People and whole communities may leave their conventional environment many ways and we can see diversified forms of living out of the world as natives, closed or opened communities based on religious or other ideologies from traditional eremites to hippie nests everywhere on earth. There are around 40 communities on Hawaii Islands only which propagate the harmonic co-existence with nature and minimizing the ecological footprint of humans as one of the basic values. This is also a general and traditional characteristic of the Hawaiian culture.
We found András Gáspár and his family in the jungle of the Big Island of Hawaii. András, his wife, Ági, their daughter Ági’s parents has been living in the small town of Volcano in the dense of the rainforest. They tell us the unbelievable story of the Hungarian family wound up in Fen Forest where the population density was 74.5 people per square mile.
Your everyday life seems to me an incredible story. To be honest, my first thought and feeling when we had talked had been a shock with a little bit of envy. How could it happen? Did you wake up one morning in LA which so many dream of saying ’It was enough, let’s go and find a place in the world where noone had been before us and have a new start with our contorted life’?
Your reaction is common and although you used the word ’shock’ other reactions are also often as ’scepticism’ or ’looking for an excuse’. Anyway, I found a great deal of interest from other people fueled by unfulfilled dreams or yearnings of the youth.
It is important to mention that when arrived to Los Angeles in 1993 I knew within two weeks that it was not the place where I want to live my life or raise my kid or generally feel all right. It has a lot of reasons and we can talk about these maybe in another interview as it is an interesting topic. LA is a very exciting city just like New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas and a lot of other big cities in the US. I find the circus exciting too but only for a couple of hours–later I’ll be explicitly nervous looking at the clowns and made animals and illusionists’ tricks. I’m using a metaphore of course to express what I think of LA. One can be famous and make career there paying a huge financial, moral, environmental and other price.
Life in big cities, the hustle and the noise, the many stimuli, the ads and the all-time crowd, the traffic and the air pollution and so on is not good for everyone just like living in a rural place or a forest but I think these two can be combined. I was born in Budapest, Hungary where I had lived 19 years before I could study and settle for another 19 years. During this time I made certain that big cities’ possibilities, amusements and life in general is not for me.
It is easy to see how this way of life affects the whole Earth, the global ecosystem and our future… and this is just the beginning: we started an exponentially rising tornado with unpredictable consequences thanks to our behavior since the industrial revolution. I think anyone can understand that so instead of delivering speeches I personally try to find a way out of this mindless treadmill. To be wealthy is another thing of course, I just want to know whether is it enough to simply decide to live another kind of life and what kind of requirements and consequences pertain to such a decision depending on the available funds.
How this experiment may become self-supporting and also an experience giving completeness for the human life? How many people are necessary fewest in a community in order to achieve it? What kind of small communities are we talking about? It seems to me that there are many losses in a non-transparent community. There are not many crimes, thefts in a village where all know each other like in a great family. But when we don’t know even our neighbours it is easy to be immoral with them without consequences.
I have been a couple of times in Hawaii as a visitor to windsurf and to rest as other friends and acquinbtances of mine and I worked a whole year to spend two weeks in this Paradise. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live here because somehow I involuntarily thought it was a distant land and many do not choose to live there because it’s not easy. What would you do there? How could you make living? What would you work? But something really touched me on the seventh or eighth visit. I would say it was a slow–not physical but mental –and pleasant heart attack lasting two or four days.
Something hits you hard, something bubbles up in you feeling there is no striving against fate even if you don’t know what happens to you and where you head to. It was a feeling like that and I also understood that when you don’t know what will happen to you even in your well-known environment as work, career, family etc., how could you calculate the unknown which you can’t control at all howsoever hard you try.
There were many kind of events and conditions for Ági and also for me in Los Angeles like job, flat, friend, pregnancy and a lot of other important dimensions but the main motivation was the looking for another kind of life and to be together more and also the direct impact of our deeds on our life (instead of a barter of values going on through many systems and getting back our work’s offset as goods and services where there is a huge amount of loss because of the many chafing). E.g. whether I drink a glass of milk in the morning it does not depend on my bank account and on going to a shop but depends on my work and milking the goat or the cow early in the morning back in the stable.
We still did not know in those days what did it mean. We just guessed, hoped, questioned and risked. And that’s OK but there are hardships and problems which must be more or less solved if we take our initial decision seriously about the more and qualitiative family time, more nature, play and happiness in general. These all can become a reality but need time, setness of purpose and patience and these are not equally for everyone.
[Author: Offgrid. Meanig: Off-the-grid homes are autonomous; they do not rely on municipal water supply, sewer, natural gas, electrical power grid, or similar utility services. A true off-grid house is able to operate completely independently of all traditional public utility services. It also means that the off-the-grid living persons and communities live far away from civilization, in jungles, deserts or in the hills.]
What was your basic motivation?
These motivations for changing a way of life and location were different for me and Ági but they included the aspiration after exotic, childhood dreams, desert islands, sea, warm weather etc. My main motivation was the already mentioned sickness in the City of Sunshine where humans get more and more farer from the nature, the family, each other, the real values and of course themselves, from being humans on this planet and our responsibility for the whole Earth.
My personal basic motivations were rather spiritual and philosophical ones with a logical effect of the offgrid living in a small community, mainly creating happiness, the existentially whole and dignified human experience which is independent from everything and everybody. Briefly, I’d say it is searching for happiness not outside but inside (and he points to his heart). Big city keeps us busy and inhibits us from this fantastic possibilities of an inward journey–but I have to stop here again because these are also tips of new subject-icebergs.
Wasn’t it a shock to arrive after leaving the comfort of services?
Ági and me often go to camp and this experience was a little bit similar in the beginnings. The new kind of camping is more and more comfortable and interesting but there are many plans to accomplish in order to reach all we had imagined and all worth powder and shot to be here and do this whole thing. The average men have less physical and emotional needs (cleanness, comfort, security etc.) then women and I think and could observe that for them it is a greater shock. But human race evolved during wilder circumstances for thousands of years. I think we should rather understand from these hardships that how much we can make of our own power and how successful we can be when we join our forces.
Your aim is to find a way of living which is in accordance with the nature, does not damage the environment, to achieve the conditions of an off-the-grid communal life. Is it really achievable?
As I had explained earlier, our aim is not the off-the-grid, green, self-supporting life – that is rather a way leading to more deeper and important ends. To think it over logically, we have to try for the time being to realize our basic aims making as little sacrifice as possible. This way of live is more than a reality, mankind lived thosuands of years like this. This life was undeniably shorter and bad but the possibility is unquestionable. Our technology and know-how had left far behind the level we could control with sound mind so we don’t have to afraid of wild animals jumping on us in any moment or starving without food. We have other kind of problems nowadays.
Most people think money income is one of the basics of creating the conditions of life. How can you get any earnings far away from civilization?
As a matter of fact, we are not so far away from civilization, there are many communities, services, products around us and we can take part of this circle in order to make money (e.g. Ági cuts the hair of the 6 kids in the neighbourhood while their mother visits us with stockbreeding advices and help.) During this we try to learn as much as possible and we can change our own individual values for other things. Internet and smart phones are really good tools for such barter and we do not want to leave this net, our community thinks is reservation is important.
How can you offer a new alternative instead of the consumer society?
I’m also waiting curiously the answer for that question but until somebody finds it I feel this is the only way to go to bed every night with a clear conscience and happily, to set an example and to teach my children to try and learn another way of life before they decide to go back to „normal” civilization. Our daughter is only 4 now so we have at least another 8 years and I think after that the situation would be clean-cut and we don’t have to debate about global climate change, drastic pollution of environment, recycling or green energy. But today it’s another situation. If everybody around us sings ’the old song’ it’s quite hard to begin a new one, that’s why it’s easier here, ’far away’ from all.
How can you achieve the growth of the community?
My attitude reminds me to a wise phrase which says ’When the flower blooms the bees come uninvited’. That’s my experience too. To tell the truth, people more often just make inquiries at the present and we are still not at the point to draw conclusions or to estimate or especially to give advices to others. As I told others many times this must be a compelling inner urge which is invincible and one does not have to overcomplicate it, it’s enough to bow to it. But until we can easily make a list of cons I also do not try to persuade anyone.
What are you planning to do for the propagation of the sustainable lifestyle in the immediate future in order to make as many people as possible to be interested in this program?
As I have already mentioned I personally do not want to persuade anyone about the sustainable lifestyle because it would be like to persue somebody to make money. Money as well as sustainable lifestyle is not a target but a tool. Of course many do not understand this function of the money and that’s why it is a good example. To live a sustainable life is evidently a way of staying on the Earth for a long time living in peace with each other and all living creatures of this planet (including the mosquitos I hate). The fantastic good news is that if we reach the self-preservation we can propose any kind of objects whatever we want as it always had been. But if we do not understand this essential connection and carry on living from credit payed by the biosphere we’ll bankrupt after a while (and I think we are really close to it) because our environment will not be able to fill the gaps by biological and genetical evolution.
Rita Gaal, Lloyd Magazin, USA
