..Voluntary Simplicity ..Voluntary Simplicity "Doing more with less." Buckminster Fuller
"Less is more" Mies van der Rohe,
"Form follows function." Louis Henri Sullivan
"Long hair minimizes the need for barbers; socks can be done without; one leather jacket solves the coat problem for many years; suspenders are superfluous." -- Albert Einstein
http://web.umr.edu/~jthomas/jeff/quotes/
About Einstein: "In his personal life, he tried to remove clutter. He gave up wearing socks as an unnecessary complication. To simplify his life, he washed and shaved with the same soap."
http://home.att.net/~uufbr/pages/sermons/sermon6.htm
..from .Choosing Simplicity by Duane Elgin
Writing in 1845, Henry Thoreau set the soulful tone for the simple life in Walden, in which he wrote these famous lines:
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to confront all of the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what it had to teach , and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived. . . . I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. . .
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here are other priorities (beyond material frugality) that I have found that characterize this way of living:
Relationships-Those choosing the simple life tend to place a high priority on the quality and integrity of their relationships with every aspect of life-with themselves, other people, other creatures, the Earth, and the universe.
True gifts-This way of living supports discovering and expressing the true gifts that are unique to each of us, as opposed to waiting until we die to discover that have not authentically lived out our true potentials.
Balance-The simple life is not narrowly focused on living with less; instead, it is a continuously changing process of consciously balancing the inner and outer aspects of our lives.
Meditation-Living simply enables us to approach life as a meditation. By consciously organizing our lives to minimize distractions and needless busyness, we can pay attention to life’s small details and deepen our soulful relationship with life.
excerpt from Promise Ahead: A Vision of Hope and Action for Humanitys Future from Awakening Earth
excerpt from Voluntary Simplicity By Duane Elgin and Arnold Mitchell, The Co-Evolution Quarterly, Summer 1977
1. Material Simplicity
Simplification of the material aspects of life is one of the core values of voluntary simplicity. The American Friends Service Committee, long a leader in exploring a way of life of creative simplicity, defines simple living as a ?non-consumerist life-style based upon being and becoming, not having.
2. Human Scale
A preference for human-sized living and working environments is a central feature of the values constellation embraced by voluntary simplicity. Adherents to voluntary simplicity tend to equate the gigantic scale of institutions and living environments with anonymity, incomprehensibility, and artificiality
3. Self-Determination
Voluntary simplicity embraces an intention to be more self-determining and less dependent upon large, complex institutions whether in the private sector (the economy) or public sector (the political processes). Self-determination manifests itself in consumption as a desire to assume greater control over one's personal destiny and not lead a life so tied to installment payments, maintenance costs and the expectations of others. To counterbalance the trend towards increasing material dependency a person may seek to become more materially self-sufficient -- to grow his own, to make his own, to do without, and to exercise self-discipline in his pattern and level of consumption so that the degree of dependency (both physical and psychological) is reduced.
4. Ecological Awareness
A sense of ecological awareness which acknowledges the interconnectedness and interdependence of people and resources is central to voluntary simplicity. There emerges from this awareness a number of themes that are hallmarks of this way of life. For example, ecological awareness prompts recognition that our earth is indeed limited, with all that implies for conservation of physical resources, reduction of environmental pollution, and maintenance of the beauty and integrity of the natural environment.
5. Personal Growth
For many persons taking up a materially simple way of life, the primary reason is to clear away external clutter so as to be freer to explore the inner life. The themes of material simplicity, self-sufficiency, a more human scale to living and working, and an ecological awareness are, in a way, devices to sweep away impediments to inner growth. The goal, then, is to free oneself of the overwhelming externals so as to provide the space in which to grow: both psychologically and spiritually. Simone de Beauvoir succinctly stated the rationale for this desire for self-realization when she said: "Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying."
The modern private enterprise system ingeniously employs the human urges of greed and envy as its motive power, but manages to overcome the most blatant deficiencies of laissez-faire by means of Keynesian economic management, a bit of redistributive taxation, and the 'countervailing power' of the trade unions.
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Quotes from Small is Beautiful "[A modern economist] is used to measuring the 'standard of living' by the amount of annual consumption, assuming all the time that a man who consumes more is 'better off' that a man who consumes less. A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption. . . . The less toil there is, the more time and strength is left for artistic creativity. Modern economics, on the other hand, considers consumption to be the sole end and purpose of all economic activity."
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The E. F. Schumacher Society, named after the author of Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered, is an educational non-profit organization founded in 1980. Our programs demonstrate that both social and environmental sustainability can be achieved by applying the values of human-scale communities and respect for the natural environment to economic issues.
Building on a rich tradition often known as decentralism, the Society initiates practical measures that lead to community revitalization and further the transition toward an economically and ecologically sustainable society.
E. F. Schumacher, born in Germany and educated in England, was for many years the head of planning at the British Coal Board.
"Schumacher has been a Rhodes Scholar in economics, an economic advisor to the British Control Commission in postwar Germany, and, for the twenty years prior to 1971, the top economist and head of planning at the British Coal Board. It is a background that might suggest stuffy orthodoxy, but that would be exactly wrong. For there is another side to Schumacher, and it is there we find the vision of economics reflected in these pages. It is an intriguing mix: the president of the Soil Association, one of Britain's oldest organic farming organizations; the founder and chairman of the Intermediate Technology Development Group, which specializes in tailoring tools, small-scale machines, and methods of production to the needs of developing countries; a sponsor of the Fourth World Movement, a British-based campaign for political decentralization and regionalism; a director of the Scott Bader Company, a pioneering effort at common ownerhip and workers' control; a close student of Gandhi, nonviolence, and ecology."--Theodore Roszak, from the introduction to Small is Beautiful.
The Three Step Program