The Free Range Network - 'WEIRD';
Issue No.4, Midsummer 2021:
Thank you for calling UNTECH SUPPORT... we value your dependency!
This tortuous pathway of disengagement, ‘untechnical support’, is a process of liberation through basic re-skilling. That’s not just about learning practical skills again; it is about building confidence in a person’s own power to discern what is right for them.
Download this edition
- A4 format PDF, for printing at A4, single- or double-sided, stapled in the top-left corner; or
- A3 brochure format PDF, for printing as an A3 double-sided, folded and stapled brochure, or (with very small text) scaling-down for double-sided A4.
'WEIRD' is only available as a PDF download. For the reasons why see the 'about' page.
Contents
- ☮ Introduction: ‘Untech Support’
- People need help to ‘uninstall’ technology since its use is innately de-skilling.
- ☮ History file: Part 5,‘Tools for Conviviality’
- Ivan Illich’s 1973 book on human society, technology, and ecological crisis.
- ☮ Are You ‘WEIRD?’: The answer may surprise you!
- The technocracy behind the networked world is disconnected from reality.
- ☮ We need a mass ‘uneconomic consumption’ movement
- We are told to measure ourselves by economic factors. Is the fastest route to change to opt out of that delusion?
- ☮ ‘Couch to 5 nights camping’?
- The only cheap, available space for anyone to learn the skills of simple living is ‘the outdoors’ – and the Whitehall government is trying to criminalise that.
- ☮ Marketing as a form of psychological abuse
- How advertising & marketing morphed into ‘strategic communications’, and became organised corporate ‘mass abuse’.
- ☮ Wild tea making and the revolt against the machine
- Brew a bowl of rosehip tea on a hill is a gateway towards a lifestyle revolution.
- ☮ Numerical Ramblings: ‘Why own-grown potatoes are better energy storage devices than lithium-ion batteries’
- People obsess about electricity-producing technologies. Seldom do they think about the potential of something more hum-drum, like their food.