Not in the far-off past, many people in the United States were gun-toting self-reliant libertarians, Amen. By self-reliant, I mean that they grew their own food, built their own wagons, managed their own forestry, and built their own houses. Today we refer to this lifestyle as ‘living off the grid’, but to be frank, without energy such as coal, oil, or green energies, this is simply the only way to live.

The agrarian lifestyle arose out of hunter-gathering several thousand years ago. Putting a number to the amount of years that this lifestyle has been around is difficult. Because while there is a consensus among anthropological scholars, more and more evidence is being uncovered that shows that civilization existed at some level further back than was previously known.

Today, instead of a shepherd and his herd, or the father and his field, we have supermarkets. The modern world as most of us in first world countries know it has only been around for a very, very short time. Without the advent of technologies discovered and developed in the past 150 years, our lifestyle would not exist.

So it begs the question, is self-reliant, or the agrarian lifestyle a thing of the past?

Modern Problems Require Modern Solutions

The largest driving force of our modern supermarket lifestyle is population growth and the pursuit of knowledge.

To put this into perspective, allow me to pose a question, and I want you to think about it before reading the answer.

The population of the world in 1956 when your grandparents graduated high school was around 3 billion people, give or take a few hundred thousand. Today, a mere 70 years later, the population of the earth stands at a staggering 7.5 billion people.

Now, between 1956 and 2021, how much more does the earth weigh?

Take a second.

The weight of the earth hasn’t changed. 

The earth is a closed system. Excluding any meteorites and man-made rockets and satellites, mass does not leave or enter this system. So what’s happening? Why isn’t the weight of the earth changing?

It is, just not in the way you think, if you count the biomass of humanity as part of the weight of the earth, which you should, then humanity is literally turning the ground underneath it into more humans.

Amazing really.

This is why commercial farming is so crucial to the continuation of our civilization. Without proper management and communication, 7.5 billion people fighting for the space to roam, hunt, and gather would be engaged in skirmishes and wars often, and in almost no time at all many of the plants and animals we eat would be wiped out.

We wouldn’t have time or the stability to reach for the stars.

For instance, while white-tailed deer are so common today they are considered a pest species, at one point in time they were almost driven to extinction.

This was at the turn of the century when there were less than 3 billion people on the planet!

Without the engineering marvel and efficiency that is commercial farming, our civilization would be impossible. In fact, modern farming practices are so efficient that we can fit feed another 2 billion people that don’t even exist yet. The only problem with starvation is logistics at this point.

The Price That We Pay

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows though, there is a trade-off, and it is a bitter one. Many of us in America are currently making the transition from the rural lifestyle to the urban one. We have to follow the money since living on the farm is a thing of the past.

There are tribes in other parts of the world that pay so, so much more. Often they lack the education to plug into the modern economy.

However, over 80% of the population lives in cities in the United States at the moment. This means that the sprawl of neighbors across the countryside has opened up vast swathes of land.

This drops property value due to low demand and if you so chose, you could very easily purchase a sizable chunk of land and get back to the agrarian lifestyle.

Of All Things Change is Constant

In today’s world living a self-reliant lifestyle is a choice, and in America, you have the right to make that choice. Just like you have the right to own firearms with sweet sweet customizations.

Yeehaw!

The cool thing is, that instead of having to fight pests, and the weather, you can have a robotic greenhouse that is affordable, and so efficient you can feed your family and your neighbor’s family. You can work in the city and live on the farm and never have to leave the driveway.

Is self-reliant tribalism a thing of the past?

Heck naw, we are just adapting.

Which seems like a very smart choice when you watch the news.