Simplify

According to Bill McKibben, organizer of Step it Up in an article entitled “Global Warming Can’t Buy Happiness,” published in The Los Angeles Times Wed, 21 March 2007:

“For the last century, our society’s basic drive has been toward more- toward a bigger national economy, toward more stuff for each of us. And it’s worked. Our economy is enormous, our houses are enormous. We are (many of us quite literally) living large. All that more is created using cheap energy and hence built on carbon dioxide- which makes up 72% of all greenhouse gasses.

“…We made an assumption- as a society and as individuals- that more was better. It seemed a reasonable bet, and for a while it may have been true. But in recent years economists, sociologists and other researchers have begun to question that link. Indeed, they’re finding that at least since the 1950’s, more material prosperity has yielded little, if any, increase in humans’ satisfaction.

“In the 1990s, for instance, despite sterling economic growth, researches reported a steady rise in “negative life events.” In the words of one of the study’s authors, “The anticipation would have been that the problems would have been down.” But money, as a few wise people have pointed out over the years, doesn’t buy happiness. Meanwhile, growth during the decade increased carbon emissions by about 10%.

“Further, economists and sociologists suggest that our dissatisfaction is, in fact, linked to economic growth. What did we spend our new wealth on? Bigger houses, even farther out in the suburbs. And what was the result? We have far fewer friends nearby; we eat fewer meals with family, friends and neighbors. Our network of social connections has shrunk. Do the experiment yourself. Would you rather have a bigger television, or a new friend?”


And if you’re just spending time watching that television rather than being involved in community activities, you’re driven to want even more of the stuff you see on TV. I know a lot of people who love in these cul-de-sacs of new cookie-cutter houses, and it would seem like the achievement of a lifelong dream. But they all absolutely hate the people around them, thinking they’re pretentious assholes.




Excerpts from:
“Why Working Less is Better for the Globe,” Dara Colwell,
Alternet.org, Mon 21 May 2007

“’We now seem more determined than ever to work harder and produce more stuff, which creates a bizarre paradox: We are proudly breaking our backs to decrease the carrying capacity of the planet,’ says Conrad Schmidt, an internationally known social activist and founder of the Work Less Party, a Vancouver-based initiative aimed at moving to a 32-hour work week- a radical departure from the in early, out late cycle we’ve grown accustomed to. ‘Choosing to work less is the biggest environmental issue no one’s talking about…. As a society, we’re working exponentially hard to decrease sustainability and it’s making us miserable….’

“When people work long hours, they rely increasingly on convenience items such as fast food, disposable diapers or bottled water. Built-in obsolescence, has become standard business practice- just throw it away and make more- leaving mountainous landfills in its wake. ‘Earning more often means spending more money in ways that are environmentally detrimental. We’re finding that to compensate for lack of time, you actually need more money to work those extra hours,’ says Monique Tilford, acting executive director of the Centre for a New American Dream, a Maryland group promoting environmentally and socially responsible consumption. ‘When people are time-starved they don’t have enough time to be conscious consumers. The overarching theme of our organization is to remind Americans that every single dollar they spend has a carbon impact, to make the connection.’

“Do the math: Longer hours plus labor-saving technology equals ever-increasing productivity…. Maintaining growth means using more energy and resources, both in manpower and raw materials, which results in increased waste and pollution.

“Unsurprisingly, the United States is the world’s largest polluter. Housing a mere 5% of the world’s population, it accounts for 22% of its fossil fuel consumption, 50% of its solid waste and, on average, each citizen consumes 53 times more goods than a person in China, according to the environmental nonprofit, Sierra Club.

“So what fuels this need to accumulate in the face of time depravation? Devoting his career to what drives materialism, Tim Kasser, associate professor of psychology at Knox College and author of ‘The High Price of Materialism,’ has sought scientific explanations, examining the relationship between materialism and psychological well-being.

“ ‘Materialism is driven by an underlying sense of insecurity,’ says Kasser, who conducted a study where subjects were randomly assigned writing about death or writing about listening to music. The former experience an increased desire for consumption and were ‘greedier,’ according to Kasser. ‘Death is the ultimate end of time; it’s interpreted as that feeling of not having enough time. In the last decade politicians have played off that insecurity. It keeps getting people elected, but it also drives us to think we need to work harder and harder,’ he says, noting the signs of insecurity around us are numerous: We don’t know our neighbors and suffer from high divorce rates; our social safety nets have been dismantled…. “All these work to create an underlying sense of insecurity, and we need to break out of that cycle,’ he says.
“Interestingly, Kasser conducted an empirical study comparing 200 adherents of Voluntary Simplicity to a control group of 200 mainstream Americans and found the Voluntary Simplicity group was ‘simultaneously happier while using fewer resources,’ and that their happiness was derived from ‘less materialistic, intrinsic goals, such as personal growth, family and community.’"


Daniel Quinn also proposes a shift from material rewards to higher ones- the exchange of human energy. In his description of a “tribal business,” what the participants gained was not so much financial security, but the security of knowing they’d all take care of each other. The idea of working and living for some other purpose than monetary reward- the feeling of closeness and belonging. And, if you’re doing something you love, your happiness can come from that instead of trying to make up for your unhappiness with monotonous and meaningless work on payday


So what is sustainability?

Resources are like your bank account-
*Renewable resources are like Income
*Non-renewable resources such as Fossil Fuels are like Savings

If you spend more than you earn, you can spend your savings for a little while but eventually you go broke

So what would you do?
1.) Spend less (efficiency, conservation)
2.) More Income (increase renewables

Some people wonder, “What about China and India? What will happen when all those people attain the American lifestyle like they want to?” This question should scare us. But not because they aren’t entitled to improve their situation. It should scare us because we are not setting the right example. It makes the need for America to move toward sustainability that much more pressing.

We have to move the big players- government, companies and people. We have what we have because one group makes stuff in a way that uses energy and other resources, the public buys stuff, and in the middle is government charged with regulating, but mostly adding to the problems. Some people have no resources to trade for any stuff, so they’re poor or they take by force.


Daniel Quinn in Ishmael points out the cultural myth that it's man's manifest destiny to improve the earth. There's nothing wrong with how it was- all we've done is screwed it up.