Have you ever considered jumping off the hamster wheel and living off the land? Maybe saving up money to buy a farm in in the country where you and your family might grow your own food and raise your own livestock? 

While some have heard this call and followed it obediently and successfully, the vast majority struggle to redefine their place in American society both figuratively and literally. 

For those who have yet to take the leap… What stopped you? Your soul desires it, and you aren’t asking for much, are you? You’re willing to put in the hard work. Your family would be happier and healthier, and such a lifestyle would presumably be better for the environment – a great solution to a popular concern. Why is it that so many Americans feel this siren call, this instinctive urge to be more self-sufficient, to be more connected with the natural world that truly sustains us, yet so few are ever able to actually achieve it? 

For too long as a society we have allowed ourselves to be yanked from our agricultural roots that previously afforded us a fair degree of self-determination. We have been forced into economic and political systems that are completely devoid of any semblance of personal sovereignty. 

The average American’s connection with the earth, the sole satisfier of all our human needs, has been nearly wholly severed. Our prospects for a return to greater self-sufficiency grow bleaker everyday, especially for middle and lower class Americans, due to the unceasing rise in the prices of land and housing as well as the monetization of everything. 

While the wealthy are able to satisfy this fundamental human need of connection to the land and the natural world through so-called “hobby farms”, the rest of us have no such ability. Rather, we are often confined to zero lot suburban homes or apartments in sprawling, soullessly mechanized, car-dominated cities in which humans are hardly welcome.

The Abstracted Economy is the spiderweb in which each of us struggles for freedom. The spiderweb is so ever present and far reaching it makes up the entire mental and physical landscape for those trapped in it. It is hard to see, precisely because it is all we know. And since it is all we know, we presume that it must be necessary. 

The most pernicious effect of this spiderweb is that it keeps our feet from ever touching the earth. The earth is where we belong. We see it, but we can’t grasp it or its bounty; not directly. We can only satisfy our human needs through a layer of commercial abstraction we have come to call “the economy”. This commercial abstraction coupled with deleterious civic policies is the wedge that has splintered the individual by fixing itself firmly between an individual’s need and his ability to satisfy that need for himself through direct and prolonged interaction with the earth.

Conceptually, the struggle I am describing is the struggle between dependence and self-determination. Accepting an ever expanding dependence on the State has been the critical mistake of every American generation, including our own. Reclaiming our human rights to self-determination and self-sufficiency is this generation’s primary charge. Not climate change. Not viruses or vaccinations. Not identity politics. Not evil cabals. Not securing political power for this or that party. 

Our charge is self-sovereignty. Nothing more. Nothing less. Because all else resolves when humans as individuals are free. And the only person responsible for your sovereignty is you. 

Freeing ourselves from the spiderweb, means psychologically freeing ourselves from the opinions and behaviors we formed because of it and then solving the practical problems of life on Earth with clear heads and able bodies geared toward individual sovereignty and a spirit of duly incentivized cooperation.

In this substack I will explore and describe the makeup of the spiderweb that creates poor paupers of us all, dive deep into the abstracted reality in which we, as Americans, live, and discuss the many steps we might take to free ourselves.

Whether we realize it or not, each of us is on a hero’s journey. In order to traverse the morass in which we find ourselves, we will need to travel together so far as we can. I invite you to join me in this humble attempt to map the terrain for the hero’s journey of our time. Where are we? Where are we going? What are the obstacles? How do we overcome them?

Let us see.

This article posted with permission from Connor Veering. Read more of his work at growingeverywhere.substack.com