December 3rd, 2008 by Chris Eng

I’m not sure if Bruce Sterling coined the term ‘greenpunk’, but he was the first one I saw use it. It was here (courtesy of Boing-Boing), used in conjunction with a furthering of the concepts inherent in steampunk (a genre of science fiction that speculates what would have happened if steam power and pneumatics powered our technology). What if, instead of using coal to power Victorian technology, they had instead used alternative and renewable sources of energy? What if we were doing that now? What if, instead of having a dystopian and universally grungy version of cyberpunk where everyone is wired neurally into the ‘Net because no one wants to live in the real world, we had a world run off of solar panels, wind and tidal energy? Technology and green living aren’t (or, at least, don’t have to be) mutually exclusive.

Still, there is the division that appears in most people’s minds, which is you either have computers/technology/whatever trappings and conveniences you take for granted, or you’re living in the sticks with your tallow candles, poorly-sewn hempen smocks and Luddite mentality. Which is stupid. This is not a black and white decision that needs to be made, nor should it be. In the above article, Sterling uses another term that’s appropriate here: ‘hairshirt green’—in essence, those people who martyr themselves for the environmental cause by moving out in the middle of nowhere and living completely off the grid with an anti-technological philosophy. There is nothing to be gained, in a larger sense, by doing this. While martyring yourself for the green cause and removing yourself from the ‘Net ensures your emissions and personal living will impact the environment to a minimal degree, dropping out at this point simply makes certain you’re removed from any further discussions on how to lead our lives in the best possible way. You’re making life unnecessarily harder for yourself when you could have the support and wisdom of thousands of other like-minded individuals, and any contributions you might have made will be felt only by those you have immediate contact with.

I view Greenpunk as a concept in two ways:

1) It’s the continuation of a series of ‘-punk’ genres, blending science, science-fiction, technology and culture together in a melange that might ultimately impact with the real world and produce something more than the sum of its parts. Then again, in the end it may only give us philosophical fodder, but it’s not like that’s valueless either.
2) As a collision of the words ‘green’ and ‘punk’. Punk at its heart has always embodied a spirit of community. At its most idealistic, it’s a vehicle for revolution and no one is (or can be) a revolution on their own. It takes a movement, generally with an anti-authoritarian flair, to change society. Considering that the Internet is the greatest communications tool mankind has ever come up with, it’s not unreasonable to think we could form a community (or, more likely, multiple communities) to help us cooperate, collaborate and reach our goals, both individually and as a group—a group of environmentally-grounded people with a D.I.Y., homegrown, punk attitude.

Together, I see the concepts dovetailing in technologically-minded enviro-punks who have every desire to use technology to make the world (and their lives) better but simultaneously want to reduce their footprint on it and impact in it, preferably by returning to some of the concepts we’ve forgotten over the past 100 years (as well as making the remembrance of those concepts easier through the use of technology we’ve pioneered in the last 30 years or so).

Such a lifestyle is not without its own inherent costs—you can’t have a society that still uses microchip and silicon-based technology and not have environmental damage. If you’re producing anything technological on an industrial level there’s going to be waste and toxic byproducts. Still, there’s a balance we can strike (or at least work toward), and by living as sustainably as we can while exchanging knowledge and building community through global networking it’s something we can possibly achive.

I don’t think that greenpunk is the answer to the world’s problems, but I do think it’s a step in the right direction, and if we’re there to help each other out there’s no telling how many steps we’ll be able to take—locally, nationally and globally. Forty years ago, activists encouraged everyone to turn on, tune in, drop out; currently, I think everyone should log on, pare down, act up.

November 25th, 2008 by Chris Eng

Picture a two-floor log cabin on the edge of the woods. There’s a large vegetable garden beside it, and next to that are the chicken coops and pig pen. Attached to the house is a waterwheel powered off the creek, which in turn powers some of the electricity. The indoor heat is supplied by the wood stove and the air smells like fresh-baked bread. I’m in the living room and so is my wife—we’re watching downloaded British documentaries being played on our PC and shone onto a pull-down screen through a projector. This is the fantasy.

And I’m not unaware that the reality—the lifestyle one my wife Carla and I are working toward—will inevitably be an assload of hard, tough and possibly brutal work. I’m pretty sure it will never match up to the idealized Black-Forest-Meets-Similkameen fantasy in my head, but that’s okay—it’s something to shoot for. And we’ve got five years to get ourselves on the path.

The beginning of this story starts with me, Chris Eng, in 1973, being born into a life of tightly-woven pop-cultural milestones. The first movie I remember seeing in the theatre was Star Wars. I started collecting comics when I was six. I got turned on to Dungeons & Dragons at age nine. We got our first in-house computer when I was 11. Most of my adolescence was evenly split between BBSing, video games and geek culture in general. Punk caught me around 13. I got my first college radio show at 16 and started writing professionally in my twenties (for magazines like Vice and Punk Planet). I was given my first editorship at 28.

I mention all of this not for whatever bragging rights I might accrue on account of packing such colossal geekiness into three decades, but to emphasize what’s missing: there’s not a single mention of country living or a simple life anywhere. This is not selective omission—it’s because there was never a point in my life where I’d considered cabin-based self-sufficiency a viable option.

Growing up in Victoria (the capital of British Columbia, with a population of around 400,000) and eventually leaving for Vancouver (with brief stopovers in Calgary and Halifax) didn’t prepare me for a quiet existence. None of the places I chose to call home are small towns… or, indeed, towns at all. In fact, the most I’d ever really seen of small town life growing up was either passing through on vacation or the Old Town exhibit in the Provincial Museum.

Work-wise, most of the jobs I’ve held over the course of my life were retail (with a few writing-related posts for flavour). There was no tilling, hewing, feeding or gathering anywhere in my past. I would be surprised if there were more than a few isolated incidents of mowing.

Have I convinced you I’m grossly unqualified to lead the dream life described at the top? I have no inborn skills (that I know of) that would be any use in moderate homesteading. Why, then, would I make this decision and turn completely away from the life I’ve spent three and a half decades building up? There’s a few reasons, and I’ll explore them at length in future entries, but it more or less comes down to two things:

1) I’m tired of city living, and
2) The way we, as a society, are living isn’t sustainable, and I don’t want to be a part of it anymore.

So I’m going to give a shot to putting the past behind me by starting my life from scratch just weeks after turning 35. Carla and I have set my 40th birthday as the deadline to be living on our own property and practicing the basics of DIY living. We figure five years is a reasonable amount of time to change our habits and lay the groundwork for what’s to come.

But here’s the crux of it: I’m not giving up my geeky affectations and lifestyle. You can have my internet when you pry it from my cold, dead hands, and those Rock Band instruments aren’t going to play themselves. Still, I want to use different methods of harnessing electricity to take me off the grid as much as possible, and with luck and perseverance the lion’s share of our food will be grown or raised on-site.

On top of everything else, this is an exercise in becoming organized and responsible—two things that weren’t always easy for me. Getting there will teach frugality and patience (possibly the hard way), and will hopefully reemphasize the importance of friends and family as the basic cornerstones of everyday living (though I don’t undervalue either of them now). I don’t expect the journey to be easy, but I do expect it to be rewarding and satisfying.

I also think it will be amusing to see how as unabashed an urban technogeek as myself makes the transition to multifaceted outdoorsman/handyman. So, if you’re interested to see how I pull forward toward my goals (as well as periodically fall flat on my face, I’m sure), please come back and check up. I’m going to try to update a few times a week—whenever I have anything to say. And if you have something to say, please introduce yourself in the comments or at chris@geekunplugged.com.

As one last note: before I begin in earnest, I’d also like to ask for your patience. Being completely new to some of the concepts I’ll be talking about, I’ll likely say some naive, ignorant or simply downright stupid things from time to time. This is going to be an unfortunate part of the learning curve and I apologize to everyone in advance, but there’s nowhere for me to go but up. Thanks!