[.ca] Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology (ISBN 0060570040)

A call to simplicity:
Eric Brende's 2003 'Power Off' is at once an optimistic utopian narrative and a uplifting illustration of the healthful benefits of practising inner simplicity. In reading it, I was reminded of E. F. Schumacher's classic 'Small is Beautiful' and Richard Bolles's 'What Colour is Your Parachute?' both of which advocate a re-examination on one's work-life balance. Brende becomes one of a growing number of voices calling us to purposefully step off the careening cart called technological progress and return to a sanity rooted in simper living based on deliberately choosing to forego so-called labour-saving technologies in favour of embracing the intrinsic worth of manual activity. A university post-grad resident in Boston, Brende and his wife Mary deliberately chose to live among an Amish-like agrarian community in the American Midwest. At the time, they premised this as a living experiment upon which to base Eric's MIT master's thesis. The desire to live a more holistic lifestyle, evidently latent in both loves for some time, blossomed - not without some difficulties - with their migration. That they are not isolated examples of a grassroots movement is evidenced by the references to other transplanted community members they discover during their eighteen month sojourn among the so-called Minimites, a term Brende coined to represent that community's choice to pursue minimal technology and its avoidance of any machinery powered by more than muscles. Well-written and flowing, Brende's engaging narrative is peppered with humorous and self-reflective insights about the nature of work, community, and interdependent relationships. He shares enough of the inner dynamics of the community members, his family included, to reveal that while there is occasional trouble in paradise, inner discord and disharmony can best be resolved through honest self-examination and self-discipline. While not a religious book, Brende's narrative embodies a faithful testimony to the healing benefits of simplicity living with a community of like-minded neighbours. In consciously choosing an alternative lifestyle, Brende describes our slavish dependence on technology and harmful consequences of our health, inner life, community, and environment. His surprisingly joyful discovery of the abundance received in simplicity, including invigorated health, spiritual vitality, and enriched interpersonal relationships. During their life among the Minimites, Eric and Mary ate and lived better than their friends still totally enmeshed in technology. In its honest eloquence, Brende's book beckons the reader to reconsider the cost of progress; it is a hopeful invitation to a better lifestyle to which we can return.