Off Grid....

Originally meant to be off the power grid, independent of the commercial power supply.

I should probably clarify here and now that I am anti, modern corporate start.  There are some things that should be entirely divorced from the profit motivation.  I think that anything that affects the health and welfare of just about everybody in society should defiantly be divorced from the motive of profit.  Power, water, healthcare, sanitation, safety, none of these should be run by the bottom line.  There should be no such thing as a for profit prison.  That’s nothing but a recipe for oppression.  I am firmly convinced that the drive for profit does nothing but destroy the common good.  The drive for profit will kill the last animal, chop the last tree, and shit in the last puddle of clean water.

The question that we all need to answer individually is, do we really want to go there?

If you really don’t want to live in an industrial wasteland, it is time to change the style that we are accustomed to.

Which brings us back to Off Grid, and its meaning, and how that meaning has changed, and how it will continue to change, cuz now, when you say Off Grid, it conjures the notion of camping in the woods with the arsenal of a small army and a 100 year supply of toilette paper.

And I think it is so much more than that.

The Grid is the playing board, The Grid is the base of the game, and unless you are camping in the woods with the 100 year supply of toilette paper, getting your water from a well or stream, hunting your own food, making your own cloths from their skins, and burying your own shit, you are on the board to some degree or another.

So how do you get off that Grid and still maintain some semblance of the life you know and love?

 

I think that instead of getting off The Grid, we need to start changing The Grid.

Cuz we need some kind of Grid, some kind of structure to our society.

 

And we need to fully realize that we control The Grid, not the other way around.  Just because this is the only thing you know, doesn't mean that something else isn't possible, and even preferable.

Just as we can choose to go play Uno or Candy Land when the Risk and Monopoly games are drawing to a close, we can choose the structure of the next Grid.

At this moment in time we are facing a game changer on a world scale.  We can choose to remain slaves to the corporate state, and let them dictate where and how we live.  Or we can quit playing their game, and start our own game.

And, at this point, I'll ask you to pause and consider:  Think about who exactly it is that does play Monopoly and Risk to the bitter, one person controls everything, end.  In my personal experience it's never been my best friends, my most considerate friends.  It's generally been the most aggressive and selfish of our group.

One of the things that I like the least about the modern corporate state is that it rewards, praises, and encourages the most negative of human nature and behavior. 

I want to stop playing their game.

I want to get off the old Grid and find a new one.

And I don’t think I’m alone in this longing for a better way.

I have few clues how to achieve my aim.  But I’ve gotta at least try.