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Voluntary Simplicity: People
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Voluntary simplicity means doing/having/living more with less--more time, meaning, joy, satisfaction, relationships, community; less money, material possessions, stress, competition, isolation. It doesn't mean depriving yourself; it doesn't mean buying "cheap" and always pinching pennies; it doesn't mean poverty. It does mean wanting what you have, and finding joy in having less; and recovering the connection with other people and with the Earth that alone makes life really worthwhile.
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Voluntary simplicity/simple living movements owe a conceptual debt to E.F. Schumacher, author of Small Is Beautiful : Economics as if People Mattered,a collection of essays that tied economics to sustainable thinking behind the nascent environmental movement. In his essay on "Buddhist Economics," Schumacher wrote that modern economists are
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For Cecile Andrews, author of Circles of Simplicity: Return to the Good Life (HarperCollins), the goal of voluntary simplicity is to live consciously so that one can live more fully. She avoids words such as frugality to describe the changes people need to make to achieve this conscious life. Instead, she prefers to emphasize the positive results of a pared-down lifestyle.
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By embracing the tenets of voluntary simplicity---frugal consumption, ecological awareness and personal growth--people can change their lives and begin to change the world. For nearly two decades this powerful and visionary work has been a catalyst in the emerging dialogue over sustainable ways of living. As the push of environmental stress combines with the pull toward more meaningful ways of living, Duane Elgin's extensively revised and updated book is more relevant than ever.
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In January 1992, Cecile offered a workshop on voluntary simplicity to the general public (through North Seattle Community College). Though she was expecting about 20 people to enroll, 175 came. Over 200 came to the next workshop. At the end of each workshop, Cecile forms study circles: she organizes the participants into neighborhood groupings, gives each of them their copy of IN CONTEXT and they're off - meeting weekly in each other's homes.
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Ideas associated with voluntary simplicity are ideologically compelling, if not necessarily reflected in actual behavior. In 1989, a majority of working Americans rated "a happy family life" as a much more important indicator of success than "earning a lot of money" - by an unusually wide margin of 62 percent to 10 percent.(23) Also, numerous women and some men prefer part-time jobs or jobs that allow them to work at home, even if better paying full-time jobs are open to them, because they are willing to reconcile themselves with earning a lower income to be able to dedicate more time to their children and be at home when their children are there.(24) People who switch to new careers that are more personally meaningful but less lucrative ... fall into this category. For instance, a 1997 source reports that "a growing wave of engineers, military officers, lawyers, and business people...are switching careers and becoming teachers."(25)
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