I, too, was a victim of white male Eurocentric western culture

"Like other victims, I became fixated on material things. There was actually time, before graduate school, when I considered getting a job."

After the conference, Grok vowed to eliminate the trappings of western culture in his own life. First to go were his personal computer, his BMW sedan, his fashionable Back Bay apartment, and his expensive wardrobe. They were replaced by a typewriter, a bicycle, a phone-free studio apartment and secondhand clothes.

To his chagrin, Grok eventually realized that the even the low-tech alternative technologies were also contaminated by western culture. "The wheels on the bicycle, for example," notes Grok. "Only western civilization would be as arrogant to speak of 'perfect' circles."

Grok says that each of his attempts to replace western technology brought more frustration. "Last year, when I was lying over a heating grate in my cardboard box, I realized I was merely a pawn of western industrialists. Like the developing world, I had been seduced and entrapped by their addictive steam and cardboard technology."