Book review: The Way Home: Lessons from a life without technology
Key theme(s):
Media Type: Book
Title: The way Home: Tales from a life without technology
Author: Mark Boyle
Year of Publication: 2020
What’s it about?
On the surface, pretty much what it says on the tin: A man decides to see if he can survive without all the mod-cons that are essential to “modern life”, like electricity. But dig a little deeper, and it seems like the ‘technology’ in the title is shorthand for something more nuanced and complex: convenience.
There’s a phrase that’s been stuck in my head ever since I first heard it on some satirical panel show like The News Quiz or Mock the Week: “bloated on convenience”. I can’t even remember who said it, but I’ve never forgotten it, and it’s something I’ve tried to be alive to in my own life ever since. It came back to me reading this book, especially as I tried to understand what exactly Mark Boyle means by the word ‘technology’. And to be clear, it’s a term that he himself does not seem particularly comfortable with, as made clear in the introduction:
So when the editor who first contacted me about the book you are now reading asked me to clarify the rules of my life without technology, it must have seemed a reasonable request, yet I instantly felt uneasy about it. Unlike money [which Boyle had previously written about giving up], it’s not easy to draw a clear line in the sand in relation to what constitutes technology and what doesn’t. Language, fire, a smartphone, an axe – even the pencil I write these words with – could all be described as technology, though I shy away from using such a rough brush to paint life. Where would I draw the line – the Stone Age? The Iron Age? The eighteenth century? – became an impossible question when the words themselves could be considered technology’ and the more I reflected on my years without money, the less important finding the perfect answer seemed to become. (xvii-xviii)
It’s very tempting (and I must admit I gave in a couple of times whilst reading) to go into this sort of book looking for opportunities to strawman-ise his position. And Boyle’s definition of ‘technology’ (or rather the lack of a single clear definition) seems like one of those openings. What does it really mean to give up ‘technology’? Are books not a technology born of the printing industry? Is properly sanitised water immoral? Would he reject lifesaving medication for a loved one because of the computer processors involved in developing it? But these questions spiral away from the core principle that seem to guide Boyle’s understanding of the world: that convenience is not the only measure by which to judge a tool or gadget. The convenience provided by an animal-driven plough may pale into insignificance against that of a giant mechanical tractor, but what other downsides do the mechanised version bring that we don’t see? And, more importantly, can we learn to live without them? To me, Boyle’s understanding of technology made more sense when I mentally replaced it with ‘convenience for convenience’s sake’ or perhaps even ‘addiction to convenience’.
What’s the key message?
Insofar as there is a central message, I suppose it’s that we are more capable of tending to our own basic needs than modern society has taught us to believe.
One of the reasons it’s tempting to launch into strawman-style attacks on this book is that it is essentially about rejecting the things that most of us think of as essential to our everyday lives – even so much so that rejecting those technologies feels like rejecting us as people, like an attack. But if you can work through that impulse, the underlying message seems, to me at least, to be quite a hopeful one. Boyle seems to be saying that although it’s hard to make the change, it is possible for pretty much anyone to shed the complexities that we are addicted to, and swap them for a ‘simpler’ life, one in which more of your time is spent on the essential things, like producing your own high-quality food, than on substitute things, like making lots of money so you can afford to buy the same quality of food.
It’s important to say, however, that Boyle is not attempting to proselytise with this book, and it definitely isn’t a ‘how-to’ manual. There are descriptions of how he does certain things that might be useful to anyone looking to embark on a similar path, like how to use soapwort or make candlewicks from reeds. But they are just that – descriptions, not instructions. And I suppose – though just to emphasise, this is my interpretation, not Boyle’s own words – the other message is that most of the skills that kept our ancestors alive for thousands of years are still very much within our reach. We are capable, as individuals or small communities, of amassing all the various bits of know-how that we need in order to live to a fairly decent standard.
Sometimes I think (and again I’m riffing here, not repeating what Boyle actually says) that specialisation is the essence of industrial capitalism. No matter what the productivity gurus say, we only have a certain number of hours per day, and so the only way to improve your material status in a capitalist system is to make your time more valuable than other people’s, which you do by acquiring ever-more specialist skills that others are willing to pay you more money for rather than acquire themselves. And the same applies to the skills that would once have been considered ‘domestic’, in the literal sense of ‘something that was done at home’, like spinning your own wool to knit your own clothes, or growing your own vegetables to keep you fed. These are the sorts of skills that have have slipped (or been taken?) away from the ‘average’ person as a result of industrialisation, and that are maybe slowly starting to be reclaimed. And what is Boyle’s book if not a mass reclamation of those fundamental skills?
Caveat: Yes, I know this is a double-edged argument. Specialisation is also the essence of innovation – we rely on highly specialised individuals to develop the medicines that make/keep us healthy. And it’s also the essence of wisdom – we need individuals whose job is to produce the art that inspires the rest of us and tells us something about ourselves, and we as a community have a responsibility to support the material wellbeing of both of those groups (and many others). I guess my point (and probably also Boyle’s) is that while there is power in specialisation, there is power in generalisation as well, if by ‘general skills’, we mean the ones that help satisfy our core material needs. For all other arguments, I refer you to my previous comments on strawmen.
You should read this book if…
You feel uneasy about the direction our world is heading, and you’re looking to hear from someone who decided to take gently drastic action to prove that there is another course we can take, without getting bogged down in complex ideologies.
I said before that this book is not a proselytising one, and I stand by that. But I also think there is a sort of model in this book that others could follow, if they felt so inclined. Or perhaps less of a model and more of an attitude. And it’s one that is deeply pragmatic and rooted in ‘getting things done’ rather than theorising about things. You won’t find much environmental or sociological theory in this book. Boyle’s writing is mainly quite pragmatic (if lyrical), but from time to time, he is prepared to critique what he sees as the flaws in certain mainstream ideas and attitudes, and their disconnect from ‘the real world’. One passage that I think encapsulates this viewpoint is as follows:
A farmer across the way calls me over. he quickly needs a hand moving a couple of bullocks, and though it’s only 1.5 kilometres up the road, he insists on giving me a lift. Ten years ago, when I was an environmentalist and animal rights activist, I couldn’t have imagined a future for myself where I would be chasing bullocks into a pen, ready to be tagged and numbered and tested for tuberculosis. Back then, my opinions were derived from documentaries and footage from factory farms. These days I have broken sleep for two or three nights as I listen, first-hand, to the cries of the mother for the newborn calf that was taken from her.
When I lived in Bristol, activists – including me – would be forever falling out over theories of society, ecology, politics and culture. Out here we need each other too much to fall out over such things. (81)
If this book has a call-to-action at all, it is to the doers, to just get stuck in and be happy with imperfect action, rather than perfect inactivity. I fully admit, however, that this might be stretch. I think the book is not so much a call-to-action as a call-to-sight, to see through the layers that have been imposed on our world by our industrial society and to take in the heart of things, in every sense.
What makes the book effective?
Well, there’s obviously Boyle’s commitment to his principles. Or at least, his honesty about them. One thing that particularly intrigued me and that is mentioned a few times is his shifting attitude to consuming meat. It’s obviously a highly contentious topic that he covers much more eloquently than I ever could. But I do think it exemplifies what makes the book work, despite the lack of an obvious ‘aim’ to work towards. In his efforts to get back to ‘the basics’ (and I’ll admit I got The Bare Necessities stuck in my head a few times reading), Boyle manages to elaborate a kind of principle-rooted pragmatism that I find very persuasive.
And something else that I haven’t really mentioned so far is the lyricism of the writing. It’s definitely a book about an embodied experience, one based pretty much entirely on the physical experience of the real world, in all its beauty and its hardship. I think anyone who had not lived through that life might be tempted to romanticise it – I know I probably would if I tried to imagine what it would be like. But he manages to leave you with an impression that is raw and real without layering in too much abstracting rhetoric, even despite quoting from poets at several points.
Overall, you’re left with the feeling that Boyle is someone you could disagree with passionately but also sympathetically. You may not always agree with all of the decisions he makes, but you can understand how you would probably arrive at a similar choice if you were in the same situation working from the same set of principles. And in that, it is a deeply human book to read.
Is there anything that could be improved?
I suppose, given Boyle’s commitment to never reading anything on the internet, I can be brutally honest here. But to be frank, it seems to me like the book achieved what it set out to do: to give a brief, non-sanitised view of what it means to live this kind of lifestyle in order to show that it is, in fact, possible. There was one critique I might make though, and it’s one that derives from the deeply personal nature of the story, and that is the lack of acknowledgement that this kind of journey is only realistically available to a relatively young, able-bodied person. I know, I know, not every story has to be about everybody (or every body), but I think it would be useful to at least acknowledge that there are dependencies on technology that cannot be simply rejected. And I know, I know, that isn’t what Boyle is proposing, but I think it’s important to acknowledge that there are levels within this kind of lifestyle, and that diving in at the deep end isn’t right for everybody.