Simplicity

[Guest guest]

SIMPLICITY

 

by Stephanie Mills

 

http://www.orionsociety.org/pages/om/02-2om/Simplicity.html

 

Among do-gooders, it's bad form to be a pessimist, but I can't seem

to get that extinction crisis out of my mind. Or that population

explosion. Or global climate change. Can't get those billionaires;

those landless, homeless, jobless billions; those new diseases; the

corporate capture of the media; those aging nuclear reactors; those

crowded prisons out of my mind.

 

These days, most of us know at some level that consumerism is

complicity in all of the above. Even ordinary lives in our society,

let alone the lifestyles of the rich and famous, exploit and

undermine cultures and bioregions near and far. However suppressed or

attenuated, an awareness of doing harm must taint whatever pleasure

might be had from material convenience or luxury.

 

Given the degree to which even low-on-the-food-chain types like me

are implicated in the wholesale wastage of the earth, the structural

aspect of the answer to "How are we to live?" must be "More locally."

The epitome of the good here would be to grow or make my own basic

necessities. Next best would be to barter for necessities or purchase

them from a neighbor whose practices I know and respect. Next to that

would be buying from a reputable, socially and ecologically

conscientious purveyor; the nadir, a fast-food burger from a global

chain.

 

By paying attention to the small things - the wholesomeness of the

daily bread, the source and state of the water, the seemliness of

one's shelter, and the well-being of all the human and

more-than-human lives around us - we may be led to practice

simplicity and harmlessness in tangible ways, to "be the change one

wishes in the world," as Gandhi taught. This is not to premise a life

on renunciation, abstinence, and deprivation, but to enjoy, as did

Epicurus and his followers, the freedom in simplicity.

 

After spending the first half of my adult life trying to do my bit

for the macrocosm, I find myself now addressing the microcosm of my

own home and the life within. Just for now, I want to sit in the

garden, savor my life and my solitude, do my work, and be a good

friend. One afternoon as I was sweeping my house, it occurred to me

that having a philosophy really can be a help. As I rhythmically

swept the sand and ash and hair and lint and leaf-legged wood bug

carcasses into neat little accumulations for the dustpan, it also

occurred to me that my willingness to be behind the times has been

both a cause and an effect of philosophy. A keystone of mine is that

life forms and life places have moral standing on par with that of

any human being. The deep questioning fundamental to such a

philosophy helps one to distinguish between needs and wants and to

minimize those that entail getting and spending.

 

Having a sweeping philosophy, being able to spend an hour tidying

with a broom, a technology that hasn't changed much in several

thousand years, and doing so in a handmade home, which I can see no

reason to leave until the day I go feet-first, feel like such

blessings! And enjoying the least things - a chill glass of water, a

moment of play with the cat, the sight of sunlight caught in the

frost spangling locust twigs - is a form of prayer.

 

 

Stephanie Mills is the author of Whatever Happened to Ecology?, In

Service of the Wild, and Turning Away From Technology. A prolific

writer and speaker on issues of ecology and social change, she lives

in the Great Lakes bioregion in the upper Midwest. The text above is

excerpted from her new book, Epicurean Simplicity, published in 2002

by Island Press.

 

 

I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.

-Alan Watts