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Re-Reading Voluntary Simplicity

As I sorted through the books on my too-full shelves, I discovered a very yellowed, stiff book, Voluntary Simplicity. It cracked as I opened it to the first chapter.

I was going through my books to see which ones contained old information that new research invalidates. Those would go in the recycle pile. With all the research on climate change, environmental hazards and the destructive nature of the consumerist culture, this book seemed like old news.

Then I read the first paragraph:

The world is profoundly changing, that much seems clear. We have entered a time of great uncertainty that extends from local to global scale. We are forced by pressing circumstances to ask difficult questions about the way we live our lives: Will my present way of life still be workable when my children go up? How might their lives, and my own, be different? Am I satisfied with my work? Does my work contribute to the well-being of others–or is it just a source of income? How much income do I really require? Require for what? How much of my consumption adds to the clutter and complexity of my life rather than to my satisfaction? How does my level and pattern of consumption affect other people and the environment? …. Am I missing much of the richness of life by being preoccupied with the search for social status and consumer goods? What is my purpose in life? How am I to take charge of my life?1

It feels like the more things change, the more things stay the same. We have advanced so far in so many ways yet we are still asking the same questions about how we live in the world, perhaps even more urgently.

I could see this stall as a sign that hope for a better future is a pipe dream. Or I could see this as, at least, we are still asking. When we keep the questions in our mind, the answers can be found.

Today, I choose the later.

silhouette of mountains
Photo by Simon Berger on Pexels.com
  1. Elgin, Duane. Voluntary Simplicity: An Ecological Lifestyle that Promotes Persona & Social Renewal. Bantam Book, 1981. Page 1.
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What Do I Value?

Am I an ecologist with ecological values or am I a hedonist with consumerist values? I want to accept an ecological ethos to make myself a good and pious citizen of the world. I also want the dress in the window.

I remind myself that consumerist values are destructive to the planet, destructive to societies and destructive to my well-being. Environmental degradation, inequality and angst about not having or being enough are consequences that I see as I consume. So, I celebrate every time I decide not to get the dress in the window because, really, I don’t wear dresses and I don’t need another one to hang in my closet. I don’t make the best choice every day, but I am making better ones.

I am making better choices that don’t undermine the foundation on which my house rests because I want to enjoy the world, selfishly, as a beautiful sanctuary, and I hope that my children and grandchildren can do the same.

What are ecological values? How should be look at them? From our basic metaphor of the world as a sanctuary, immediately follows that the right and inevitable attitude towards the world is that of reverence. Thus reverence establishes itself as the chief ecological value…

A true exercise of reverence immediately implies responsibility…Responsibility is not “heavy”, a burden, but a concept that gives us wings and enables us to practice our reverence as a cosmic dance…

Frugality follows both responsibility and our sense of reverence…IN our interconnected world, and within its limited resources, if some consume too much, there is not enough for others…”What you have and don’t need is stolen from those who need it and don’t have it”…Frugality is born of our awareness that the orgy of consumption is obscene and immoral, of our awareness that in overconsuming we put enormous stress on Mother Earth and therefore on ourselves in the long run…

Diversity, at first sight, appears as an unlikely candidate for an important ecological value…We must maintain diversity to maintain vibrant life…Evolution means diversity. Human cultures mean diversity. Fulfilling human lives means diversity.

Justice has been enshrined in all significant value systems of humanity…Ecological justice signifies justice for all–not only within our own clan and within our own society; not only among nations of people, but also with respect to all living beings; and with regard to the Mother Earth herself…

Ecological values are offsprings of ecological consciousness.”1

Ecological values can seem like lofty ideals. Each, though, can be grounded in daily actions: admiring the sunrise while the gulls, and geese, and swans wake on the sand after picking up discarded masks and coffee cups, in last year’s winter coat.

What decision can I make today that helps me line up with ecological rather than consumerist values? Start there.

“You must take action. You must do the impossible. Because giving up is never an option.”
–Greta Thunberg

  1. Skolimowski, Henryk. A Sacred Place To Dwell. Great Britain. Element Books Limited. 1993. Page 34-37

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Re-imagining Ecological Consciousness

I’ve been thinking, reflecting on Einstein’s thought that we can not solve a problem with the same thinking that created it. What thinking do we need to solve the world’s most pressing problems? What is today’s thinking that is not allowing us to see solutions?

One start is that our current thinking is mechanistic in nature.

Three centuries ago, when the world was an exquisite machine set in motion by God–a closed system with a watchmaker father who then left the shop–the concept of entropy entered our collective consciousness. Machines wear down; they eventually stop…This is a universe we feel that cannot be trusted with growth, rejuvenation process, If we want progress, then we must provide the energy, the momentum, to reverse decay. By sheer force of will, because we are the planet’s consciousness, we will make the world hang together. We will resist death. (Leadership and the New Science, Margaret Wheatley, pg 49)

Within the mechanistic thinking, all of the earth’s components are manipulated and controlled. This thinking promised great things: “the promise of domination of nature, of material abundance, of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, and of unimpeded personal freedom.” (To Have or To Be, Erich Fromme, pg 1)

Progress was made. The future was bright.

With industrial progress, from the substitution of mechanical and then nuclear energy for animal and human energy to the substitution of the computer for the human mind we could feel that we were on our way to unlimited production, and hence, unlimited consumption; that technique made us omnipotent, that science made us omniscient. We were on our way to becoming gods, supreme beings who could create a second world, using the natural world only as building blocks for our new creation. (Ibid, Fromme pg 1)

Until it wasn’t: progress became sacrificial and the future charred in the Anthropocene–the human era:

The Anthropocene is a condition that chokes our airways with the smoke of uncontrollable wildfires, toxic leaks, megastorms, agricultural poisons, air pollution–and novel runaway viruses. It’s an embodied realization of inescapable danger, one that stands in contrast to the still-dominant 20th-century myth that the world’s dangers can be contained and forgotten. That myth rested on an endless supply of security zones, hiding places blocked off from dangerous poisons and people with illusory barriers. (Orion, Winter 2020, The Snarled Lines of Justice, Janelle Baker et al., pg 14)

If that is the mechanistic thinking that got us here, what is the thinking that takes us from here?

One possibility is the re-imagining of ecological consciousness. Re-imagining because humans were ecologically conscious pre-industry, indigenous history tells us. It was required for survival. We need to re-imagine that thinking for survival in the 21st century and beyond.

The almost unbelievable fact is that no serious effort is made to avert what looks like a final decree of fate. While in our private life, nobody except a mad person would remain passive in view of a threat to our total existence.

How is it possible that the strongest of all instincts, that for survival, seems to have ceased to motivate us? (Fromme pg. 8)

Ecological consciousness is thinking in a holistic, interconnected way. Unfortunately, we can’t change our thinking without changing our underlying conception of the world.

Our current mechanistic thinking is manipulative and controlling, secular and alienating. Ecological thinking comes from a place that is reverential and holistic, spiritual and participatory.

Ecological consciousness must not aspire to be just another attempt to soften the hard edges of mechanistic consciousness. It must be an altogether different entity, an altogether different cast of mind…

Instead of seeing the world as disconnected atoms, ecological consciousness envisages it as one seamless web/ As we perceive all things in the universe holistically, we also celebrate them as a part of the miracle of creation. To celebrate the world as a miracle of creation is something distinctive to ecological consciousness. This aspect is absent in mechanistic consciousness. Moreover, to celebrate a miracle of creation is to behold the world reverentially. Thus we not only behold the world holistically, we also behold it reverentially. First of all, by taking nothing as given, nothing as ours for the taking. Beholding all forms of life reverentially is honouring human beings and all beings as divine specks of creation. Reverence for life means the re-enchantment of the world. (A Sacred Place To Dwell, Henryk Skolimowski, pg. 22)

Our altered thinking is kinder, gentler and respectful. And we do need to start with thinking. A famous actor/director once said that eighty percent of success is showing up. Elevating our consciousness to start an ecological revolution is showing up to the first step in living with reverence upon the earth.

Putting our inner house in order will prove the key to re-inventing work for the human species. And not only individuals have inner houses: the inner houses of our communities, our churches and synagogues, our economic and political systems, and our neighbourhood and family relationships all need our attention at this critical moment in human and Earth history. (Learning Toward an Ecological Consciousness, Edmund O’Sullivan & Marilyn Taylor, pg.99)

Start with the only person we can truly change, yourself.

  • Baker, Janelle et al. (2020). The Snarled Lines of Justice. Orion Magazine, Winter 2020. Great Barrington, MA: The Orion Society.
  • Fromme, Erich (1976). To Have or To Be. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
  • O’Sullivan, Edmund & Marilyn M. Taylor (2004) Learning Toward an Ecological Consciousness. London: Palgrave McMillan.
  • Skolimowski, Henryk (1993). A Sacred Place to Dwell. Rockport, MA: Element Books Ltd.
  • Wheatley, Margaret (1992). Leadership and the New Science. San Francisco: Barrett-Koehler Publishers.