A long time ago, I watched the movie “Zietgiest” (by Peter Joseph), and it helped my teenage self articulate the injustices inherent to our socio-economic basis for society - injustices that I had very much suspected, but simply didn’t have the life experiences to articulate clearly. While the film spoke on many insidious deceptions, my main take-aways from the film were clear; I would be a slave to the world order if I took on a corporate job, and tried to work my way up through the ladder. The whole point of the ladder was to dangle the carrot of opportunity, lifestyle and material possessions to lure immature audiences into an unsustainable life path, that made them dependent on an endless stream of income to support their television-endorsed life choices… I knew in that moment that I had to - somehow - disentangle myself from the lures of a corporate career and its many perks, and instead chart a different path to personal satisfaction. It eventually dawned upon me that to be free of society’s grip, I needed to be independent in a few facets of life - thinking, energy, resources and information.

Thinking

Fortuitously (or maybe, more likely, by significant effort on my parents’ part) I have a mind entirely of my own - a mind unafraid to think its own thoughts, come to its own conclusions, and be fairly independent of peer pressure and conformity. This, coupled with the fire of curiosity, drove me to chart out parallel paths that would satisfy me in enough ways to make up for the lack of mainstream perks. I have a strong inner voice, and as long as I was honest with myself (and by extension, with others), I would find a way to be satisfied with whatever I received. I determined early on to freelance, so as to keep a decent amount of my time free for personal growth (my substitute for corporate perks). This proved to be an excellent move because, while my friends were busy making corporate careers, I was expanding my skillset laterally, and with each new skill I acquired my confidence in my ability to learn more grew exponentially. This DIY attitude has fostered a scarcely-imaginable self belief, where once i set my mind to a task, I know that I will find a way to accomplish it nine times out of ten.

Energy

This was - and continues to be - a big one… and Zietgiest helped me tremendously in developing my own thoughts on this matter. Somewhere in the film they introduced Jacque Fresco, an industrial designer, socio-engineer and free-thinker, who had excellent views on the state of our society, as well as a future vision of a resource-based economy. Finally, I had found someone thought along my lines, in that they were fed up of the planet being run by politicians (who’s only real qualifications are being sociopaths) and felt instead that we needed to give science a shot at running the ecosystem. He imagined a world where we had a resource-based society, supported by machines, so that humanity could be freed of spending the majority of their lives working to survive… and instead spend their energy on discovery and implementation of intelligent ideas, to better distribute the global resources of the planet and advance our species towards becoming part of the inter-galactic fraternity. An example of this in action is my switch over to electric transportation over my favorite automobile; I was very distressed that the electric revolution wasn’t making it to me in time, so I built my own, rather badass 500W electric-enhanced cycle, and eliminated my dependence - and demand! - on the world’s polluting energy trade.

Of course, riding around on an electric cycle will not, in itself, liberate me from being dependent on providers for energy. Luckily, I once came across a certain John Bedini, a true legend of the Free Energy movement. Back in the ‘80s, he built a motor that, essentially, worked as an over-unity device, under the correct conditions. I am working on one of these devices myself and, bit by bit, teaching myself about electronics along the way. While the simple motor (detailed in the hyperlink above) is only good enough to charge a single 12v battery… it could potentially be scaled up, to the point where it might be able to charge something significantly larger. This, combined with using low energy devices throughout my house, could potentially lead to a point where the supply and demand of energy within my personal sphere of existence balance each other out! Of course, this is just one of the avenues; there are several more traditional ways to do things, such as build micro wind turbines to take advantage of the constant cross-wind blowing through my micro-apartment, exercising on a cycle connected to a DC generator, and using differences in temperature to generate current.

Of course, the best way to become energy independent is to significantly reduce the amount of energy I ask for in the first place. There’s nothing like conspicuous consumption to liberate the mind, body and soul!

Resources

This is an ongoing battle… but also my preferred domain of operations, as it sits at the intersection of practicality and luxury. Luckily, I am a self-confessed minimalist, and wish to live a lightweight life, with as few possessions as possible. For this to be achievable, those possessions must be practical, hard-wearing, and preferably multi-functional in some way or another. With these tenets in mind, my material possessions fall into two simple categories; consumables and keepers. My goal is to gradually stop purchasing items from society altogether, and rely entirely on my possessions to maintain or generate the additional consumables that I will no doubt require. A great example of this is my investment in a desktop 3D printer. I expect that over time, I will be able to reduce my dependence on store-bought hardware, and instead print out exactly what I need, in the quantity I need, to fulfill my requirements. If managed intelligently, this can significantly reduce my carbon footprint… and my dependence on society.

Information

This is the one place where I wish to be a thorough maximalist. I operate under the assumption that society will collapse within my lifetime, and take the internet down with it. Keeping this in mind, my goal is to arm myself with as much practical and spiritual information as I possibly can so that, when this moment (inevitably) arrives, I will not be left in the dark. Assuming by this time, I ahve amassed enough thinking, energy and resources, I will need information to mix the correct balance of these vital ingredients to solve any problem that I face. For example, when the world comes to an end, I should be able to build a water-wheel and an energy storage system, that I can then use to power my 3D printer to help myself and my community to uplift ourselves from mere survival, and spend a little time each day working on our spiritual component.

You see… I am almost certain that there are no coincidences in this life and that we are in some sort of ‘kindergarten’ for souls, where at the end of our ‘“lives” we will be examined for competence in being spiritually mature enough to handle the next stage of interaction with the cosmos… or be sent right back to Earth (or other kindergarten-planets similar to it) to work further on our integrity, until our souls are worthy of being allowed into the fellowship of the extended universe. And I, for one, really wish to experience the wonders of the universe at the end of my lifetime :)