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Voluntary Simplicity: Toward a Way of Life That is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich
When Voluntary Simplicity was first published in 1981, it quickly became recognized as a powerful and visionary work in the emerging dialogue over sustainable ways of living. Now, more than ten years later and with many of the planet's environmental stresses having become more urgent than ever, Duane Elgin has revised and updated his revolutionary book.
Voluntary Simplicity is not a book about living in poverty; it is a book about living with balance. It illuminates the pattern of changes that an increasing number of Americans are making in their everyday lives — adjustments in day-to-day living that are an active, positive response to the complex dilemmas of our time. By embracing, either partially or totally, the tenets of voluntary simplicity — frugal consumption, ecological awareness, and personal growth — people can change their lives. And in the process, they have the power to change the world. First published in 1981, Voluntary Simplicity was instantly recognized as a visionary work. The New York Times called it "seminal"; the Wall Street Journal noted that it was "considered the movement's Bible." Revised in 1993 to address the trend toward downshifting, this pertinent book helps us to adjust our thoughts, habits, and goals and embrace the key elements of simplicity: frugal consumption, ecological awareness and personal growth.
312 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
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December 14, 2012
Though this book gives a solid overview of the many probable catastrophes we face and how they relate to materialism and consumption, it had a number of problems. I was a bit surprised by how little I liked it, given that I agree with most of the ideas, and that it's considered a classic.
It was not a well structured book. It seemed to move around from point to point with no real flow, often repeating the same information. This was my biggest issue with the book. Also, the inclusion of so many direct quotes from a small scale survey of simple living converts in the first part of the book really bored me. It felt like filler, and I wasn't sure how to relate it to the rest of the text.
The lack of any practical advice was also disappointing. Not so much because I need to be told what to do, but simply to clarify what "simple living" really means. I get that everyone needs to form their own path, but if all it means is walking to work, avoiding processed foods, and not watching tv... Well, I guess I'm already on my way to saving the world. Who knew?
Finally, there was a lot of mumbo jumbo. I can stomach a bit of this, but sometimes I had trouble even parsing sentences, e.g. "We can see ourselves on a sacred journey of awakening to our participation in the unfolding of a living universe."
Perhaps this just was not the book for me.
It was not a well structured book. It seemed to move around from point to point with no real flow, often repeating the same information. This was my biggest issue with the book. Also, the inclusion of so many direct quotes from a small scale survey of simple living converts in the first part of the book really bored me. It felt like filler, and I wasn't sure how to relate it to the rest of the text.
The lack of any practical advice was also disappointing. Not so much because I need to be told what to do, but simply to clarify what "simple living" really means. I get that everyone needs to form their own path, but if all it means is walking to work, avoiding processed foods, and not watching tv... Well, I guess I'm already on my way to saving the world. Who knew?
Finally, there was a lot of mumbo jumbo. I can stomach a bit of this, but sometimes I had trouble even parsing sentences, e.g. "We can see ourselves on a sacred journey of awakening to our participation in the unfolding of a living universe."
Perhaps this just was not the book for me.
December 20, 2008
I give this 3.5 stars actually. Truth be told, I give 5 stars to the concept behind the book, but just a couple of stars to the book itself. This was just full of too much "social scientist" speak -- I really would've preferred something that read less like a paper being presented for a major conference and more like something I could connect to as an individual, as someone wanting to embrace these types of changes and work toward making them an active part of my life. Still, it was very affirming to read that the things I've been fulling drawn to lately expressed in this book, and being able to see patterns and trends emerging (although that's also frightening in terms of a global community). Simply put, if you want sociological theories on the impact of voluntary simplicity, this is the book for you. If you want something more practical and applicable, then look elsewhere.
December 11, 2011
My husband and I took a "Voluntary Simplicity" discussion course back in 2000/2001. The course was from Northwest Earth Institute and was based on Duane Elgin's book and scads of other terrific writings about simplicity and mindfulness. It was remarkably influential on how we lived our newly-married life together, but for some reason, it took me more than ten years to pick up Elgin's original book (well, the 1993 revision).
When I finally did read the book, I was blown away by the simplicity and compassion with which Elgin presents the idea of Voluntary Simplicity.
The book consists of three main sections. The first introduces the idea and contains excerpts from the written replies on a 1977 survey of people committed to voluntary simplicity to give a sense of how some people live the principles of voluntary simplicity. The second expands on the idea of voluntary simplicity, dissecting both the "voluntary" and the "simplicity" aspects of this way of living. And the third was a rather apocalyptic vision of the future if we choose not to address our current ecological problems head on.
The first section was a little dry at times, but I found it interesting to note the demographics of the respondents as I read their responses. It was encouraging that so many people from all over the country and with so many different ways of life embraced voluntary simplicity and were finding similar benefits (and challenges). It was also interesting how similar the culture of 1977 seems to be to the culture of 2011. My dad would laugh to hear me say that and make some comment about how it wasn't that long ago and how he was there when I was born, after all. But being that I was less than a year old then, it seems like a long time ago to me, and it seemed odd how little things have changed, really, in the past 34+ years.
The second I found inspiring as Elgin made it clear that there's no one way to live a voluntarily simple lifestyle. It's about making individual choices with awareness of both their direct and indirect effects on us and on the people and environment around us. Two people can live lives of voluntary simplicity that look vastly different from one another. The important piece is to stop living on automatic pilot. We must wake up and make conscious choices.
The third section I approached with some trepidation. Elgin empathizes with the discomfort the reader will likely experience considering the possible collapse of civilization as we know it. "All of the hopes and fears that lie in uneasy though quiet repose in our everyday lives become starkly visible as we consider the depth and scope of change that lies ahead." He encourages us to embrace these changes as natural: "Our anxiety about transformative civilizational change is lessened when we realize that it is part of a natural and purposeful process."
I wasn't really comforted.
It took me a week or so to pick the book back up, but last night I screwed up my courage and finished the book. And it really wasn't so bad after all. Elgin outlines three possible cultural responses to the current ecological, societal, and governmental problems:
1. Overshoot and collapse. Basically we continue to increase our rampant consumerism and individualistic focus until the ecosystem can no longer support us and society collapses because we're not at all prepared for the disasters as they mount. The human race experiences a massive die-out due to disease and famine and civilization enters an extended dark age. This was the one I was worried about reading. On to the next...
2. Dynamic Stagnation. This is the one where we as a culture fight so hard to maintain the status quo that we don't really make anything all that worse, we're just not well prepared for what comes so we end up making the changes necessary to survive but not to thrive as a species and a civilization. We depend too much on existing institutions rather than taking personal, local, and global responsibility for the changes necessary to make it through this "Winter" period of our culture. This is bad, but not so bad compared to #1.
3. Reconciliation and Revitalization. This is the one that made it possible for me to go to sleep last night once I closed the book. Individuals come together in a grass-roots effort to build up new decentralized institutions to provide for the needs of our population on a more local level and to put pressure on our government and the global community to make choices based not on isolationism and personal gain but on a collective desire to see humanity thrive. We enter a period of unprecedented cooperation and compassion which results in a New Renaissance of cultural, artistic, and governmental advances.
Elgin concludes by making the case for compassion as the basis for our society and for our species going forward. "If we value our freedom and vitality as a species, we are obliged to do no less than learn to love one another as a human family or else destroy ourselves in the learning," he writes.
I immediately began to think of ways that I could act in my own life to improve the health of my community. Voluntary simplicity from Elgin's perspective isn't about a back-to-the-land movement or about living a life of deprivation and social/geographical isolation. On the contrary, Voluntary Simplicity requires making conscious choices not only in our own homes but also in close cooperation with our communities and being active in creating the changes that we need on a national and international level. I thought of things that I could do to connect with my neighbors and to be a part of our small city and our religious community that would also serve my introverted needs for physical space and quiet reflection. Learning about the history of our town, inviting the neighbors over one or two families at a time to talk and share food, asking for assistance in gaining expertise about issues from home repair to hiking trails, and sharing yard and garden-care equipment were all ideas that came to mind. It will be a challenge to engage like this, but I think that if I do it prudently, we'll experience a much richer involvement in our community.
The key really isn't simplicity so much as it is consciousness. Making conscious choices, we understand the larger impact of our consumption patterns. For example, when we buy a television, we recognize not only the price tag, but the materials and labor and research and marketing that went into bringing us that television. We understand the social impact of the manufacture of the television on the community where it was assembled. We understand that our perceptions and our desires will be shaped not only by the programs we choose to watch but also the advertising that we see between and within the programs and by the time we spend watching television rather than interacting. In addition, we understand where that television will go when its useful life is over (or when we choose to upgrade to a newer model) and what affect that later life will have on our environment and on the health and wellbeing of the communities surrounding the television's final resting place. Voluntary Simplicity doesn't mean not buying the television; it means knowing what it is we're really buying.
Making conscious choices, we see the world with open eyes, and we realize that there is nothing we can do that doesn't somehow affect someone else. And that's comforting, when you really think about it.
When I finally did read the book, I was blown away by the simplicity and compassion with which Elgin presents the idea of Voluntary Simplicity.
The book consists of three main sections. The first introduces the idea and contains excerpts from the written replies on a 1977 survey of people committed to voluntary simplicity to give a sense of how some people live the principles of voluntary simplicity. The second expands on the idea of voluntary simplicity, dissecting both the "voluntary" and the "simplicity" aspects of this way of living. And the third was a rather apocalyptic vision of the future if we choose not to address our current ecological problems head on.
The first section was a little dry at times, but I found it interesting to note the demographics of the respondents as I read their responses. It was encouraging that so many people from all over the country and with so many different ways of life embraced voluntary simplicity and were finding similar benefits (and challenges). It was also interesting how similar the culture of 1977 seems to be to the culture of 2011. My dad would laugh to hear me say that and make some comment about how it wasn't that long ago and how he was there when I was born, after all. But being that I was less than a year old then, it seems like a long time ago to me, and it seemed odd how little things have changed, really, in the past 34+ years.
The second I found inspiring as Elgin made it clear that there's no one way to live a voluntarily simple lifestyle. It's about making individual choices with awareness of both their direct and indirect effects on us and on the people and environment around us. Two people can live lives of voluntary simplicity that look vastly different from one another. The important piece is to stop living on automatic pilot. We must wake up and make conscious choices.
The third section I approached with some trepidation. Elgin empathizes with the discomfort the reader will likely experience considering the possible collapse of civilization as we know it. "All of the hopes and fears that lie in uneasy though quiet repose in our everyday lives become starkly visible as we consider the depth and scope of change that lies ahead." He encourages us to embrace these changes as natural: "Our anxiety about transformative civilizational change is lessened when we realize that it is part of a natural and purposeful process."
I wasn't really comforted.
It took me a week or so to pick the book back up, but last night I screwed up my courage and finished the book. And it really wasn't so bad after all. Elgin outlines three possible cultural responses to the current ecological, societal, and governmental problems:
1. Overshoot and collapse. Basically we continue to increase our rampant consumerism and individualistic focus until the ecosystem can no longer support us and society collapses because we're not at all prepared for the disasters as they mount. The human race experiences a massive die-out due to disease and famine and civilization enters an extended dark age. This was the one I was worried about reading. On to the next...
2. Dynamic Stagnation. This is the one where we as a culture fight so hard to maintain the status quo that we don't really make anything all that worse, we're just not well prepared for what comes so we end up making the changes necessary to survive but not to thrive as a species and a civilization. We depend too much on existing institutions rather than taking personal, local, and global responsibility for the changes necessary to make it through this "Winter" period of our culture. This is bad, but not so bad compared to #1.
3. Reconciliation and Revitalization. This is the one that made it possible for me to go to sleep last night once I closed the book. Individuals come together in a grass-roots effort to build up new decentralized institutions to provide for the needs of our population on a more local level and to put pressure on our government and the global community to make choices based not on isolationism and personal gain but on a collective desire to see humanity thrive. We enter a period of unprecedented cooperation and compassion which results in a New Renaissance of cultural, artistic, and governmental advances.
Elgin concludes by making the case for compassion as the basis for our society and for our species going forward. "If we value our freedom and vitality as a species, we are obliged to do no less than learn to love one another as a human family or else destroy ourselves in the learning," he writes.
I immediately began to think of ways that I could act in my own life to improve the health of my community. Voluntary simplicity from Elgin's perspective isn't about a back-to-the-land movement or about living a life of deprivation and social/geographical isolation. On the contrary, Voluntary Simplicity requires making conscious choices not only in our own homes but also in close cooperation with our communities and being active in creating the changes that we need on a national and international level. I thought of things that I could do to connect with my neighbors and to be a part of our small city and our religious community that would also serve my introverted needs for physical space and quiet reflection. Learning about the history of our town, inviting the neighbors over one or two families at a time to talk and share food, asking for assistance in gaining expertise about issues from home repair to hiking trails, and sharing yard and garden-care equipment were all ideas that came to mind. It will be a challenge to engage like this, but I think that if I do it prudently, we'll experience a much richer involvement in our community.
The key really isn't simplicity so much as it is consciousness. Making conscious choices, we understand the larger impact of our consumption patterns. For example, when we buy a television, we recognize not only the price tag, but the materials and labor and research and marketing that went into bringing us that television. We understand the social impact of the manufacture of the television on the community where it was assembled. We understand that our perceptions and our desires will be shaped not only by the programs we choose to watch but also the advertising that we see between and within the programs and by the time we spend watching television rather than interacting. In addition, we understand where that television will go when its useful life is over (or when we choose to upgrade to a newer model) and what affect that later life will have on our environment and on the health and wellbeing of the communities surrounding the television's final resting place. Voluntary Simplicity doesn't mean not buying the television; it means knowing what it is we're really buying.
Making conscious choices, we see the world with open eyes, and we realize that there is nothing we can do that doesn't somehow affect someone else. And that's comforting, when you really think about it.
June 29, 2013
Elgin likes to preach, a lot...
I agree mostly with the underlying message, that's why I picked up the book in the first place. I don't need to be convinced page after page. The tone got a bit too self-rightious and activist for me, so I gave up reading after a few chapters. Skimming the rest convinced me I wasn't missing much.
I agree mostly with the underlying message, that's why I picked up the book in the first place. I don't need to be convinced page after page. The tone got a bit too self-rightious and activist for me, so I gave up reading after a few chapters. Skimming the rest convinced me I wasn't missing much.
June 17, 2017
Ironically, this book suffers from redundancy. I like the general idea, but the writing of the book was building a mansion where a small cottage would suffice.
Read
February 16, 2020I happened to spot this in my building’s laundry room lending library after seeing it mentioned in Jia Tolentino’s recent New Yorker piece about minimalism. It was interesting, and I think the way he describes voluntary simplicity is similar to how I’ve been trying to live my own life in the last few years—more conscious of how much I consume and my overall environmental impact. I’m still working on that and on the side of it that involves meditative practice and being more present in day to day life. Less helpful but still interesting were some of the later chapters about the history and future of industrial civilizations. The main point, that we are facing a critical moment of ecological crisis that could result in collapse or a renewed, more sustainable civilization—is more obvious that ever. But it was interesting to read his cautions against overweening bureaucracy and govt regulation as causing so many problems. Makes more sense in a late Cold War context, but from 2020 our problem looks much more like unbridled, destructive capitalism than too much bureaucratic red tape. While I do believe in our potential to meet the challenge and create a new way of living and a better world, Elgin will have to forgive me if I’m skeptical of his assertion that “if one corporate officer were to choose to shift from a self-serving to a life-serving intention, that change could contribute more to meeting corporate social responsibilities than a whole new maze of government red tape and regulation.” I’ll believe it when I see it!
February 6, 2017
This book was hugely influential to me in the late '80's. It shaped and reinforced my understanding of the meaning of happiness and more importantly, joy. In a recent book study group, the messages from this book still rang true for us today:
Mindfully living requires a consciousness above autopilot!
Say "yes" to what's next, mindfully.
Change is opportunity for growth. Accountability is key to depth of joy.
Make an impact right where you live.
"How can I help you?" is a conflict resolver and never fails.
Mindfully living requires a consciousness above autopilot!
Say "yes" to what's next, mindfully.
Change is opportunity for growth. Accountability is key to depth of joy.
Make an impact right where you live.
"How can I help you?" is a conflict resolver and never fails.
March 14, 2019
This book really resonated with me at this time. The last section on Civilization Revitalization felt a little off the rails to me, but maybe I’m just used to books that talk about changes on a more individual level.
January 19, 2015
Sound, sage exploration of simple living, but a bit heavy-handed on the ecological/civilization aspects. However, it was an astute book and ahead of its time.
September 10, 2021
Guess I should have believed the other reviews. I felt like this would have made a really strong essay or long magazine article, but as a book was pretty repetitive.
December 4, 2020
Life affirming and a great guide for further consciousness raising in a climate-challenged time. Duane Elgin offers a roadmap for a new economy, where people work re-building infrastructure and caring for the elderly, as opposed to making and selling junk no one needs.
October 1, 2025
What an interesting book! I had no idea what I was picking up or that it was considered a (modern) “classic” for readers of simple living, minimalism, and eco-conscious living material. I like the discussions of what voluntary simplicity is. The section on the survey results was a little boring. But then end of the book —where the author makes predictions about our future state of affairs aka what life will be like in 2025 (the book was written in 1981) I was astounded! So spot on in many ways. I had recently been thinking about (teaching a class that touches on) how we must evolve out of the industrial age. This book helped me think about that a bit more and what an ideal future could be. Definitely worth the read, it’s pretty succinct and very easy to follow. Would love to hear the author’s thoughts of where we are today, based on his projections.
January 4, 2019
170 ELG 1993
Summary: To live sustainably, we must live efficiently. To live efficiently, we must live peacefully. To live peacefully, we must live with a reasonable degree of equity. Only with greater equity can we expect to live peacefully, and only with greater harmony can we expect to live sustainably.
Golden mean: In ancient Greek philosophy, especially that of Aristotle, the golden mean or golden middle way is the desirable middle between two extremes, one of excess and the other of deficiency.For example, in the Aristotelian view, courage is a virtue, but if taken to excess would manifest as recklessness, and, in deficiency, cowardice.
Golden rule: The Golden Rule is the principle of treating others as one's self would wish to be treated. It is a maxim that is found in many religions and cultures.
https://www.sloww.co/voluntary-simpli... ( a blog about this book)
Introduction by Ram Dass ((born Richard Alpert; April 6, 1931, a Jewish family in Newton, Massachusetts) . He and Dr. Timothy Leary directed The Harvard Psilocybin Project, start sometime in 1960 and lasted until March 1962. Huston Smith's last work, Cleansing the Doors of Perception, describes the Harvard Psilocybin Project in which he participated in the early 1960s as a serious, conscientious, mature attempt to raise awareness of entheogenic substances.
Be Here Now by Ram Dass ( published in 1971 is one of the first guides for those not born Hindu to becoming a yogi. For its influence on the hippie movement and subsequent spiritual movements it has been described as a "countercultural bible" and "seminal" to the era. Two sequels Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing and Dying(2000), and the second is Be Love Now: The Path of the Heart (2011).
in introduction, Ram Dass said Many in west search a conscious balance, a voluntarily simplicity of living that allows the integration of inner and outer, material and spiritual, masculine and feminine, personal and social. From The 1960's counterculture movement, renunciation of the West to return back to West, and embrace richness of West and East culture.
p17 A cycle of learning is being completed. The time of withdrawal is moving into a time of return. The exploration of new ways of living that support new ways of being is a movement that arises from the awakening of compassion - that dawning realization that fate of the individual is intimately connected with fate of the whole. It is a movement that arises from the recognition that our task is not only to be here, in the NOW; it is also to now be HERE. And where "here' is must include the fact that we are inhabitants of an aging industrial civilization that is in great need of the insight, perspective, and creativity that the journey to the "East" (to the interior) can bring upon return to the West.
The dualism inherent in our thinking process (which pits materialism against spiritualism, West against East) must be transcended if we are truly to be the inheritors of our evolutionary legacy and the children of a new age. From this perspective the historic Western preoccupation with the intellect and with material consumption need not be viewed as "wrong" or "bad" necessarily leading to our destruction. Rather, the Western orientation in living may be viewed as a necessary art of an evolutionary stage out of which yet another birth of higher consciousness-as an amalgam of East and West-might subsequently evolve. The Industrial Revolution, then, is part of a larger revolution in living. The West has made its contribution by providing the material basis of life needed to support the widespread unfolding of consciousness. The contribution of the East is the provision of insight into the nature of the conscious unfolding of consciousness. East and West require the learnings of each other if both are to evolve further and realize the potentials that arise in their integration and balance.
Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered by Ernst F. Schumacher (published in 1973)
==========================
Chapter one
Richard Gregg in 1936, wrote:
There is no special virtue to the phrase voluntary simplification - it is merely a label, and a somewhat awkward label at that. Still, it does acknowledge explicitly that simpler living integrates both inner and outer aspect of life into an organic and purposeful whole.
To live more voluntarily is to live more deliberately, intentionally, and purposefully -in short, it is to live more consciously. We cannot be deliberate when we are distracted from life. We cannot be intentional when we are not paying attention. We cannot be purposeful when we are not being present. Therefore, to act in a voluntary manner is to be aware of ourselves as we move through
life. This requires that we not only pay attention to the actions we take in the outer world, but also that we pay attention to ourselves acting-our inner world. To the extent that we do not notice both inner and outer aspects of our passage through life, then our capacity for voluntary, deliberate, and purposeful action is commensurately diminished.
To live more simply is to live more purposefully and with a minimum of needless distraction.The particularly expression of simplicity is a personal matter. We each know where our lives are unnecessarily complicated. We are all painfully aware of the clutter and pretense weigh upon us and make our passage through world more cumbersome and awkward. To live more simply is to unburden ourselves- to live more lightly, cleanly, aerodynamically. It is to establish a more direst, unpretentious, and unencumbered relationship with all aspects of our lives: the things that we consume, the work that we do, our relationships with others, our connections with nature and the cosmos, and more. Simplicity of living means meeting life face-to face. It means confronting life clearly, without unnecessary distractions. It means being direct and honest in relationships of all
kinds. It means taking life as it is-straight and unadulterated.
When we combine these two ideas for integrating the inner and outer aspects of our lives, we can describe voluntary simplicity as a manner of living that is outwardly more simple and inwardly more rich, a way of being in which our most authentic and alive self is brought into direct and conscious contact with living. This way of life is not a static condition to be achieved, but an ever-changing balance that must be continuously and consciously made real. Simplicity in this sense is not simple. To maintain a skillful balance between the inner and outer aspects of our lives is an enormously challenging and continuously changing process. The objective is not dogmatically to live with less, but is a more demanding intention of living with balance in order to find a life of greater purpose, fulfillment, and satisfaction.
Some people tend to equate ecological living with a life characterized by poverty, antagonism to progress, rural living, and denial of beauty. It is important to acknowledge these misconceptions so that we can move beyond them.
1. Simplicity is not poverty. Simplicity is not about a life of poverty, but a life of purpose.
Poverty is involuntary and debilitating, whereas simplicity is voluntary and enabling. Poverty is mean and degrading to the human spirit, whereas a life of conscious simplicity can have both a beauty and a functional integrity that elevates the human spirit. Involuntary poverty generates a sense of helplessness, passivity, and despair, whereas purposeful simplicity fosters a sense of personal empowerment, creative engagement, and opportunity.
2. Simplicity is not turning away from progress
3. Simplicity is not rural living
4. Simplicity is not denial of beauty, as Pablo Picasso, said "Art is the elimination of unnecessary."
p31 There is no cookbook for defining a life of conscious simplicity. Richard Gregg, for example, was insistent that "simplicity is a relative matter depending on climate,customs, culture, and character of the individual."Henry David Thoreau was also clear that no simple formula could define the worldly expression of a simpler life. He said, "I would not have anyone adopt my mode off living on my account. . . . I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way," Nor did Mahatma Gandhi advocate a blind denial of material side of life. He said, "As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, you should keep it. If you were to give it up in a mood of self-sacrifice or out of a stern sense of duty, you would continue to want it back, and that unsatisfied want would make trouble for you. Only give up a thing when you want some other condition so much that the thing no longer has any attraction for you." Because simplicity has as
much to do with each person's purpose in living as it does with his or her standard of living, it follows that there is no single, "right and true" way to live more ecologically and compassionately.
p36 Two aspects of life - maintaining outselves (creating a workable existence) and surpassing ourselves (creating a meaningful existence). Feminist Simone de Beauvoir 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."
p38-39 contrast between industrial ear vs. emerging ecological ear.
==========================
Chapter Two People living the simple life
1. Why choose simplicity? (Some people resonance with my own thought)
Overall the most common reasons given for choosing to live more lightly were to find a more skillful balance between skillful balance between one's inner experience and its outer expression in work, consumption, relationship, and community; to search for a workable and meaningful alternative to the emptiness of a society obsessed with material consumption and display; .. to find a much higher degree of independence and self-determination in a mass society of alienating scale and complexity... to create the personal circumstance of life in which one's feelings, thoughts, and actions can come into alignment.
--I have less and less to blame on other people. I am more-reliant. I can both revel in the independence and be frustrated by my shortcoming - but I get to learn from my mistakes. Each step is progress in independence ; free is the goal.
--The main motivation for me is inner spiritual growth and to give my children an idea of the truly valuable and higher things in the world.
--I feel more voluntary about my pleasure and pains than the average American who has his needs dictated by Madison Ave.
--I want a simplicity that would include beauty and creativity -art, music, literature, an aesthetic environment.
--I felt the values involved in consumerism to be false, useless, and destruction. I prefer to appear as I am . ... I was also influenced by the values of the feminist and ecological movement.
--Increasing my self-sufficiency seems the only honest way to effectively make my feeling, actions, and life congruent.
-- It forces you into a relationship with a basic reality... It also forces you to deal with some direct anxieties... It succinctly points out your frailty and clearly delineates your dependencies. It also reinforces your strength and independence.
--I want out from the typical pressure of maintaining materials acquisition that were meaningless to me.
2. The path to ecological living
Overall the journey into this way of life seems to be a relatively low, evolutionary process, one that unfolds gradually over a period of months and years.... Revealed that transition into this way of life is a personally challenging process. It may be accompanied by inner turmoil and feeling of uncertainty, self-doubt, anxiety, despair, and more. Life changes of this dimension seldom are made without deep soul-searching.
--I do not own anything more than I need. The things that I do own are selected on the basis of their utility, rather than their style or the fact that they are currently faddish.
-- Stopped shaving legs, stopped using scented products, stopped buying stylish haircuts, ... feel strong affinity for all animals -my comment: I think the quieter, content mind make sensor organs more sensitive, body start prefer natural state of all things. Flower is flower, weed is weed, each has its own beauty.
3. Inner Growth and Voluntary simplicity
Inner Growth refers to generally to a process of learning a natural quietness of mind and openness of heart that allows our interior experiencing to become apparent to us.
--I don't believe a person can make the commitment necessary to maintain this lifestyle without a spiritual-psychological motivation.
--I've had a lot of years of growth pains and for a long time I got lost in the pain and suffered; but I've learned to let go more easily now.
-I consider the whole picture one of positive personal growth that I inadvertently (luckily?) set in motion through trial and error and suffering. And now I sense a momentum established that I could not now "will" to halt.
--meditation appears to be the most prominent inner growth process correlated to a life of conscious simplicity.
==========================
From Wikipedia
The counterculture of the 1960s was an anti-establishment cultural phenomenon that developed first in the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US) and then spread throughout much of the Western world between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s, with London, New York City, and San Francisco being hotbeds of early countercultural activity.
Regarding Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam war, human sexuality, women's rights, traditional modes of authority, experimentation with psychoactive drugs, differing interpretations of the American Dream.
Several factors distinguished the counterculture of the 1960s from the anti-authoritarian movements of previous eras. The post-World War II "baby boom"generated an unprecedented number of potentially disaffected young people as prospective participants in a rethinking of the direction of American and other democratic societies.Post-war affluence allowed many of the counterculture generation to move beyond a focus on the provision of the material necessities of life that had preoccupied their Depression-era parents.
The counterculture era essentially commenced in earnest with the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963. It became absorbed into the popular culture with the termination of US combat military involvement in Southeast Asia and the end of the draft in 1973, and ultimately with the resignation of President Richard Nixon in August 1974.
Summary: To live sustainably, we must live efficiently. To live efficiently, we must live peacefully. To live peacefully, we must live with a reasonable degree of equity. Only with greater equity can we expect to live peacefully, and only with greater harmony can we expect to live sustainably.
Golden mean: In ancient Greek philosophy, especially that of Aristotle, the golden mean or golden middle way is the desirable middle between two extremes, one of excess and the other of deficiency.For example, in the Aristotelian view, courage is a virtue, but if taken to excess would manifest as recklessness, and, in deficiency, cowardice.
Golden rule: The Golden Rule is the principle of treating others as one's self would wish to be treated. It is a maxim that is found in many religions and cultures.
https://www.sloww.co/voluntary-simpli... ( a blog about this book)
Introduction by Ram Dass ((born Richard Alpert; April 6, 1931, a Jewish family in Newton, Massachusetts) . He and Dr. Timothy Leary directed The Harvard Psilocybin Project, start sometime in 1960 and lasted until March 1962. Huston Smith's last work, Cleansing the Doors of Perception, describes the Harvard Psilocybin Project in which he participated in the early 1960s as a serious, conscientious, mature attempt to raise awareness of entheogenic substances.
Be Here Now by Ram Dass ( published in 1971 is one of the first guides for those not born Hindu to becoming a yogi. For its influence on the hippie movement and subsequent spiritual movements it has been described as a "countercultural bible" and "seminal" to the era. Two sequels Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing and Dying(2000), and the second is Be Love Now: The Path of the Heart (2011).
in introduction, Ram Dass said Many in west search a conscious balance, a voluntarily simplicity of living that allows the integration of inner and outer, material and spiritual, masculine and feminine, personal and social. From The 1960's counterculture movement, renunciation of the West to return back to West, and embrace richness of West and East culture.
p17 A cycle of learning is being completed. The time of withdrawal is moving into a time of return. The exploration of new ways of living that support new ways of being is a movement that arises from the awakening of compassion - that dawning realization that fate of the individual is intimately connected with fate of the whole. It is a movement that arises from the recognition that our task is not only to be here, in the NOW; it is also to now be HERE. And where "here' is must include the fact that we are inhabitants of an aging industrial civilization that is in great need of the insight, perspective, and creativity that the journey to the "East" (to the interior) can bring upon return to the West.
The dualism inherent in our thinking process (which pits materialism against spiritualism, West against East) must be transcended if we are truly to be the inheritors of our evolutionary legacy and the children of a new age. From this perspective the historic Western preoccupation with the intellect and with material consumption need not be viewed as "wrong" or "bad" necessarily leading to our destruction. Rather, the Western orientation in living may be viewed as a necessary art of an evolutionary stage out of which yet another birth of higher consciousness-as an amalgam of East and West-might subsequently evolve. The Industrial Revolution, then, is part of a larger revolution in living. The West has made its contribution by providing the material basis of life needed to support the widespread unfolding of consciousness. The contribution of the East is the provision of insight into the nature of the conscious unfolding of consciousness. East and West require the learnings of each other if both are to evolve further and realize the potentials that arise in their integration and balance.
Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered by Ernst F. Schumacher (published in 1973)
==========================
Chapter one
Richard Gregg in 1936, wrote:
Voluntary simplicity involves both inner and outer condition. It means singleness of purpose and sincerity and honesty within, as well as avoidance of exterior clutter, of many possessions irrelevant to the chief purpose of life. It means an ordering and guiding of our energy and our desires, a partial restraint in some directions in order to secure greater abundance of life in other directions. It involves a deliberate organization of life for a purpose. Of course, as different people have different purposes in life, what is relevant to the purpose of one person might not be relevant to the purpose of another…The degree of simplification is a matter for each individual to settle for himself.
There is no special virtue to the phrase voluntary simplification - it is merely a label, and a somewhat awkward label at that. Still, it does acknowledge explicitly that simpler living integrates both inner and outer aspect of life into an organic and purposeful whole.
To live more voluntarily is to live more deliberately, intentionally, and purposefully -in short, it is to live more consciously. We cannot be deliberate when we are distracted from life. We cannot be intentional when we are not paying attention. We cannot be purposeful when we are not being present. Therefore, to act in a voluntary manner is to be aware of ourselves as we move through
life. This requires that we not only pay attention to the actions we take in the outer world, but also that we pay attention to ourselves acting-our inner world. To the extent that we do not notice both inner and outer aspects of our passage through life, then our capacity for voluntary, deliberate, and purposeful action is commensurately diminished.
To live more simply is to live more purposefully and with a minimum of needless distraction.The particularly expression of simplicity is a personal matter. We each know where our lives are unnecessarily complicated. We are all painfully aware of the clutter and pretense weigh upon us and make our passage through world more cumbersome and awkward. To live more simply is to unburden ourselves- to live more lightly, cleanly, aerodynamically. It is to establish a more direst, unpretentious, and unencumbered relationship with all aspects of our lives: the things that we consume, the work that we do, our relationships with others, our connections with nature and the cosmos, and more. Simplicity of living means meeting life face-to face. It means confronting life clearly, without unnecessary distractions. It means being direct and honest in relationships of all
kinds. It means taking life as it is-straight and unadulterated.
When we combine these two ideas for integrating the inner and outer aspects of our lives, we can describe voluntary simplicity as a manner of living that is outwardly more simple and inwardly more rich, a way of being in which our most authentic and alive self is brought into direct and conscious contact with living. This way of life is not a static condition to be achieved, but an ever-changing balance that must be continuously and consciously made real. Simplicity in this sense is not simple. To maintain a skillful balance between the inner and outer aspects of our lives is an enormously challenging and continuously changing process. The objective is not dogmatically to live with less, but is a more demanding intention of living with balance in order to find a life of greater purpose, fulfillment, and satisfaction.
Some people tend to equate ecological living with a life characterized by poverty, antagonism to progress, rural living, and denial of beauty. It is important to acknowledge these misconceptions so that we can move beyond them.
1. Simplicity is not poverty. Simplicity is not about a life of poverty, but a life of purpose.
Poverty is involuntary and debilitating, whereas simplicity is voluntary and enabling. Poverty is mean and degrading to the human spirit, whereas a life of conscious simplicity can have both a beauty and a functional integrity that elevates the human spirit. Involuntary poverty generates a sense of helplessness, passivity, and despair, whereas purposeful simplicity fosters a sense of personal empowerment, creative engagement, and opportunity.
2. Simplicity is not turning away from progress
3. Simplicity is not rural living
4. Simplicity is not denial of beauty, as Pablo Picasso, said "Art is the elimination of unnecessary."
p31 There is no cookbook for defining a life of conscious simplicity. Richard Gregg, for example, was insistent that "simplicity is a relative matter depending on climate,customs, culture, and character of the individual."Henry David Thoreau was also clear that no simple formula could define the worldly expression of a simpler life. He said, "I would not have anyone adopt my mode off living on my account. . . . I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way," Nor did Mahatma Gandhi advocate a blind denial of material side of life. He said, "As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, you should keep it. If you were to give it up in a mood of self-sacrifice or out of a stern sense of duty, you would continue to want it back, and that unsatisfied want would make trouble for you. Only give up a thing when you want some other condition so much that the thing no longer has any attraction for you." Because simplicity has as
much to do with each person's purpose in living as it does with his or her standard of living, it follows that there is no single, "right and true" way to live more ecologically and compassionately.
p36 Two aspects of life - maintaining outselves (creating a workable existence) and surpassing ourselves (creating a meaningful existence). Feminist Simone de Beauvoir 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."
p38-39 contrast between industrial ear vs. emerging ecological ear.
==========================
Chapter Two People living the simple life
1. Why choose simplicity? (Some people resonance with my own thought)
Overall the most common reasons given for choosing to live more lightly were to find a more skillful balance between skillful balance between one's inner experience and its outer expression in work, consumption, relationship, and community; to search for a workable and meaningful alternative to the emptiness of a society obsessed with material consumption and display; .. to find a much higher degree of independence and self-determination in a mass society of alienating scale and complexity... to create the personal circumstance of life in which one's feelings, thoughts, and actions can come into alignment.
--I have less and less to blame on other people. I am more-reliant. I can both revel in the independence and be frustrated by my shortcoming - but I get to learn from my mistakes. Each step is progress in independence ; free is the goal.
--The main motivation for me is inner spiritual growth and to give my children an idea of the truly valuable and higher things in the world.
--I feel more voluntary about my pleasure and pains than the average American who has his needs dictated by Madison Ave.
--I want a simplicity that would include beauty and creativity -art, music, literature, an aesthetic environment.
--I felt the values involved in consumerism to be false, useless, and destruction. I prefer to appear as I am . ... I was also influenced by the values of the feminist and ecological movement.
--Increasing my self-sufficiency seems the only honest way to effectively make my feeling, actions, and life congruent.
-- It forces you into a relationship with a basic reality... It also forces you to deal with some direct anxieties... It succinctly points out your frailty and clearly delineates your dependencies. It also reinforces your strength and independence.
--I want out from the typical pressure of maintaining materials acquisition that were meaningless to me.
2. The path to ecological living
Overall the journey into this way of life seems to be a relatively low, evolutionary process, one that unfolds gradually over a period of months and years.... Revealed that transition into this way of life is a personally challenging process. It may be accompanied by inner turmoil and feeling of uncertainty, self-doubt, anxiety, despair, and more. Life changes of this dimension seldom are made without deep soul-searching.
--I do not own anything more than I need. The things that I do own are selected on the basis of their utility, rather than their style or the fact that they are currently faddish.
-- Stopped shaving legs, stopped using scented products, stopped buying stylish haircuts, ... feel strong affinity for all animals -my comment: I think the quieter, content mind make sensor organs more sensitive, body start prefer natural state of all things. Flower is flower, weed is weed, each has its own beauty.
3. Inner Growth and Voluntary simplicity
Inner Growth refers to generally to a process of learning a natural quietness of mind and openness of heart that allows our interior experiencing to become apparent to us.
--I don't believe a person can make the commitment necessary to maintain this lifestyle without a spiritual-psychological motivation.
--I've had a lot of years of growth pains and for a long time I got lost in the pain and suffered; but I've learned to let go more easily now.
-I consider the whole picture one of positive personal growth that I inadvertently (luckily?) set in motion through trial and error and suffering. And now I sense a momentum established that I could not now "will" to halt.
--meditation appears to be the most prominent inner growth process correlated to a life of conscious simplicity.
==========================
From Wikipedia
The counterculture of the 1960s was an anti-establishment cultural phenomenon that developed first in the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US) and then spread throughout much of the Western world between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s, with London, New York City, and San Francisco being hotbeds of early countercultural activity.
Regarding Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam war, human sexuality, women's rights, traditional modes of authority, experimentation with psychoactive drugs, differing interpretations of the American Dream.
Several factors distinguished the counterculture of the 1960s from the anti-authoritarian movements of previous eras. The post-World War II "baby boom"generated an unprecedented number of potentially disaffected young people as prospective participants in a rethinking of the direction of American and other democratic societies.Post-war affluence allowed many of the counterculture generation to move beyond a focus on the provision of the material necessities of life that had preoccupied their Depression-era parents.
The counterculture era essentially commenced in earnest with the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963. It became absorbed into the popular culture with the termination of US combat military involvement in Southeast Asia and the end of the draft in 1973, and ultimately with the resignation of President Richard Nixon in August 1974.
March 21, 2024
HIGHLIGHTS:
1. ACCOUNTABILITY:
- Your level of accountability determines your level of happiness.
2. SUFFERING:
- Suffering is optional, ditch the drama.
- Gossip is a morale killer.
3. SAY YES:
- Rule #4: Say yes to what’s next.
- Change is an opportunity.
- Resistance = desire for safety.
- Future potential = state of readiness.
- It is your job to get flexible and flow seamlessly into what is next.
4. BE VALUABLE HERE:
- Stay in your lane and make an impact, be the most valuable and resilient person there.
5. EXCUSES:
- You will always have extenuating circumstances.
6. SUCCEED ANYWAY:
- “How can I help you?” is the fastest way to resolve conflict with others.
7. PERFORMANCE REVIEWS:
- Performance Reviews go wrong: compared to minimum job performance.
- Compare to other employees in the company vs. industry.
- Confusing “effort” with results. Lulled into a false sense of security.
- Personalizing performance reviews: the gap between expectations and actual results.
8. FEEDBACK:
- Feedback is about your work and your approach, not about YOU.
9. LEARN TO TEACH:
- Learn something.
- Teach something.
- Start a group—each person reads 3 blogs and reports back. ROI (return on investment).
10. VALUE:
- Your VALUE = your current performance + future potential, minus 3x Emotional Expensiveness.
1. ACCOUNTABILITY:
- Your level of accountability determines your level of happiness.
2. SUFFERING:
- Suffering is optional, ditch the drama.
- Gossip is a morale killer.
3. SAY YES:
- Rule #4: Say yes to what’s next.
- Change is an opportunity.
- Resistance = desire for safety.
- Future potential = state of readiness.
- It is your job to get flexible and flow seamlessly into what is next.
4. BE VALUABLE HERE:
- Stay in your lane and make an impact, be the most valuable and resilient person there.
5. EXCUSES:
- You will always have extenuating circumstances.
6. SUCCEED ANYWAY:
- “How can I help you?” is the fastest way to resolve conflict with others.
7. PERFORMANCE REVIEWS:
- Performance Reviews go wrong: compared to minimum job performance.
- Compare to other employees in the company vs. industry.
- Confusing “effort” with results. Lulled into a false sense of security.
- Personalizing performance reviews: the gap between expectations and actual results.
8. FEEDBACK:
- Feedback is about your work and your approach, not about YOU.
9. LEARN TO TEACH:
- Learn something.
- Teach something.
- Start a group—each person reads 3 blogs and reports back. ROI (return on investment).
10. VALUE:
- Your VALUE = your current performance + future potential, minus 3x Emotional Expensiveness.
February 22, 2012
I have to admit that this wasn't exactly the book I expected, but then I remind myself that it was written in the 1980s and was at that time quite revolutionary. I don't doubt the need for simplicity and will read more books for specific ideas in how to do so.
Favorite passages: "It is a radical simplicity to affirm that our happiness cannot be purchased, no matter how desperately the advertiser may want us to believe the fiction that we will never be happy or adequate without his or her product. It is a radical simplicity when we accept our bodies as they are - when we affirm that each of us is endowed with a dignity, beauty, and character whose natural expression is infinitely more interesting and engaging than any imagined identity we might construct with layers of stylish clothes and cosmetics."
"We are each responsible for the conduct of our lives - and we are each unique. Therefore we are each uniquely responsible for our actions and choices in this pivotal time in human evolution. There is no one who can take our place. We each weave a singular strand in the web of life. No one else can weave that strand for us. What we each contribute is distinct, and what we each withhold is uniquely irreplaceable."
Favorite passages: "It is a radical simplicity to affirm that our happiness cannot be purchased, no matter how desperately the advertiser may want us to believe the fiction that we will never be happy or adequate without his or her product. It is a radical simplicity when we accept our bodies as they are - when we affirm that each of us is endowed with a dignity, beauty, and character whose natural expression is infinitely more interesting and engaging than any imagined identity we might construct with layers of stylish clothes and cosmetics."
"We are each responsible for the conduct of our lives - and we are each unique. Therefore we are each uniquely responsible for our actions and choices in this pivotal time in human evolution. There is no one who can take our place. We each weave a singular strand in the web of life. No one else can weave that strand for us. What we each contribute is distinct, and what we each withhold is uniquely irreplaceable."
March 31, 2012
Synopsis: Originally published in 1981 and updated in the 1990's, this book is considered by many to be the simple/sustainable living bible. The book covers the tenets of Voluntary Simplicity, which include frugal consumption, ecological awareness and personal growth. The book concludes with a vision of the global issues that will arise if more people do not choose a path of voluntary simplicity.
My Review: This book wasn't really what I had expected. The first third of the book is just rehashing results from a magazine survey about people who have chosen to live a life of voluntary simplicity. The second third of the book was the part that I found most interesting. This part gave a little bit of an idea into what living with voluntary simplicity is all about. The last third of the book was an expose about how the whole world needs to embrace voluntary simplicity and how the unfair it is that the rich nations have more than the poor nations. The author advocates for the United Nations to have power to enforce all of the rules and regulations needed for the world to enjoy voluntary simplicity. I was hoping for more ideas about living simply, but there were too many political undertones in the discussion.
My Review: This book wasn't really what I had expected. The first third of the book is just rehashing results from a magazine survey about people who have chosen to live a life of voluntary simplicity. The second third of the book was the part that I found most interesting. This part gave a little bit of an idea into what living with voluntary simplicity is all about. The last third of the book was an expose about how the whole world needs to embrace voluntary simplicity and how the unfair it is that the rich nations have more than the poor nations. The author advocates for the United Nations to have power to enforce all of the rules and regulations needed for the world to enjoy voluntary simplicity. I was hoping for more ideas about living simply, but there were too many political undertones in the discussion.
April 10, 2010
This book is a quick and simple read but it contains a vitally important message: that if we don't seriously curtail our addiction to consumerism, we face a catastrophe unseen in human history (read mass famine, water wars, mass extinction, continued and increased global warming, mass displacement). Many of these things are on the fast track to manifestation if we don't change our ways immediately.
It is a call for us to simplify our lives where we can. To stop mindless consumption...of water, of fossil fuels, of material goods, of junk television. It asks us to take a hard look at our lives to see where we can make choices that will lead to a more balanced and compassionate society. It's not about becoming a monk and living with one shirt and a mattress on the floor. It's about making the conscious choice to cut back where it feels right. And the thing is, once you realize how much you can live without, it feels really good and you want to cut down even more.
For those of us in the US, this is a critical message. We gobble up the vast majority of resources and if our country makes the shift toward (far) less consumption, it will have an incredible impact on the world.
It is a call for us to simplify our lives where we can. To stop mindless consumption...of water, of fossil fuels, of material goods, of junk television. It asks us to take a hard look at our lives to see where we can make choices that will lead to a more balanced and compassionate society. It's not about becoming a monk and living with one shirt and a mattress on the floor. It's about making the conscious choice to cut back where it feels right. And the thing is, once you realize how much you can live without, it feels really good and you want to cut down even more.
For those of us in the US, this is a critical message. We gobble up the vast majority of resources and if our country makes the shift toward (far) less consumption, it will have an incredible impact on the world.
September 26, 2020
Really a 3 1/2 stars.
There is some really interesting information and parts of it were inspiring, but it took me a long time to read it.
The book is already 8 years old & perhaps it's due for another update? Whilst I agree with the author that humanity has a chance of creating a positive future as we navigate the necessary changes needed to survive climate change, I feel that not enough is being done and not quickly enough.
That's the premise of this book really, that individual effort isn't enough, that we need community effort- but as we march towards 2020 (and beyond) how do we effect change on a community and global level?
There is some really interesting information and parts of it were inspiring, but it took me a long time to read it.
The book is already 8 years old & perhaps it's due for another update? Whilst I agree with the author that humanity has a chance of creating a positive future as we navigate the necessary changes needed to survive climate change, I feel that not enough is being done and not quickly enough.
That's the premise of this book really, that individual effort isn't enough, that we need community effort- but as we march towards 2020 (and beyond) how do we effect change on a community and global level?
May 30, 2019
Written in 1981, I found this alternately naïve and depressing, in that there was such hope - in what he wrote - that we would return to a simpler lifestyle and avert some of the environmental disasters that we have already caused. Instead, here we are....
Elgin shows us three possible scenarios, starting in the mid-2020s: the collapse of civilization and a return to the dark ages for the foreseeable future; dynamic stagnation (strong authoritarian tendencies), which sounds like where we are headed; or a reconciliation and revitalization that requires a "reorienting of the mass media to break the cultural hypnosis of consumerism".
Heaven help us.
Elgin shows us three possible scenarios, starting in the mid-2020s: the collapse of civilization and a return to the dark ages for the foreseeable future; dynamic stagnation (strong authoritarian tendencies), which sounds like where we are headed; or a reconciliation and revitalization that requires a "reorienting of the mass media to break the cultural hypnosis of consumerism".
Heaven help us.
November 29, 2018
I really wanted to like this book, and was hoping to find practical steps to implement in my daily life. I found the first chapters, attempting to pursude the reader of the benifits of voluntary simplicity, which is great but I didn't not pick up the book, to learn about the benifits be how it can be applied practically to my life. I also found it hard to follow and disorganized, I love the concept but I am slightly disappointed.
Read
October 25, 2023If you have enough interest in the topic to desire to read a book like this, you have already surpassed the need to read this book.
Read
September 21, 2020i find the reviews highly interesting for this one for being all over the place...
He was a wacky guy at the Stanford Research Institute
wiki says it all
Arnold Mitchell (1918-1985) was a social scientist and consumer futurist who worked for SRI International and created a noted psychographic methodology, Values, Attitudes and Lifestyles (VALS).
Career
Mitchell coauthored a report on Voluntary Simplicity with Duane Elgin that was published by SRI in June 1976. The report was expanded and republished with a survey in CoEvolution Quarterly in 1977, which was used as the basis the 1981 book Voluntary Simplicity.
VALS
Mitchell created the Values, Attitudes and Lifestyles (VALS) psychographic methodology at SRI International in the late 1970s. VALS helps companies tailor their products and services to appeal to the people most likely to purchase them, and explains changing U.S. values and lifestyles. It was formally inaugurated as an SRI product in 1978. VALS was subsequently called "one of the ten top market research breakthroughs of the 1980s" by Advertising Age magazine.
In the VALS study, Mitchell identified three major values groups in society: the Traditionalists, the Modernists and the Cultural Creatives.
The Traditionalists, as he saw them, were those who wanted to return to the 1950s, with mom in the kitchen and the white picket fence around the house.
The Modernists were those who thought technology would solve all our problems.
And the Cultural Creatives, consisting of two subgroups of "Greens" and "Spiritual Seekers," were people who were self-directed and interested both in developing themselves in fulfilling ways and in being of service to the larger community.
---
Stability and Idealism
Futurism and Idealism
and then the 70s Whole Earth Catalog group of Environmentalists and Seekers!
I think if you got money and security, the rest is easy!
He was a wacky guy at the Stanford Research Institute
wiki says it all
Arnold Mitchell (1918-1985) was a social scientist and consumer futurist who worked for SRI International and created a noted psychographic methodology, Values, Attitudes and Lifestyles (VALS).
Career
Mitchell coauthored a report on Voluntary Simplicity with Duane Elgin that was published by SRI in June 1976. The report was expanded and republished with a survey in CoEvolution Quarterly in 1977, which was used as the basis the 1981 book Voluntary Simplicity.
VALS
Mitchell created the Values, Attitudes and Lifestyles (VALS) psychographic methodology at SRI International in the late 1970s. VALS helps companies tailor their products and services to appeal to the people most likely to purchase them, and explains changing U.S. values and lifestyles. It was formally inaugurated as an SRI product in 1978. VALS was subsequently called "one of the ten top market research breakthroughs of the 1980s" by Advertising Age magazine.
In the VALS study, Mitchell identified three major values groups in society: the Traditionalists, the Modernists and the Cultural Creatives.
The Traditionalists, as he saw them, were those who wanted to return to the 1950s, with mom in the kitchen and the white picket fence around the house.
The Modernists were those who thought technology would solve all our problems.
And the Cultural Creatives, consisting of two subgroups of "Greens" and "Spiritual Seekers," were people who were self-directed and interested both in developing themselves in fulfilling ways and in being of service to the larger community.
---
Stability and Idealism
Futurism and Idealism
and then the 70s Whole Earth Catalog group of Environmentalists and Seekers!
I think if you got money and security, the rest is easy!
May 23, 2021
This book left me even more disheartened than I normally am. Elgin is right, of course, but here we are forty years since the first edition and our country, among others, is farther than ever from the cooperation that might save humanity from the drastic changes affecting our planet. Our society undergoes spurts or pockets of introspection, but they don't seem to last long or amount to much. Today the inequality of wealth and thoughtless consumption are greater than ever, plastics recycling is revealed to be as big a fraud as the ones perpetrated by the tobacco companies about cigarettes and the sugar producers about the evils of fat, politicians foster divisions and are incapable of governing, and the media escalate tribalism and dueling "facts." And this book was written before the internet was part of our daily lives.
And individual actions can go only so far. We need society-wide changes, such as public transportation, agricultural policy, energy policy, and so forth on a large enough scale to make a real difference. That looks impossible from my perspective.
One way I can simplify my life is to donate this book to the library book sale and make another inch of space on my shelves. Five stars for importance; one star for distress.
It's probably at least fifteen years since I read Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology, but this book brought that one to mind. My recollection is that Brende doesn't have the urgency of Elgin's book, but he addresses the byproducts of technology and the ways it can destroy community. Might be interesting to reread. Meanwhile, I'll need a few mysteries to talk me down from the ledge.
And individual actions can go only so far. We need society-wide changes, such as public transportation, agricultural policy, energy policy, and so forth on a large enough scale to make a real difference. That looks impossible from my perspective.
One way I can simplify my life is to donate this book to the library book sale and make another inch of space on my shelves. Five stars for importance; one star for distress.
It's probably at least fifteen years since I read Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology, but this book brought that one to mind. My recollection is that Brende doesn't have the urgency of Elgin's book, but he addresses the byproducts of technology and the ways it can destroy community. Might be interesting to reread. Meanwhile, I'll need a few mysteries to talk me down from the ledge.
May 1, 2020
#19 in 2020. This book was given to me in a stack of other books by my dad. He gave them to me when I was struggling a lot with identity and mental health, and yet I didn't pick this book up until now. I think that is a good thing, because I have started to feel much better and I think I was in a good place when I started to dissect how the ideas in this book can change my life. A lot of what is mentioned are ideas I had already started toying with in my mind, or concepts that had been introduced to me by society or my eco-friendly mother. Granted, this second edition book was released before I was born and it's first edition mother was published in the 80s. "Voluntary Simplicity" shares a lot of concepts with the growing minimalist movement. This lifestyle of simplicity over conspicuous consumerism has roots dating back to the 1800s with Henry David Thoreau, although there are misconceptions that with simplicity you renounce society and live a self-sustainable rural life. That is not necessarily so, and Thoreau argued that each person must decide what their path and lifestyle will look like. I think for me the big takeaways are 1) decluttering my physical life frees my mind as well (Marie Kondo gets it), 2) by living with nature instead of against it I can do my part to combat climate change and environmental destruction, 3) by focusing on personal growth I can live a richer life than if I focused strictly on accumulating riches.
I am excited to put some of these lessons to the test, and I think that just by setting my high goal of 85 books in a year and 500 books before I'm 30, I am showing up for myself in the personal growth arena and definitely looking at new perspectives that will, at the very least, be fun experiments to try.
I am excited to put some of these lessons to the test, and I think that just by setting my high goal of 85 books in a year and 500 books before I'm 30, I am showing up for myself in the personal growth arena and definitely looking at new perspectives that will, at the very least, be fun experiments to try.
September 25, 2020
I originally read this in the nineties and decided to re-read during the pandemic. The title of the book is inspirational in itself. In many ways, the current minimalist movement would be better described as "Voluntary Simplicity." The title is a philosophy that would do the world good. Elgin uses quotes from participants of a questionnaire who have disavowed themselves of the consumerist lifestyle to seek more time contemplating life through activities which provide personal fulfillment. If you've been growing tired of the "rat race" and "trying to keep up with the Jones's," you will find this book affirms your thoughts.
What surprised me during this re-read is that Elgin made some predictions that the world would face a crossroads in the future - specifically the 2020s. "Therefore my best guess is that industrialized nations will be forced to confront squarely the challenge of civilizational disintegration or revitalization no later than the 2020s." He even suggests how we use the tools of mass communication for consensus will be key to what path we choose, but I don't think he envisioned the social media nightmare we currently live in. "Then the social fabric of nations could be torn apart violently, democracy could dissolve, and anarchy, or more likely, an authoritarian government could take its place." Although I'm not a doomsayer, I found his look into the future was fascinating.
All in all, Voluntary Simplicity was an interesting re-read in these times and the title continues to inspire as an excellent life philosophy.
What surprised me during this re-read is that Elgin made some predictions that the world would face a crossroads in the future - specifically the 2020s. "Therefore my best guess is that industrialized nations will be forced to confront squarely the challenge of civilizational disintegration or revitalization no later than the 2020s." He even suggests how we use the tools of mass communication for consensus will be key to what path we choose, but I don't think he envisioned the social media nightmare we currently live in. "Then the social fabric of nations could be torn apart violently, democracy could dissolve, and anarchy, or more likely, an authoritarian government could take its place." Although I'm not a doomsayer, I found his look into the future was fascinating.
All in all, Voluntary Simplicity was an interesting re-read in these times and the title continues to inspire as an excellent life philosophy.
February 19, 2021
I've been re-reading this every couple of years for decades. This book comes close to being my Polaris. While Elgin falls into what I consider an area of incoherence when he refers to 'spirit' or 'spiritual', many of those references are to surveys performed by others. Overall the synthesis rings true. He delves into one of my core interests--the effects of our evolved drives, appetites, and biases--and recommends implementable perspectives and practices to bootstrap ourselves to a more resourceful, non-reactive level.
"With simplicity, equity, and compassion we can have both freedom from want and the freedom to evolve our potentials in co-operation with other members of the human family." (p. 141)
I heartily concur with Elgin's identification and assessment of the most pressing global issues (as evident in 1981) but can't agree fully with his expectation that individuals, families, communities, nations, etc. will simply start pulling in a unified, sustainable, healthy direction. I don't see conclusively effective global changes to avert disaster happening solely from the bottom up. Decisive, overwhelming, sustained, fully cooperative actions from global sources of power (governments, surveillance capitalists, and other influential multinational corporations, etc.) will be crucial. Individuals, families, communities, and other localized groups CANNOT be allowed to abstain from or obstruct the actions needed to ensure the viability of human and other life into the future. Elgin was naive in this regard but, otherwise, the book is incredibly insightful.
"With simplicity, equity, and compassion we can have both freedom from want and the freedom to evolve our potentials in co-operation with other members of the human family." (p. 141)
I heartily concur with Elgin's identification and assessment of the most pressing global issues (as evident in 1981) but can't agree fully with his expectation that individuals, families, communities, nations, etc. will simply start pulling in a unified, sustainable, healthy direction. I don't see conclusively effective global changes to avert disaster happening solely from the bottom up. Decisive, overwhelming, sustained, fully cooperative actions from global sources of power (governments, surveillance capitalists, and other influential multinational corporations, etc.) will be crucial. Individuals, families, communities, and other localized groups CANNOT be allowed to abstain from or obstruct the actions needed to ensure the viability of human and other life into the future. Elgin was naive in this regard but, otherwise, the book is incredibly insightful.
January 10, 2024
Voluntary Simplicity: Toward a Way of Life That is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich by Duane Elgin.
4/5 rating.
Book #16 of 2020. Read March 8, 2020.
I completely subscribe to the important message of this book about voluntary simplicity!
Duane's message is that in today's world of discontent, environmental disaster, and ever-widening stratification between people's views, everyone would be helped by living simpler and more sustainable lives. This was one of the early books to push the idea of minimalism to a mainstream audience. Duane discusses the amount of good that living a life that consists of less materialism, and more conscious living can have on people's well-being.
In this updated version written in the 2000's (original was '81), Duane deals even more with the positive impact that people who live simply and more sustainably can have on the world.
I think that everyone needs to read this book as we all need to realize that a shift in our thinking needs to occur to stave off the worst effects of catastrophes such as climate change, energy concerns, water and food shortage, and other, yet to be known concerns. Make a change to lessen your impact in every way you can: together, by living simpler, more fulfilling lives, we can all save this earth while becoming more content with our own lives!
4/5 rating.
Book #16 of 2020. Read March 8, 2020.
I completely subscribe to the important message of this book about voluntary simplicity!
Duane's message is that in today's world of discontent, environmental disaster, and ever-widening stratification between people's views, everyone would be helped by living simpler and more sustainable lives. This was one of the early books to push the idea of minimalism to a mainstream audience. Duane discusses the amount of good that living a life that consists of less materialism, and more conscious living can have on people's well-being.
In this updated version written in the 2000's (original was '81), Duane deals even more with the positive impact that people who live simply and more sustainably can have on the world.
I think that everyone needs to read this book as we all need to realize that a shift in our thinking needs to occur to stave off the worst effects of catastrophes such as climate change, energy concerns, water and food shortage, and other, yet to be known concerns. Make a change to lessen your impact in every way you can: together, by living simpler, more fulfilling lives, we can all save this earth while becoming more content with our own lives!
November 6, 2019
I lost interest about 1/3 of the way through, but I did find a few passages that really resonated with me.
"'As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, you should keep it. If you were to give it up in a mood of self-sacrifice or out of a stern sense of duty, you would continue to want it back, and that unsatisfied want would make trouble for you. Only give up a thing when you want some other condition so much that the thing no longer has any attraction to you.'" pg. 32 (Mahatma Gandhi)
"Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without" pg. 51 (Puritans)
"Voluntary simplicity is an individual thing...It has to be something that springs from the heart because it was always there, not something you can be talked in to by persuasive people, or something that is brought on my financial necessity...This is not something we do because we want to be different, or because we're rebellious to convention, but because our souls find a need for it." pg. 73 (woman, thirty, married, big city, Canada)
"...if change is too abrupt, it may not have the staying power to last. It seems better to move slowly and maintain a depth of commitment that can be sustained over the long haul." pg. 74
"'As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, you should keep it. If you were to give it up in a mood of self-sacrifice or out of a stern sense of duty, you would continue to want it back, and that unsatisfied want would make trouble for you. Only give up a thing when you want some other condition so much that the thing no longer has any attraction to you.'" pg. 32 (Mahatma Gandhi)
"Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without" pg. 51 (Puritans)
"Voluntary simplicity is an individual thing...It has to be something that springs from the heart because it was always there, not something you can be talked in to by persuasive people, or something that is brought on my financial necessity...This is not something we do because we want to be different, or because we're rebellious to convention, but because our souls find a need for it." pg. 73 (woman, thirty, married, big city, Canada)
"...if change is too abrupt, it may not have the staying power to last. It seems better to move slowly and maintain a depth of commitment that can be sustained over the long haul." pg. 74
April 20, 2022
I read this book outloud with my wife, so it took us a while to finish reading it. But I'd say it was well worth the time and reading it with someone at a slower pace really added to the experience with plenty of time to question, reflect, and discuss. This book is a little dated, so there are certain areas where our understanding of the issues discussed has deepened or we know more about where we are headed, but it is amazingly still very relevant and informative. Additionally the way this is written is so accessible as to be a truly valuable mass text on the subject of simplicity and the challenges of the future two highly intertwined subject. I hope many many more people take the time to dig this out archive and read it.
November 19, 2022
2010 edition. Concept: 5; writing: 3. Too much big picture that any individual will feel like they can’t change. Interspersed in that, there are good discussions of how to understand voluntary simplicity and how different folks manifest it.
I appreciated discussions around focusing locally, just enough, study/support circles, and that VS isn’t about a return to “better times” but a way forward that decreases consumption, focuses on equity, and improves likelihood of a sustainable and healthy future for the individual and community.
I appreciated discussions around focusing locally, just enough, study/support circles, and that VS isn’t about a return to “better times” but a way forward that decreases consumption, focuses on equity, and improves likelihood of a sustainable and healthy future for the individual and community.
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