Transcriber: Lisa Rodriguez
Reviewer: Peter van de Ven Do you guys know anyone
who lives off the grid? Yeah? No? Well, you do now. My name's Esther, and I live off the grid. I live intentionally and permanently
not connected to the power grid, with my family, in the foothills
of Southwest Idaho. For me, this is an expression
of my freedom, it's an expression
of what human beings are capable of, and it's also a reaction or a response to what I perceive to be a culture
of hyperstimulated numbness and learned dependency. I have kind of a thing about dependency or, really, whatever is
the opposite of dependency. And there's a particular experience
in my life, that we can trace, that gave me this kind of clarity
around this issue. That's what I'd like
to share with you today, and that's the time that I went
for a year without the internet. So, some of you,
when I said I lived off the grid, thought I might be
a little crazy, now you're sure. But it's true, I went for a year
without the internet. And it might have been
a little crazy, just a little crazy. But it changed things for me; it changed my perspective on my life. And if I could just shovel that
out of here and give that to you, well, I guess that's what we're here for. So, here's how it started. I was 30 years old, and I was going through
a transition in my life. I had been very career-oriented
and my own financial support, and I was transitioning
into being the stay-at-home mom of two very small children. Now, this talk is not
about that transition. That is another talk. But I shared that with you so you can understand how it was possible
that I could just drop off the internet. At that time, not only
did I not have a job, it wasn't advantageous for my family
for me to try to get a job, because the daycare would have cost
more than I could earn. I had been a high-achiever
in the workplace, kind of a go-getter type, and I thought,
I'm not going to sit around, I'm going to do something
useful with this time. I'm going to do
a social experiment on myself. But, seriously, when was I
going to have another chance? I think so many of us
have these fantasies. Probably some of you have this fantasy: If I could just drop out. If I could shut off the noise. If I could simplify my life. But we can't, because the internet and electronic noise
is so integrated into our lives, we have responsibilities, we have obligations. So you always wonder,
what would it be like? Would I be like Walden,
like Thoreau on Walden Pond? Would I be more self-actualized? Would my IQ increase? Or would I just be really bored? Well, in December of 2009, I had
my chance to find out, and I took it. I cut off everything digital, every form of digital
communication in my life. So, of course, the wi-fi,
but also the cell phone, even the credit cards and debit card because that counted to me
as electronic communication with my bank. Although that was really hard
to explain to the bank teller when she asked me
to run my card and I refused. I found I had to explain myself
to a lot of different people. Not only to the bank teller, but also to the parking garage attendant,
the travel agent, to my pastor when she wanted
to give me some scripture readings and I didn't have email
so she had to drive them to my house. Also, of course,
all the people on Facebook, except not really very many
of the people on Facebook, because most of them
didn't notice I was gone. As I was explaining myself
to all these people, an interesting thing happened. The responses fell pretty neatly
into two categories. There were those who responded
with some version of the question "why?" Why are you doing this? What does it mean to you? What is it changing? What are you getting out of it? All these people, older than me. And there were people who responded
with some version of the question "how?" How do you communicate? How do you tell time? How do you get places? All these people, younger than me. So, I was born in 1979,
along a generational line between people who have experienced
the world prior to the net revolution and those who have never experienced a world without wi-fi
and texting and debit cards. The reason I share that with you
is that when I jumped into my experiment, I was asking both questions. I wanted to know why. I wanted to know how
the technology of the internet was affecting my pursuit
of a meaningful life. But I was also looking forward
to the visceral, physical challenge of getting to someone else's house
without Google Maps. (Laughter) So December of 2009, in I jumped. I turned in the cell phone,
I turned off the wi-fi. I unplugged. The first thing I discovered
is that I was addicted. You are not surprised by this. I wasn't surprised either,
except that from the inside, addiction is always a surprise. I gained 10 pounds,
as if I had just quit smoking. I was irritable.
I couldn't concentrate. That lasted for about a month
or maybe 40 days. Might fit a clinical profile there. But I wasn't done. The second thing I discovered
is that now that I wasn't on the internet and I wasn't binging on
banana bread quite as much, I had a lot of empty space in my life. Now, and let me clarify:
this is not the same thing as free time. I had two children
under the age of three - and that is not all video games
all day, anyway. But there was empty space. There was space without entertainment,
which is also without distraction. And I was beginning to wonder
if those two were the same thing. What was I going to do with this space?
I decided to try to fill it. Went through fascinations,
like serial relationships. If this sounds really impressive,
that's exactly what I intended. So, I read a bunch of books. Over a hundred books, some of them
very big books - I made a list. I reengaged with my spiritual life, which had been on the back burner
for a long time; all of a sudden, I was
an A-plus student of scripture. I made a financial plan
to get my family out of debt, I changed how I ate,
I started doing yoga, and I learned to cook. I had not been a confident cook,
ever, before that, and, to be honest, personality-wise,
I'm not an easy cook. But in the third month
of my year without internet, I broke through. I learned to bake bread,
make perfect muffins, Moussaka, vegetarian lasagna. And I got really into my marriage. Because if you're both going
to bed at the same time and you're not holding phones - I'm gonna let you finish that sentence. (Laughter) At this point, my year without internet
was an unqualified success. I wanted to proselytize, I wanted to stand on the mountain
and say, "Everyone set down your iPhones, there's real life
on the other side of this." I was no-internet-lady-of-the-world
awesome. But around the six-month mark, I hit a snag. I was on the phone with my sister -
on the phone because I didn't have email - and I was explaining to her
how I would write these articles, and I would put the articles
on a jump drive, and I would put the jump
drive in an envelope, and I would send the envelope through
the U.S. Postal Service to California, where my friend would put
the articles on my blog. Yeah, that is what it sounds like. So I was off the internet, but I was writing
articles for the internet about how I was off the internet. My sister was not impressed. She's not net generation,
she's a few years older than I am, and she said, "Esther,
why don't you just quit?" I said, "What, quit
my little letters to the internet?" She said, "Yes, get off the internet,
like you've been telling people you are." Well, my heart just froze. Because I realized at that moment,
that I couldn't do it. I couldn't cut that last thread
that connected me to my online self as it was visible to other people, because I was afraid if somebody
didn't know what I was doing, I wasn't sure it was still happening. Whoa. Everyone born after 1980
is totally tripping with me. (Laughter) For the rest, let me explain. So, in internet life,
there's a cycle of an action and then some kind
of validation for that action. What had happened to me is that I had integrated
that validation response into my interpretation of reality. In other words,
if no one is looking at me, I am not sure that I am real. Well, I took my sister's advice. I unplugged completely this time. And I was still baking bread. I was still having
quality time with my family. I was still doing yoga. I was still getting us out of debt, but my life was really quiet
and really small. Now, some of you may know there's another TEDx talk out there
about a year without the internet, it's called "A Year Offline:
What I Have Learned." I saw this TED talk, I think,
it must have been 2013. I went off the internet in 2009. So three years after I
finished my experiment, I was watching this,
and he's got a TED talk, and he's got a documentary,
and he's got viral articles, and he's the top-ranked thing
on Reddit, for days. And I realized that going off the internet
and telling people about it and going off the internet and
not telling people about it is not a difference of degrees. It's like going two different
directions on the same road. So, imagine with me, this city, this Mecca of validation,
which is the internet, which in our culture is the very center
of notoriety and fame and being known. Are you really walking away from that? Or are you walking toward it by doing something
that you hope will trigger that viral information distribution? I realized that the difference between
my experiment and Paul Miller's was just how many people
cared what I was doing, which was about 10. About 10 people cared what I was doing, my pastor, my husband, my sister, add a couple close friends,
and that's about it. And when I came back on the internet
at the end of my year, no one noticed. That isn't true. Real people noticed. My community noticed. But the internet did not notice. That viral information
distribution wasn't triggered. So what did I get out of this? Well, kind of a lot. I mean, besides the Moussaka
and the vegetarian lasagna. The thing that I gained
from my year without internet was not a gain at all. It was something I let go. I let go an addiction and dependency
that I didn't even know was there. I was addicted to a validation,
and, in my case, that was keeping me from being true
to who I really was on the inside. And, also, not to feed
the conspiracy theories, but it was keeping me
from having my eyes open to what's really going on in the world. Six years later, you can find me all over the internet. I have a blog, I have a YouTube channel, you can find me on Facebook
and Twitter and Instagram. But you won't find me producing constantly
on any of those channels, because now I live off the grid. Now I have only as much electricity as I can gather and store
with equipment that I understand. I have only water that I am gathering
from a natural spring. I don't even live in what many of you
would think is a real house. We live in a yurt,
which is one of these round things. You have to take my word for it,
it's pretty cool. Turns out that this process of discovering
and changing your dependencies is repeatable. So, I went through this process
of paradigm shift. Over here is my life
in context of the internet. And over here is my life
without the internet. They're different. I started looking for other things that are technology
masquerading as reality. We have all these things we count on: light switches and forced-air
heating and sewage lines. We think that's reality,
but actually, it's technology. And if we don't know that, I'm afraid we can't
be using it responsibly. Now, not only is this process repeatable,
it turns out it's also contagious. My husband caught the bug although he may have been
predisposed to it already. As a couple, we started living simply,
in sometimes very dramatic ways. But always following this process
of cutting along the line of a technology and reattaching it
without the element of dependency. My husband and I are not the only ones. Off-grid living is becoming
more popular all the time. I know off-grid families
in Canada and Australia and all over the United States. You want to know how I know them? From the internet. (Laughter) It's true. You are going to think
I'm crazy again, but it's true. Off-grid people are hanging out
on the internet. You'll find a concentration
of us on YouTube. And if it seems like
that's a physical impossibility, remember that we are a bunch
of fairly resourceful people. We're not just hanging out,
we're doing community. When your obsession or passion
is reversing necessity, reversing learned dependency, there's a lot of
skill building to be done. And we're doing that
in community together. We're using the internet
in a way that emphasizes community rather than competition
and humanity rather than scarcity. Which is how it's possible for me to say
that I produce content for the internet, on my good days, at least,
and I think have a lot of good days, that's very grounded in my real life, which is still pretty quiet
and pretty small. Someone asked me the other day
why we put ourselves through this; he meant living off the grid. He meant working so hard,
having so little, settling for so much less than everything
that a person can reach for in this world. Didn't have time to tell him
the whole story. Didn't have time to show him that I have
searched and found and I know for sure that this Mecca of validation
was making more insecure and more anxious, was keeping me from
my full personality development, and also keeping me from being accountable to the big difficult issues
of a difficult time. All I could say was, "I choose this. I choose quiet, and I choose small
because it's real, and I choose real." Thank you. (Applause)
I feel like she's delivering her impression of what a TED talk is rather than speaking straight. Her directly uploaded YouTube videos about her family's offgrid progress are a lot more interesting. Also her husband's beard is epic.
I made it to 14:43 before I'd had enough.
First of all, it's wrong of me to judge her this way, BUT...
...she's not helping combat the stereotype of people wanting to live off grid. She comes across as someone who might be self-named, "Moonbeam". Again, that's unfair and prejudiced - I admit it - but that's how the video grates on my nerves.
The main reason I couldn't finish it though is that this lady just seems to really want to talk about herself, how she lives in a yurt, and her philosophy of why she is living "off grid". It's almost like one of those letters (yes paper letters) you used to get from your aunt or cousin telling you how awesome their life is and how amazing their children are, etc. Yeah, you're happy for 'em and all, but after a while it's like, "Okay, we get it already."
Anyway, good for this lady. I'm glad she's happy and maybe it is a good video; it IS spreading the idea of being less dependent on "technology". But for me, I'd rather see something less abstract. Just sayin'.
Still appreciate the submission and upvoted. :)
TedX? Pass.
"Mecca of validation" these words will certainly will stay with me, off grid or on.
She clearly loves public attention and the admits that in the talk I think that's fine.
Goes off grid to get more attention? "I live off grid, but I'm not crazy" yes....yes you are. Her husband is awesome, but his lady is pretty far out there.