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Frugality As A Virtue

After World War II, the public was persuaded to pull the global economy forward by becoming consumers. After 9/11, the US president, Bush, compelled the US to get out and shop, as a way to get back to normal quickly. The populous learned well. We have become expert consumers and built a world based on more and more growth. Unfortunately, we are running out of Earth and the space to put stuff.

There are several movements afoot that are challenging the consumer identity: F.I.R.E. (Financially Independent Retire Early), zero waste living, and Kondo cleaning, to name a few. Frugality is at the heart of these.

Frugality, as a virtue, is not to be prescribed to the poor and destitute, but to the rich and affluent. Our world is interconnected and has limited resources. We are becoming aware that the “orgy of consumption is obscene and immoral.” (pg 36)

“What you have and don’t need is stolen from those who need it and don’t have it.” (pg 35)

We are at a point where we can adopt frugality as a desirable virtue. We can see it as:

“…grace without waste
…a precondition of inner beauty
…a majesty of simple means
…a joy of living simply
…a judicious and discriminate use of resources.” (pg 36)

With frugality as a virtue, we can move to make the world a better place for all of us.

Source: A Sacred Place to Dwell, Henryk Skolimowski

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Through Acedia

I was recently asked what it meant to be a good person in a world where definitions are updated, adjusted and deleted depending on the wind. It seems that the question of good and right is under siege right now as the world is shifting. Can you feel the wobble?

There is a fringe theory that suggests that the magnetic poles around which the earth turns might to shift or wander up to thirty degrees causing potentially cataclysmic events. The earth generally makes that kind of change slowly. Imagine the speed of a retreating glacier during the last ice age. Humans change things quickly. Think of the retreating glaciers during this Anthropocene age. Still, let’s expand on this metaphor as the world seems to be wobbling right now between continuing or returning to energy-draining — in all ways: human and earth— practices and restorative, reverential practices.

I find this wobble quite destabilizing. I am so busy trying to keep my feet underneath me that I ignore most of what goes on around me, in spite of a desire to do something good. So, Acedia is my companion in this.

Acedia sits me “between two fears — the fear of what will happen, if we, as a society, continue the way we’re going and the fear of acknowledging how bad things are because of the despair that doing so brings up.” (Active Hope, pg. 65)

How did we get into this mess? That is looking down a slippery slope of rule-breaking on a vast global scale, the consequences of which we are only beginning to see.

Acedia tells me that is will continue to get worse and eventually I will die. So, what is the point? And that is not true (well, the dying part is true, eventually). It doesn’t always get worse. Eventually, we can get through: we finish the race; we recycle or reduce plastic; we clean our house. And we are better for it.

How do we get out of this mess is the question that acknowledges where we are and looks forward. When we look forward, we can see the path through. As Robert Frost reminds us in A Servant to Servants:

By good rights I ought not to have so much
Put on me but there seems no other way.
Len says one steady pull more ought to do it.
He says the best way out is always through.
And I agree to that, or in so far,
As that I can see no way out but through.

In the fourth century, the desert mothers and fathers instructed that perseverance was the only cure for acedia. Perseverance, day after day…go through.

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But What Is The Question

I find myself asking a lot of How? question. Or I make how statements like I don’t know how to do something. So I pulled what I describe as one of my favorite books off the shelf. I think I call it my favorite because I love the title: The Answer To How Is Yes, by Peter Block. As I re-read it I realized why it stands out.

The introduction convicts me:

There is depth in the question “How do I do this?” that is worth exploring. The question is a defense against action. It is a leap past the question of purpose, past the queston of intentions, and past the drama of responsibility. The question “How?”–more than any other question–looks for the answer outside of us. It is an indirect expression of our doubts…

Pg, 1, The Answer to How is Yes, Peter Block

My notes on the book and long and deep. I say yes when I read how questions overvalue practical and doable skipping over purpose, and to truly act on our values we must accept that we are free to choose our own message regardless of what society says (Pg 41).

The most profound section of the book for me this time is one that I don’t remember reading last time, in spite of the yellow highlights I see. It asks us to be social architects. It explains that architects are concerned with beauty and practicality. And to be a social architect means that we are able to design social spaces where we thrive.

The social architect’s task is to create the space for people to act on what matters to them. It requires faith in common values and interest in the common good…What is required is simply the will to act as if we know enough right now to put the dream into action. And the belief that this is possible.

Pg 174, Peter Block

I want to live into this role and I will have to practice. I keep coming back to the question: How do I become a social architect? The answer is yes.

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Time To Come Alive

After reading The Tools by Barry Michels & Phil Stutz, I decided that I liked the idea of having tools to access in your mental tool shed that helped me move through the day. I am still practicing Bring It On, Active Love and Jeopardy. And I looked for more tools, which I found in their newer book, Coming Alive.

What makes these tools great, like the last ones, is the ease of implementation. Instantaneously, you can change your state by following simple steps. As the saying goes, it is simple and not easy. The hardest part of using these tools is remembering to use them. Each requires you to pause before responding or taking action. And that takes practice.

The tools in this book focus on becoming the best version of ourselves by tapping into our innate wisdom:

The belief that an invisible animating energy underlies our existence is
thousands of years old. Unlike our modern, mechanical notion of energy, which we understand via mathematics, this is a living energy that we feel inside us. In Eastern religions, this energy, or Life Force, is known variously as prana (in Indian philosophy and medicine), lung (in
Tibetan Buddhism), and chi (in Chinese philosophy and medicine). In the Old Testament, it was called ruach, the breath of God, which gave mankind not only life, but the spirit to evolve. (pg 11, Coming Alive)

By experiencing this energy deeply, we can come to see the Life Force around us expressed in Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. They are the true forces that make life meaningful:

To put it simply, Truth reveals your path, Beauty inspires you to walk it, and Goodness enables you to spread virtue along the way. It is on this path that you gain the greatest reward: you know who you are and why you are here. Your soul finds its true place in the universe. (pg 230, Coming Alive)

Come Alive!