"Simple living today is joyful, bright, poetic and mentally robust."

from Michael Phillips and Catherine Campbell's Simple Living Investments

Voluntary Simplicity is not a list of rules. It is a consciousness, an awareness.

It is a matter of personal responsibility. Every time we go to buy something, to use something, we think:

• Do I need to buy this?
• Or do I want to?
• Do I really need to use this?
• Do I buy what I like?
• What will impress?

It can be difficult separating needs from wants. Especially with some things, like automobiles. What do we use them for? Can we do without? If not, how do we choose the one we need?

Voluntary Simplicity is not a list of rules to follow, though there are five life principles. It's about seeing our lives as extravagant, even out-of-control concerning our consumption. Then deciding what to do little by little, day-by-day, week-by-week to cut down on consumption.

We recommend not going cold turkey.

That brings significant frustration.

Remember what our children would say to us when they wanted to do something that they knew was irresponsible.

"But, all the kids are doing it."

Let's try that in our lives. [say this aloud in a whining voice]

"But, everybody's driving a new car. . . .

But, everybody builds a big, expensive house that's ten times bigger than they need, claiming it's for equity when the kids leave home. . .

But, everybody has a yard that looks like a golf course so that nobody complains that we're lowering their property values. . . ."

Sounds pretty silly and disconcerting, doesn't it?

Living more simply can be lonely.

 

Our families, our church, our social circle may think we're peculiar. It's important to find another Simple Liver or to start a support group. It may mean dealing with resentment when others don't "get it." When we are making corrections, living more responsibly and others don't seem to have the slightest inclination to change their wasteful ways. Living Simply faces great challenges, powerful forces.

Voluntary Simplicity is not romanticizing poverty, monks, the Amish or people who struggled through the Depression. We only diminish those people's devotion or struggle, and we tend to try to make the journey of discipleship look silly or "for others/unrelated to us," untouchable. Poverty is NOT fun. Two thirds of the world population live in poverty Involuntarily. We have a choice.

I don't want to sell everything and join a commune!

 

Voluntary Simplicity is not "living on the cheap."

It's more than frugality, far from being a tightwad, and surely not being a miser. In some cases we'll actually need to pay more for tools that are Earth-friendly. Instead it's a journey to find more meaning, more joy, more fun in life by getting out from under the burden of so much stuff, to remove the barrier of stuff that keeps us apart from other people, from God and even from ourselves.

There are two paths now in Voluntary Simplicity.

One is the secular, which is called "Downshifting."

A young executive is cruising along in high gear, peddling her sports car as fast as she can. She thinks, This is a lot of work! So she downshifts, maybe she takes a different job that has a smaller income but less stress. Maybe she moves into a smaller house in a rural area and grows her own tomatoes. Maybe she gets smart, gets control of her credit card and pays off her debts. Basically she's downshifting to increase her personal happiness.

Christians adopt Voluntary Simplicity for the same reasons.

Personal happiness is good. But there's more. We adopt Voluntary Simplicity also to be in touch with God and to help others. Voluntary Simplicity is a lifestyle of integrity, living as a disciple of Jesus, walking our talk.

 

The essence of voluntary simplicity is summarized in

Living More with Less:

• • • • Do Justice
      • Learn from the World Community
      • Cherish the Natural Order
      • Celebrate Responsibly
      • Nonconform Freely

Do Justice	1. Do Justice ... "Do Justice" may remind us of the courts. . . to get our due. Biblical Justice is quite different. It reflects God's great love for the poor and our call to respond to their needs. In How Much Is Enough? Alan Durning categorizes the world population into three groups. One fifth ­ 20% ­ are the disenfranchised people. They have no reliable source of food or water, no medical care, only one set of clothes and they walk wherever they go. Three fifths ­ 60% of the world population ­ are the sustainers. They have basic, reliable sources of food, some medical care, several sets of clothes and they take public transportation. The remaining fifth or 20% are the overconsumers. This group has access to lavish, cheap food, has reliable medical care, has many sets of clothes and they use private transportation. This last group, the over consumers, is made up, to one degree or another, of virtually everybody in North America, Western Europe and Japan. Guess what percentage of the world's resources are used by the disenfranchised and the sustainers, 80% of the world's population and by the over consumers, 20% of the world's population. That's right, just flip the figures. The overconsumers use 80% of the world's resources and the other 80% of the world's people use only 20% of the resources. Notice that the first principle is not "thinking about Justice," or even "believe in Justice." It's Do Justice. In addition to our prayers, our contributions, and our pressuring of governments, we help the poor around the world by taking seriously the phrase, Live Simply That Others May Simply Live. By consuming less we make more available for others. As we work to take control of our own lives, our own consumption, our own waste, we work toward changing the inequitable distribution of wealth. As we share ideas of simpler living with others we hasten the day when Justice is done.
Learn from the World Community	2. Learn from the World Community ... We have a great deal to learn from people in Third World countries. Most of the world's people live simply by necessity, not by choice. Our attitude has largely been that we want to help those poor people with THEIR problem OVER THERE. We need to realize that their problem is caused by OUR problem OVER HERE, our problem of over consumption. All things are connected. One beautiful way to Learn from the World Community is through music. Several years ago a black bishop from Africa told an unforgettable story. He said, "White folks. . . yes, they're the people who can sing and NOT move at the same time." African music can help liberate many white North American Christians from their rigidity. Thousands of Christians are leaving North American and Western European churches. They' not going to another church. They're falling away from the faith. But in Africa, Christianity is gaining three times as many converts. We have something profound to learn from our African brothers and sisters. We can also learn about food. . . from creating simple, tasty meals to understanding the whole process from seed to table. The United States is undergoing something called "vertical integration." This is the process in which the most powerful resource ­ food ­ becomes monopolized. The people who sell the food also own or control the distribution system, and the processing plants and the production, the farms. When we shop at Farmers Markets, support community based agriculture, refuse to buy out-of-season fruits and vegetables, we begin to control and take responsibility for our food. We can learn food justice from the world community. We can learn more about community by doing menu planning and meal preparation and clean-up together. And we can vow that we will eat at least one meal a day together. So much of the time we have allowed the school, the community, the TV, even the church to take away our common meal. Research indicates that a typical U. S. father has only three minutes a day of direct conversation with his child. And that married couples in the USA have only five minutes a day of meaningful verbal exchange. Learning from the World Community about food is important for another reason. We Americans now eat a great deal of expensive, highly processed food with many of its nutrients processed out. Why? Yes, it's convenient. It's a cycle. We work more hours so we can afford more expensive food that's fast so that we can work more to buy more expensive, hollow food.... Alternatives promotes cookbooks that use recipes from Third World countries, such as More-with-Less Cookbook and Extending the Table . Even people from our highly technological medical establishment are now seeing the potential of learning from shamans, healers and witch doctors. We are learning natural and alternative cures, from the rain forests, Native Americans, herbalists, acupuncturists.
Nurture People	3. Nurture People ... We find meaning in life through our relationships with God and with people, not through stuff. If we let them, the things we own would own us. First we may go into debt paying for this thing shortly after its exciting glimmer dies down. Then we have to maintain it. And secure it so nobody steals it! What owns whom? We put ourselves at risk by going into a mall. We find the thing that is going to give excitement and fulfillment to our life. We whip out our credit card and take our treasure home. It's great [hug the TV]. . . for a while. Then something else comes along that we can't live without. So what happens to our first little lifesaver? We either chuck it or store it. If we keep it, we have to dust it or put batteries in it. We have to maintain it. And we surely wouldn't want anyone to steal it. So we secure it. We protect it. We lock it up. So we go into debt to buy it, then we use our time and energy to maintain and secure it. It raises the question, "Who owns whom?" Yes, it gives a new meaning to the concept of ownership. I'll tell you what works for me. I play a game with myself that you can play with your children or grandchildren. It's OK to admire things in stores and say, "I Like that." It's not OK to say, "I want that," or even worse, "I need that." Think of the mall as a museum. Everything there is on display for your pleasure, but somebody else owns it. Say to yourself as you stroll through the galleries, "Thank you store person for putting this here for me to see. I'm so glad you're responsible for all this stuff and I'M NOT." Nurture People, not things. Let's use our time, money and energy to nurture relationships. . . with our self, with others and with God. We have been hearing a lot lately about intimacy, about getting to know someone well, about opening oneself up. Most of us have experienced that when we choose to be intimate with our spouse, that things get in the way. To be intimate we may choose to take something off. . . to take everything off. Stuff can get in the way of intimacy in other situations as well. We can learn to discard stuff and put relationships first.
Cherish the Natural Order	4. Cherish the Natural Order ... This is the environmental component. Most folks have heard the four R's of Caring for Creation ­ reduce, reuse, recycle and restore. Reusing means to use something over again. It means not using something just one time. It means refusing consumables like styrofoam cups. And it also means using things that can be repaired. That's not easy because so many thing are designed to break. It's called "planned obsolescence." We can buy tools and appliances and shoes that can be repaired but we need to do our homework to find them. It's inconvenient. The Europeans are on to something. They are beginning to require manufacturers to be responsible for the final disposition of their product. That should make them a lot more concerned about how the product is built and how it can be repaired and recycled. Recycling means making something new out of something that's already been used. Most of us realize that we have to do something. So, we recycle glass, paper and metal. After glugging down a soda we drop the can in the bin and carry the bin to the curb on recycle day and feel proud to be an American, proud that we have done our best for Mother Nature. That's an important start. But that's really the easiest and least necessary part of the whole cycle. Don't use recycling as an excuse to keep things the way they are. It's not OK to keep on over-consuming just because we recycle. Even more important is Pre-cycling - evaluating a product before you buy it to make sure it is environmentally sound. And recycling does little good if we don't Close the loop. . . buy products made of recycled materials, such as paper. It does little good to recycle if we don't then buy the products we need made from recycled materials. Yes, it may for the time being cost a bit more to buy and use recycled paper. But living simply, living faithfully is not living "on the cheap." Sometimes it costs more to do what's right. Restoring. . . remember what your grandmother used to say, "You got it out. You put it back!" The most common example is trees. But this also relates to sustainable agriculture, i.e. putting natural, not synthetic nutrients back in the soil. This can help make up for past mistakes but never should be used as a reason to make future ones. And some resources cannot be restored, like oil and topsoil. The first R is the most important. . . and hardest for Americans. . . Reduce. That's what Simple Living is about.
Nonconform Freely	5. Nonconform Freely ... We are not talking anarchy here. We are resisting the pressures created primarily by advertising. The forces against us living more simply are extremely powerful and devious. Some of them are quiet, unwritten. . . like how we dress in church, how our house will look at Christmas time. But many of them are loud, in-your-face forces that work to get as deeply into your pocketbook as possible everyday. We all have basic physical needs. . . for food, for shelter, for community. It's helpful to have information about where we can meet those needs. That's one reason for advertising. What's objectionable is advertising that creates false needs, really wants or desires. . .when advertisers play with our heads, trying to get us to think that we will be better people by the beverage we drink, that we will be sexier if we buy a certain kind of car, that we will be more popular or successful if we wear certain kinds of clothes or perfume. When I watching TV, I ZAP the commercials. . . mute the sound. Be put-off by aggressive car and soda pop commercials. Are they the price of admission? That's exactly what the advertisers want you to think. But the air waves belong to the people. We owe advertisers nothing! (Remember Turn Off TV Week in April, and Buy Nothing Day, Friday, November 29. Yes, that's the day after Thanksgiving!) Sioux City is a nice place to raise a family. This past summer had billboard selling sun tan lotion that showed three young, attractive people. They happened to be naked. It was no big deal. There was no outcry. Just another billboard selling something. At the same time a group in Des Moines was working to promote breast feeding. They were turned down from buying billboard space because their subject was TOO OFFENSIVE! Some advertisers are trying to capitalize on peoples' desire for simpler lives. Recent commercials use the Simplicity theme. An expensive luxury car is hyped with a picture of the Honda Accura and the word "Simplify." Denny's restaurants use the slogan "Simplify your life. Eat out more." MBNA America, a huge credit card processor, proclaims"Simplify your life in the New Year! . . . Consolidate your holiday bills. . . ." A typical MBNA account charges over 17% interest. Credit card "checks" (a form of the dreaded cash advance) have no grace period. Interest begins accruing immediately. At the same time, their late payment fee went from $10 to $20! The Masters of Double Speak! In the name of "research," some advertisers ­ without your permission, even without your knowledge ­ place cameras in grocery stores to photograph your eyes as you shop. When you are looking at cereal, for example, the cameras record your reaction to various boxes and even count the length of time you focus on each box. This "research" helps advertisers to decide what appeals to you. We have permission to follow our religious principles, our faith, instead of our culture, instead of advertisers who pressure us to buy things we don't need, probably don't even want, and that break down on schedule. Nonconform Freely.