
Pareto rejecting modernity is about discerning what elements of modernity cause harm (to you and others), cause fragility (by tightly coupling you to systems of modern logistics), or are simply unaligned with your existential-aesthetic preferences.
For many, if not all, aspects of lifestyle logistics, “decoupling” from industrial consumer society might look more like loosening the coupling rather than fully decoupling.
Best,
T
PS Here’s my trip report for my motorcycle ride, and some cabinets I built for my studio in the desert before heading north.