David Grant’s most recent essay in The Sun was “Learning To Walk” (Issue 124), an uncompromising look at his decision to give up cars.
I asked him to send something this month on compromise. He said that he was too busy to write, being in the midst of moving from the Aprovecho Institute in Cottage Grove, Oregon to Pacem In Terris, “a Zen-Catholic Worker house” in Seattle, Washington. He explained, “People and shared values are more important than rural life at any cost. Also, good work which is intelligent and humane is not in itself ‘enough.’ Compromise and complication. Barbara and I face the question again as I propose biking up and Barbara asks my help in driving. Family is a unit, isn’t it? Not really two single people sharing a child.”
David sent along this short, provocative piece he’d written a few months earlier for News From Aprovecho, which is reprinted with permission.
— Ed.
Voluntary simplicity has gained popularity since the late Sixties. Of course the idea is at least as old as the first religions, but nowadays voluntary simplicity is not practiced for overtly religious reasons. A cynic might say that a sense of reparation for damages done is driving some to practice a new spirit of self-denial. It touches most strongly, after all, the descendants of the adventurous, progressive pioneers from Western Europe who invaded this country a few centuries ago. In any case, exploitation is a touchstone by which many of us gauge our use of toilet paper, gasoline, rubber, washing machines, nylon, coffee, newspaper and on and on.
What’s happening is not clear. We find ourselves full of contradictions. Sometimes we feel like ethical pretzels in our attempts at “making best use of” our home, this earth.
We’d like to open a discussion with the following questions. They are arbitrary questions. And loaded ones. Maybe you can find a handle and join in.
1) Gandhi saw consumer economics as being based on neighborliness, self-reliance and direct personal responsibility. Face-to-face transactions are paramount (and never mind the “big boys’’). Adam Smith defined The Wealth of Nations, in the eighteenth century, in terms of specialization, long distance transport (especially oceanic), lowest cost, highest bidder and the economy of scale.
Our question is: How big is your neighborhood?
2) When Calvin sanctified usury — under the rubric of “moderate gain for the risk of making the loan” (and, furthermore, “God favors the industrious”) — it became socially acceptable for money to make money . . . “interest,” that is. A modern addendum is to say one is “covering inflation.”
Question: How do you jibe this ethic with third world debt? How about with your own bank account, even a “socially responsible” one?
3) Here in the Coast Ranges, battles are being fought to save old growth forest. At the same time, a strike against Weyerhaeuser has just ended with union workers taking a $4 an hour cut and feeling lucky they still have their jobs. Timber executives face both international competition and their own stockholders — which is to say, anyone with money in a bank, since banks reinvest at will. The market (what we each buy) pushes them toward “highest return, least risk.”
Question: Do you always play the “smart shopper” seeking bargain prices for your lumber (or other) needs?
4) How do you handle your children’s captivity by media consumerism? Do you draw lines, make limits? Do you risk alienation thereby, especially relative to peer pressures?
5) Using your experiences (second or third hand is okay): What do you see as the major differences among the various types of “development” groups — governmental, religious and humanitarian? This question applies internationally, domestically and locally.
6) In your own life, what is it you call welfare? Charity? Patronage? How do you feel (not think) about it, whether you are benefactor or recipient?
7) When is a gift not a gift? When is trash not trash?
If someone or some institution is unwilling or begrudging in sharing its excess wealth, what is the appropriate response?
8) Many village cultures live under an ethic of obligation to share whatever one owns, at least with members of the extended family. This often leads to stagnation, discouraging innovation.
Question: How big is your extended family?
9) The Community of the Ark, in southern France, makes a virtue of washing its laundry by hand. France is heavily nuclear-powered, which is a strong enough reason to avoid unnecessary electric appliance use. But, beyond that, the community considers household duties as valuable life experience — not as trivial chores to be done as quickly as possible. On the other hand, Gandhi thought the sewing machine was a wonderful invention done “out of love” by Singer for his wife.
Question: When and how do you choose to go slow?
10) What does volunteering mean to you? Do you volunteer your time to make money? Do you volunteer to clean your baby’s diaper? Do you volunteer to breathe the air, no matter how dirty or clean?
When does “taking charge of one’s life” become onerous?
So much for the ten questions. You have a lifetime to answer.
