Matt deWolfCarle HallKeene State Collegematt.dewolf@ksc.keene.eud

Levels of Subsistence: Purist to Realist

Put down everything and just relax. People living in 2015 rush form one task to another,

making sure that their daily schedule is filled. Every minute of every hour is a constant worry of

meeting deadlines and getting things done. It is as if people are imprisoned in their own lives. All

of this fast paced technology is holding people to higher standards of productivity. As humans,

we are now using more resources than ever. How do people manage this lifestyle? For longer

than you have imagined, people have been veering away from this type of consumerist life style,

leaving the stress of the cities and technologies behind in order to pursue something they find

more internally gratifying. This push to get away is called the back-to-the-land movement.

Participants seek simplistic lives that do not require much more than the most basic necessities.

Getting by on only what you need is called subsistence living. In the cities it may become murky

water when trying to decide what is a need and what is a want but in the country it is more clear

cut. Living from the land forces people to think and be creative rather than have immediate

satisfaction, something technology users are all familiar with.

In this paper I will unveil how much technology is too much to live with in order to

maintain a subsistence lifestyle. Most people believe that those who go back to the land are

purists and have a firm belief against technology. That they go to the land with nothing but

clothes and some food and water in a back pack. Frankly, that would be unrealistic and going

back to the land is not that simple. There are multiple levels of lifestyles lead by people who go

back to the land. There are those who need some technology to survive and even some who

just want the comfort of a modern technology for safety reasons. Those who want to live on the

grid and those who want to live off the grid. Don’t be fooled by what some people say, hardly

anyone can walk back to the land with little more than some clothes food and water.

Throughout history different people have gone back-to-the-land for different reasons.

However, all of these reasons share the common goal of living a more full life than would be

lived otherwise. Either way there is something about living a life in harmony with nature that

people just can not experience any other way than in nature.

When the back-to-the-land movement in North America is brought up, most people

associate it with the 1960s and 1970s. During that time period there was a new way of thinking

being passed around. There was a wave of counterculture where people threw away the

societal norms of the 1950s and started to expand radical beliefs. New ways of thinking about

people and how they interacted came about. Attention to gay rights, women's rights and civil

rights skyrocketed. People became aware of equality in conjunction with world peace and many

didn’t want the United States to go to war with Vietnam. Additionally, people began to see how

the government was failing them, the Watergate Scandal being a major indicator of corruption

and also the Kent State Shootings (Gair). Along with those issues the Cuban Missile Crisis also

had many Americans on edge (Gair). More importantly environmentalism became a popular

idea and people began to see how their lifestyles impacted the earth. Citizens started to pay

attention to their pollution and consumption based lifestyles. This is what sparked the typical

hippy stereotype of loving the earth and going green. Instead of wanting to work long day jobs in

the city where the counterculturists were stuck in the hustle and bustle of travel and

consumption, many wanted to take a second, and go back to the land. However this is not the

only time that this movement has arisen. As said in a book review of Dona Brown’s, Back to the

Land: The Enduring dream of Self-Sufficiency, “These latest back-to-the-landers are part of a

much larger story. Americans have been dreaming of returning to the land ever since they

started to leave it” (UW Press). Clearly the push to go back to the land is a historic and enduring

dream of some people.

Around the turn of the 19th century American demographics started to drastically

change. People started to move away from the country and to the cities. In Brown’s, Back to the

Land: The Enduring Dream of Self-Sufficiency she proves this by showcasing that, “Clearer

still was the shift away from farming as an occupation. By 1890, 43 percent of American workers

were farmers; by 1910, the figure had declined to less than a third” (Brown 24). With such a

radical shift happening it was not long before many people who tried to make it in the city came

back to what they knew best: living from the land. What the first generation city people found

was that the city was not as “intrinsically” satisfying as was the life on the farm (24). Brown

asserts that “rural life was more pleasant than city life” (27). The primary generation did not want

to change from rural life to city life, as human nature favors routine and consistency. Once some

were in the city however a depression would soon send them back to the land. This occurred

when “In 1893, a seismic panic and stock market crash had sent waves of shock throughout the

economy and ushered in years of depression” making it nearly impossible to make ends meet

for most families (27).

This showcases that most back to the land movements happened when there was a

time of hardship in the American economy, the most notable being the Great Depression.

During these time periods people who found the city life too unstable looked to the land for

answers. Dona Brown, author of Back to the Land: The Enduring Dream of Self-Sufficiency,

notes that, “Back-to-the-land authors of this generation repeated in unison that the chief reason

for returning to the land was that it would enable one to defend oneself against depressions,

panics, joblessness, high prices, and low wages” (45). Essentially for some people the options

were clear: either go on living in the city where there is the possibility of starving or start farming

to cultivate food.

The back to the land movements still exist today and are influenced by many similar

causations as were past movements. Social crisis is the underlying theme of why people look to

go back to the land. Brown recognizes the most recent events that could have caused people to

return to the land:

At the turn of the millennium, a false crisis— the anticipated “Y2K” collapse in the year

2000— was followed by a real one, in the wake of the 2001 attacks on New York and

Washington. Two drawn-out and costly American wars ensued, and even these were

often overshadowed by other calamities. Energy prices rose and fell with alarming

volatility, and a series of hurricanes, floods, and droughts seemed to portend

catastrophic climate change. When in 2007 a housing bubble burst, triggering a bank

panic and a stock market crash, Americans were suddenly confronting nearly every kind

of crisis that had threatened and inspired back-to-the-landers over the previous hundred

years. (228)

The lack of control in all of these situations is what made going back to the land such a clear

choice. Social crises will be bound to happen every few years. It is the natural cycle of how the

politics of economy work.

As the back-to-the-land movement of the 1960s dwindled participants moved onto a

different mind set. Instead of living to provide for oneself many back to the landers and

subsistence farmers found that the food industry was a common ground. Together the two

groups used food to come up with the cooperative food movement. Instead of focusing just on

themselves “…counterculturists used the simple and virtuous back-to-the-land ideal to fit within

a growing cooperative natural foods culture.” (Edgington 282). The ideas of subsistence farming

was taken from the back-to-the-land movement and applied to the new food co-op. People knew

where their food was coming from and had a say if they wanted change.

By moving back to the land people are leaving the comforts of society. This is where

subsistence living comes into the picture. In order to survive in the wilderness, or wherever the

people who moved back to the land settled, those people must know how to live from the land

and have just the bare necessities. Although subsistence living is using only what you need to

live, it is also a way to become self-reliant. A person must be able to make and do what they

need to on a day to day basis. Whether this is fixing clothes so they have something to wear or

knowing how to raise chickens, there is not much to rely on other than themselves and mother

nature. By living this way people often have a better sense of accomplishment and feel better

about themselves. In a study conducted by Merlin B. Brinkerhoff, he concluded, “Self reliance

within the context of the back-to-the-land movement ideally means supporting oneself (family

and/or community) by producing what one consumes on one’s own property. Self-reliance then

is ipso facto both ecological wholeness and voluntary simplicity” (Brinkerhoff). People who

choose to live in such a manner have done so “voluntarily” (Brinkerhoff). This means that they

did not have to choose this lifestyle but despite how it may be considered a challenge they

accepted anyways. Because it is a voluntary choice the people must have seen some sort of

benefit to making that decision. In living simplistic and self reliant lives, people find “wholeness”

something not found in urbanized lifestyles (Brinkerhoff). Instead of rushing around and

stressing over things like having to go to meetings or buying the most recent technology, “the

solution … proposed was to reject long hours of work and superfluous luxuries in favor of

plainer living in the country where one would have free time to indulge in music, books, and

outdoor leisure” (Brown). Just enjoy the outdoors for what it has to offer. So go outside and

don't worry about money.

When people go back to the land as a group they are considered to live in a subsistence

economy. This means that there is no money in the economy and value is based simply upon

how much a resource is needed and how available that resource is (Merriam-Webster). This

creates a special social environment where nobody is too powerful and nobody is too poor. In

this type of economy, “even the most well-to-do participated in the systems of barter and labor

exchange like everyone else” (Hatch 146-147). Relative equality is something that is present in

a subsistent economy but not found in the United States’ primarily capitalistic economy.

Powerful companies and executives that control much of the economy are the reasons why

some people feel powerless in modern America. To regain some of that power, people in the

past have looked to the subsistence economy.

Subsistence living gives a person a form of new identity. Instead of associating with city

life, someone who lives this way associates with the land. An example of this association can be

seen in the homeless identity. People who are homeless are usually forced into the situation

they find themselves in. On the streets homeless people learn to live a lifestyle that is similar to

subsistence living. They don't have much and usually get by on just the basics and their own

wit. However, like others who have found more meaning in a self reliant life some homeless

people do not want to leave the streets. Randall Osborne conducted a survey and found that,

“The concept of self-reliance, then, may create a pattern that allows homeless persons to

survive on the street but, in return, may create circumstances (such as non-use of services and

fewer attempts to transition off the street) that make it more likely the homeless person will stay

homeless” (Osborne). Finding an identity in something meaningful is a reason why people have

chosen to go back to the land regardless of what others think.

By not becoming bound to the norms of society, the back to the land movement can be

seen as a freedom movement. People don't rely on the government or other sources in order to

get by. They become literally freed of the prices, taxes, and pressures that are burdened upon

most citizens. According to Davie Levine, freedom relates to self reliance as follows: “freedom

is linked to creativity in work. Creativity in work is considered the exercise of a human capability,

specifically the capability to do skilled labor” (Levine). By becoming self reliant a person must

become very skilled in a broad spectrum of labor. From things like scientific knowledge about

cultivating plants, how to plumb a cabin, or how to weld, self-reliant people have quite the skill

set. This by Levines definition is freedom. Freedom also has to do with an escape from

monetary value. While choosing to live a more self-sufficient life a person must consider that,

“One of the main enticements is freedom from the need for money” (Maxwell). Steve Maxwell

remembers, “As a youngster, I thought the prospect of a money-free lifestyle in the wilderness

looked like a great alternative to the few dollars I earned each week cutting grass and painting

garages” (Maxwell). Maxwell’s point is that rather than getting by on minimal wages doing

tedious tasks, why not take to the wilderness where one can wholly enjoy themselves without

the constraints of monetary value.

The back-to-the-land movement can be considered somewhat religious and is referred

to as quasi-religious as some people who depart on this path are looking for something more

than what they would find in every day life. They seek something focused on, “ecological

integrity and wholeness” (Brinkerhoff and Jaffery 64). People set out to live this way in order to

achieve a higher quality of life. This does not mean that they live with luxuries and ease. Instead

it is usually a labor intensive lifestyle that brings harmony to human kind and the earth.

Another theory as to why the back-to-the-landers are so happy with what they do

is the argument that they are forced to go beyond their limits. As Bill McKibbon explains in

Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age: “The joy comes not from excelling against some

arbitrary standard, but from excelling against whatever your limits happen to be” (52). Instead of

having a standard set by a common belief system where a person lives, people who have gone

to the land have actual limits they can physically experience. When it is a matter of survival and

those limits are pushed beyond their capacity a feeling of “joy,” as McKibbon puts it takes over

(52). The realization comes that the limits a person thought they had, based upon their social

and physical context prior to going to the land, do not really exist. What a person thinks they are

in their head is not always the truth. The human body is capable of doing extraordinary things.

The only way to achieve these abilities is to ignore the limits imposed by others and tap into

oneself. Push the limits past what the societal norms say they are and amazing things will

happen.

While talking about wildness in its current context it is impossible to ignore the fact that

technology is becoming more and more a part of every day lifestyles. Technology is the use of

science to invent useful things or solve problems (Merriam-Webster). Technology can be further

defined as being “high” or “low” technology. Something that is high-tech is most likely a machine

or something that has complex parts that work in unison like a computer while low-tech is

something that is simple and is usually not mechanical such as a hammer or axe. There is also

hard technology vs soft technology. A soft technology is something that requires human

interaction for it to function. For example the hammer needs a human to use it in order for the

hammer to be useful. Hard technology on the other hand is the opposite. It requires no human

interaction. Something like an electronic freezer, which it is simply plugged in, is hard

technology. The hard and soft technology have a correlation between high and low technology.

Usually when something is hard technology it is high technology and vice versa.So can people

go back to the land without technology of any sort? There are different levels to which some

believe that technology is of acceptable use.

Technology is something that people use as shortcuts. There are goals that people have

to accomplish everyday. By using technology its as if a shortcut is being taken to reach the goal.

Taking shortcuts is whats wrong with how people are living today. There is no longer a process

that people have to go through in order to get results. The process however is the most

important part in learning lessons and figuring out who you are as a person. The process is

something that should be fallen in love with. Instead in modern technology saturated societies

the process is eliminated and people are reaching the destination too quickly.

By using soft technology or alternative technology people are seen as not having an

environmental impact on the land. As said by Jeffery Jacob, “Alternative technology

(composting, solar heating, etc.) is seen as ‘soft technology’… and consequently as

nonpolluting and in harmony with the environment. At the same time, through its relative

accessibility to the non expert, it can provide independence from the high technology of the

mainstream industrial society” (Jacob 45). This means that a person does not have to be

incredibly smart to utilize this type of technology as say using a computer. Instead of not

knowing how to use the computer or any high/hard technology for that matter, “the ideal back-

to-the-lander celebrates menial physical labor through alternative technology to carve out an

independent way of life in harmony with the environment” (Jacob 45). Jacob believes that only

soft technologies should be considered part of the back-to-the-land movement. This is

particularly important to note because by using these technologies there is no shortcut to

carrying out tasks.

In the early 50s when technology was coming to households many were unsure of how it

would impact their life styles. When magazines started publishing about technology they

promoted the use of modern conveniences in the context of subsistence farming cultures. In an

editorial in the August, 1952, issue of the Progressive Farmer the writer stresses that, “The farm

family ‘can enjoy all the conveniences of the city without its congestion and confusion’”(qtd. in

Hatch 154). It is important to note that these “conveniences” can be applied to a lifestyle that

has never known them before (154). How can someone be so sure that people can enjoy

technology with out the confusion of a city if they have never experienced it before? Isn't that

how all cities started—by introduction of technology?

There is a balance between using modern technology and living a subsistent life. When

both practices are used in conjunction enormous amounts of knowledge can be spread and

applied in short amounts of time. In the article I Love My Chickens...And My Ipad. author Tami

Graham figures, “Technology is fast paced and always changing, while the fundamentals of

food and clothing never changes. Technology can be used to enhance our knowledge and skills

and make life a bit easier. Staying grounded in the un changing, basic human needs keeps us

from getting lost in the fast-paced modern world” (Graham). She clearly makes the point that

technology is a great tool, but she concedes that it is important to stay “grounded” and not let

ourselves get caught up in the flow of the electric age (Graham). People cannot control when

they were born or where they were born or who raises them. If a person born in today’s world

wanted to go back to the land but was raised in Manhattan, and their parents worked on Wall

Street, they would not have the knowledge on how to go about their quest. Thanks to

technology, this dream can be possible. By using the internet to learn and research people can

finally do things that they would otherwise never have been able to do.

Sarah Pohl put it simply when in her journal she wrote, “The trick is determining which

items are essential and which are distracting, separating important ‘equipment’ from needless

‘devices,’ and exercising the self-control to carry only what you need” (Pohl 149). The point here

is that a line needs to be drawn between what someone absolutely needs to survive and what

someone wants to have to be more comfortable. Perceptions of nature become convoluted

when conveniences that would not be there are injected. A person cannot get the same sense

of accomplishment by using a pre made fire starter to get a campfire going as they would if they

used resources strictly found in that environment. As long as a person is living within the

guidelines of using technology as “important ‘equipment,’” and nothing more than that their

lifestyle can be considered a subsistent life (149). Using equipment is like using a tool to

achieve a goal rather than using hard technology that would achieve the goal without any

human process. When Brown said to live an “intrinsically satisfying” life she's referring to

enjoying the process and cheating by using technology (Brown 27).

Gary Snyder has been talking about this issue for a long time. He takes the stance that

technology that should have a criteria. In an online interview with Snyder, Juliet Harding asks:

“Q:Do you envision a world in which technology and other human inventions could live in

harmony with nature and the wild?

A: It is definitely one possible future, but I wouldn’t bet money on it. The biological and

earth sciences show us that we are all very much interconnected, and that we

share bodies and minds throughout the organic world, right down to our genetic

makeup. We are kin to the rest of nature. But, to talk about technology, one would

need clear criteria to distinguish between useful and sustainable technologies, and

those which cost the world too much.” (Harding)

Snyder believes that there is a line to be drawn like many others and he's right. There are

technologies which should be avoided not only to enjoy the process but also to keep from

“costing the world too much,” (Harding). He's asserts the point that only sustainable

technologies should be accepted—things that meet a threshold of tolerable impact on the earth.

The Whole Earth Catalogue has compelling articles that showcase technology as

something that just as problematic as it is beneficial. Technology has little benefit to us because

there is a lack of technology to keep up supporting the current technology. Kevin Kelly, author of

Tools Are the Revolution explains how, “Technology and tools create as many problems as they

solve” (Kelly). His argument is that whenever technology comes out, there is always a new

technology that must follow in order to correct the flaws in the current technology. In addition

technology opens doors that wouldn't have been otherwise, thus unveiling new problems. The

fact that such contradictions arise is due to, “…gizmos mutating at wild rates, [and] engineers

love the endless stomach-churning ride of creating the firstest [sic] with the newest,” according

to Joel Garreau author of Thinking Outside of The Box (Garreau). Engineers cant keep up with

the demands of the newest of new technology. This happens primarily to hard technology. Its

hard to say there are problems to be solved to make a hammer work better however its easy to

say there are problems to be solved to make computers work better. Because these

technologies are so problematic, people looking to live a subsistence life should avoid them in

general.

It is clear that going back to the land will be a journey that only those with an internal

drive to do so will embark upon. Its a personal choice that is seemingly getting farther and

farther out of reach as technology takes hold of our lives. But how does the world benefit from

people going back to the land? By choosing to live off the land world problems won’t be solved.

Verlyn Klinkenborg, a New York Times columnist, asserts that “Growing a vegetable garden

isn’t going to balance the budget or replace lost benefits or even begin to make up for the shock

of a lost job.” It may be being said a little sarcastically when the back to the land movement is

referred to as simply, “growing a vegetable garden” but he's right. There is no way that going

back to the land will be attributed to a world without problems. Its difficult to wholly understand

what exactly causes people to get gratification out of living subsistent lives. Yes it is the feeling

of self reliance and being freed from the burdens of mainstream America, but for every

individual who has this experience, it runs much deeper.

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