I read an interesting book called "Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology" by Eric Brende, a man who moves out of the city to live for eighteen months amongst an Amish-like community in an experiment to live off grid. I can't find the exact quote, but he wrote how the people he lived with were always looking for any excuse to get together and to be involved in one another's lives.
That's because they had time to.They weren't running helter skelter commuting to a city job and back, and they weren't hooked on a TV or computer afterwards.
They weren't afraid of hard work either. In fact, they loved to work,
because it meant time to be with each other. The company made work lighter and happier.
Of course, this is more of a necessity when living far from any well-equipped city, but you also get the heart warming feeling they really wanted and craved their neighbors' company, which to me was the highlight of this book.
As for devotees of Krishna, descriptions of simple country life should help us remember Krishna and the way of life humanity is meant for, to save valuable time for our spiritual progress. The closer we can live according to His natural provision and program, the closer we may come to each other and the better off we will be.
And seeing the beauty of nature instead of cement and steel and smoggy air...It's good for the brain, too!
Some favorite quotes:
" 'Many hands make work light.' This statement was true, though hard to explain. Gradually, as you applied yourself to your task, the threads of friendship and conversation would grow and connect you to the laborers around you. Then everything suddenly became inverted. You'd forget you were working and get caught up in the camaraderie, the sense of lightened effort. This surely must rank among the greatest of labor-saving secrets. Work folded into fun and disappeared. Friendship, conversation, exercise, fresh air, all melded together into a single act of mutual self-forgetting. "
"When the quantity of machines shrink, another area of human realization expands: skill.
"By minimizing technology, our neighbors maximized human know-how".
"In the modern university, with its rapid turnover of assignments and fast-paced technology, the human brain is treated as just another processing device and is expected to keep pace with electronic blips."
"And this explained not only why time moved more slowly but also why we had more of it, why we were able to relax and read the way we were doing right now: in the absence of fast paced gizmos, ringing phones, alarm clocks, television, radios and cars, we could simply take our time. In being slower, time is more capacious. The event is only in the moment. By speeding through life with technology, you reduce what any given moment can hold. By slowing down, you expand it."
The author, an MIT grad, does not totally condemn technology, just the kind that zaps human energy, that becomes more important than humanity.
A passage regarding off grid life that struck me:
"When the temperature exceeds a hundred degrees...Mary and I had heard about a water hole ....and promptly set out for it... So we did learn about another natural alternative to the air-conditioner.
"There was still another.
"Late one sultry afternoon a big storm moved in...The next day, it was about seventy-two and clear....
"It occurred to me that this new coolness would not be nearly so bracing had it not been for the unbearable (hot) weather before.
"In our era of technology, affluent westerners spend billions every year to 'get away' to exotic locales. They do so surely to escape the stress and frustration of modern life, but also to relieve its monotony. They spend forty-eight weeks of the year in the same job in a climate-controlled environment; when they go home in the evening, they travel on the same stretch of freeway to a subdivision where all the houses look the same; they watch television programs that reduce the complex issues of life to half-hour segments on a flat screen. They crave diversion, depth, escape...
"There may be another way. What if they just notice the weather changing?"
I found this observation interesting because for many years I lived in hot and humid Texas and also in India without an air conditioner, and during the summers the humidity was high and the heat over a hundred degrees. Sometimes it was so hot at night the ceiling fan above my bed did nothing to relieve the heat which made it hard to sleep, and in India, especially if the power went out!
Yet, the discomfort of a few sleepless nights lasted only about a week at most, and then would gradually cool down. And in India, I discovered that the more still I lay, the more I could perceive even the faintest and coolness of the evening air.
So it was bearable. Meanwhile, I used to find various ways to beat the heat, cost free. My favorite was our front porch with shade trees in the evening. In India it was swimming in the refreshing waters of Ganga or just a bucket of cold water. During those times, I too had been noticing even the slightest changes in temperature and the weather. As a result, I felt a much greater connection to nature and God than before, since there was no "climate-controlled environment" to numb my senses.
