64 – Sustainable Simplicity

Editorial

For more information, visit our website at www.sofn.org.uk ISSN 1460-5244 © SOF, 2003 sof 64 March 2004 Contents 3 Editorial Articles 2 Laurie Michaelis commends sustainable living 8 Emma Orbach reflects on her sustainable spirituality 14 Richard Boeke introduces Huston Smith and his book The World's Religions Feature 11 Get to Know your Ecological Footprint Book Reviews 15 Stephen Mitchell and Paul Overend review Life, Life by Don Cupitt David Boulton reviews 19 The verb to be is everywhere irregular by Anne Ashworth 20 The Blasphemy Depot by Bill Cooke 21 Humanism: an Introduction by Jim Herrick News 21 Flotsam and Jetsam Regular 10 Postbag 23 Radical Theology Series - Part 9: Don Cupitt Cover Image Still Life of Apples in a Hat (1891) by Levi Wells Prentice (c. 1851 - 1935) Oil on canvas | Sustainable Simplicity "To achieve sustainable development and a higher quality of life for all people, states should reduce and eliminate unsustainable patterns of production and consumption..." Principle 8, The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, 1992 One way of considering religions is to see them as offering an analysis of the human condition and a consequent prescription for its betterment. For example, Siddhartha Gautama saw the world to be a place of ignorance and of suffering, sickness and death, and prescribed an eightfold path to an awakening that includes the acceptance of ETRE AY Ps ed ree 20% 80% Sources SOELIT Ag THE COnSUMER SOCIETY yy Consumerism is a recent sickness.

Whereas Henry Ford sought to increase production to make products affordable to match need, modern production far outstrips need and economic markets must foster wants and desires far in excess of need.

Producers therefore seek to create consumers’ dissatisfaction with their (i.e. our) weight, body hair, hair suffering and a way of moderation XK. via J colour, and signs of ageing, with their and mindfulness. Lao-Tsu accepted the Chinese view of life existing in a harmony of quiet and active energies (shine and rain, Yin and Yang), and prescribed a way, a Tao, to find harmony within. Paul of Tarsus took the world to be fallen and therefore in need of salvation, with humans sold into slavery to sin and needing a redeemer, and he prescribed faith in Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God. Viewed in this way, the survival of a religion can be taken as a testimony to the credibility of its analysis and interpretation of life, irrespective of creeds or practices.

An analysis of the human and global condition today reveals a deep social and personal sickness in need of a a deep social and personal sickness possessions and homes, and especially with their sex-life (to which it is suggested all the other dissatisfactions are related), thus commodifying sexual desire. People are shamed who haven't the latest mobile phone—a light version, with colour screen, built-in camera and internet access for immediate online shopping, for example—or the design and cut of “this season's” clothes, which makes last season’s out of date clothes disposable within a perpetual round of consumption. And consumerism’s manipulation begins with children, with advertisements for the latest toys and games, with brand identity on trainers (sneakers), and by sexualizing clothes from an ever earlier age, with thongs visible above low-cut jeans and short-cut tops for girls who are not even teenagers. Audiovisual stimulation, through computer games corrective, and requiring another religious response. This sickness is consumerism.

It is a sickness with three symptoms: individuals in the “developed” world who are unhappy and dissatisfied with themselves because they are manipulated to buy into impossible ideals and identities; the exploitation of cheap labour in developing economies that is not only unjust but also involves forced “economic adjustments” that are deeply painful and anti-democratic; and a damaged environment that is exploited for production and polluted by waste in a manner that is unsustainable. This environmental damage affects the whole world, including the poorest countries. and cable and satellite channels, creates a “default” mode of boredom in their absence, or when they fail to stimulate enough - as when an old computer game is not as exciting as the latest product. Consumerism creates restlessness by depriving children and adults of the space to think.

It is a sickness that grew with the failure of an alternative economics, with the failure and subsequent collapse of East European politics (so badly misnamed as “Communism”) and the fall of the Berlin Wall. But the human consequences of this sickness are devastating, and the environmental consequences are far more extensive than the damage perpetrated in the industrial and ColdWar era.

So] 64 March 2004 The extending of the economics and politics of consumerism has been achieved by various means, but in particular by pressure put on economically-deprived countries to extend the consumer market and create new investment opportunities. The deregulation and financial liberalization of the “Washington Consensus” was extended by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund which placed conditions on loans to indebted countries. Even the so-called debt relief advanced by Gordon Brown, in response to the Jubilee 2000 campaign, carried with it conditions of reform. Moreover, the investment in the “emerging markets” that result from trade liberalisation, in order to lower production costs and extend consumption, has been volatile. This is witnessed by the financial crashes of Mexico, East Asia, Russia and Argentina (where wages were reduced by 40%).

Dissatisfaction with the capitalist free market has been apparent from the end of November 1999, with protests on the streets against meetings of international government in Seattle, Washington, Millau, Melbourne, Prague, Seoul, Nice, Washington (again), Quebec City, Gothenburg, Genoa (for the G8 summit), Cancun and so on.

Among those protesting were environmentalists, who recognise that patterns of life in the West are already damaging the planet, and that devastating and irreversible consequences can be expected unless there is change.

Although the financial cost of products may be falling, goods and travel only seem to be cheaper because we disregard the damage to ecosystems and consumption of natural resources. Moreover, if other countries were to consume products like the West does, the rate of damage would simply increase. Augustine of Hippo once said, ‘It is better to have fewer wants than to have larger resources.’ But as resources are finite, it becomes absolutely necessary to have fewer wants. As Mohandas K. Gandhi once said of those who exploited his country, ‘It took Britain half the resources of the planet to achieve its prosperity. How many planets will a country like India require?’ Perhaps in George W. Bush’s mission to Mars is the recognition that America’s consumption already needs another planet. The environmental implications show the unsustainable nature of the neo-liberal economic theory that market growth (dependent on consumption) is the key to progress.

The ending of global capitalism is one prescription, but this attempt to readdress the underlying problems of the economic mechanisms misses the true sickness. The sickness is the consumption that motivates capitalism, and which capitalism fosters for the benefit of those who earn the most from it, the employees and executives, and the investors of private pensions or personal wealth.

What is needed is a life-changing vision, a vision based on positive value and alternative worth—a religious vision!

In most religious traditions, forgoing overindulgence has been a virtue, and there have been some who took this further, who stepped aside from society to live an alternative life and became an inspiration for others. Since Socrates, Diogenes (the forerunner of Stoicism) and Epicurus, who all influenced Western philosophy and religion, since the Buddha and Confucius in the Eastern traditions, discerning thinkers have valued detachment and simplicity. Consider the Early Christian hermits of the sof 64 March 2004 Egyptian and Palestinian deserts who sought to live religion uncorrupted by the Church’s alignment with Constantine and later Greek and Roman Empires. Think of the detachment of those who chose to live lives of holy simplicity - Bernard of Clairvaux, Francis of Assisi, Leo Tolstoy, the Zen master Dogen, the shrewd Hindu politician Gandhi, the philosopher Wittgenstein, or the Romanticist Henry David Thoreau. They did so for various reasons, but their responses each involved a life-changing religious commitment. Their choices for simplicity resulted in new perceptions. Simplicity and balance inspired the graceful, pure forms of Cistercian abbeys, Zen gardens and Amish furniture, for example; the wonder of nature for Francis and Thoreau; and silence before the unspeakable for Wittgenstein.

Today, our response to the sickness of consumerism needs to be a religious healing. This will involve choosing to be aware, reevaluating our lives and our society, and disengaging from consumerism in order to live with a sustainable simplicity. Not many of us find it possible to live lives of complete detachment from society and from consumerism, to follow the inspiring example of those who live in ‘intentional communities’ for religious or environmental reasons, but everyone can choose not to let consumerism determine them. The two British TV series, Location, Location, Location (Channel 4) and Relocation, Relocation (Channel 5), the style of which is probably syndicated to many countries, often feature successful people who have made their money in the City of London or whose house increased in value through the property boom, and who choose to sell up and move to the countryside or abroad. The practice is known as “downshifting”; a choice to step apart from the stresses and cost of living of the big city. The programmes are popular, selling dreams that the less rich can only wish for.

For others, a more realistic choice might be to find detachment from possessions and technological stimulants in order to achieve a balance: to work for a living, rather than living for work. As Ali Ibn Abi Talib put it (circa 660CE), ‘Asceticism is not that you should not own anything, but that nothing should own you.’ By choosing sustainable simplicity we can find that level of contentment which is more than just avoiding the dissatisfaction of not having what is prescribed by advertisers: it is, instead, the enjoyment of ordinary beauty.

It is a finding of fulfilment in simple things - making bread, playing cards, listening to or playing music, writing, and sharing (local, fresh, non-GM, organic) “slow food” and home-made wine lovingly prepared (and perhaps grown and gathered) for friends. It is a finding of time and space to be oneself.

Lest this desire to live contentedly sounds like opting out from society, let us be aware how religious ideals influence others. Living simply does not mean a disengagement from politics, but offers a prophetic engagement with society through which others can become aware of the necessity and possibility of moving to a sustainable solution to our social sickness. It is only when enough people embrace this vision that a realistic and sustainable economic theory can develop, in the interests of all life on earth.