It was March 2020, still in the early stages of the pandemic. My husband and I packed up all our bags and took one of the last flights out of soon-to-be-locked-down London to the big city closest to where I grew up and where we intended to make it. I headed to Cluj, Romania. House.
In the row in front of us was an older woman with a traditional paisley scarf wrapped around her hair. She was clearly upset. She defiantly pulled her obligatory surgical mask from her mouth. The stewardess tried to reason with her, but the woman remained adamant. “It’s just the flu. Her daughter is a nurse!” she shrieked. Watching this minimal battle, the entire plane was divided into skeptics and true believers.
Technology has become like a god, covered by an invisible hand, becoming increasingly complex and difficult for the layman to read. It is subordinated solely to its own ends, as chronicled repeatedly in the disturbing genre of runaway technological dystopias.
There was a general atmosphere of bewilderment and irritation. The pandemic has thrown us all into a state of uncertainty, but our personal plans to change direction, pull out of London and put down roots elsewhere are in no uncertain terms as the virus plays into our hands. It started long before I forced it. We wanted a more connected and spiritually rich life that aligned with our families, our children, our community, and our values. London, despite having certain advantages, could not offer us what we wanted.
London is essentially rootless. That is one of its main attractions. You go there to consume the place, the experience, the people.even you self We aim to be a work that is constantly updated. Living in a city like London is thrilling, and there are few places in the world better suited to explore what you want to do and who you want to be. But this consumption is not optional. That’s the point. Like everyone else, you are in flux. Scratch almost any city dweller who lives in a high altitude and you’ll find someone who aspires to live in a vacation home somewhere.
I met my husband here and will be forever grateful for the time I spent there. If living in a big city had not appealed to us, our being Romanian and Kiwi would have been a very unlikely combination. But for both of us, the city was more of a tool than a destination. It was a means to an end, and the end has come.
There were also practical limitations. We had a nice apartment in London near work, but we were spending a ton of money on rent. Knife crime was an immediate threat in our neighborhood, and walking in the dark was almost an extreme sport. After witnessing two now-traditional moped robberies, and witnessing one person riding a moped onto the sidewalk in one week, brandishing a hammer to show he was serious, my basic… The sense of security plummeted further.
Even though there were 15 Nepali restaurants within a two-mile radius, we didn’t know our neighbors and they weren’t all that interested in us. The city appeared to have been built to supply consumption to valuable producers. We were about to go a little beyond that and make some weird and inefficient decisions along the way, like having kids.
Romania
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The old home I returned to is in a small city in Transylvania. Although it’s a smaller house, it means your fixed costs are significantly lower and you have much more room to save and explore different opportunities. In my case, it was the beginning. podcast.
My mother is now my neighbor. As you can imagine, this presents certain difficulties. My mother is a flamboyant, loud, and creative Eastern European woman. My husband is a British engineer from New Zealand. One person’s talk sounds like a scream to another. Sometimes a lit cigarette is left in a place it’s not supposed to be.
We cook together once or twice a week and do a few different projects to improve our little intergenerational hub, but it’s nice to live together without a constant battle of wills. There is enough space and distance. There is a lot of romanticism built into the idea of multigenerational living. However, given the great cultural distance between generations these days and the added pressure of marrying someone from a different culture, it can be difficult.
Family is often difficult, but the benefits far outweigh the problems. “Who’s home with the kids?” is not a question we have to ask. It’s just a short walk from my home office, and I can comfort and feed a crying baby in the next room. We do most of the childcare, but my mom helps when she needs it. Likewise, we are here to help mom with whatever she needs. As a widow, she has become independent, but it would be nice to give back a little help, even if she “could do it herself.”
The garden has become a shared central project in which the nature of these relationships is particularly salient. As it turns out, tending a garden is a useful metaphor for a reason. Romania has scorching summers and sudden autumns, with temperatures often dropping to -15 degrees Celsius in January. The garden sets its requirements accordingly. Spring means pruning and replanting. In summer, watering is required every day. Autumn is the time to harvest and preserve the few edible plants we grow. Timing is everything. This work requires everyone to participate. The rhythm and severity of the seasons, the responsibilities they impose on us, and the fruits of this labor are the essential glue of our relationships.
The key lesson from this garden is that there are no opt-out clauses, shortcuts, or technologically-assisted workarounds for these fundamental obligations. Much of the disconnect we experienced in London was based on finally having the choice to not need each other. All the new layers of technology we’ve added to our lives in recent years are meant to disintermediate, eliminate friction, cost, and especially humans.
What is atomization? obvious preference Because for each instance you get atomized It is more comfortable and “maximizes utility” than non-atomized, high-human-friction alternatives. For every need and every impulse, there is a comfortable shortcut through technology. paranormal stimulation. Soma in digital form exists everywhere. Every widget and screen is an all-singing, all-dancing amusement machine. Most foods are super tasty tickets to instant comfort. Porn oozes from every pore of the internet, and within seconds you’ll find a stacked genital combination you’ll enjoy.
Moving from this series of experiences to a much more glamorous and immediately less comfortable life has the feeling of waking up in a cold bedroom. Dreams disappear. The blanket has been torn off. But the day has begun, and it’s up to you to decide.
escape from the matrix
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In “Tools for Symbiosis,” Ivan Ilych diagnoses the escalating problems created by technological society and its logical successor, technocratic society, resulting from a misunderstanding of the purpose of technology. Technology is just a glorified tool. Every tool is subordinate to human purpose. A tool that does not serve a human purpose is a bad tool. We have turned technology into something else.
Hidden behind an invisible hand, technology has become increasingly complex, indecipherable to the layperson, and god-like. It is subordinated solely to its own ends, as chronicled repeatedly in the disturbing genre of runaway technological dystopias. “The Matrix,” “Black Mirror,” etc. There are countless others, but they all tell the same underlying story:TSex has been against us. Tools have become masters, but they don’t have to be. Technology needs to reaffirm purpose, virtue, and what it means to be human. But first, the people who create the technology must do the same.
For my family, putting purpose first and thinking clearly about our values has been very helpful in this regard. This doesn’t mean we have a perfect relationship with technology, nor do we sometimes get so exhausted that we chain ourselves to a screen or hide in the shadows of a Transylvanian mountain. That doesn’t mean. But overall, the use of technology has given us far more freedom than we were previously deprived of. That’s what brought us here in the first place, allowing us to ask these questions and even look for the right answers.
The modern world sets a default life script shaped by a myriad of incentives and status promises. Gaining the knowledge and confidence to step back and decide which of these pressures to follow and which to ignore is not easy. I don’t think I would have made these decisions earlier in life if I hadn’t understood what was on the other side. I was under the same spell as everyone I knew, walking the same path of determination towards a goal I couldn’t honestly defend or even define. It could be a long checklist of career successes and fresh, international experiences that led you there. But what about these experiences, apart from the great-looking Instagram photos?
Assuming you have a destination, what happens when you get there? I think “success” and “experience”, whatever they mean, are similar. Fortunately, I realized pretty early on that the horizon wasn’t leading to where I wanted to go, and spent my time in the default world living the life I wanted, or as I understood it anyway, and on my terms. I have established myself for a life that can be shaped by. In leaving, we sacrificed a few things: convenience, culture, and restaurants. But the city often felt like an expensive amusement park where you paid for a ticket and never went on any more rides. In the end, leaving it didn’t feel like such a big sacrifice, and it still doesn’t feel that way, but time will tell.
I know that my escape is impossible for everyone. The opportunity to go out to a place where you have family, where you can live cheaply, and where intergenerational reciprocity remains a core value is a unique blessing. It never occurred to me that her mother didn’t want to be her neighbor or that she would rather rent out the second house than let us live there.It won’t even be that Get used to it A second home in a different cultural paradigm. It exists to make it easier to live closely with your family. We had an obvious path, but that’s not the case for most people.
At the same time, parts of this lifestyle are also possible for many people. It’s about creating new ways to rely on people in real life, using digital means to sell your time and intellectual output to a larger market on your own terms, and giving purpose to the way you do things. Take advantage of technology and avoid the trap of becoming its slave. The possibilities have never been greater, but so are the distractions.
There is no perfect recipe for reaping the positive aspects of technology while preserving its negative aspects. You often fail because you are wrestling with forces that know you better than you. But remember, you’re just a dressed-up tool surrounded by a moat of limbic candy. All you have to do is get to the other side.
This is a great place to stop. It’s late; our dinner is boiling on the stove and I can hear the faint cries of an awake baby from across the hall.
