The way home, By Mark Boyle

 

Being stuck at home or in bed does at least give you a chance to read interesting books, and this is one that I read recently and really enjoyed. It is by Mark Boyle, an Irish writer and describes, mainly, his attempt to live without modern technology in our current world. He was in his late thirties by the time that he decided he needed to do this, having worked in organic food companies and promoting the need for ecological change in our lives, before deciding that the real need was to break the dependence on technology, and not just smartphones and social media.

But he did start with social media. Having bought a smallholding plot in the west of Ireland, he gave all his many thousands of contacts notice that he was leaving the online world, sent them his postal address and then at the time he said he would, deleted all his online existence and got rid of all his devices. Their reactions were interesting, some praising his decision and others begging him to reconsider, and as he knew himself, this meant that some of the more peripheral contacts he would probably never have contact with again. 

The bulk of the book is describing what he and his partner had to do to build their cabin, plan what they would grow and get it ready to live on it in the first few months. But along with descriptions of the physical labour involved, he is very good at describing how the change affected his relationship with the world around him. And 'around him', he later realised, was not quite the whole story. To see ourselves as somehow outside the natural world is not in fact accurate. We are creatures too, and the fact that we do this thinking business does not mean that we are really all that different from the other creatures that inhabit this world. They are all, like us, looking for the niche in which they can survive. 

Several things changed in the way that he saw the world. For a start, because he had no means to 'tell the time' or to use 'clock time' as he came to call it, he fell into the rhythm that other creatures use, rising at dawn, whenever that may be, and stopping when the sun went down. He did still write this book in the evenings on some days, using a pencil, paper and some home-made candles. He also found that time spent on the land made him much more aware of the the creatures and plants that he shared it with, knowing what would grow and what would breed or hunt in the different parts of the land around them.

He also clearly developed a deep affection for the mainly elderly farmers and householders who still lived in his out-of-the-way area with its marginal land. And you can see that he notices the trade-off between thousands of virtual relationships and a much smaller group of real-world ones. He is particularly struck by how much of everyone's relationships are governed by mutual help, where nobody expects to be paid or compensated but a circle of support emerges from it. And if he is on the way to gather wood which he needs to get in before winter starts, and if old PJ wants to engage him in conversation for an hour, he will take the latter and know its worth. 

What I enjoyed most about the book was its honesty in observing how his own thoughts and wishes, regrets and sadnesses changed over the year he describes. One of the toughest things was that ditching a phone meant not hearing the voices of his much loved parents except when he went to visit them (hitching) every few months. That comfort of voice which we have become so used to via telephones is not one that previous generations had. When someone emigrated in the 19th century from Ireland, letters were your only contact, if that. He also notices that the compulsion to know what is happening in the rest of the world becomes much less, which he worries about at first but then accepts as the reality of what life is like. The massive deluge of knowledge that we have via technology does not seem to make us healthier or happier or more aware of our place in the world. The things around us and the people close to us are where we can have the greatest effect, and maybe the only place were we can have a real, concrete effect. Online existence, even likes on a blog, is in the end quite ephemeral. 

Stepping back from the tale, you are tempted to say "What difference did it make?". I suppose because he has written a book about it, he could at least respond that it could make other people think in a way that benefited them about the choices that they have made in life. But the biggest difference, I'm sure, was that difference it made to him. It was an experiment that became a way of life and which he felt was a more real life and a more lived life than the one that preceded it. And as a description of how you can look at your own life and change it, I would very much recommend it.