Living Simply and Living Off Grid in Mark Sundeen’s the Unsettlers

Abstract

: Mark Sundeen is an American born author of many successful books touching on various themes. One of his most prolific book is The Unsettlers, which was published in 2017, and focuses on two emerging practices, living off the grid and living simply. The author combines these two themes in The Unsettlers as though to imply that they are related. This provides a starting point for the reader to understand what they are. Living simply underscores the quest to resist the material culture prevailing in America and the world today. Living off the grid underscores the quest to be free from bills and utility connections for water, electricity, and gasoline. The simplicity theory by Nick Chater. Paul Vitanyi, Jacob Feldman, JeanLouis Dessalles, and Jürgen Schmidhuber provide a better understanding of human affinity to noncomplex things. When examined through the concepts of anticonsumerism and environmentalism, simplicity theory helps understand Sundeen’s ideas about living simply. The theory of Eco-psychology by Theodore Roszak offers a better understanding of the link between the environment and economic activities. This theory helps understand the ideas of Sundeen on living off the grid when evaluated through the concepts of environmental sustainability and ecological economics. This paper examines the motivations and processes of living simply and living off the grid.