[kweinber]

I find it interesting that some people feel that moving away from cities and towards a more natural lifestyle means moving to a farm or ranch.

As Steven Pinker notes in his brilliant “Enlightenment Now”, there is nothing natural about a farm. It is basically a factory that subjugates the local ecology to produce monoculture crops so delicate that you have to domesticate humans to take care of them. If you want to live in nature and get away from command and control culture, you may want to skip the farm or livestock ranch and experience nature more directly as forests, meadows etc.

[uberman]

I don't think anyone can claim with a straight face that farm/ranch living is not significantly closer to nature or not significantly more natural than living in a big city.

Is it hunter/gather subsistence living in a quasit hut or out of a cave no, but I think that would be realistically too far a leap for people in the tech community.