I began here and continued here a discussion of the Scott and Helen Nearing book, Living the Good Life. The Nearings attempted to live a more simple, sustainable life back mid-century. The story (which I'm just finishing) is extremely compelling and one I recommend - whether or not you have any intention of simplifying your life (but who amongst us doesn't dream of doing that these days?).
Another excerpt from their chapter on Livelihood:
Our practice was almost the exact opposite of the current one. Our consumer necessaries came mostly from the place, on a use basis. Comforts and conveniences came from outside the farm and had to be procured by barter or through cash outlays…
We endeavored to do as Robert Louis Stevenson advised in his Christmas sermon, “earn a little and spend a little less.” Food from the garden and wood from the forest were the product of our own time and labor. We paid no rent. Taxes were reasonable. We bought no candy, pastries, meat, soft drinks, alcohol, tea, coffee or tobacco. These seemingly minor items mount up and occupy a large place in the ordinary family’s budget. We spent little on clothes and knick-knacks. We lighted for fifteen years with kerosene and candles. We never had a telephone or radio. Most of our furniture was built in and hand made. We did our trading in town not more than twice in a month and then our purchases were scanty.
“Civilization,” said Mark Twain, “is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessaries.” A market economy seeks by ballyhoo to bamboozle consumers into buying things they neither need nor want, thus compelling them to sell their labor power as a means of paying for their purchases. Since our aim was liberation from the exploitation accompanying the sale of labor power, we were as wary of market lures as a wise mouse is wary of other traps.
So, does their simplicity strike you as beautifully appealing or appallingly spartan? Would you replace TV at night with storytelling, music-playing and/or dancing? Would you trade nearly all your stuff for just a bit more simplicity?
8 comments:
dan, i think that a lot of problems that we are currently searching solutions for (obesity, fear of the common man, general happiness) could be solved if we just decided to turn off our televisions and actually go and have REAL human interactions, like you said. but i think we've gotten to the point where some of us think we'd rather stayed plugged into the matrix rather than do something scary, like going to see a local band. kudos.
Thanks for stopping in, Ace. And now, a few words from our good friend, John Prine:
Blow up your TV
Throw away the paper
Move to the country
Build you a home
Plant a little garden
Eat a lotta peaches
And try to find Jesus
on your own.
Ya know, I'm moving to the Denver area sometime, when the Lord wills and I hear Him say "when," toi be with my wife. I've been thinking of John Belushi and "Continental Divide." I coluld sooo use some time away ... from .. everything...
Do you have the source for the Mark Twain passage you quoted? That looks to be some interesting reading considering the time that it was written to now.
I had borrowed the Good Life from the library, so I don't know off hand that Twain quote. Sorry.
The quotes Nearing put in the book were one of my favorite parts of it. He begins each chapter with a collection of quotes on the topic at hand, all from interesting, sometimes obscure, usually old sources.
Brian,
The Mark Twain quote is from a book published in 1927 by an editor named Johnson (don't remember first name) called More Maxims of Mark
Well, Dan, I'm always a bit disappointed that you best posts garner so few comments by way of discussion. I was just going to sit back and read what people had to say about your posit, but it seems to have turned out to be a shallow well.
Pity.
But I would add this, if I may: You have only touched on one half of Nearing's paradigm. Sure, he was very keen on very simple living. He didn't use much in he way of engines and machines, he dressed, ate, housed himself simply. He wrote by hand instead of using a typewriter, cut firewood by hand when he was 99 years old, and ate all his meals out of a wooden bowl with chopsticks.
But the reference point he used, the touchstone and measure, was that aimed to use no more than he could himself produce. It's a good measure. Otherwise if we just start eliminating things in order to have a simpler life, we might think we are doing something along Nearing's line of thinking when in fact we are not.
If we give up an auto and ride a bike, give up TV and the cable, give up frozen pizza from the mart, we might really be just like someone who has five Hummers and gives up three of them. Now with only two Hummers, they are doing their part to live simply, no? No.
To balance the equation, you have to compare what you use to what you produce. Nearing's bit was not so much that he went through a list of things he could live without. Rather, for example, he determined that he could not participate in the commercial food business and so he was only willing to expend the time and energy to grow a rather sparse vegetarian diet. That unwillingness to do more and at the same time refuse to traffic with the food industry determined what he ate (or gave up eating), not the other way around.
His question was not so much how much you could give up, but rather to what extent you can live with what you can bring about without exploiting and extracting it out of someone else.
Thanks, E. There's a lot to consider there.
I think we don't comment much about that which strikes us as obvious, but which we're not especially prepared to do ourselves.
Sort of a silent "amen," perhaps?
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