{"id":12474,"date":"2017-07-06T15:01:49","date_gmt":"2017-07-06T19:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.lsa.umich.edu\/dcbrp\/?p=12474"},"modified":"2020-08-28T14:05:35","modified_gmt":"2020-08-28T14:05:35","slug":"week-6-off-the-grid-or-part-of-the-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/2017\/07\/06\/week-6-off-the-grid-or-part-of-the-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 6: Off the Grid or Part of the System?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How should we cope with living in a broken, corrupt system? Do we boycott\u00a0it all together? Sustain ourselves and live best we can without any dependence on capitalism? Should we be a part of the system and change it from within? Or something in between?<\/p>\n<p>These are questions I&#8217;ve been considering a lot the past few weeks. Through community workshops, my internship, and other connections in Detroit, I&#8217;ve discussed these questions with\u00a0people who have strong opinions on each side. I&#8217;ve met anarchists, some of whom\u00a0converted their Detroit homes to be off the grid, working full time on sustaining themselves and their homes. I&#8217;ve met community urban gardeners who encourage strong community as an alternative to relying too much on both businesses and the government. I&#8217;ve met communists who are actively protesting against the system we have. I really only haven&#8217;t heard from many people who <em>don&#8217;t<\/em> have a strong view on the topic.<\/p>\n<p>I admire the resiliency of those trying to live a completely self-sustainable life, and I think their response to the society we are faced with is one I can understand. But personally, I struggle to see myself living that way because I want to be more focused on helping those around me who are victims of our system, instead of just avoiding it altogether for my own reasons.\u00a0Also, I don&#8217;t see our society as we know it\u00a0collapsing anytime soon, although some strongly believe otherwise. I&#8217;ve always been an ambitious person when it comes to large-scale political and social justice movements, and I always strive\u00a0to live in accordance with my views, but I am also pretty realistic. I don&#8217;t think America will become communist, at least not in my lifetime. I don&#8217;t think the absence of any government will be good for most people. And I acknowledge the current hierarchy\u00a0of power in American politics. My goal is to make the biggest change I can for the most people I can, in whatever way that may end of being.<\/p>\n<p>I recently was accepted into the Ross School of Business, which I applied for on a whim, having never thought seriously about going into business. I always was turned off by the greedy business person stereotype, but I&#8217;m coming to realize that this might be how I can reach my goals. I could go into nonprofit, or create a sustainable business with social justice goals. I&#8217;m excited to use my education to\u00a0work towards my goals from within the system. I&#8217;m grateful this program is exposing me to people all different types of lifestyles and backgrounds so I can make an informed decision on what I want to do with my life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How should we cope with living in a broken, corrupt system? Do we boycott\u00a0it all together? Sustain ourselves and live best we can without any dependence on capitalism? Should we be a part of the system and change it from within? Or something in between? These are questions I&#8217;ve been considering a lot the past [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1669,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1669"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12474"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15708,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12474\/revisions\/15708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/dcerp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}