No refrigerator hum. No electric light. Wood burning for heat. A family in West Philadelphia choosing to live without the grid — not because they couldn't afford it, but because they believed the grid itself was the problem. That was MOVE. And the reasoning behind that choice was more systematic than most people expect. In previous discussions, we explored MOVE's use of collective voice as a form of religious testimony and political resistance. Now the same logic extends outward. If the System corrupts through institutions, it also corrupts through objects. Through convenience. Through the tools people depend on every single day. John Africa emphasized that technology fosters dependency, which in turn weakens individuals. The Guidelines framed human-made inventions as distortions — things that replicate, badly, what nature already provides. Think of it this way: fire warms you. A furnace warms you too. But the furnace requires a utility company, a bill, a grid, a government that controls the grid. Each layer of convenience adds a layer of control. MOVE described every company, manufacturer, and industry in industrial society as, their words, wheels of disaster for Life and nature. That phrase matters. It's not a critique of bad corporations. It's a rejection of the entire industrial project. Scholars have placed this squarely within anarcho-primitivist and degrowth thought — a structured refusal of economic growth and technological expansion as inherently destructive. Now, IZ, here's where it gets genuinely counterintuitive. MOVE rejected electricity yet strategically used sound systems. The Guidelines noted that technology could be employed to dismantle other technology when necessary. The example given: if an airplane is needed to blow up an airplane factory, using it is acceptable. The criterion wasn't purity. It was necessity. John Africa's definition of technology was broad, encompassing any human-made system disrupting natural order. That includes packaged food, synthetic clothing, household appliances — and, strikingly, organized religion. The Guidelines equate religion with technology as a shared denominator of insanity, according to John Africa. Spiritual symbolism and mechanical systems were read as parallel distortions of direct experience. [short pause] Remember this, IZ. The takeaway isn't that all technology is evil. It's that John Africa identified a specific trap: the more you depend on artificial systems, the less you trust your own instincts. Scholars of degrowth have called MOVE forgotten pioneers of post-growth thought — people who named this dependency decades before it became an academic conversation. The question worth sitting with is where that line falls for you. Between useful tools and the systems that quietly own you.