How Do I Achieve Voluntary Simplicity?
The art of "simple living"... or "how to save the planet Earth from the excesses of its inhabitants"

Voluntary Simplicity Offers Perhaps the Only Real Solution to Save Planet Earth from Being Unthinkingly "Consumed" by Its Voracious Inhabitants

".... Never before has the entire human family been entrusted with the task of working together to imagine and then consciously build a sustainable, just, and compassionate future. Seeds growing for the past generation in the garden of simplicity are now blossoming into the springtime of their relevance for the Earth. May the garden thrive...." Duane Elgin, The Garden of Simplicity

"....The push toward simpler ways of living was clearly described in 1992 when over 1,600 of the world's senior scientists, including a majority of the living Nobel laureates in the sciences, signed an unprecedented 'Warning to Humanity.' In this historic statement, they declared that, 'human beings and the natural world are on a collision course . . . that may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know'... 'A great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated.'

"Roughly a decade later came a related warning from 100 Nobel Prize winners who said that 'The most profound danger to world peace in the coming years will stem not from the irrational acts of states or individuals but form the legitimate demands of the world's dispossessed.'...." a passage from "The Garden of Simplicity by Duane Elgin which offers 10 Distinct but interrelated ways to achieve the kind of simplicity that will be required to rescue planet Earth.

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Historic Expressions of Simplicity

"Our life is frittered away by detail... Simplify, simplify." Henry Thoreau

"Give me neither poverty nor wealth," Proverbs 30:8

"He who knows he has enough is rich" Lao Tzu

According to WikiPedia "... Simple living (voluntary simplicity) is a lifestyle characterized by minimizing the 'more is better' pursuit of wealth and consumption. Adherents may choose simple living for a variety of personal reasons, such as spirituality, health, increase in 'quality time' for family and friends, reducing their personal ecological footprint, stress reduction, personal taste or frugality. E. F. Schumacher summarized it by saying, 'Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.'

Others cite socio-political goals aligned with the anti-consumerist movement, including conservation, social justice and sustainable development. According to Duane Elgin, '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.'...."

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