Viridianism's last note: surround yourself with beautiful, excellent things and get rid of all else
1. That the world was under serious threat due to anthropogenic global warming, and
2. That the answer wasn't to live simply, but rather to use better technology to help us make better choices and conduct our lives in a better way
These two ideas are incredibly inspiring, and have served as a powerful antidote against the Three Stupidities of Global Warming:
1. There is no global warming, or if there is, it's natural
2. The only answer to global warming is to live in log cabins, unplug your fridge and never get on another airplane
3. Global warming is inevitable, so let's go buy some more Hummers and pass the spotted owl omelette, wouldya?
The Stupidities are, at root, counsels of despair. They rely on denialism, or hold humanity to an impossible standard (witness the goofball commenters to my post about entertaining your children with a single bucket of water on a hot day who immediately leapt in to characterize this as a sin against the very planet, since water is precious and shouldn't be wasted by splashing around in the summer), or throw up their hands and give up.
For this entire century, Viridianism has provided a critical, design-based, technological, optimistic, and humane approach to the immense problem of global warming.
Now, Bruce has wound up his movement, writing a final brilliant essay filled with advice for the future of material culture. In the Last Viridian Note, Bruce issues a kind of high-tech Arts and Crafts Movement manifesto to surround yourself with great things -- things that are great for you, great for your community and planet and species, and to approach the world as a problem to be solved, and to solve it. Reading Bruce in this mode is inspiring, makes me want to stand up and salute.
I've just given away fifty boxes' worth of junk and shut down my Toronto storage locker. My London locker is gone. My LA locker is next. I won't get down to Thoreau's axe-head and pen, but I'll be pretty close: a few good pieces of furniture, some books I love, some art, a laptop and assorted life-support, and well-made, comfortable clothes that look good and last. Oh, and a multitool, natch.
What is "sustainability?" Sustainable practices navigate successfully through time and space, while others crack up and vanish. So basically, the sustainable is about time -- time and space. You need to re-think your relationship to material possessions in terms of things that occupy your time. The things that are physically closest to you. Time and space.In earlier, less technically advanced eras, this approach would have been far-fetched. Material goods were inherently difficult to produce, find, and ship. They were rare and precious. They were closely associated with social prestige. Without important material signifiers such as wedding china, family silver, portraits, a coach-house, a trousseau and so forth, you were advertising your lack of substance to your neighbors. If you failed to surround yourself with a thick material barrier, you were inviting social abuse and possible police suspicion. So it made pragmatic sense to cling to heirlooms, renew all major purchases promptly, and visibly keep up with the Joneses.
That era is dying. It's not only dying, but the assumptions behind that form of material culture are very dangerous. These objects can no longer protect you from want, from humiliation -- in fact they are *causes* of humiliation, as anyone with a McMansion crammed with Chinese-made goods and an unsellable SUV has now learned at great cost.
Furthermore, many of these objects can damage you personally. The hours you waste stumbling over your piled debris, picking, washing, storing, re-storing, those are hours and spaces that you will never get back in a mortal lifetime. Basically, you have to curate these goods: heat them, cool them, protect them from humidity and vermin. Every moment you devote to them is lost to your children, your friends, your society, yourself.
It's not bad to own fine things that you like. What you need are things that you GENUINELY like. Things that you cherish, that enhance your existence in the world. The rest is dross.
Do not "economize." Please. That is not the point. The economy is clearly insane. Even its champions are terrified by it now. It's melting the North Pole. So "economization" is not your friend. Cheapness can be value-less. Voluntary simplicity is, furthermore, boring. Less can become too much work.
The items that you use incessantly, the items you employ every day, the normal, boring goods that don't seem luxurious or romantic: these are the critical ones. They are truly central. The everyday object is the monarch of all objects. It's in your time most, it's in your space most. It is "where it is at," and it is "what is going on."
It takes a while to get this through your head, because it's the opposite of the legendry of shopping. However: the things that you use every day should be the best-designed things you can get. For instance, you cannot possibly spend too much money on a bed -- (assuming you have a regular bed, which in point of fact I do not). You're spending a third of your lifetime in a bed. Your bed might be sagging, ugly, groaning and infested with dust mites, because you are used to that situation and cannot see it. That calamity might escape your conscious notice. See it. Replace it.
the latest
latest episodes
Being the "scavenger" sort (read: broke) I'm seeing this as an open invite for you to mail me some cool books and such. Clear your shelves, Mr. Doctorow! It's time for a stranger in rural America to carry your burden!
" The only answer to global warming is to live in log cabins, unplug your fridge and never get on another airplane"
I thought there was an MIT study that showed that homeless people in the US emit surplus CO2 by their lifestyle, and that the only lifestyle that didn't emit excess CO2 was a buddist monk.
Welcome to the Voluntary Simplicity tribe Cory!
I've pared down our stuff to value quality in everything- no debt, save before you buy, media fasts, calculating the real dollar cost of my life energy(how many hours do I really have to work to buy this item?', focusing on the things that really matter=family and learning, all of which I've learnt from this flourishing simple living community:
http://www.simpleliving.net/
This 1977 essay 'Taking the Scare out of Scarcity' by the economist E.F. Schumacher is prescient in this regard:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/8053198/Taking-the-Scare-out-of-Scarcity
I thought there was an MIT study that showed that homeless people in the US emit surplus CO2 by their lifestyle
I heard that internet comment boards are the source of much of the hot air.
But more seriously, YES PEOPLE LISTEN TO BRUCE.
Find the handful of stuff you need to do your thing, keep it. Then find the rest of your stuff, give it.
pduggie: "living in a log cabin" =/= "homeless". You grow some vegetables, it uses up CO2.
cory, excellent to have you back.
Didn't Al Gore spell out that we were screwed already?
Nuclear Power!
Pretty soon, half the readership of BoingBoing are going to begin a routine that sounds very similar to Steve Martin when he got kicked out of his mansion in The Jerk.
ALL I NEED IS THIS REMOTE CONTROL, THIS LAMP, THIS RUBBER BALL THINGY...
This is a reference to the study:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080428120658.htm
The issue is that merely *living* in the USA means you share in the support network of police, roads, courts, libraries, etc. that bump up your carbon footprint to way higher than the world average.
Pduggie, that statistical rationale is why people with 17 cars, 7 houses, and a private jet justify their excess. Those people are doing it wrong.
The solution to pollution is not dilution.
""I've just given away fifty boxes' worth of junk and shut down my Toronto storage locker. My London locker is gone. My LA locker is next.""
Who knew that blogging could be so profitable? Toronto, London, L.A.
dude must be loaded.
Mmmmm, spotted-owl omelet.
Who wouldn't want to eat that?
-abs is for some amount of environmentalism, actually a fair bit of it, and definitely believes in anthropogenic global warming, but at the same time loves the idea of eating an endangered species . . . in fact the only thing better would be to eat the very last example of a species that is alive thus causing it's extinction, or possibly eating coelocanth because that fish has spent millions of years getting it's flavor just right! (and yes, I hear coelocanth tastes nasty, but I still wanna try a bite)
Too many people. Way too many. Remember the population explosion everyone was worried about? Why did we stop worrying? Was it refuted or something?
I have moved about once per year since 1998 (and before that, when I was a kid and lived with my parents, it was once every 3 years). So I am always aware of how much stuff I have and how cumbersome it all is.
Thanks in large part to these BoingBoing posts about simplifying, I have recently been fantasizing about throwing away all my non-essential stuff.
But it does pose a problem: In the modern western society where I live, a "normal adult" has a pretty big living space (at least a small apartment), and it would be odd if this space is mostly empty. What would people think when I invite them over to a mostly-empty place? What would WOMEN think? The only way to have a place with the normal density of stuff, if I had very little stuff, would be to rent a tiny place. My quirks are already enough to cause all but the bravest girls to stay an arm's length away, so seriously I don't need another weird thing to add to the list. In all seriousness. Who wants to date a guy who lives in an empty apartment or in a place the size of a hotel room?
Still, I have been toying with the idea. Recently, an opportunity presented itself: I had to move out of my old place on October 10 and can not move into my new place until December 1. So I put almost all my stuff in storage and am living in my sister's living room (which is very small and pretty much empty - she's an undergrad living in a tiny apartment) with just my essential stuff. The past few weeks have made it evident just how unnecessary all my stored-away junk is.
So I've donated one third of my clothes. Another third is worn extremely infrequently (snow clothes for when I visit my parents in Connecticut, beach clothes for when I visit my family and friends in Rio, Halloween costumes, etc) and I might also get rid of it. I've also donated a good fraction of my decorative things, got rid of a lot of my furniture, and threw away many old projects I have built over the years. I did photograph my old projects thoroughly, though. It's amazing how many digital pictures can fit in a one-terabyte external hard drive. And it's amazing how much junk I keep only for nostalgia's sake, and how much more efficient it is to have digital pictures of those things rather than the things themselves. Next up, I want to take the few large boxes mostly filled with papers (notes from school, drawings, essays, things I have published, the occasional newspaper article about me, souvenir programs) and scan them. And maybe I can rip my DVDs and digitize my video tapes, just as all my music has lived in my hard drive for years now.
So I think I am slowly but surely moving in the right direction.
One thing, though: I don't think I could ever get rid of my book collection. It takes a strong, strong person to accomplish that. I really don't think I can do it. We'll see.
In any case... thanks Cory and Bruce for the inspiration. (And thanks hard-drive makers for making roomier and roomier HDs which make it possible for me to get rid of things while keeping a satisfying digital vestige of them).
Whew! I just finished purging my Budapest locker and my Tijuana locker. Watch out, Stockholm --you're next! This feels so right!
On a more serious note, you gotta wonder how this will play out in BoingBoing itself... how does one justify the endless shiny gadget reviews on one hand, and this common-sense approach to purchasing on the other?
A long time before the Viridian Manifesto, I remember reading an essay by Jerry Pournelle called, I believe, "Survival with Style". Pournelle argued that the solution to the environmental fears of the day - which were probably overpopulation and pollution, rather than global warming - wasn't to drop out and unplug, but to put the pedal to the metal and find bold technological solutions - colonize space, strip-mine the asteroids, etc. etc. No surprises there.
Part of Pournelle's view has been at least tacitly endorsed by people like the present administration, who use it as an excuse for doing nothing. When they're not working hard to ignore the problem, they assure us that technology will save us. They don't know how, but the scientists will think of something. "Don't worry your little heads, the magic fix will be there when you need it." I don't find this argument compelling. A much better writer, John Brunner, once said that one of the assumptions he made when trying to imagine his future worlds was that governments would never take any action until it was much too late. His pessimism seems to have been amply borne out by facts.
Governments interpreted the message put out by people like Pournelle as "Don't bother changing anything. We don't need to make sacrifices." The danger is that the rest of us (who are the ones who will ultimately have to solve the problem, given Brunner's axiom above) will interpret the Viridian Manifesto the same way. There'll be a short orgy of throwing out unread books and old clothes among the nerdnoscenti, and then we'll be back to collecting Shit We Don't Need because we can persuade ourselves that it's cool or beautiful or necessary. Meanwhile, we haven't even begun to touch the structural problems at the heart of our race towards eco-collapse. While we're embracing the brave new digital nomad lifestyle, reducing all our possessions to 1's and 0's and fondling our shiny new multi-tools, Joe Everyone Else is still driving his SUV seventy miles a day because the whole country is still organized around the idea of owning a big-ass McMansion in the suburban sprawl and buying your goods at the mall.
The Viridian Manifesto is pitched at something very much like what I take to be the BoingBoing readership; technophiles, geeks, crafts-fans, and so forth. Like Pournelle's 'Survival with Style', the message is "The way to save the world is to do the stuff you like doing." That's a comforting message, but it becomes dangerous when people read it as validation for their lifestyle and conclude that saving the planet (and ourselves) won't mean giving anything up. "It's OK, Bruce says I don't have to live in a yurt after all." There's nothing wrong with the Manifesto, but if it becomes just an excuse for more complacency, it'll do more harm than good.
"how does one justify the endless shiny gadget reviews on one hand, and this common-sense approach to purchasing on the other?"
How about the fact that, if people stopped buying crap that they don't need, the entire global economy would collapse quickly and completely? Forget Great Depression. Think more the fall of the Roman Empire. Or the Aztec, where cities disappear into the forest. How many jobs do you think that the world would need if people bought only the essential amount of clothing, cars, technology, etc, and kept them until they wore out instead of buying a newer fashion or a shiner model? The majority of the world's jobs, both manufacturing and service, are about crap that we don't need. If the world stopped with the crap consuming, that majority of the world's jobs would disappear overnight.
The artist Michael Landy famously destroyed all his possessions (except his cat).
In theory, I operate a one-in-one-out policy with books (disposal via giving to friends, ebay, & charity shops); in practice, it is failing miserably.
All my purchases are filtered first with the question, "Can I protect this from rats easily?" This is especially true when I go to the mall to clean out Foot Locker. :)
Oh, and @11 Mojave:
Bruce Sterling is not "a blogger".
@14 Airshowfan:
The Japanese seem to do minimalism right. Also, I have thousands of books and decided to get rid of them. But first save them on an ebook :)
I've always called this as snobbery, in the sense of reclaiming the word. Why *wouldn't* you be a snob about everything you own?
Next stop for Cory: Basho simple life haikus.
Delight, then sorrow,
aboard the cormorant
fishing boat
Happy unloading!
Sorry! I actually meant to paste:
How reluctantly
the bee emerges from deep
within the peony
I'm a big time supporter of non-consumerism, so don't take this as an argument for buying tons of stuff.
I notice consistently that non-materialism and arguments for downsizing once's possessions are pretty exclusively advocated by middle- and upper-class people. One of the reasons that getting rid of possessions is so easy for those people is that buying stuff is always in reach for them. It's not particularly painful or scary to give away their wardrobe or their furniture, because if it ever turns out they need more clothes or chairs they can go buy some.
Accumulating lots of stuff often serves as a buffer for poor people. If their shoes wear out, they have other pairs on hand, which is good because they might not be able to afford buying a new pair right then. Same thing goes for lots of possessions. You have more alarm clocks than you need, probably more food stocked away somewhere. Probably a lot of mostly useless odds and ends that will come in handy some day when something breaks or needs to be replaced, because buying a new [whatever] will be prohibitively expensive.
Yes, having to have all that junk to store and manage is annoying and a drain on one's energy. But the interesting point is that from my perspective the ability to get rid of it is actually a luxury.
This is not to say that non-materialism is bankrupt, but I think it's important to remember both that it's generally only within reach for certain classes, and also that it can paradoxically result in /more/ consumption if you end up buying things more often and getting rid of them quicker in the interest of minimizing unnecessary possessions.
Or create.
Hear, hear Zikzak.
Cory, I commend your effort for its symbolic value, but a man with many possessions living in one city has a waaaaaay smaller footprint than a man with no possessions living in three cities.
Get rid of one home (eliminating the need to fly there) and you can probably in good conscience fill one of the others with ginormous amounts of junk, and throw in a mondo jacuzzi, a gas-guzzler, and all the appliances you could possibly want.
Make sure you get the stainless steel ones. You wouldn't want to accumulate fridge magnets.
Although I agree with a lot of what you say (and indeed, live it - I have extremely minimal 'junk' sitting around and have no interest in acquiring more), I have two points:
1) You're wealthy. A large part of the reason I don't have much clutter is because I couldn't afford to. Granted, I know plenty of people that are poor and surrounded with junk, but most of it is just that, junk. As poster #1 hinted, I'd imagine you're not so much tossing out moldering filth so much as choosing to have fewer nice things than you currently do.
2) "For instance, you cannot possibly spend too much money on a bed." I don't know about Britain, but in America you can spend thousands and thousands of dollars on a big piece of foam. While I understand that your point is that something that is actually valuable to you should be of good quality (and here again, I agree. I buy comfortable, long-wearing shoes, and if they're expensive, so be it), there are some cases where you can just be blatantly ripped off. Or, diminishing returns may make a minor improvement cost $1000 more (*cough* Buying a Mac *cough) and thus dubiously justifiable - unless, of course, you're wealthy. Then it's still dubiously justifiable, but at least affordable. ;)
once upon a time, rural sensibilities were pack-rat thrifty since space was essentially all you had for free. The urban model constrained quantity by selection for quality when space became expensive. Look at Japan; compared to say, North America, consumer goods are of higher quality since people won't buy crap since often there is no room for spares or the obsolete. Or at least it used to be.
If we refuse to buy things unless they have sufficient quality to serve their putative purpose for a long time, then the dollar store/walmart approach of almost free, inferior goods will wither.
If only durable goods are purchased, local economies become more competitive - and employment generating.
Another tradition that has largely vanished is the returning to vendor of defective/inferior cheap goods. If every piece-of-crap one dollar,two dollar item were returned for refund (as was the case a generation or two ago), there would soon be no crap on the market.
objects have no intrinsic value
objects have no intrinsic value
objects have no intrinsic value
repeat after me
He wants to help the environment, yet his lifestyle involves numerous airplane flights. If his location on the planet is completely arbitrary, why doesn't he pick one place and stay put?
It's obvious that Sterling's philosophy is still determined by his personal preferences, rather than an objective philosophy.
@#14: What would people think when I invite them over to a mostly-empty place? What would WOMEN think?
I feel like I'm qualified to answer this question, given that (a) I've had to inspect hundreds of occupied apartments, and (b) I'm a woman.
I wouldn't react badly to a mostly-empty space at all. The most unpleasant living spaces I've been in are the cluttered ones, where you're not quite sure how you can relate to the space.
Also: putting up a few large pictures (or framed posters) will make your space feel occupied rather than empty.
(This all being said, I'm a terrible clutter-monkey and have been fruitlessly trying to clean out my cluttered apartment for over a year now.)
Darren, you're just scared. If the economy fails the have nots, and also fails the have's... what's worth saving? Momentum?
My favorite piece of excellence is the electric-assist bicycle. If you get a nice lithium battery, a typical bolt-on motor kit can take you more than 30 miles at 20-25 mph, and you're not all tired and sweaty at the end of your trip, even if there's a big hill in your way. Lead batteries are worse for the environment and don't have nearly the range, but are cheaper than lithium if you don't need to go very far. Either way, the electricity needed to power a bike costs less than $0.10 per Kwh in most parts of the US (at 40-50 miles/Kwh), and it's far more efficient than an internal combustion engine.
"1. There is no global warming, or if there is, it's natural"
I think there's a general consensus that global warming exits, but I think a lot of scientists are at least open to the possibility that global warming is a naturally occurring phenomenon.
Claiming that global warming is anthropogenic is almost as stupid as claiming it's natural. The system is just too complex to know for sure. We don't have another planet to experiment on and the time scales we're dealing with are HUGE anyway.
Of course, in terms of risk assessment, assuming it's "unnatural" has minimal consequences, while assuming the opposite could cost us the habitability of the planet...so it's best to err on the side of caution.
Very good points Cory. Your post fits in nicely with a (old but good) documentary I was watching last night. It's called 'The Barbarian West' and discusses western progress in World History. The last, perhaps, quarter of the documentary talks about western culture's successes and excesses and frames further progress of western culture as critically dependent on learning to deal with our excesses and their effects on our planet and ourselves. The film goes on to discuss the ideas of Francis Bacon who cited technology as being the progressor of future western culture...which is precisely the idea tacit in your post.
If you haven't seen it, it's a wonderful documentary and while not earth-shakingly profound, it provides a cultural context that pretty much everyone should be aware of.
Enjoy.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=181966379384354506
Randomcat:
Why buy an electric bicycle? Buy a very nice (well built and, dare I say, beautiful) bicycle and learn how to maintain and fix it yourself. Every time you go up that big hill, you get stronger and it gets easier.
Each trip puts you in better shape and makes you more prepared for when the zombies come.
"Of course, in terms of risk assessment, assuming it's "unnatural" has minimal consequences, while assuming the opposite could cost us the habitability of the planet...so it's best to err on the side of caution."
But if we act without understanding, do we not have an equal chance of worsening the situation as we have of ameliorating it?
This is why my wife and I sunk tons of dough into a nice set of Shun knives. We use them several times a day and they'll last forever. Same thing goes for our All-Clad cookware. Of course now we don't have any money . . . but whatever! We have COOKWARE!
This sounds a lot like 'Consume as much as you like, just don't keep the evidence.'
I don't mind it as an aesthetic but I don't think it's a useful way to live if you are trying to address or even helpfully acknowledge global warming. You're kidding yourself.
Also, encouraging people to live globally - as in, actually physically moving between countries frequently - is crazy consumptive and isn't going to be a sustainable activity any time soon. Don't pretend you aren't vastly over consuming your share of our natural resources.
@airshowfan #14, think of it the other way: make sure everything in your space is something you'd be comfortable showing off to a date.
@ G Jules;
Pick you up at 8? ;]
@ Takuan:
Interesting point.
@ Zikzak;
Interesting point. I was going to reply to G Jules saying that I always have posters up on my walls, since as a photographer I like to have up some diverse examples of the beauty I have captured (flowers, air show air-planes, sky-lines, eclipses, dogs...). This illustrates your point: I can say this because, to me, posters are perfectly disposable since I can afford the cost of making new ones (something I do once every few months). For some people, $7 for a store-bought poster or $20 for a huge print of a digital image (plus mounting, which is even more expensive) is not trivial, so they would not get rid of posters so easily, or see "Just put some posters up on the walls" as an easy solution. Interesting. I need more frequent reminders that, even though I do not feel "rich", I have more money than the vast majority of this planet's population...
@ a bunch of people:
Y'know, I'm an environmentalist (I produce almost no trash, drive an efficient car and only when necessary, etc), but I see this minimalism thing as just a way to be happier, one of those things that hurts at first but then pays off, like diet and exercise, or having a strictly regular sleep schedule. To me, environmental benefits (if any) are a fortunate side effect. Heck, this minimalism thing is actually very selfish, since if we all did it the economy would collapse, as a lot of commenters have pointed out.
All I need is this thermos. ...And this lamp.
How is "living in a log cabin and . . . never getting a plane again" an impossible standard? 100 years ago it was quite common.
I just spent 5 days at the Watermill Center on Long Island (working on developing Klingon Opera with the Klingon Terran Research Ensemble). The Watermill Center is a performance research centre founded by director Robert Wilson and is the epitome of de-cluttered living. Every object in the centre serves a purpose, whether that purpose be useful or beautiful. I'm back home now and am more inspired than ever to get rid of stuff - being in an uncluttered space leaves so much headspace to do other work.
My family was recently going through the last of the seemingly endless stores of crap that my Grandmother had packed away in a 2500 sq foot house between the years of 1947 and 1997. While we threw out much more than we kept, I've got to admit that some of the crap we came across was fun from a historical perspective and there was a fun element to discovering ephemeral things like a promotional map of the Eisenhower Freeway System from Esso Oil, or more valuable things like an old neon-trimmed clock from my grandfather's haberdashery which closed in the late 1950s.
I have a hard time imagining that much of the stuff that surrounds us today from Best Buy and Wal-Mart will have the same "gee-wiz" factor to our grandchildren, and I'm certainly not going to store it up just in case. But as a former thrift-store junkie, I must honor the pack rats among us. The ones who manage to preserve old cool stuff are curators of private museums, and in some instances have been the sole sources of culturally important artifacts like radio program airchecks, kinescope films, etc.
Thank goodness people like Rick Prelinger & Mr. Jalopy are around who are willing to live the "maximalist" lifestyle :). Boing Boing would be a much poorer read without them. Not all consumption (or pack rat behavior or whatever) is mindless.
A. There are some nice aspects to the rant, but some of it sounds like "high falutin' justification for stuff I like". Like the multitool. (For me an iPhone, my info-multitool, is much more important)
B. How the hell does anyone figure out what kind of mattress to invest in? Even going for a catnap in a store doesn't seem like it would really tell. I'm toying with getting a $150 tempurpedic mattress cover-- splitting the difference I guess
Oh and
C. man books and to a lesser extent, old video games and dvds. You don't know when the value of any one of these is gonna suddenly pop up for you, so it's hard to weight against the cost of keeping it around.
Minimalism does not equal sustainable. That is, if you declutter your life and keep only the very best it still doesn't address your dependency on an unsustainable culture.
If one's lifestyle depends on frequent air travel what happens when that goes away or more likely becomes too expensive? If your lifestyle depends on just in time delivery of foodstuffs what happens when the shelves are empty? If your lifestyle depends on the global shipment of goods from around the world what happens when those companies can no longer afford the credit to make those goods available to you?
Minimalism is a stylistic choice, a privilege of the wealthy. It does nothing to address the underlying problem.
If it is true that governments will not act on global warming until it's too late and that it may already be too late, then I guess one should plan for the worst. You're not going to like the worst.
Do you know what the consequences of a 4 degree C rise in global temps would be?
Nobody's asking you to save the world. Do it for yourself.
The first few weeks it's liberating, even exhilerating. The next year or so it's confusing. You find yourself needing or wanting things you no longer have. I walked away from it with few regrets, knowing there would come times when I would regret it, but it gradually gets easier and some of the initial feelings of freedom return.
Many years ago I visited a Zen retreat and saw a Japanese rock garden. I knew then that I would some day, if I lived long enough, try to do something like that.
The decision was, finally, an aesthetic one.
(I must learn to Photoshop a laptop for this guy:
http://www.andrew-may.com/monk.htm )
Vernor's note makes most sense for folks who are essentially global nomads, as both he and Cory seem to be. It's always made sense for nomads, whether the shiny 21st-century variety or the historic preindustrial variety, to travel light.
But not everyone is, or should be, a nomad. Those of us who aren't might do better using different criteria for our choices.
There are folks in my family, for instance, who make their living by farming their own land, which is about as rooted as you can get. And yes, they keep around a fair amount of Stuff-- substantially more than Vernor's note recommends. But there's good reason for this. They're in a low-margin business, they've got plenty of land that the Stuff can occupy, and they're mechanically inclined enough that they can use the Stuff for parts or backup when they need it. (If something breaks, they might not be able to afford buying a replacement, or a replacement might not be available anywhere close enough.)
Folks who are rooted in a community may keep Stuff around for the benefit of the community as well as themselves. If I keep around more books than I personally need, and my neighbor keeps around more tools than he personally needs, we can share our Stuff with each other and the rest of our neighborhood to good end. Or we may know that our circumstances are likely to change in the future-- not necessarily by catastrophe, but by the changes that come about simply from kids, aging, and job market shifts-- and keep some appropriate extra Stuff for future contingencies. (This makes more sense, of course, if you have reasons to not move around much.)
There are plenty of reasons for lots of us to be shedding more Stuff than we do, or not acquiring it in the first place. Vernor's note is a useful starting point to help us focus our investments in useful Stuff, and divest ourselves of Stuff that's more trouble than it's worth. But we need to look at this issue from our own perspectives, and the perspectives of where we live.
(Sorry, I meant "Bruce", not "Vernor", in the last message. I think "Veridian" was making me assume V-names too freely...)
Start out with less and you end up with less. This phenomenon in choice theory is well established in social psychology. Barry Schwartz even made it one of his main points in the excellent Paradox of Choice.
The phenomenon applies to everything from cars to computers to cocker spaniels. For now, we'll stick to something everyone can identify with: living arrangements. Let's say Person A and Person B are each presented with a fully furnished one-bedroom with separate kitchen. The floor space is the same, but the similarities end there.
Person A is given a pad of P-Diddy proportions, complete with an HDTV 5.1 Blu-Ray rig and leather sofa. Person B, on the other hand, gets the Spartan Special: everything needed and nothing else. Each person is then given a master list of options, to add or subtract from their initial package. I think you know where this is going. In the end, Person A never subtracts enough options to come close to Person B's lean setup.
Unfortunately, most of us are some version of Person A. And short of pulling a Tyler Durden and blowing up the apartment, it can be pretty hard to escape this quandary.
Me? I got lucky. I put all my stuff in storage, packed a suitcase, and went traveling across the States in search for another city. When I found "the one", I dropped my bags, found a apartment, and have been living a suitcase-sized life ever since. Simplicity was never voluntary for me. I had to stumble upon it.
For those faced with minimizing rather than starting over, my story isn't much help. But it does highlight the tricky meaning of the "voluntary" aspect of simple living.
As a counseling psychologist friend has pointed out, you can still simulate the starting-over experience and with excellent results:
1. Put everything but the essentials into bins and put those in a closet, basement or, if you want to be really bold, local storage unit.
2. For the next six months, retrieve items as necessary.
3. Donate or sell everything left in the bins after this time.
But remember: material simplicity is a means, not a goal.
A simple office will help you focus and alleviate stress. That's it. It will not turn you into a watermark novelist, crusading humanitarian, brilliant programmer, or successful entrepreneur.
So while you're binning your material life as you know it, don't forget to give your intellectual, emotional, and social lives the same scrutiny. After you've dusted your hands from boxing all those Beanie Babies that you're sure will be worth something once the 90s comes back....stop. Make yourself a nice cup of tea, curl up in your favorite chair and write out what you are, and what you want to become. Be selfless in asking these questions: whose lives do you envision you'll make better with your time here on earth?
This mental clarity will transcend all other forms of simplicity. The rest is just details.
#33 mdh
"Darren you're just scared. If the economy fails the have nots, and also fails the have's... what's worth saving? Momentum?"
I don't think I understand your point-- but I'm not "scared", I just know that the economy of the modern industrial world is based on conspicuous consumption. Let’s say that there was a sudden sea change in the attitude of the world’s consumers to not use or purchase things that they don’t need.
Look at clothing, for example-- people buy new clothes not just because their old clothes no longer fit or are worn out but because fashions change. Lots of it gets simply thrown away. Every thrift store I go into and every yard sale I pass has piles of clothing that people are trying to sell. Most of it probably isn’t, and eventually even that is thrown away. Imagine that people’s attitude about clothes changes— you ignore fashion, wear what you have until it wears out or no longer fits. Clothes that don’t fit, you sell or give away— and someone actually takes it, and wears it. You look to buying from the VAST amounts of used clothing around you before resorting to buying new clothes. That would help the environment. But it would cost millions of jobs raising the animals and plants (for natural fibers) making the thread, making the cloth, sewing the clothes and shipping the clothes. It would cost jobs for the people marketing the clothes and the stores selling the clothes.
Look at cars— how many people use the car that they have until it is no longer economical to repair it, say, 10, 20, 30 years? And how many keep a car just a few years and get rid of it just because they want something shiny and new? Using cars much longer and making far fewer of them would cost millions of jobs in every stage of production (though new jobs would be made in maintaining older cars). The same can be said of all consumer electronics and appliances.
What about toys for your kids? Do they really need all that crap peddled to them on cartoons and commercials? Of course not. But stop buying all that junk, and millions of jobs will disappear.
And the same is true for everything that we don’t need. Cut out all conspicuous consumption (all consumption that is for something that you want, not something that you need) and you will be cutting out the majority of the word’s jobs and material wealth. Entire product categories would disappear, and others would need far fewer workers. And it isn’t just jobs manufacturing those products that would be lost— jobs in shipping, marketing, technical support, and areas I’m not thinking of would be lost, too.
And what jobs would take their place? If far fewer people are needed to create and support a smaller volume and variety of consumer goods, what are the multiple millions of unemployed to do? Before the industrial revolution (and still, in pre-industrial areas of the world) most people spent their lives working small plots of land to produce their own food on a subsistence level. But most food now is produced on large farms, and a majority of the world’s population live in cities. Without jobs, how would those people pay for the true essentials? The majority of the world’s population is surplus above what is needed to produce and maintain the actual needs for the population to survive. Would those people simply be allowed to starve? Would the minority with jobs be required to support the majority without them? Would we resort to a forced type of protectionism, with large farms and assembly lines intentionally broken down into smaller, distributed, less efficient and more expensive localized operations to artificially support more jobs?
Conspicuous consumption creates wealth, creates jobs, and creates infrastructure to support large populations. Get rid of conspicuous consumption, and you loose all three.
#30 tomic
"objects have no intrinsic value
objects have no intrinsic value
objects have no intrinsic value
repeat after me"
Neither do people.
Neither do people.
Neither do people.
"Value" is a subjective, artificial human concept and has nothing to do with physical reality.
But stop buying all that junk, and millions of jobs will disappear.
Oddly, when I was growing up, before we had air or gravity, people didn't have much stuff and only one member of a household worked. And most households were substantially larger than now. So, Dad worked and Mom and Granny and your five siblings stayed home and enjoyed life. Now we have enormous amounts of useless, soul-sucking greed-debris and every adult is considered lazy if he or she doesn't work 50-plus hours per week.
Include me out. Yes, jobs will disappear. So will the need for immense quantities of disposal income used to buy singing trout plaques and pet rocks. Why do you think they call it 'junk'? It's just an addiction.
You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.
Huh. I was a Virdian Curate or Archbishop or something, and I didn't get this note mailed to me.
@NOEN - Do you know what the consequences of a 4 degree C rise in global temps would be?
I do, but I'm a minimalist.
@Darren, as I seem to have said in three threads today, the economy is quite a Juggernaut. also, I don't have kids to buy toys for but I do buy my nieces and nephews books and microscopes and lego's.
I want to thank you for this posting. I struggle with the gadgets/simplify dilemma. I am trying hard to learn to admire rather than acquire. On a couple recent vacations, I visited some fabulous places and, as often happens, ended up in the gift shop on the way out. I made a conscious effort to go straight for the most expensive, most elaborate items in the stores. Not to buy, but to continue the admiration experience, enjoying the artistry and ingenuity of the work. I bought almost nothing. If only I could remember this feeling in my day-to-day life, and not end up sitting in a cubicle surrounded by worthless plastic toys that were good for a laugh and nothing else.
But I hear folks about books. Holy carp. Sure, I work at a giant library, I can get almost anything anytime, but these are my BOOKS, man!
But I hear folks about books. Holy carp. Sure, I work at a giant library, I can get almost anything anytime, but these are my BOOKS, man!
I can relate to that.
I went through a total and utter 'cleanup' of most of my possessions when I divorced 5 years ago and had to leave pretty much everything behind except my cat, a few pieces of clothing and a few trinkets with huge sentimental value given by my mother. It was actually very liberating to see that life did not end once I had next to nothing. It also was an empowering feeling to see that your own value is not reflected by your possessions' value (even if too many people foolishly believe so). It was very practical too, because the next few moves I went through, I could do in a few hours by foot(or in a single trip with a friend's small car).
I didn't bother getting new furniture and only a bit of clothing to replace the old, worn pieces. But books? I don't know what is the thing with books, but I've spent more money on them in the past years than on any other products combined.
Gotta have my books.
Antinous:
"Oddly, when I was growing up, before we had air or gravity, people didn't have much stuff and only one member of a household worked."
Yes. And the people who make the junk that is consumed now were living in crushing poverty in 3rd world countries, or crushing poverty in the US. When I grew up, we worried where our food for the rest of the week would come from, and if the power would be cut off before the next paycheck. If you never experienced living from paycheck to paycheck, with even a few days of lost work a potential disaster, then you have no idea about how important low-wage jobs producing junk matter. Again, there just are not enough NEEDS to support employment of all people that need jobs.
"Yes, jobs will disappear. So will the need for immense quantities of disposal income used to buy singing trout plaques and pet rocks"
And with the disappearing jobs, so too will disappear the ability of the ability of the people who had those jobs to feed themselves or keep a roof over their heads. When jobs disappear aren't replaced by new ones, lives are destroyed.
But don't worry-- you'll see for yourself soon enough when the US economy continues to crash and burn and millions of people drop into destitution because of disappearing jobs.
Nobody ever said that detox was fun.
Antinous
Oddly, when I was growing up, before we had air or gravity, people didn't have much stuff and only one member of a household worked.
Luxury! We had to make our own air, worked 28 hours a day, father beat us till we were black and blue, had only gravel for breakfast, and we were thankful!
Off course, I had only one resident parent, who worked 70 hours a week and I did all the house and yard work. We were trendsetters.
I'll become an indentured servant broker. Scoop up the destitute and bind them legally to work for a dollar an hour (and a dollar for me), a bunk in the pens and a bowl of gruel. Just need a little working capital...
Seriously now, drug dealer is more realistic. Speed.
The problem with the theory of anthropogenic global warming is that is uses, as its very foundation, the axiom that the external inputs to our Earth's atmosphere are constant- that is to say that solar conditions do not effect planetary temperature.
Yet, the past two years have had an unusual number of worldwide records for cold snaps- sea ice and glaciers are growing, "hot spots" used to say October 08 was the warmed month on record have been shown to have fraudulently used September's data for large area's or Russia- this Oct in the US was the 38th COLDEST on record. This cold spell coincides with a nearly complete lack of sunspots and associated solar flares, the exact solar conditions which scientists who "deny" global warming was man-made theorized as being responsible.
Probably it is not as simple as either of these theories. Probably hundreds of different things, some man-made and some not, are causing warming and cooling of our planet. But I once supported global warming theories and I now wonder if we aren't really headed for a "little ice age" instead.
BTW, why do you dis living simply Cory? I can't figure that... I live in a rural, off-grid home built largely from recycled materials and only drive my car (admittedly an SUV, my road has no blacktop) once or twice a week, etc. Somehow you portray my lifestyle as being impractical? BTW, there are a bunch of Buddhist monks up the hill from me.
Somebody really needs to tell me right now what the hell Bruce sleeps on.
@ #37 posted by Boba Fett Diop:
1) There is a mile-long 12% grade hill in my way
2) I am old enough that my knees won't take a lot of abuse, like for example mile-long 12% grades.
3) It is not always practical for me to pedal 40 miles+ per day round trip
4) Some places where I go there's no shower available afterward
5) Long workouts sometimes need to be followed by a day or two of rest
6) Sometimes I'm injured but still need transportation
7) electric bikes are super cool
8) I do have a regular bike, maintain it myself, and often go on 20+ mile rides. One of those was part of a triathlon, earlier this year. But thanks for making the assumption that I am lazy and don't know anything about bikes.
I suspect some of us may be mis-reading Bruce. It's not about a minimal life-style - he even explicitly rails against "economization"! It's about making sure that the stuff you own is the right stuff for you to own - whether for aesthetic, emotional or practical reasons.
If you own something, and you don't want it, and it gets in your way, get rid of it!
Mr. Sterling's words are extremely valuable. I can attest that the simple advice offered in this essay has been my guiding philosophy for at least the last 3 years and it works.
Thebes
"The problem with the theory of anthropogenic global warming is that is uses, as its very foundation, the axiom that the external inputs to our Earth's atmosphere are constant"
Do you seriously believe that no scientist has stopped to wonder if solar forcing might contribute to climate change? A quick search of Real Climate or other such site for the terms solar forcing or sun spots should give you plenty of information. It isn't that hard to find. Secondly, a lot of denialists seem to believe that research scientists think like engineers. They don't.
"Sea ice and glaciers are growing". False or misleading. Sea ice is growing because the north pole is shrinking. Antarctic ice sheets are growing because the glacial ice flows have increased. Remember, Antarctica is a continent, the north pole is not. Ice flowing off the continent and onto the ocean is what you'd expect from warming.
"This Oct in the US was the 38th COLDEST on record." Weather is not climate and the only fraud is in your source. "This cold spell coincides with a nearly complete lack of sunspots" Solar forcing is well known and accounted for in the current models. Last time I checked it is thought to account for about 10-12% of observed warming.
"Probably it is not as simple as either of these theories." Yeah, probably. In fact it's probably complicated enough to merit a Ph.D. as a separate discipline. Let's call it "Climatology" ok? I encourage you to write to Nature with your stunning observation that there may be many factors that contribute to warming.
"I now wonder if we aren't really headed for a "little ice age" instead." No, we're not.
Addicted to books? No problem! Gandhi to the rescue:)
"If simplicity of living is a valid principle, there is one important precaution and condition of its application. I can explain it best by something which Mahatma Gandhi said to me. We were talking about simple living and I said that it was easy for me to give up most things but that I had a greedy mind and wanted to keep my many books. He said, "Then don't give them up. 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, or when it seems to interfere with that which is more greatly desired." It is interesting to note that this advice agrees with modern Western psychology of wishes and suppressed desires. This also substantiates what we said near the beginning of our discussion, that the application of the principle of simplicity is for each person or each family to work out sincerely for themselves."
-Richard Gregg 'The Value of Voluntary Simplicity' (1936)
http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0304spiritpsych/030409simplicity/SimplicityFrame.html
Is this the future? Nag, nag, nag? I know prophets act holier than thou but do they have to be so annoying?
We're off topic now. I thought this thread was about how Cory needed to mail me some books.
Is this thing on?
Darren,
Yes, if people stopped buying "junk" the "junk" industry (and probably all other "industries")would collapse, as would deforestation, massive air/water/soil pollution, and mass species extirpation. The need for a livable planet trumps job-loss anyday.
but for the record I have no faith that enough people would actually give up their "junk" for this to happen voluntarily.
Robert @ #20: Bruce Sterling has a blog:
Beyond the Beyond
Aside from stockpiling free children's hand-me-down clothing (kids' bodies just keep changing sizes, dangit), I see much of Bruce's post that is urgently, ruthlessly applicable to me. Right behind me here are many stacks dead hard drives awaiting young'uns with screwdrivers to harvest those rare earth magnets, and outmoded servers piled high in the closet that won't fetch more than $20 on eBay. [sigh]
Still, it's hard for me to visualize surviving a Kunstlerian Long Emergency if I'm going to get rid of my spare whats-its when my original whats-it is beyond repair. Nothing short of hypnosis is probably going to get my scrounger's viewpoint overhauled entirely. I concede that decluttering is nearly all for the good. Please just don't postulate for me what I could have gotten on eBay for that original Mac IIFX prototype that I insisted we donate to some dang city school eons ago before most of us had ever heard of eBay.
This last post from the Viridian Pope has been my most-forwarded-email of the month. Godspeed you Bruce. Keep calling it like you see it.
goes off to inspect that multi-tool currently in the glovebox...
NEON,
how's that Kool-Aid?
I notice that you decline to actually rebutt Thebes's comment with any facts.
Actually Thebes was right in pretty much all they said, and in fact the global temperature trend by 3 of the 4 major sources is flat. Since 2002 - 2003 the trend is probably downward. This is pretty much not in dispute except by data deniers. The notable exception is the discredited dataset from GISS (home of The Catastrophist General).
And of course the ice coverage world wide IS higher than the past few years. Coverage on the Antarctic has been incerasing for years and the Arctic is up 30% on last year and is now within a standard deviation of the average coverage. Globally ++.
Now, I know you know these statements are facts, so your reasons for denying them are odd.
However these things in and of themselves do not mean that we shouldn't care for our precious environment. I reuse whatever I can, recycle what I can't and conserve water scrupulously for example. I think the non-consumerism aspect of the head post is an important topic to discuss.
None of this has anything to do with Global Warming (sic) and Climate Change (redundant since climate always changes). Climate change abatement is a goldmine for emissions traders and carpetbaggers which takes our eye off of real issues like actual pollution, overfishing, forest degradation, other land use issues, global poverty etc.
It's a shame you are helping spread the disinformation. Oh, and I don't need a PhD in Climatology - I have one in a non-modelling-based discipline with a bit more scientific rigour.
Thanks for listening. Please think critically - find data on your own and evaluate it.
DMS, save your breath.
Depending upon who responds first, the rebuttal to your argument will be:
a) Hope your logic doubles as a flotation device.
b) You're a shill for Exxon/Shell/Big Carbon.
c) You've been duped by shills for Exxon/Shell/Big Carbon.
d) You're too simple to understand the science behind this.
e) The scientific consensus is that you're wrong.
f) I just spent $X buying carbon credits, which makes me right.
g) Even if it might not be true, what harm could come from altering the earth's CO2 balance, just to be safe?
Been there.
there is a price to pay for erring on the side of caution. This is undeniable. It is also not the worst thing.
There's a fourth stupidity of global warming:
#4 Believing that technology will save us from global warming.
Like anything, the gadgetry has to be deployed intelligently. We've built our economy on the assumption that we need more stuff. That's a dangerous assumption. Technology designed with that in mind probably won't help.
Conservation is easier, less expensive, and still satisfies the gadget itch. If we find ways to use less energy, instead of trying to use more different energy, we'll probably make it through okay.
DMS,
Issues with your hostility aside, why should NOEN attempt to comprehensively rebut Thebes' claims? The latter didn't supply anything more than a junk anecdote about temperatures in the USA (interesting that, as "USA" is is a political feature -- one that seems emblematic of the poster's parochial outlook).
NOEN was at least nice enough to supply a reference to a well-respected web site with interesting arguments and information. So do take a chill pill.
Regarding "technology", a lot can be read into that word.
Too often what people infer by "technology saving us" is understood as "the perfect technology" - the technology that will be convenient, pretty, and little cost to one's preferred lifestyle or level of consumption.
Technology can, indeed, save us... but not if we wait for something futuristic or a panacea. City-building involves technology, for instance, and is probably one of the few things that will put a major dent in the ecological footprint of 6+ billion large mammals. But then, hatred of urbanity runs wild in our popular culture (esp. since the 1950s); Its a big issue we're going to have to address... lots of people with different backgrounds living efficiently in close proximity.
The alternative to 'urban technology' of course, is living in close proximity in shanty towns after the costly suburban/exurban support systems crumble.
We don't have much of a technological problem in global warming and other impacts we are making. The technology is here. What we have is a social/cultural attitude problem that has to be adjusted before we can put a whole raft of technologies to work. Misanthropy is incompatible with the environment.
I think Super Chicken had it right when he discovered that Global Warming was caused by people moving Elephants around the globe, causing the poles to shift. Don't give away all your STUFF, send the Elephants back to India!
The Unusual Suspect,
wow - and there came TAKUAN right on cue with your #8.
Burz,
thanks for your comment. Fair enough on the civility issue. (However) I frankly don't consider Real Climate a well-respected anything. They are a shill for Big Carbon Abatement, and quoting them has the same effect on me as on others if I chose to "reference" the sites of Watts and McIntyre.
The cooling data and the increase in Arctic ice cover data are there for all to see on the issue. For example ice cover is within a standard deviation of the 30-year mean at the moment
[url=http://eva.nersc.no/vhost/arctic-roos.org/doc/observations/images/ssmi1_ice_area.png]here[/url]
The indoctrinated choose not to absorb data like these or just use an unrelated argument to "refute" them (@79/Unusual Suspect actually captured it pretty well).
Again, you're right about the hostility though. I think I'll take a Bex and have a lie down.
oops