; it is a JPG image.
"No man ever stood lower in my estimation for having a patch on his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience." - H.D. Thoreau, Walden
"Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind." - Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca
"We can conserve energy and tread more lightly on the earth while we expand our culture's capacity for joy." - Richard Louv. Last Child in the Woods.
Now we come to the first chapter of this book that describes a holistically committed response to the problems of humanity and Earth. Voluntary simplicity, or living simply, is a choice to turn away from our pervasive consumerist lifestyle in order to live a less hectic and more enjoyable life, and perhaps to reduce our individual and collective environmental impact.
I prefer the term "voluntary simplicity" to "simple living" because it emphasizes that this is a voluntary choice of lifestyle, an option, which we are not forced into. Living a life of simplicity is not the same as living in poverty, because poverty is not a choice but a forced necessity. Simplifying one's life does not need to be an all or nothing process. It is not deciding to take a tin cup and wander the streets seeking alms, though that too is a choice some make. It is, rather, a choice to slow down, to live frugally, and to enjoy life free of many of the multitudinous products of our culture.
Simplicity is not simple; it takes deep desire and commitment to resist the incessant drumbeats of advertising, of making more money, and of patriotically buying more than you can afford in order to keep our economy growing. Choices to live more simply will not be maintained without some underlying set of moral or spiritual beliefs. Guy Claxton says (quoted in Session 7 "Simplicity" of Exploring Deep Ecology by the Northwest Earth Institute) "advocacy of 'voluntary simplicity' or any other significant lifestyle change, which does not understand [the requirement] that these habits are the visible tip of a massive and intricate belief system, is bound to increase frustration, guilt, hostility, and thereby generate heat and friction - but not much motion." Development of such a belief system is the subject of ECOSHIFT's final section "Changing Human Spirituality".
Duane Elgin describes voluntary simplicity as leading a life that is outwardly more simple, and inwardly more rich. Freeing ourselves from some of the demands of our culture allows us to enjoy our life more. We may make such choices not necessarily from a desire to reduce our adverse impact on Earth, but maybe just to live a more rewarding, fulfilling, and happier life.
Having lots of money and lots of things does not seem to make people happier; it just makes them more frantic and overworked. Why else do we hear so much about "downshifting" and "getting out of the rat race". The classic book "Your Money or Your Life" by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin, describes a process for getting out of the rat race and becoming able to enjoy life more. The process involves learning to be frugal, estimating what income you ultimately need, working hard to save and invest the required amount as quickly as possible, and then living off of savings for the remainder of a freeing, rewarding life. This book has helped many people to realize that they do not need to slave forever in work they don't enjoy in order to have lots of money to spend on things that don't really create happiness. They ask "are you enjoying a living, or making a dying?"
The money part of voluntary simplicity involves learning to save instead of to spend, reducing "wants" that cost money, and determining the minimum income one needs in order to be satisfied. There seem to me to be three choices of life path:
Obviously there are millions of variations on these three basic scenarios. Dominguez and Robin direct much of their attention to choice A. I chose B. I have many friends who have chosen C. There is no one right way, but the principle is that the more you can reduce your "needs" for money the more likely you are to find satisfying work that can provide that income.
One book that has helped many to find an enjoyable career is "What Color is Your Parachute" by Richard Bolles. He has a web site called Job-Hunters Bible.
A primary rule (THE primary rule??) of frugal living seems to require a deep psychological base that few people have these days. The rule is STAY OUT OF DEBT. Don't spend more than you have. Don't pay interest except on your home. Throw away your credit cards if you can't pay them off each month. Here I'm breaking my ECOSHIFT rule of not using imperatives! Why are there so many personal bankruptcies in our society? Obviously because we want more than we can pay for.
| Buying things has never held much interest for me. My father taught me how to straighten out and reuse bent nails and this reuse ethic has stayed with me. Christmas purchasing has always been something to be minimized if not avoided. My wife sneakily throws out my tattered old clothes. The only power tools I ever had were a hand drill, which I still have, a lawn mower, which I don't still have, and an electric snow blower, which I had briefly when my back was in bad shape. On the other hand, I am a hoarder, one who thinks he may find a use for scrap, reread a book, look something up in an old magazine, need worn-out clothes, and listen some year to old 33 rpm records. when we moved two years ago from our home of thirty years it took my wife and I six months to find new homes for or to recycle our accumulated unneeded stuff, about half of everything we owned. |
Our current "western" culture, which we are trying to export throughout Earth, involves conspicuous consumption, showing off in appearance and possessions, ostentation, big houses, fast and expensive cars, second and third homes, and lots of "toys" for adults and children. There is a new name for this: Affluenza. It has been defined as "
Shopping is, I suppose, as American as apple pie. But what a cost it induces in time, indebtedness, and impact on earth. The Media Foundation, publishers of Adbusters magazine, invented Buy Nothing Day on the day after Thanksgiving to help raise awareness of the adverse impacts of consumerism. The foundation wants to create a new media culture that does not have commercialism as its heart and soul.
It takes a powerful commitment to resist advertising in our time. The commitment may come from the ethical, spiritual basis behind voluntary simplicity. It may come from a belief that humanity must decrease its impact on Earth. Or it may come just from a recognition that many commercials are ridiculous and stupid, or that the needs the advertised products appear to meet are manufactured by the advertisers themselves. But with commitment it is possible to learn to use the mute button, to be blind to ads in newspapers and magazines, and to eliminate junk mail.
I think the mute button on my TV zapper is one of the greatest inventions ever. The length of the commercial breaks when I'm watching sports or old movies, my usual fare, is happily filled reading a book.
To reduce the amount of junk mail, spam, and junk phone calls you receive:
; it is a JPG image.
Resisting advertising and reducing buying can come more easily to a single adult, but becomes more complicated when living as part of a family. I have been married for 46 years and have two daughters and four grandchildren. Though my wife and children (and their spouses) have been very supportive of and join in my efforts to simplify, family desires do make serious lifestyle changes more difficult. The Northwest Earth Institute has developed a new study group program called "Healthy Children, Healthy Planet", which addresses issues of consumerism, advertising, and children. Greg Rowland (quoted by Jonathan Freedland in Resurgence March/April 2006, p.41) says in response to advertising-induced demands for food, "The real question is why are parents not strong enough to say "No"? It's because they feel guilty. Giving in and buying stuff is the easy way of parenting for "time-poor" parents." It's not just food, but "stuff" also. I'll return to parenting and time below.
Our societal great emphasis on gift-giving, not only at Christmas but at manufactured holidays like Valentine's Day and Halloween, drives further buying. Voluntary simplicity greatly reduces such gift-giving. Alternatives for Simple Living lists a variety of non-consumer alternatives for Christmas, such as monetary gifts to appropriate non-profit groups, service gifts, or home-made certificates for outdoor activities. Each Christmas each of the six adults in my family (me, wife, daughters, their husbands) buys just one present for one of the other adults. The names are drawn by lot.
Voluntary simplicity usually involves many purchasing choices that are governed by the community and Earth-centered subject matter of the earlier ECOSHIFT chapters on Energy Choices, Food Choices, and Housing Choices. Buy local, buy American, buy green, buy free-trade, buy indigenous, buy recycled. Support locally-owned food stores, book stores, hardware stores, etc. Avoid the corporate giants who are controlling our lives and destroying our Earth support systems. Limit your web purchasing. If you do buy on the web use companies that are at least trying to be green, like RealGoods. Woops. I broke my "no imperatives" rule again.
Duane Elgin has said, "The character of a society is the cumulative result of countless small actions, day in and day out, of millions of people."
As a reminder that the purchasing choices you make every day do make a difference, I've developed this Voting For the Future of the Earth poster . Click here for an enlarged version you can print to hang on your refrigerator and everywhere else.
All this stuff that we are talked into buying accumulates. Exercise and recreational equipment is bought and not used or used only briefly. All my cross country skis come from the Dover, Massachusetts, town dump where they are left, still in fine condition, by their too wealthy former owners. Furniture is replaced with newer fancier stuff but not given away. People actually rent extra garages at storage facilities or even build additions or new bigger houses to store their accumulations. It seems that no matter how much we have, it is never enough to satisfy. There is always a new gadget, a new technology, without which life will not be worth living.
Choosing to live more simply often means getting rid of the accumulation. My wife and I did this when we down-sized our living quarters. It can take time and commitment to do this right, by selling things or giving them away, trying to find the right new home for each item, and only in the last resort recycling something or consigning it to a landfill. One reward of reducing clutter is the satisfaction of having simplified life by getting rid of things that we are not using and probably never will. Another reward is the knowledge that we have saved our children a lot of hassle after we die. A third reward is increased recognition of not really needing a lot of things, which reduces the temptation to buy them in the future.
For many people, choosing to live more simply involves time rather than possessions. Current American culture, at least, must be the most highly scheduled culture the Earth has ever known. What ever happened to "free time"? we rush to work, taking a lot of time commuting to distant jobs. We ferry children around to the many activities we believe are good for them. We volunteer for many causes that we believe in. And we spend enormous amounts of time, in response to advertising, shopping for things we don't need and won't use. The we collapse in front of the boob tube in order to mindlessly recover from our scurrying.
Learning how to manage time better can involve many lifestyle changes and takes the same deep commitment as other forms of simplicity. Simplifying life helps learning to make choices, to think before saying YES, to say NO, to give up commitments, to live close to work, to work reasonable hours, and to reduce the scheduling of children.
Simple living involves at least thinking about, if not acting upon, those bumper stickers that say "Kill your TV", "Kill your computer", and "Kill your car". All these are time wasters. All these are interactions with machines rather than with real people like your children. And I would add, "Kill your headphones". It is difficult to be in touch with your surroundings and the Earth with headphones on. Kill them and learn to listen to the birds, the wind, the streams, and, yes, even the traffic (especially when running or biking!).
An important debate within the Great Turning is whether computers and global communication, such as the World-wide Web are good or bad. Jerry Mander, in "In the Absence of the Sacred", argues that such communication is destroying local communities and particularly local native sustainable cultures. On the other hand, Duane Elgin, in "Awakening Earth", argues that global interconnectedness is necessary if we are to move through the present crisis. Obviously, developers of the web sites mentioned in ECOSHIFT believe Elgin rather than Mander. Apparently I do too, or I wouldn't be writing this web-based book. I believe the internet, in general, helps to build global community, even though it can also be a tool for disinformation and falsehood. But the computer, which was originally intended to simplify life by eliminating hand calculations and hand-written record-keeping, has actually made life much more complicated. We are now subject to overloads of information on the web and of communication by email. Computers have not even been able to produce the desired "paperless office". According to the New Scientist of November 22, 2003, the world's offices used 43% more paper in 2002 than they did in 1999! Simplicity with respect to computers may mean just keeping their demands on our time in check and using them for "business" rather than for recreation. But I must say that I respect and admire those few remaining people I know who have resisted getting involved with computers at all.
Simplicity involves rejection of addictions, learning how to avoid becoming addicted. This doesn't necessarily mean alcohol, tobacco, or coffee. It means addiction to money, power, shopping, possessions, and even many forms of recreation (should I mention downhill skiing and golf?).
Simplicity means giving things away and enjoying things without owning them. It means avoiding technical complexity; the latest technological marvels sooner or later break and need repair. But in our throwaway culture repair shops have become scarce and most items are chucked when they get broken and replaced by newer but not necessarily better versions. Simplicity often means using manual tools, which rarely break and can last almost forever. I still use some my grandfather used. . Though it may take longer, manual tools provide both exercise and greater satisfaction than using the latest gadget machine. Simplicity means walking and running, which are practically free, instead of buying expensive indoor and outdoor recreational and exercise equipment.
For Earth-centered people, simplicity means spending less time watching television and playing video games, less time in team sports, less time in shopping, and more time in nature, especially with the whole family. It means taking walks in the woods and fields, learning the birds, the flowers, the trees, the clouds, and the stars. It may involve hiking, backpacking, and camping out (not in an RV!). It involves travel in your own bioregion and getting to know it really well. It is just as exotic as other parts of the world.
| I have found solo backpacking to be excellent practice for living simply. I learned how little a person really needs in training for and then through-hiking the Appalachian Trail in 1995. Though I backpacked only small parts of the Trail (my expedition with Warren Doyle is another story), I have since enjoyed light-weight backpacking on numerous multi-day trips. Everything I need for up to seven days outdoors I can carry in a pack that weighs less than 30 pounds, including food and water. By resupplying food at 5 to 7 day intervals I can go on indefinitely except in winter. The goal of minimizing pack weight creates simplification by eliminating "wants". And I really enjoy being alone in what I call the "real" world, as opposed to the artificial human-oriented one. |
Simplicity can help to create REAL family time. This does not mean standing by chatting with other adults while your child plays soccer. It means eating meals together (with the TV off!). It means playing games together. It means exercising together: run, play tennis, swim, go hiking or orienteering. It means getting out in nature, not watching Animal Planet or the Discovery Channel on television. For the importance of nature time for children see the Ecopsychology chapter and Richard Louv's book "Last Child in the Woods".
When we spend less money on stuff and junk food and watch less television and spend less time on the computer, what will we do with our time and money? Society needs to find other ways to circulate money. It needs to change the Gross National Product from a record of how fast we can buy stuff and trash it to what activities we support and what we learn. We can start to change the economy by spending our new-found time and money on theater and the arts, on lifelong education, on nature study, and on exercise. The result will be a different kind of life, one that is more enjoyable, more relaxed and healthier, more studious and knowledgeable, and more rewarding.
Although prophets have preached the virtues of voluntary simplicity for millennia, the current simplicity movement has a sounder base in opposition to the consumer culture and in respect for all of creation on Earth. An increasing number of resources and organizations are available to help with learning to live more simply.
The Simple Living Network is a fine source for links and books. Choose "Resources" for the many books you can order directly. Choose "Beginners" and cruise the Web of Simplicity. This is a very rich site. The New Road Map Foundation, established by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin, has study guides on low consumption and simple living. Alternatives for Simple Living has comments, links, and books and is especially good around Christmas.
Curricula for simplicity study groups are available from the EcoTeam program of the Empowerment Institute, Cecile Andrews' Circle of Simplicity, and the Northwest Earth Institute. The Granite Earth Institute, with which I am associated, is the New Hampshire affiliate of NWEI.
In summary, read the pattern of behaviors and attitudes associated with choosing a simpler life as described by Duane Elgin in "Voluntary Simplicity". You could also check out his web site.
I have one final and important comment to close this chapter. We are all in transition; we are each in different places along a continuum of change. An expectation of making lots of changes all at once is too overwhelming and is counter-productive. You can decide to choose just one area (e.g. time scheduling, travel, job, money, clothes, equipment) and concentrate on it for a year. By then your new practices in that area will be automatic and natural and you can move on to another area. Change is difficult, but it can be very rewarding, so just get out there and DO IT.
To the next chapter - Sustainability: The Current Buzzword
ECOSHIFT: Voluntary Simplicity - by Tony Federer