Jaimie Mantzel is a toymaker and inventor who got out of the rat race, sold his Vermont house, and moved his family to a secluded Island in Panama.
You may be familiar with the small but growing trend of people bugging out of America to do homesteading abroad. But Jaimie uses his ingenuity to take going off the grid to the next level.
In addition to his three boats, Jaimie has built a concrete habitation dome, a mini-bulldozer that also powers his workshop, and a fruit tree garden capable of sustaining his family.
Eccentricity aside, Jaimie is a rugged go-getter of the kind that tamed the wilderness in the first place. He’s accomplished more on a remote third world island than most people in the richest country on Earth can dream of.
Some members of younger generations have noticed Jaimie’s achievements and asked him for advice. Like all good advisors, Jaimie tells his Millennial audience members what they don’t want to hear.
Since understanding a problem is the first step to solving it, Jaimie invites his NEET viewers to ask who, if anyone, is responsible for their wretched lives.
His conclusion? Millennials were raised – more accurately, abandoned to state schools – by parents who didn’t know how to be parents.
But instead of stopping there and pinning all the blame on Baby Boomers, Jaimie points out that the Boomers didn’t know how to parent because their Greatest Generation parents never taught them.
Which makes sense when you consider that their mothers went to work when their fathers went off to war.
This cycle has now run through multiple generations. Boomers left parenting up to TV, and Millennials are leaving parenting up to tablets and phones.
As a result, young adults today have little contact with the highs and lows of the real world. Instead, their lives are defined by screens that act as windows into false realities where nothing really happens. These electronic illusions sap Millennials’ and Zoomers’ motivation by giving them dopamine hits for simulated achievement.
Jaimie’s solution?
Cut the screens cold turkey.
And not just electronic devices. To cure false reality addiction, Jaimie advises his viewers to reset their lives. That means throwing out the iPhone, laptop, tablet, game console, booze, drugs, and TV.
In fact, he suggests picking one room in the house and clearing everything out of it except for a mattress.
This done, our young NEET must commit to following one rule: Don’t do anything that makes you go backwards.
Jaimie wagers that viewers who take these drastic steps will soon get so tired of sitting alone without any stimulation, they’ll venture outside to relieve the tedium.
And that impetus to get up and go will be the first spark of their rekindling motivation.
What will Millennial NEETs find beyond their doorsteps? In time, they will have real-life experiences with real stakes. They’ll meet people, get exercise, and gain experience.
But most important of all, they’ll try new things and fail.
Because failure is a great teacher. And persistence is invincible.
Watch the whole video here.
Note that Jaimie advocates breaking the cycle of absentee parenting and home schools his kids. That alone earns him a fair hearing.
As you mull over his wisdom, know that you needn’t move to Central America to thwart the people that hate you. For now, you can stop giving them money.
