The philosophy of being off the grid, or thinking about the “grid” is in itself, a fascinating concept and idea.
First, the grid as a metaphor, or a metaphorical way to think about almost everything. The grid, essentially imagine like a geometric box, cubes, shapes etc. For example grid gridlock traffic, traffic is a grid, one of the great upsides of walking is that it is multi directional; you could decide to walk on the sidewalk, walk close to the curb, walk in the bike lane, enter stores etc.
Do you remember that scary thriller “CUBE” horror film from the 90’s? Same grid idea.
Walking is non grid like
Funny; nobody really talks about how awesome it is to walk, the upsides of walking, the idea that when you’re walking you could be omnidirectional; you can weave around the sidewalk, go up and down the curb, different elevations and directions, and also turn around whenever you want. The problem with the car is that you are stuck in a singular plane; you can only drive forward, stay in the lane, turn when you’re told to turn etc.
Your legs run the world
Therefore, the first idea is this: to walk, walking is at least 1 billion times superior to driving, doesn’t matter if you have a Ferrari or a Lamborghini or whatever, etc.
The second thought, it looks like having a membership, a gym membership, any sort of membership is bad. Why? I believe perhaps the issue at hand is that you are still confined to a box, a cube, another form of metaphorical grid. For example, the day I toured an equinox, and I was curious, and honestly, it is very overrated. Only thing they really have going for them is that they have hammerstrength (life fitness) squat racks and power racks, but you could find that at any golds gym or even crunch fitness. For the plates, iron grip is the best, but beyond that… The barbell sucked. It is cool to see that they have some trap bars, but don’t people know, you could buy your own barbell which quality is at at least 1 trillion times better? Texas power squat bar.
Look at the brands
For example, equinox uses iron grip barbells; it feels like cotton candy, so cheap. My Texas power squat bar feels at least 1 billion times superior in terms of overall quality. 
Buy Texas Power Squat bars!
Off the grid thinking
I don’t know if I am different or exceptional or perhaps I am more similar than dissimilar to other people, but at least for myself I’ve discovered, I am insanely extremely easily distracted.
For example, the only time where and when I could really think is when I am in airplane mode. That is, when I’m just walking out and about on my iPad, iPad Pro without an Internet Wi-Fi connection. This is also why really really long international flights are good for thinking, because when you are devoid of an Internet connection and distractions, it is finally a good opportunity to start to think.
In fact, one of the ex founders of the company I used to work for, demand media, which later was rebranded into the “leaf” group, Byron Reese, he actually told me when I was 21 years old that one of his passions was writing, and he would actually intentionally go on really really really long international flights without Wi-Fi connection in order to get good writing done.
I think it is true; it is funny because in today’s world, a lot of these flights now have Wi-Fi, but still the good thing is that in mostly sucks. Therefore my suggestion is simple; even if you have the option, don’t use Wi-Fi on a plane, doesn’t matter whether domestic or international. In fact, the privilege of being able to go on a long international flight or domestic flight is via negativa — the privilege of NOT being contactable and the privilege of NOT being wired to the internet.
What do you need more … oxygen or WiFi? – Kanye
Once again, the new privilege is being disconnected, to be without an internet connection etc. 
Do you remember that scene from the Matrix — when you have all the humans linked up like batteries to the mega machine? To unplug yourself in the cerebral spine is painful, but the ultimate desired thing.
My formative years of thinking
Around 2017 I consider the peak of my philosophical goal thinking and inquiry. Why? First, from the period of around 2016 to 2017 to a little bit of 2018, Cindy and I were pretty much off the grid. I got rid of my phone, turned off my phone number and phone plan, and when we are living in Vietnam, we were just either renting a tiny studio apartment, in Hanoi for only $320 USD a month, all gas electricity plumbing water and gigabit internet included, totally brand new apartment built from the bottom up, brand new furnishings, up lighting, even this infrared heater thing in the bathroom, all furniture included. And we will just eat out every single day, even all you can eat Korean BBQ for one person was maybe around seven dollars USD, And an espresso at my favorite local coffee shops in Hanoi or maybe around 10,000 Vietnamese dong, around 22,000 Vietnamese dong is worth one dollar, so essentially a cup of coffee or espresso is less than $.50. 
Also, when we were just living in Saigon in one of the hotels there, maybe paying $20 USD a night, for a really nice hotel, across the park, Le Van Tam park, and our life was insanely simple; we would wake up, Cindy would have some breakfast upstairs, I would get some eggs, to store for later, we will just grab a Uber or grab taxi to the archives for Cindy, she would do her research, I would just plug myself inside a coffee shop and do some reading writing research and thinking, we would reconnaissance later, have an early dinner at the mall at around four to five p.m., chill and hang out, talk, go back to our hotel, maybe around eight p.m., and just go to sleep.
The reason why this was such an interesting life workflow was that when you’re living in a hotel, you literally cannot buy anything or accumulate anything. First of all, there is literally nowhere to put it, our hotel room was tiny. It just fit a bed, a single bed that both Cindy and I slept on, maybe it was a full-size mattress or a small queen, a tiny dresser where Cindy could do make up or I could have my evening “eggs snack”, eating around 6 to 8 hard boiled eggs as a post dinner supplement, and literally no storage, we would just wash our clothes in the shower every single day and hang dry it, life was very very straightforward.
Anti states living
Now back in the states, life becomes a little bit weird. One of the big problems about life in America is that there is too much stuff, too many possessions, too many opportunities to purchase things. As a consequence our storage units, our lockers, our garages, closets, end up filling with so much stuff.
For example, I am probably the most minimalistic person that I know, and still… I have an own so much shit! I have random clothes from maybe 5 to 7 years ago that I still got in Costco Kirkland trash bags, randomly tossed haphazardly in the closet, some at our new apartment at some in storage at Cindy‘s mom‘s house, and also all this old camera equipment and other stuff in random bags.
What is the big issue here? 
The biggest issue of living in America is there are too many distractions. I include distractions like TV, movies, shows, things to buy, it looks like in LA, the reason why everyone is so broke is that they either squander their money on cars, eating out, alcohol, clothing and fashion, makeup and silly overpriced stuff at Sephora (owned by the Louis Vuitton LVMH group), silly gym memberships at equinox, I think an equinox gym membership is maybe close to $400 USD a month? As a consequence, people are living paycheck to paycheck, or even worse; racking up their credit card bills.
How do you become less broke?
Simple ideas include paying everything in all cash, because you better have a sense of your spending habits, when you got physical paper cash money, it seems more real, and also you feel more pain when actually buying stuff. For example can you imagine going to the local ATM where the bank, withdrawing $1000 USD of hundred dollar bills or $20 bills or $50 bills, I’m going to the Apple Store and paying for an iPhone in all cash? Probably not. But if you put on your credit card, you don’t really think about it twice.
Debit cards?
There are certain things that I think in today’s world, you cannot even purchase it with cash even if you wanted to. I think this includes airline fares, flights. And I’m also sure with Airbnb, Uber, other transit related things, you gotta use some sort of visa credit card or debit card.
At least the good thing about using a debit card is that with debit cards, you’re technically using money that you already got. I feel that credit cards are such fucking scam – they tempt you with all these “rewards, “cashback“, but the reason why it is a scam is that ultimately, the “cashback” you get from these purchases are nominal, and I wonder if in the long-term it actually nudges you into spending more money, more money on things, which equals a net negative for you. 
So why does this all matter? 
Well, I think the reason why it matters is because ultimately, everyone strives for happiness, and I think people believe that the secret to happiness is rooted in money. But, this is not true. Money is simply a tool, tool to get people to do stuff for you.
For example, where is Tru wealth created? Through constructing, building stuff. For example, ultimately you need labor, skilled labor, or unskilled labor in order to build stuff. This includes buildings, architecture, museums, roads and infrastructure, etc.
For example, look at all these insanely epic new buildings being built, for example the new Lacma, bankrolled by David Geffen, or even the new George Lucas museum, museum of the narrative arts.
Would actually find very interesting is that these two Titans, David Geffen as well as George Lucas, both of them actually made their fortune in media, cinema, movies, and “entertainment”.
For example David Gethin, he is the one who essentially “platformed“ all of these notorious and successful singers, artist, blink-182, black-eyed peas etc.… People don’t understand that David Geffin, through Geffen records, produced a lot of the superstars.
Fill up my cup… mazeltov!
Mazeltov, it’s a celebration bitches! – JAY Z
What people don’t seem to understand is that media, music has such a strong allure and influence on us.
“I’ll be looking flashy in my Mercedes-Benz”- (I’m coming up so you better get this party started!”
Things I know, or things I don’t know; how much of modern day music culture and movies has an influence on our purchasing behaviors, or desires?
For example, one of the most formative songs in my childhood growing up was the VANS song by “the pack”. I am 35 years old, born in 1988, and I was raised and grew up in a very formative time in the bay area, Alameda, Oakland, East Oakland, the Bay Area movement, stupid dumb and hyphy, yellow bus retarded, E-40, Mac Dre, Keak da Sneak etc.
Essentially, a lot of these artists, both modern day, and old school, the general idea was a very democratic one; anyone and everyone could become cool simply if they had “I bang in my white TEE”– the basic idea that being cool and dressing well was open to all; all you needed was a simple white T-shirt, something you could easily pick up at any footlocker, I think I remember buying 10 white T-shirts for only $10 or something, and blue jeans, preferably dark denim.
The reason why the VANS song was so influential to me was multi fold: first and foremost, at the time, only weird skateboard kids or vans snickers, not black kids or any kids from the African-American population, and hip-hop. It wasn’t interesting time because to be a “skater”, was only for white kids, punk rock kids, which was not yet mainstream nor cool. But came out this very innovative song and concept that in fact, you could be black, African-American, into hip-hop music and rap, and still somehow wear vans sneakers, and skateboard?
“Real niggas wear these VANS…” – The Pack
“Stop buying those Nikes”
Nike sneakers were very interesting to me as a kid growing up because first and foremost they were so expensive. As a kid, the cheapest pair of Nike sneakers I think was maybe $80? For a kid that was a lot of money. Instead, I preferred to buy Adidas sneakers, there was a deal I remember at footlocker, a typical Adidas sneaker was maybe $60, but if you bought two Adidas sneakers, or any of the sneakers listed, you could buy two for $100, which equal only $49 a sneaker. This is how I started collecting sneakers as a kid, specifically Adidas sneakers, the château, as well as the case Swiss classic tennis shoe; when I was in high school, and also middle school, just having a simple pair of all white case Swiss tennis shoes were in. And once again this was great because they were quite affordable, you could buy two pairs of them for only 100 bucks, which was $49 a sneaker.
Weird things nowadays, why is it that in two days world, 2024, almost 20 years later, sneakers are more expensive than they were in the past? Wouldn’t you think that with industrialization, advancements and technology and whatever, that shoes should be cheaper, not more expensive?
For example, is still befuddles me how and why people would spend $200 on a loser Adidas ultra boost shoe, the only reason Adidas became cool was because of Kanye West, yet everyone still likes to hit on him. And also, spending $700 on a Balenciaga Knitted shoe, which also only became popular because of rap music, Cardi B, etc.? And also let us not forget that Demna, Kanye West, their collaboration is actually what made Balenciaga cool as well.
Also, Kanye West is the one who made Kim Kardashian so famous, and also, I think he actually did help Taylor Swift become somewhat famous as well.
“I made that bitch famous, not really but somewhat famous!” – Kanye Famous outtake song
In 2017, I downloaded a unreleased version of the life of Pablo, I think I found it somewhere on Google, Reddit, which was just hosted on Google Drive, which included a bunch of outtake songs, not the final versions of a lot of his iconic songs on the album “the life of Pablo“. One of them which I found fascinating was the one quoted.
***
Why think off the grid?
The reason why I like this idea and notion of “off the grid” thinking is that it is more fun, interesting, creative, and advancing.
Even Nietzsche in one of his books wrote that in order 41 to advance their thinking, one needed some sort of pseudo metaphorical monastic life, in which one had to do a “strict refusal of letters”. Back in the day, we can consider  “letters” the same thing as email. 
In fact if you really think about it, email, which stands for electronic male, and what is sent in the mail? Letters.
I think the reason why there is so much weird modern day angst about email and letters is that we treated with the same gravity and gravitas as handwritten letters. I think this is bad. Let us bifurcate the two; make real letters long form, written by hand and personal, And let email be more like text messaging. Ideally voice dictated, or even AI generated?
I even like this idea that when you open up your inbox, you could create this funny Gmail email app, or plug-in that every time you actually load up and open up an email in your inbox, the client will automatically populate “confirming receipt of your email, I will get back to you later… And funny, even if you never get back to them… At least you acknowledged receipt of it?
Getting rid of the tedium of every day life. 
The purpose of life and living is to live more, not to be behelden to all of these hateful tasks.
For example, not negotiable things like paying your bills and utilities, paying your taxes, etc. But beyond this, a lot of our “obligations”, are not real obligations.  Rather, it seems like “busy working “, like all of this BS work you had to do in K-12 education, which both you and the teacher knew was busy work.
Otium vs Negotium
OTM is the Latin Roman notion of leisure. Even the ancient Greeks knew well; the true apex was this virtuous, creative leisure, a life of learning thinking philosophy and advancement. 
Even for the ancient Romans, like the stoic sage Seneca, everyone knew that business was a hateful thing, everyone wanted to get rid of their duties, even Seneca and one of his letters is talking to his friend Lucilius, saying that he should stop playing for political office, stop having to manage the price of bushels of wheat etc.
Seneca says, “retire now!”
It doesn’t matter how much you plow the Earth, still, you will be a slave to something! 
Ancient.
Thinking more ancient

Doda; defense of the ancients, actually a really good idea entitled because perhaps when it comes to the military, the philosophical concept should be centered around defense, not offense.
For example, ancient Spartans. They were all about defense, defending their city state from outside intervention. For the most part, this part just wanted to be left alone.
This is where politics, international politics, culture and the culture wars is so weird;
Just leave them alone!
For example, if somebody wants to be LGBTQ, whatever; why do you care? Just leave them alone!
I suppose they’re a big issue at hand is when you want to be left alone, and you talk and interact in society a certain way, and then other people don’t leave you alone.
For example, let us say that I refer to a person as, boy, girl, man, woman, whatever; I don’t think anybody should “correct” me; shouldn’t they leave me alone and just let me talk the way I want to talk?
Similarly speaking, if somebody is talking a certain way and I don’t like it… I don’t go and “correct” them– I just ignored, turn away, walk away, and just focus on myself?
Social justice warriors are on both sides
What the right, the conservatives, the alt right doesn’t understand is actually, they are also being a “social justice warrior”; they believe in some sort of righteous Christian God-fearing nation, and as a consequence, they don’t want the LGBTQ people to perform a certain way?
Leave the gays alone!
Also, there seems to be a lot of criticism, this ridiculous Fox News talk of “alphabet soup”. But once again, if someone wants to be a man woman or trans or whatever… Why do you care?
Why thinking ancient is good
I think the big issue in today’s world is a lot of these modern day notions are feeble at best. For example, even though I am a huge fan of Kanye West, listening to some of his interview with Lex Fridman, reading some of the transcript etc.… I think the issue is that Kanye thinks too modernly;  using modern analogies like “downloading as much information as I can“, the reason why this is a bad analogy is that we are still stuck in uncritical  modes of thinking, which are connected to technology. Technology for the most part is bad, as even the ancients didn’t really care for technology that much.
Technology, tekhne– technician, these were the craftsman, the art creators of the ancient Greek past; for the most part, they were seen as middle-class. The people on top — if we think about ancient Sparta, the Sparta nobility were part soldier warriors, this Spartan hop lights, I suppose you had king Leonidas, who was also on the front lines of battle, putting his own personal life at risk to defend Sparta.
Apparently back in the day, when it came to war and conquest, thinking about Alexander the great etc.… You had to put your own personal life at risk, at stake, if you partook in war.
 an interesting idea that Naseem Taleb had was if a certain US military general or politician wanted to go to war, the requirement is that you need at least one blood can to be on the front lines of battle, and as a way, you have some sort of indirect skin in the game.
For example, let us say that we reminded ourselves, the past 10 or 20 years; when all this nonsense about weapons a mess destruction, and apparently the guy who popularized the whole “world is flat “concept, might have indirectly convinced the American public to go to war.
Now that I am a pater — and I have a son, Seneca at almost 3 years old… Let us assume that he grows up and becomes 18 years old or 21 years old, would I be comfortable having him suit up in army combat apparel, give him a gun, and have him fight a census war overseas, simply to regain oil power? No.
Similarly speaking, I think the only legitimate form of war and battle is one about defense. For example, let us say that we went in an alternate time universe, and somehow, the German Nazis invaded the shores of Los Angeles and whatever, and that we had to suit up, arm up, And defend the shores of Long Beach, the Los Angeles airport whatever. Then I would actually not think about it twice; grab a gun or whatever, and defend the shores of American soil from outside enemies.
I think the big issue is that America, people don’t seem to realize that we are the bad guys. Truth be told, all the stuff about Palestine, Gaza, the Gaza strip, and Israel is the red hearing; the big bad guy here is America, American military interventionalism,  essentially more or less, the Israel state was created partly by American intervention, because we wanted to secure some sort of military power and influence in the region.
I see a lot of these signs nowadays for “free Palestine“, and some American public hating on Israel, etc. But once again, just read the department of defense website, even the governor general of the US military, I think Lieutenant Austin, quoted and said “we have an ironclad commitment to Israel“.  if anything, perhaps we should consider Israel as a new colony of America; just like how South Korea can be considered a military outpost of the United States as well, to protect American interest from North Korea, China, etc.
Who’s on top?
 in ancient Greek times, the trend was to avoid anything that had to do with politics, and even war; and instead, the focus was to focus on philosophy. This is an interesting strategy because ultimately, philosophers, and their philosophical thoughts have lasted, whereas Military generals, politicians have not.
For example, everyone knows Aristotle, Plato, Socrates etc. Yet Napoleon has fallen out of vogue, even Alexander the great is not as renowned as he should be. 
Technology innovators?
One very underrated tech figure is ERIC Schmidt, the ex Google CEO who built it up into what it is today. Nobody talks about him nor does it seem that anyone cares about him. It is interesting because in fact, ERIC Schmidt has authored many books, the story of Google and beyond; but once again, nobody really knows who he is nor cares for him.
Also Larry Ellison, nobody really knows who he is nor does anyone care. Even Richard Branson, for people my generation nobody really cares for him.
Who has remained relevant? Steve Jobs. Even Jony Ive — i’m a huge fan of him, but nobody really knows who he is anymore nor cares for him. The same thing goes with Steve Wozniak; it seems that the Japanese are crazy about him but once again, no 18-year-old or 12-year-old today knows who he is. Nor cares.
True influentials?
Every 12-year-old kid or 16-year-old kid or a 18-year-old kid nowadays, highschoolers in college students, of course everybody knows who Kanye West is. Same goes with Elon musk. Or at least Tesla cars.
Jeff Bezos, not so much.
So the question is how do certain individuals become so embedded in the public consciousness of certain individuals and age groups, while others don’t?
My first thought is there are some individuals who care too much for money, traditional modes of success, etc. For example I put zero faith in anybody who mentions Napoleon Hill or Steve Covey or anybody who mentions effective habits about something… Or secrets to success, or think and grow rich? None of them is wise.
What do they look like in real life, how tall are they? What is their bodily physique? How does their voice sound?
I was randomly doing some research about Zac Efron, and apparently in real life he is only 5 foot eight? Something people don’t know about me is that I am actually quite tall, around 5 foot 10 1/2, 511, or 181 or 182 cm. of course I am over exaggerating my height, maybe by 5%
The reason why I find this so critical is this: 
just go on Amazon prime video and watch the old footage of Napoleon Hill, in his office, he looks like a loser  old, emaciated, skeletal looking figure, who is once again to focused on this modern day notion of “success“. Success as the modern day notion, we should just get rid of the concept altogether. 
