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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org, OWL-OldWaysLiving@yahoogroups.com
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Four Misconceptions About The Simple Life, By Duane Elgin
  • Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2011 11:49:22 -0600


Four Misconceptions About The Simple Life, By Duane Elgin
August 28th, 2011
http://carolynbaker.net/2011/08/28/four-misconceptions-about-the-simple-life-by-duane-elgin/

It is important to recognize inaccurate stereotypes about the simple life
because they make it seem impractical and ill suited for responding to
increasingly critical breakdowns in world systems. Four misconceptions about
the simple life are so common they deserve special attention. These are
equating simplicity with: poverty, moving back to the land, living without
beauty and economic stagnation.

Simplicity Means Poverty
Although some spiritual traditions have advocated a life of extreme
renunciation, it is very misleading to equate simplicity with poverty.
Poverty is involuntary and debilitating, whereas simplicity is voluntary and
enabling. A life of conscious simplicity can have both a beauty and a
functional integrity that elevates the human spirit.Poverty fosters a sense
of helplessness, passivity and despair, whereas purposeful simplicity fosters
a sense of personal empowerment, creative engagement and opportunity.
Historically, those choosing a simpler life have sought the golden mean — a
creative and aesthetic balance between poverty and excess. Instead of placing
primary emphasis on material riches, they have sought to develop, with
balance, the invisible wealth of experiential riches.

Simplicity Means Rural Living
In the popular imagination there is a tendency to equate the simple life
with Thoreau’s cabin in the woods by Walden Pond and to assume that people
must live an isolated and rural existence. Interestingly, Thoreau was not a
hermit during his stay at Walden Pond. His famous cabin was roughly a mile
from the town of Concord, and every day or two he would walk into town. His
cabin was so close to a nearby highway that he could smell the pipe smoke of
passing travelers.Thoreau wrote that he had “more visitors while I lived in
the woods than any other period of my life.” The romanticized image of rural
living does not fit the modern reality, as a majority of persons choosing a
life of conscious simplicity do not live in the backwoods or rural settings;
they live in cities and suburbs. While green living brings with it a
reverence for nature, it does not require moving to a rural setting. Instead
of a “back to the land” movement, it is much more accurate to describe this
as a “make the most of wherever you are” movement. Increasingly that means
adapting ourselves creatively to a rapidly changing world in the context of
big cities and suburbs.

Simplicity Means Living Without Beauty
The simple life is sometimes viewed as an approach to living that
advocates a barren plainness and denies the value of beauty and aesthetics.
While the Puritans, for example, were suspicious of the arts, most advocates
of simplicity have seen it as essential for revealing the natural beauty of
things.Many who adopt a simpler life would surely agree with Pablo Picasso,
who said, “Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.” Leonardo da Vinci
wrote that, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Frederic Chopin
wrote that, “Simplicity is the final achievement … the crowing reward of art.”
The influential architect Frank Lloyd Wright was an advocate of an
“organic simplicity” that integrates function with beauty and eliminates the
superfluous. In his architecture a building’s interior and exterior blend
into an organic whole, and the building, in turn, blends harmoniously with
the natural environment. Rather than involving a denial of beauty, simplicity
liberates the aesthetic sense by freeing things from artificial encumbrances.
From a spiritual perspective, simplicity removes the obscuring clutter and
discloses the life-energy that infuses all things.

Simplicity Means Economic Stagnation
Some worry that if a significant number of people simplify their lives it
will reduce demand for consumer goods and, in turn, produce unemployment and
economic stagnation. While it is true that the level and patterns of personal
consumption would shift in a society that values green living, a robust
economy can flourish that embraces sustainability.Although the consumer
sector and material goods would contract, the service and public sectors
would expand dramatically. When we look at the world, we see a huge number of
unmet needs: caring for elderly, restoring the environment, educating
illiterate and unskilled youth, repairing decaying roads and infrastructure,
providing health care, creating community markets and local enterprises,
retrofitting the urban landscape for sustainability and many more. Because
there are an enormous number of unmet needs, there are an equally large
number of purposeful and satisfying jobs waiting to get done. There will be
no shortage of employment opportunities in an Earth-friendly economy.

A central and exciting task for our times is consciously designing ourselves
into a sustainable and meaningful future, from the personal level outwards.
In envisioning what this future could look like, it is important to not be
bound by old stereotypes and to instead see the realism and the beauty of
simpler ways of living.





  • [Livingontheland] Four Misconceptions About The Simple Life, By Duane Elgin, Tradingpost, 08/28/2011

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