Rate this book

Surviving Off Off-Grid: Decolonizing The Industrial Mind (2011)

by Michael Bunker(Favorite Author)

3.86 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0012232432 (ISBN13: 2940012232434)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Refugio Publishing

review 1: You've probably read plenty of books that tell you how to survive off the grid. This book doesn't have a misprint in the title. It teaches you why you should be getting on with surviving off "off-grid". In other words, a whole lot less dependant. Off-grid living focuses on such things as using technology to produce electricity (perhaps wind or photovoltaic cells) Off-off-grid living would pose the question "How can I thrive without electricity?". This book doesn't describe the backwoodsman skills you might employ to eke out an existence as a hunter gatherer. Rather, it lays out a belief system that is as old as humankind, but largely forgotton in the western world of grid-connected luxury.The belief system you will be introduced to as you read is the basis for all planning... more, designing and action contained in the book. So, while it's chock full of excellent examples and suggestions about HOW to go about becoming more self reliant, once you understand WHY it is so important and natural to do so, you will be on your own exciting journey into actually living it!Michael Bunker is a colourful character. He's like John Wayne, John Calvin, Grizzly Adams and Thomas Cromwell rolled into one Texas-sized individual. Bunker doesn't pull his punches and this book is written in a direct and forceful manner. You can tell it has the ring of authenticity that comes from someone who genuinely practices what he preaches. Bunker lives in an Agrarian community in central Texas with his family and they largely produce what they need there. This book is a distillation of his learnings, mistakes and successes and has been literally field-tested for years prior to making it into print.So, if you want a book that thinks survival is all "Check out my cool bunker!" then go get one of the hundreds of books out there that cover this stuff. But if you want to learn how and why to live with meaningful and fulfilling process, relationships and freedom, click on the link to "Check out Michael Bunker!"February 29 - 2012 A year later: My above review of this book still stands. Surviving Off-Off Grid remains a very, very useful book. The book deserves to be read and reading it entirely is really the only way to find out for yourself why this book polarises people so completely. If you love the book, you possibly didn't need it in the first place, and if you loathe the book, you're someone who would stand to gain the most from adopting the paradigm shift that this book documents so thoroughly. Look, Michael Bunker causes controversy and often evokes extreme emotions in other people, but I can guarantee you that reading books by such authors is always anything but mundane. Michael Bunker walks around with a spectral amplifier volume knob floating above his head - set to 11.
review 2: This is a challenging book to review. No doubt because even the author expressed that it was difficult to write since he was trying to synthesize so many purposes into one piece of writing. Let me start by stating that I agree with many if not most of Bunker's ideas. I agree that the current system of industrialism/consumerism/agribusiness is fatally flawed and something must be done for the sake of us and our children. I agree (as a Christian) that there is an imperative for us to practice benevolent dominion and to work toward building the Kingdom in both an eternal AND a temporal sense. I even agree that modernism has hijacked many of the natural processes humanity developed through millenia of collective wisdom and has turned them into bare shadows of their former selves.And yet...Some things about this book really grated on me. The author conducts a fairly thorough examination of Western Civilization, identifying many places where the move toward urbanism resulted in the death of the civilization. All this is fine, but through all of this observation, not one single source is cited. Similarly, he examines the Civil War through a historical lens of a movement by northern industrialists to create a market for northern goods by adding former slaves as a consumer demographic. While intriguing and certainly plausible, again only one source is identified. The author even has the gall to extort everyone to "READ YOUR HISTORY" yet a bibliography of the primary sources he allegedly consulted is conspicuously absent. This gets slightly better toward the end of the book where one or two sources are quoted, but all in all, for a book that mocks the wisdom of the world, it is ironic that the most frequently quoted source is Wikipedia.This leads to my second contention (irritation?) with the book. The tone of the writing was one of such unfailing condescension and self-righteousness that even when I AGREED with the points being made (which, again, was the majority of the time), I found them slightly unpalatable. I'm not sure who the intended audience of this book really is. If it is those that already identify with the Christian Agrarian Separatist ideal, then it is preaching to the choir and useless in any practical sense. If it is those still under the influence of modernist consumer culture, I don't think anyone will be converted by the derisive and polemical rhetoric employed here. But maybe that is the point. If everyone went Agrarian, it would be difficult to maintain the ideal of separation. Better to wish ill on all those ignorant slaves of industrialist culture so that when it really hits the fan, you can laugh at all those liberal morons, government stooges, and consumer cogs going down with the system. (As a side note, I am a public educator and I found the author's derisive language regarding public education particularly irritating. I know many more educators like myself who spend most of their time trying to get students to question every aspect of the system they live in rather than simply accepting it. But then again, I don't teach in Texas...)I digress. The book is interesting and full of ideas that are worth considering specifically because they challenge paradigms that are almost a given in today's consumer/industrialist society. So if you can summon the energy to battle through repetitive rants, unsubstantiated historical precedent and a near constant injection of theology that serves to prove that scripture can be used to justify just about anything (just ask Joel Osteen and the modernist, consumer-based, prosperity gospel that the author indirectly attacks) then you will no doubt find something of value. I did. There are some nuggets from this text that I will take with me as I begin my own journey into sustainability and benevolent dominion over my own piece of land. Did I enjoy gaining this wisdom? Not particularly. less

Download links for: Surviving Off Off-Grid: Decolonizing the Industrial Mind

Advertising