Why I Want to Live off the Grid - Part I, Interdependence, or how the TV is the Devil
In High School I quickly became a teachers pet for a paper I wrote called "Television: The Work of the Devil?". Most people who know me, know that I am a well-meaning Christian, and I must first say that this paper was not about the moral evils of television content (though indeed I do find most television content unsavory). It was rather a look at how television has influenced our culture, our selves and our sense of well being. But first and foremost it looked at the ways in which television is a mind and creativity destroyer.
Being on the grid necessarily implies dependence on a larger framework for sustenance. Now to be clear we must reaffirm that one can never be fully independent. No man is an island to quote John Donne. In fact let's review his poem here; it speaks volumes about the very core of humanity.
"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." - Meditation XVII
Knowing that we are all interdependent and connected means that in some way we have a very sincere and natural need for human interaction. How sad is it then that the average American spends about 5-7 hours watching television a day? In fact, if we sleep for 7-8 hours and work for 8-9 hours, that leaves us with about 1-3 hour of totally free interaction with our friends, our spouses, people we don't know or haven't yet met, much less our grandparents and other distant relatives. To put this in perspective, 5-7 hours a day of television watching a day works will end up being 20-30% of one's lifetime.
At this point, it strikes me that when we talk about off the grid living, we are really talking about a way to become more interconnected with life, humanity, and the environment. An off the grid lifestyle is paradoxical then in that our images of an off-the-gridder is a solitary person in a cabin, by himself, who is kind of nutty and has a very long and disgusting beard (if he is a male of course). However, on the grid people seem to live in nice suburbs with all the modern conveniences and are quite content with the status quo. Thus the paradox is that not having to depend on the modern infrastructure (independence) will lead us to greater interdependence (an independence conditional on other more immediate human beings). However the dependency on modern conveniences has led to a great deal of Independence in the on-grid person...so much so that they often lead lives of quiet desperation and loneliness.
I believe that the first step to getting off the grid of mental dullness, the grid of contentment with the status quo, the grid of normality and blandness is to get rid of our televisions...or at the very least to get rid of cable television and to remove the television from the prominent spot in our living rooms. I think that real life has enough challenges, adventure and mystery to never get bored.
I hope in the next few posts about getting off the grid that we will begin to further understand what it means that get off the grid, and why it is the best thing we can do. We will further understand that becoming independent will lead to interdependence because, in essence, getting off the grid means changing our dependencies to a much more local set of people...something known as interdependence.
