On a remote peninsula in the north-west Highlands of Scotland is the small off-grid community of Scoraig.
Accessible only by boat or a five-mile walk, the residents of Scoraig live in relative isolation, partly powering their homes and school with wind power. Among the inhabitants are crofters with cattle and sheep, a violin maker, a Russian translator, volunteers and a part-time postal worker.
Generally, if you have a job you are part of the monetary system. I do spend money - but it's a choice.
I was fed up with working in an office all day looking at a screen and having to pay to go to a gym to keep fit.
I like living here because I like to know where everything comes from, to know myself what the situation is with my electricity and what to do when it goes wrong and the same goes for the water too.
I taught myself (how to make violins) from books and other makers - I used to go to exhibitions and competitions.
It's not about moral superiority - it's more to do with having more control over your own hands-on environment.
I heard there are a lot of off-grid and on-grid alternative communities across America? In the UK the planning laws are very restrictive and you couldn't just set up a community and build houses in a rural area, which I think is the appeal of finding something that already exists and why it made the news.
The U.S. is much less populated than the U.K., and there are many realms left virtually abandoned due to urban flight or rural blight, but you always run the risk that code or gentrification will catch up with you. The other option is the grueling task of actually attempting to fight city hall in order to get scientific/sanitary code changed.
I find these lifeboat communities fascinating, IMO they are a window into our future, but I suspect it will be not until many generations after the dust settles from the wake of industrialisation that these will become the dominant form of settlement.
Presently these kinds of community tend to be too small to thrive, and so don't look too appealing to outsiders. I think one of the main problems for these communities is attracting the manpower (and skills) required to become a truly self-sufficient parish and satisfy local demand for artisan crafts such as saw mill, wheat mill, blacksmith, cooper, cobbler, tailor, brewer, baker, wheelwrights etc. As the article alludes, it's quite likely, the young are drawn to the bright lights of civilisation because of the lack of opportunity to function within a robust local economy, regardless of whether one's motivation for engaging in artisan crafts is for cashola to trade in market economies or mutual benefit, reciprocity or informal economies, following the mechanisation of entire artisan crafting industries, it makes little sense to compete so long as one has abundant energy at hand.
Until these settlements reach such a critical mass, they must be either content with like stoneage tribes living amongst industrial era houses, or be highly dependant on importing speciality goods from industrial civilisation, and thus tied into the risks of the political, energy and monetary systems, competing with much more productive industrial economy makes life tough, and dependant on good marketing and selling violins on marketplaces like etsy!. That's not to say their pursuit of better work/life balance, and escaping the craziness of urban society is not a worthwhile pursuit!
JMG writes at some length about eco-villages (aka lifeboat communities) in The Ecotechnic Future. Well worth a read for those interested in how such settlements will fare in the energy descent.
