The ability to become self sufficient, even if you don't exercise it, is far better than piling on endless amounts of unneeded complications into people's lives to entrap them. Am I the only one that doesn't think Ted Kaczynski was completely insane?
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I don't see a quantitative gain in the quality of life or quality of people between gains in technology from the 1980's to now. People are just more disconnected from reality, and technology-wise, all we really got out of it is bigger TVs, the first stages of technological unemployment through automation, and infrastructure to create bigger, more powerful government.
r0ach I can see why you would come to this conclusion. I but would argue that you can't see the forest for the trees.
I don't want to clutter the post up with walls of text so I will direct you to the three arguments I would make in response to your comment above.
1)
Evolution necessitates mutual dependence2)
Complete freedom and self sufficiency is an illusion3)
Group selection, inclusive fitness and reciprocity limit neoplastic changeAnd just ask the Amish about whether it is still possible to live the simple life if that is what you want.
Don't knock the Amish. They are far wiser then many give them credit for. They recognized the toxic aspects of the modern narrative early on and partially walled themselves off from it while still interacting with and benefiting from it.
http://amishamerica.com/how-self-sufficient-are-the-amish/That is not the only solution and not the one I would choose but it is very much not unreasonable. There are other groups that have found perhaps better solutions to both protect themselves while also interacting more fully with the modern world. In a few weeks I am going to write up a post in the Politics and Society forum titled "The failure of atheism" where I will explore this in more depth. I don't want to derail this thread so I will leave further talk along these lines to a different topic.