“A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living, I think.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

A friend recently dropped by for a visit while on a vacation trip of indeterminate length on a search for a simpler life. The bumper sticker on the back of his traveling home on wheels was familiar: “Your worst nightmare is my favorite vacation.” Like so many bon mots this one can be interpreted in more than one way, including that your nightmare and my vacation as well as vice-versa are not separate events. For various reasons involving recent readings and the on going awareness that the health of planet Earth in all areas (water, air, land, human population growth, the growing number of extinct species, global warming, environment in general, etc.) is rapidly deteriorating, it was a reminder to never confuse standard of living with quality of life. All too many people do not differentiate between such two very different realities.
They are as different as the inner life of the heart and mind and the outer landscape of conspicuous consumption, or organic farmer/ citizen of the earth and derivatives trader of its extractive resources, or devoted, skeptical scientist and devout, true believing Creationist. And each can be interpreted in more than one way, including just the opposite of what the standard bearer intends.
The worst nightmare of, for instance, the CEO of any large corporation is that the business of the corporation ceases to grow. At the same time (the present moment), for the earth and all its inhabitants, human and otherwise, the worst nightmare is that the business of corporations continues to grow. The world’s economic model is based on the lurid fantasy of unlimited, endless growth, each increment of which compounds the complexity of life. Simplicity is an alternative, even an antidote to complexity and boundless growth. It can be viewed as a vacation from the prevailing worldview, economic engine and ethic of every multi-national corporation, perhaps best and most famously summed up by Ed Abbey: “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
Cancer is a nightmare for everyone, it is no one’s favorite vacation and growth for the sake of growth is its ideology. The implications of relentless growth for individual, society and the earth itself are obvious. Author and Senior Lecturer in Leadership and Sustainability at MIT Peter Senge, who was named a ‘Strategist of the Century’ by the Journal of Business Strategy and who describes himself as an ‘idealistic pragmatist’ says of the current state of Earth, “We are sleepwalking into disaster, going faster and faster to get to where no one wants to be.” That is, by 2050 the capacity of the planet to renew itself (clean air, water, arable land, sustainable fisheries and the like) will be 300 to 500 percent beyond sustainability. And there will be 9 billion people struggling (and waging wars against each other) to survive. It is difficult to imagine that there will be much in the way of vacation.
The antidote to sleepwalking into disaster is to wake up and to take a vacation from walking to where no one wants to be. Wake up and take a vacation from the nightmare crisis of complexity caused in large measure by growth for the sake of growth. As every study one can find involving the demographics of both standard of living and quality of life clearly shows the resources supporting both are quickly running out. The problem is enormous—more than 7 billion humans and growing by 50 million a year at this writing—gargantuan enough that one person might understandably feel overwhelmed, helpless, resigned. But Mahatma Gandhi, who had some experience in such matters, pointed out, “In a gentle way, you can shake the world.” You—one person—can take a vacation from and thereby shake off the nightmare. You can shake the world, gently, or, if you prefer, you can let it shake you, perhaps not so gently.
As a place to start I like what Yvon Chouinard, the founder and owner of Patagonia, Inc., says: “I think the simple life really begins with owning less stuff.” Very few, probably none, reading this can say with a straight face that they don’t own too much ‘stuff.’ In a gentle way you can shake the world—and take a vacation from the nightmare of endless consumerism—by nothing more complex than taking, say, ten things you don’t need to the community thrift store. It will put you ten steps closer to a simple life and, gently, help wake up the world.
Give it a try. Those steps might lead to others.