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# 2022-06-13 - The Simple Life, edited by Larry Roth | |
# Introduction | |
In reading through these contributions, you will note that in many | |
cases the writers encountered a crisis or decided on a goal that was | |
seemingly beyond their financial reach. Frugality was seen as a | |
solution--a means to overcome their crises or reach their goals. ... | |
Frugality, in other words, is not an end for us. It is a means to an | |
end. | |
In this book you will learn frugality has no fixed definition. What | |
one person believes is frugal others will find not so frugal. | |
# How Do You Define the Simple Life? by Edith Flowers Kilgo | |
But most of all, creative downscaling is about making people a | |
priority over things. | |
Authors Joe Dominguez and Vicky Robin point out in Your Money of Your | |
Life that material goods are what we get in exchange for our very | |
lives. Every gadget, gizmo, and gewgaw that comes into anybody's | |
house is purchased with a piece of life that was exchanged for a | |
salary. [Assumptions about employment and living conditions.] Would | |
most of us still want that gizmo if we truly comprehended what it | |
cost? I, for one, am not willing to exchange a portion of my life | |
for frivolous goods. | |
External Cost | |
For you, the simple life is what you believe it to be. You'll know | |
you are there when contentment takes the place of stress, when you | |
can sleep soundly through the night, when you can spend as much time | |
as you need with people you care about, and when the term "short | |
fuse" applies to an electrical problem and not your problem-solving | |
approach. | |
# The Pleasures of Frugality by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin | |
Let's explore the word "frugality" to see if we can't redeem it... | |
We looked up "frugal" in a 1986 Merriam-Webster dictionary and found | |
"characterized by or reflecting economy in the expenditure of | |
resource." That sounds about right... Yet digging deeper, Webster | |
tells us that "frugal" shares a Latin root with "frug" (meaning | |
virtue), "frux" (meaning fruit or value), and "frui" (meaning to | |
enjoy or have the use of.) Now we're talking. Frugality is enjoying | |
the virtue of getting good value for every minute of your life energy | |
and from everything you have the use of. | |
Frugality means we are to enjoy what we have. To be frugal means to | |
have a high joy-to-stuff ratio. | |
There's a word in Spanish that encompasses all this: aprovechar. It | |
means to use something wisely... It's getting full value from life, | |
enjoying all the good that each moment and each thing has to offer. | |
There's nothing miserly about aprovechar; it's a succulent word, full | |
of sunlight and flavor. | |
# A Gentle Survivalist by Laura Martin-Buhler | |
Paradoxically, the things we think we own really own us, consuming | |
our time and energy. Very few precious hours are left for service to | |
others or non-material pursuits that lift our minds and spirits. If | |
you feel unfocused and pressed for time, look around your home and | |
identify the things that demand regular attention or maintenance. | |
Are they worth the time and energy expended on them? | |
I agree with the great playwright Henrik Ibsen, who wrote: "Money may | |
buy the husk of things, but not the kernel. It brings you food, but | |
not appetite, medicine, but not health, acquaintances, but not | |
friends, servants, but not faithfulness, days of joy, but not peace | |
or happiness." | |
As mentally competent individuals, we are only truly alive in | |
relation to our understanding and practice of eternal laws of truth, | |
our independence from commercialism, our avoidance of conspicuous | |
consumption and addictions, and our embracing of love, light, | |
charity, and service. | |
As I wander through the orderly vegetable and fruit displays in our | |
area's new techno-megamarket, I hear thunderclaps and the sound of | |
soft rain as overhead misters automatically spray the vegetables. In | |
the egg and dairy section, I am serenaded by mooing cows and clucking | |
hens. By the meat an fish counter I hear the sounds of the ocean and | |
the piercing cries of seagulls. In the pet section, I am reminded to | |
buy the kitty her cat food with the plaintive meows of hungry kittens | |
and barking dogs. I know store managers are subtly trying to | |
manipulate my natural foraging instincts by attempting to make me | |
feel like a self-sufficient primitive hunter/gatherer, or at least | |
like I'm back on the farm, filling my basket with earth's fresh | |
bounty. The recordings seem to delight most shoppers and their | |
children, but they do nothing buy annoy me. I resent any form of | |
sales manipulation, especially on the subliminal level. | |
Simplicity, in the deepest sense, means throwing every form of dark | |
and weighty ballast overboard and like the balloonist, rising higher | |
toward the light. This process, while often painful, gets easier | |
with practice. As we put our priorities in order, we find that our | |
lives are filled with service, peace, and focus. | |
Simplicity is never as simple as it sounds. It requires a childlike | |
approach to the universe, a sense of awe and gratitude, the | |
discarding of worldly desires, false pretenses, the praise of men, | |
and every other form of vanity and excess materialism. True | |
simplicity requires that we forgive others and stop wasting our | |
personal energy wallowing in past hurts and injustices. To live a | |
life of honest simplicity has implications that extend light years | |
beyond Webster's definitions and calls forth the very best we have to | |
offer. | |
# How I Learned to "Live Cheap" by Larry Roth | |
Though I remained frugal, I bought into the corporate culture a | |
little too enthusiastically. I had to travel on my own time, meaning | |
I would put in a full day at my desk in Austin, go to the airport, | |
catch a red-eye, fly to (usually) Baltimore, attend a meeting, catch | |
a red-eye back, and report to work the next day. Why did I put up | |
with this? Well, first, the company convinced me that their stated | |
policy ("We don't pay you to sit on an airplane") was right. Second, | |
everyone else accepted the policy. It was only after I finished a | |
meeting in Baltimore early one Friday and changed my reservations so | |
that I could catch an earlier flight that I began questioning this | |
policy. I ran into one of our vice-presidents at the Dallas airport | |
while we both waited for our connecting flight to Austin. | |
"What are you doing here this time of day?" he asked. | |
"I finished my meeting, and I couldn't see any sense in not catching | |
an earlier flight," I said. I think he knew I was wondering what HE | |
was doing in Dallas during working hours. And I couldn't help but | |
notice he was flying first class while I had to wedge my | |
six-foot-seven-inch body into a coach seat. I wondered why a company | |
that demanded so much from its workers was so lenient with its | |
executives. Then it occurred to me that I was cramming my body into | |
a space made for a midget on my own time, and my employer took it as | |
a given that *I owed them my time and discomfort.* | |
In late 1991 I was involved in a major proposal effort for my | |
employer, Company L. The dollar value of this proposal exceeded a | |
billion dollars. By a lot. My boss put me in charge of making sure | |
the subcontractors' part of the proposal, more than half the dollar | |
value of the whole shebang, got in on time, in a format we could use, | |
and was analyzed, audited, massaged, and squeezed into the proposal | |
we would send out customer. | |
Company L, like most major government contractors, shut down between | |
Christmas and New Year's Day. This was no secret, but it did seem to | |
be a source of envy with many of our government customers. To | |
"punish" Company L for being so lenient during the holiday season, | |
many government agencies requested that proposals be completed and | |
submitted by the end of the year, which meant, in reality, they would | |
have to be done a week earlier. And these government requests are | |
ALWAYS issued late, and they are ALWAYS a mess. Requirements for | |
government programs--especially billion-dollar government | |
programs--are confusing, and the government employees who issue these | |
requirements, bless their pointed heads, follow one rule above all | |
others. When in doubt, put it in. | |
So we people in the trenches had to inspect these things, pass the | |
"real" requirements on to our suppliers, and put the thing together | |
in an artificially abbreviated time frame. During these proposal | |
efforts, our jobs truly became our lives. We went full-speed seven | |
days a week. Some people even brought sleeping bags, futons, and the | |
like to the office and literally lived there. | |
A couple of days before our Christmas break of 1991, I shipped our | |
part of the proposal out. As I was loading the packages on a dolly, | |
I caught my shirt on something and ripped a hole in it. In spite of | |
the loss of a good shirt, I was elated. I'd done a hell of a job, | |
and everyone knew it. | |
I wound down over the Christmas holidays, and I came back to work in | |
early 1992. One day during the first week of January, in an | |
early-morning staff meeting, it happened. One second I was sitting | |
there, ready for the challenges du jour. The next second I was | |
somewhere else, looking down on the meeting and myself through | |
something like a porthole. And a voice inside my head asked, "Is | |
this REALLY the way you want to spend the rest of your life?" I | |
snapped back into my body, and I don't think anyone else in the room | |
noticed my "momentary absence." But, once the question was in my | |
mind, I had to admit the answer was, "No, this is NOT how I want to | |
spend my life." But I was, after all, forty-three years old, ad I | |
didn't know how to change course. | |
Was my experience at the staff meeting some sort of New Age | |
kundalini? Or should I ascribe it, as Scrooge did Marley's ghost, to | |
"an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a | |
fragment of an underdone potato?" Do you believe it? For that | |
matter, do I believe it? I have no answers. But I can tell you | |
this: It happened on some level--in reality or in my imagination--and | |
though it would take three more years, the experience set me on a | |
course that would take me out of Company L and corporate America. | |
It would not become apparent for some months, but Company L was | |
changing as well. It was out with the old, people-oriented | |
management style and in with a cold new style of management that | |
viewed employees as expendable at best and enemies of management at | |
worst. As the working environment deteriorated I became more | |
convinced I had to leave. The job I left paid well... but no amount | |
of money was worth the toll that job was taking on my life and my | |
mental and physical health. Within a year of my leaving, both my | |
supervisor (at age fifty-three) and the man who took up my job (at | |
age forty-nine) had open-heart surgery. Stress does take its toll. | |
# Radical Simplicity or Good-Bye Accrual World by Catherine Roberts | |
# Leach and Britt Leach | |
We think it's important in the telling of our tale to be honest about | |
things. Make that THINGS. Voluntary simplicity does deal with them, | |
their surfeit, the way their accumulation distracts from what's | |
really real. But we were never into them. So we never had to give | |
them up. ... Maybe we need to call ourselves radical simplicists to | |
distinguish us from those voluntary simplicists who held a bonfire of | |
their vanities and moved to a yurt. | |
We began thinking about things (as in all of life, not materialism) | |
when Britt was informed [by their doctor] that he was drinking too | |
much booze and his triglyceride level [was through the roof]. | |
We gave up red meat. This was about 1980. It wasn't an ethical | |
choice; it was very much an ego decision called saving one's rear. | |
People who become vegetarian and stay with it for a while usually | |
have made at some point an ethical commitment even though their diet | |
evolution often starts as a simple move toward healthy living. But | |
when you stop eating the animal something happens: you start actively | |
thinking about it. And to think about another creature is ethics... | |
So what might start as a health matter becomes an ethical matter. | |
And when animals are included in a moral system it opens up that | |
moral thinking, makes it more inclusive. You allow yourself to | |
consider EVERYTHING ethically when you include in your moral system | |
the beasts you once ate. | |
We seem to be making a claim here for a gastro-ethical-spiritual | |
connection and wouldn't dream of going into its physiology or its | |
theology in detail. It's not the subject of this odyssey, but | |
believe us when we say that becoming vegetarian sensitized us. | |
Becoming vegetarian made us start thinking about how our choices | |
affect others. Ethics. | |
An animal diet provides a way to think about our relationship with | |
the world. When we changed our diet we changed our relationship with | |
the world. | |
What television really sells is this message: "Your life, television | |
viewer, is worthless. We will make you whole with our products. You | |
are ugly, sexless, and you smell bad. Right this way." | |
The entertainment business is the biggest business in the world. It | |
grows with the collective malaise. "Opiate of the people" comes to | |
mind. | |
One of the best quotes from Duane Elgin's Voluntary Simplicity is, | |
"The moderation of our wants increases our capacity to be of service | |
to others, and in our being of loving service to others, true | |
civilization emerges." | |
# How Much Will My Funeral Cost? by Lisa Carlson | |
Unfortunately, the funeral industry has committed such wide-spread, | |
documented abuse that the federal government was forced to pass | |
consumer protection regulations that--among other things--told | |
funeral directors they could no longer lie to the public. | |
Enforcement of these regulations is weak and far from ideal. Once | |
you are gone, it is your survivors who are vulnerable to manipulative | |
sales tactics at a time of grief. With most states having far too | |
many funeral homes, it is a situation that invites abuse. | |
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requires that mortuaries give | |
prices over the telephone. By stopping in person, however, to pick | |
up a "general price list" (GPL), you may learn a great deal more. | |
Does the price list using disparaging language such as "basic | |
disposal" or "incineration container" for cremation? Is a low-cost | |
casket displayed with the same dignity as the higher-priced ones? | |
The first price to check, regardless of what kind of funeral you and | |
your family might want, is the fee for "basic services of staff an | |
overhead." Although the national average for this fee is $1,025 | |
(1996), you need to remember that is little more than a | |
funeral-planning charge... At a chain-owned mortuary [which most of | |
them are by now], this fee will be 50 percent to 90 percent higher | |
than the already-inflated average. | |
What should this fee be, you might ask? Well, if your travel agent | |
doesn't charge for planning your vacation, and the car salesman fills | |
out all the paperwork as part of the sale, what are you willing to | |
pay to have someone else plan your funeral? The level at which this | |
fee is set may be a quick indicator of the pricing ethics at a | |
particular establishment, which is why it's worth your time to take a | |
look at several and compare. | |
Carefully total the cost for everything and then ask, "Will there be | |
any other charges?" | |
Plan a memorial service without the body present. | |
The FTC requires that funeral homes offer a package price for | |
"immediate burial" and "direct cremation." If the local prices seem | |
too high, you should consider using a low-cost funeral director from | |
another community to transport the body directly to a crematory or | |
cemetery. | |
Many people find that, without a casket present, a memorial service | |
shifts the focus to the more spiritual and personalized aspects of a | |
life well lived. | |
Immediate cremation is almost always the least expensive offering on | |
a mortuary price list if body donation is not chosen. But be sure to | |
ask if the price includes the actual cremation process. I know this | |
sounds like a stupid question; after all, how can you have an | |
"immediate cremation" without the cremation? Basically, the FTC | |
permits the funeral home to leave that charge out and bill it later | |
as a "cash advance" item if it doesn't own the crematory. | |
The crematory is not likely to accept a body unless everyone agrees. | |
Hard feelings may erupt among surviving siblings, for example, if | |
there is no unanimity on the final method of disposition... | |
The funeral home is likely to try to sell you an expensive urn for | |
the cremains. Pier 1 has brass vases at a fraction of the prices | |
charged by most funeral homes. Or perhaps you know a potter. Then | |
again, the simple cardboard container in which the cremains are | |
shipped from the crematory is perfectly acceptable for most purposes. | |
This is the only country where embalming is widespread, and to no | |
good end. According to the Centers for Disease Control and | |
Prevention it serves NO public health purpose whatsoever. [Yet it | |
was written into Oregon law that embalming is required after 24 | |
hours, prompted by the owners of chains of funeral homes.] | |
Consider handling all arrangements without using a mortuary. Caring | |
for your own dead is permitted in forty-two states... the eight | |
restrictive ones are Connecticut, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, | |
Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and New York. | |
My book, Caring for Your Own Dead, tells what permits are required in | |
each state, where and when to file them, plus a great deal of other | |
practical information for anyone choosing this meaningful way to say | |
good-bye. | |
Memorial societies were started in the late 1930s as a result of the | |
rising cost of funerals due to embalming and manufactured caskets. | |
Spurred by an angry minister who thought that expensive funerals were | |
a terrible waste of our resources, a group in Seattle got together | |
and founded a cooperating mortician. | |
There are now 150 memorial societies across the United States and | |
Canada. They are nonprofit, nondenominational, educational, | |
organizations, most of which are run by volunteers. Many of these | |
memorial societies do an annual price survey of area mortuaries. | |
In the early sixties, the societies banded together and formed a | |
federation to fight for better funeral consumer protection | |
nationwide. This group was influential in getting the FTC to pass | |
the original Funeral Rule, the regulation that makes it possible for | |
consumers to pick and choose only those funeral goods and services | |
they want and to get prices over the telephone. That right to | |
choose, however, has been eroded by the industry's abuse of the | |
nondeclinable fee. Until this nondeclinable fee is abolished, the | |
cost of funerals will be insulated from any market forces that would | |
benefit informed consumers. FAMSA is seeking new changes in the | |
Funeral Rule. By joining a local memorial society, your membership | |
supports this effort. | |
To find a memorial society near you, call 1-800-765-0107. | |
[Or visit: | |
https://funerals.org/ | |
Sadly, there are none in Oregon.] | |
A 1994 loophole in the FTC's Funeral Rule now allows mortuaries to | |
add all overhead to a nondeclinable basic charge for planning the | |
funeral, a fee that at $100 per hour, should be less than $400. | |
However, the absence of limits on this fee has given rise to a | |
situation that invites abuse of consumers, especially in areas where | |
there are far more funeral homes than can be supported by the death | |
rate. With funeral directors treating this fee as guaranteed income, | |
it has risen $1,000 to $2,000 or more in just one year, with all | |
other costs such as the casket and funeral service being added on top | |
of that. | |
# Closing Thoughts by Larry Roth | |
Whether enough people are embracing frugality and simplicity to | |
constitute a movement is not important. YOU are important. And | |
whether you incorporate frugality and simplicity into your own life | |
is important only to you. And the choice is yours and yours alone to | |
make. | |
# Resources | |
## History and Philosophy | |
* Voluntary Simplicity by Duane Elgin | |
* The Simple Life by David E. Shi | |
* The American Transcendentalists by Perry Miller | |
* American Transcendentalism by Paul F. Boller, Jr. | |
* Transcendentalism in New England by Octavius Brooks Frothingham | |
* The Spirituality of the American Transcendentalists, edited by | |
Catherine L. Albanese | |
## Intentional Communities and Co-Housing | |
* Communities Directory: A Guide to Cooperative Living by | |
Fellowship for Intentional Community | |
* Communities Magazine by Fellowship for Intentional Community | |
* CoHousing by The CoHousing Network | |
[Book list truncated for this log entry.] | |
author: Roth, Larry | |
detail: https://www.larryrothsblog.com/2019/01/a-promise-finally-fulfilled-my-2… | |
LOC: TX158 .S515 | |
tags: book,spirit | |
title: The Simple Life | |
# Tags | |
book | |
spirit |