You are speaking the truth and as much as I don't like to admit it....no attempt at isolation, living of off the grid, etc. (my favorite thing to do) will offer any more satisfaction or necessarily success. None among us can just quit and go home, so to speak. We're interconnected to the point that the last 100 years of travel and exchange intended and unintended, has actually changed the crops and range lands that can survive in various regions. Growing seasons are already shorter and certain animals no longer thrive in the places we're used to raising them. There will be fewer and fewer crops to plant that will even grow in the terrains they used to grow in. An off the grid fan won't have the choices they have now. Life IS becoming extremely simple. Genetic seeds are everywhere and they pollinate non-GMO crops all the time and family farmers or any other farmers, can't stop the winds from blowing seeds around or birds from carrying them. Agronomists recognize that the only true way to escape GMO crops is to live at a high elevation...great if you're growing Quinoa but you can't grow wheat or soy up there! It is truly a fundamental change that is taking place and even the cleverest and most isolated among us will have to reach out to others to live a modest life. Being free will mean the ability to create a paradigm of cooperation at grass roots level, one on one and begin investigating truths that we've neglected for too long. There's no way we could have stopped humans from traversing the earth, multiplying, scheming and dreaming. It's our natural tendency. We're experiencing the pressure of nature's forces calling us to evolve or become extinct.

My dream is to live off the grid, grow and raise all my food. The hell with Corporate America. We even have come up with an invention that a car could run 100 miles to a gallon with gasoline but would never market it because I would be murdered. Which already has occurred. The technologies is there but greed will always get in the way. The billion dollar oil companies will never allow it. I am tired of working hard and all my money going to bills. Everyone has their hand in my pocket. I could never to afford to retire So having a farm to be more self sufficient is the way to go. I also eat only organic fruit/veggies and meat. No factory farms for me. My health is better and Big pharma can keep their pills. I am tired of Corporations poisoning and ruining our land, water and air. If we can't take back our government then lets shut them out and not buy GMOs food, factory farmed food, processed food, stuff we really don't need but make them rich. We do need to use solar, wind and other technologies that are good for the environment.

Here's a question...

Which of these will provide you with one of the most precious things that no amount of money can buy... namely, peace of mind... A flock of chickens and a jar of pickles or a pile of un-payable debt which came from a pyramid scheme?

In the desire for simplicity, there's also the longing for peace of mind, which has been absent from the American consciousness for the past three decades, as well as learning what the responsibilities which come with being human are.

As we move deeper into The Great Depression II, we may finally discover what it means to "be" human, to understand the responsibilities which come with being human, and to carry out those responsibilities with faithfulness, love, courage and joy.

If we do these things, the current reality that many fear and loathe (including the insane hurtle towards the ignition point of thermonuclear war) can be changed, and the existence of Man might actually mean something positive for the universe.

America needed a slowdown to get some perspective on what has been done in our name in the last couple decades around the world. Local everything will lead the way back to trusting only ourselves. I started after Y2K and never looked back. Could not be happier now!

Given that the materialism that has passed for the "American Dream" for so many years has proven to be both economically and evironmentally unsustainable, I hope that Naiomi Wolf's depiction of a change in the American psyche is indeed accurate.

But the great entrepreneurial strength of the U.S. hasn't been tapped into: We need a Manhattan project to come up with a new energy technology. Hand every smart kid coming into to engineering schools at places like Columbia, Michigan etc. where a large number of kids from abroad come into study, give them a green card with their graduation diplomas and a mandate they have to stay in this country and help figure out the new energy technology.

Love Naomi Wolf's optimism for these coming lifestyle changes.

I only note, however, that her reporting comes as mostly anecdote, colored with a couple movie synopses that also nicely fit.

We're yet missing one huge area of reporting, and that's the bit coming from our dear corporate academe, where more students study biz ed than anything else -- by far above everything else, and across the entire country.

Biz ed has no morality in itself other than serving the powerful, whose interests in turn revolve only around money. To make profit, they can gaude all marketing in whatever latest fashions may help them keep any & all of their consumerism demos buying. So do we see any change in the desire of hundreds of thousands of college kids yet to keep enrolling in this machinery? And remember, these young are not only enrolling to serve Mammon, they are also almost all going tens of thousands of dollars each in student loan debt, also in helpless fealty to all the most immoral of high finance.

I like anecdotes as much as the next guy. I fear and loathe the current reality.