Positive Futures list discussion: economic boom and simple living

A series of posts to the Positive Futures list, on:

economic boom and simple living

At 17:42 9/07/99 -0700, Robert Neunteufel wrote:


>In Europe we hear a lot about the long lasting economic boom and the
>success in job creation in the USA.
>On the other hand we hear about the success of bestsellers like 
>Your Money or Your Life or the simple living movement.
>
>I'd like to ask the members of this [Positive Futures] list how they see 
>the interrelations and/or contradictions between the economic boom and 
>the simple living movement.
>
>With best wishes from Austria / Europe,
>Robert
>[His response to the following messages, at the bottom.]

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Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1999 09:01:46 -0400
To: positive-futures@igc.org
From: Tom and Bev Feldman 
Subject: [pf] economic boom and simple living

Dear Robert,
What economic boom? In my house, we haven't had it. We're losing. What's happening is that the rich are getting richer and the rest of us are getting poorer. There are "jobs" being created, but they are job-jobs and not careers.
They are service sector jobs and not jobs that you can raise a family on. The work environment is getting meaner and meaner as the corporations put the screws to the little guy. My husband and I are freelancers in the entertainment business here in Los Angeles and we've had the worst year ever so far because of globalization. Ninety-five percent of all the features being shot right now are being shot out of Los Angeles. They've gone to Canada, Australia, etc. I got a call from Vancouver yesterday from a Disney feature, "Mission to Mars," looking for the kind of equipment I use so they could use it there!
Our everyday bread and butter work is getting scarcer, and producers are making us compete with larger vendors, who are also hurting badly. It's "look, I've got a budget of X (ridiculously low), pal, do you want the job or not?" Ironically, we find that those who grind us down on our prices are also the ones we have the hardest time collecting from. Fortunately, for the time being my husband is lighting director for a new series, "Chicken Soup for the Soul", but when its over we'll be back to the same old situation. We started heading the direction of voluntary simplicity about a year and a half ago and have made some wonderful headway with it. We've paid our mortgage down, reduced our monthly expenses, changed our eating habits for the better, grow a lot of our own food, will keep driving a 1985 car till it drops, spend more time with our daughter, and so on. We find life more satisfying and more sustainable for us. But we don't know how its going to go in the long run with our business. It's very mean out there and its getting harder and harder to have a life that isn't bombarded with corporate messages, mandates, and meanness.

Bev Feldman

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Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1999 13:50:48 -0500
From: Jill Taylor Bussiere 
To: positive-futures@igc.org
Subject: Re: [pf] economic boom and simple living

Bev, I agree with you. Everything I have read and experienced backs it up. Yes, many jobs were created. The joke goes - "Yes, there have been a lot of new jobs created - I have 3 of them."

Jill

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Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1999 13:47:40 -0500
From: Nan Hildreth 
To: positive-futures@igc.org
Subject: Re: [pf] economic boom and simple living

Thanks to Bev Feldman for a refreshingly honest appraisal of life in LA. I grew up in an LA suburb, Northridge.

Bev, your talk reminds me of the book I read now, Addictive Organization, by Anne Wilson Schaef (1988). I wish I had time to work on it today, but I'm going out to play. My volunteer work is so exciting but I tend to workaholism and must take care not to be compulsive about it.

Back to Anne. She talks about organizations getting, like Bev says, "meaner and meaner". And about how no one in the organization seems to talk about it. She calls it typical addictive process of dishonesty with oneself leading to a progressive disease. I see some of the same curious phenonmenon in my Leaver organization. Dysfunctionality that people deny. A fundamental dishonesty that some of what we do hurts our organizational mission.

Anne notes that addicts in leading roles in organizations can create a corporate culture that fosters workaholism. The whole organization then begins to act like an addict. This spirals. Employee's attempts at personal recovery is thwarted by the craziness at work. The more gracious, kind people leave. Is that why you all work for yourself, Bev? That's why I refuse to participate in the work world. In 1981, I was in a supportive and creative company but they went broke. An later small employer got more compulsive and dishonest and abusingly demanding until I finally quit having anything to do with them. By then I had this divided up into apartments house paid for and then got interested in our work here. Hmmm.

Anne's book jacket says "For all who have intuitively known something is wrong with their organization and have been searching for the missing piece." Then she goes on to talk about, like Bev says, work environments that "get meaner and meaner". Addiction is a progressive disease.

Her prescription is that we understand the process. Many (most?) of my volunteers participate in our committees and support groups in order to try to have a life. Lisha said "I want you to distract me from my engrossing job." She works for TI supervising subcontractors in India. An older woman is delighted to have validation that she is not nuts in her perception that something is wrong with her affuent life and demanding job.

Here's my vision of a possible future. In our talk on our email list, we, some of the 25% of America who are cultural creatives, muse on the anomalies of our society. We realize that it is compulsive like Easter Island just before their crash. We realize that the compulsiveness is degenerative and progressive. We make the astounding and outrageous connections between our personal problems and this bad old paradigm. We begin to see our troubles as not our fault but as brought on by the system. We feel a common community with nice people being tortured in Chile and rainforest Indians being run off their land and animals being exterminated and poisons in our amniotic fluid.

We support each other in our attempts to heal ourselves. We become more coherent, persuasive, vocal. We preach a vision of spirituality, healing, of a future transformed society that advocates tolerance, human rights, ecological sustainability and the end to war. We reach out to those who suffer from the corrupt and destructive emotional and economic system. The most recovered 12 step people move from their support groups to ours. Less affluent laugh at the snotty and lonely yuppies. Fundamentalists, one fourth of Americans, are inspired and converted by our preaching of a new morality and spirituality. New Age people are drawn into political action.

The understanding of the depth of changes required to turn around the trends spreads. The talk heated and endless. Learning together we begin to recognize addictive process in ourselves, our organizations and our society. And recognize the recovery process. We challenge our compulsive members in Leaver organizations to recover. To get a life.

Our increasingly vocal vision of the new good life, the New American Dream, begins to compete overseas with the vision promoted by American economic progress devotees. We gain converts among their elites and the more connected of the middle and working classes.

American church and civics organizations begin making official apologies to conquered peoples. The understanding of the depth of changes required to turn around the trends spreads. The talk heated and endless.

The cultural creatives become coherent, unite and teach their worldview to fundamentalist and Modern worldview adherents. We grow from 25% of America to over 50%. We insist that our corporations and government act with more integrity. We convert and transform some of their members and they work from within to demand integrity.

As the Titanic slowly turns, the pressure from economic trends, environmental poisoning, global poverty mounts to push it to turn faster. A hundred million Americans act as passionate tugboats in their spare time, turning it around, urging us to the joy of the Compassionate Society.
(From Robert Theobald)

America is transformed. The rest of the world learns from us and we learn from them.

The culture of the now 12 billion in the globe are transformed.

Nan Hildreth

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Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1999 13:24:38 -0700
From: Arnie Anfinson 
To: positive-futures@igc.org
Subject: Re: [pf] economic boom and simple living

What are you all complaining about? Didn't you hear that there are over 250,000 millionaires in Silicon Valley and the numbers are increasing by 64 per day? NO serious, of course.

Maybe we'd get a better picture of what's going on in this "_GREAT_ economy" if they leave out those in the top 10 ... ? 1%. I think we all KNOW that the figures on "average income" look so good because they include the small minority WHO ARE GETTING THE BIGGEST INCOME INCREASES. Indeed, the rich ARE getting richer and the poor barely holding theire ground or most likely going down hill. IF more of us can find ways to get by with less and less STUFF -- move TOWARD David M's way of living -- then, since we are a significant proportion of the people, we can (perhaps) impact the society. At least we can feel better within ourselves; I LIKE to occasionally use my reverse snobbery :-) !

Can anyone tell me how to find out how our so-called cost of living index is calculated? The one or two percent annual increase that the gov't SAYS it is -- and gives us in our Social Security payments each year seems way out of line with how my cost of living goes. ... And I am very frugal! Of course we know that medical/health care costs go up more than 10% a year.

Live simply so that others -- the millionaires, can live in the lap of luxury!

Comes the Revolution ... !!!

Arnie (in Seattle, where we have ONLY about ten thousand millionaires!). If someone might think I'm envious, I'M NOT. Why would I want A LOT of money; just more to have concerns about!
"Neither rat nor man has achieved social, commercial, or economic stability. This has been, either perfectly or to some extent, achieved by ants and by bees, by some birds, and by some of the fishes in the sea. Man and the rats are merely, so far, the most successful animals of prey. They are utterly destructive of other forms of life. Neither of them is of the slightest use to any other species of living things."
- Hans Zinsser, "Rats, Lice and History" (1934)

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Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1999 11:57:33 -0500
From: Nan Hildreth 
To: positive-futures@igc.org
Subject: Re: [pf] economic boom and simple living

At 01:24 PM 07/10/1999 -0700, Arnie wrote:
><snip>
>Maybe we'd get a better picture of what's going on in this "-GREAT_
>economy" if they leave out those in the top 10 ... ? 1%.  <snip>

Dear Arnie,

Good post.

My having been to college puts me in the top 1% of the world. And I feel that most of my life I have been oblivious to the rest of the world. I feared the less powerful and looked down on them, if I thought of them at all.

But recent reading shows me that this paradigm has been our heritage for the last 1% of man's time on earth. The conquering growth paradigm. We denigrate Them to prepare ourselves morally for vicous conquest of Them. We denigrate Them wild plants, Them animals, Them people of color, Them "primitive" cultures.

My cultural heritage is one of fear, sorrow. I was raised to fear not venerate the Great Mystery. We venerated only the rich or powerful. This is Taker mentality. It is abusive not sharing.

We conquer and consume the other creatures. Do we now, lacking a frontier, turn our teeth closer to home, consume our own?

<snip> IF more of us can find ways to get by with
>less and less STUFF <snip> then, since
>we are a significant proportion of the people, we can (perhaps) impact the
>society.  At least we can feel better within ourselves; I LIKE to
>occasionally use my reverse snobbery :-) !

I find getting rid of stuff liberating. It makes room for my learning a new way.

I am delighted to be learning to share. I gain a natural healthy relationship with myself. This heals my relationship to my fellows and to nature.

I am just learning to pity the Taker mentality people because they are spiritually impoverished. Lack joy. Because they do not know how to share power, they cannot envision a stable, sustainable globe. They suffer terror at the trends and despair about conquering them.

Removing the blinders of Taker mentality from my eyes, I now see magnificent allies to urge our culture to grow up. Like Mother Nature.

Living simply teaches me to recognize spiritual wealth. Clearing the clutter helps me see the rich spirituality of other cultures. Martin Luther King preached a vision of the Beloved Community. Now I study Leaver cultures ( I used to call them "primitive") to glean inspiration for my reawakening spirituality.

<snip>
>Live simply so that others -- the millionaires, can live in the lap of luxury!

Live simply to have time to create and teach a new vision of the good life for the 3/4 of Americans who care about our community, future, and environment but can't see the connections.

Nan Hildreth


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Cc: positive-futures@igc.org
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 09:46:25 -0700
From: Dena Marchant 
Subject: Re: [pf] economic boom and simple living

Arnie, I agree with you when you say we can move toward David's way of living. I'm not sure to what exent individuals can move away from a money economy. But to the extent we do, it really doesn't matter how many paper millionaires there are in Silicon Valley.

My little brother supports a family of 4 on about $20,000 a year. They live well in a small house in the country and have time to play. He lives in the town we all grew up in, a small rural community in the Great Basin of Southern Idaho. He fixes most things himself. He's a carpenter by trade. What he can't do for himself he usually trades with someone. What he does is not that out of reach. His comment is that most people think they can't do what he does because they think they can't.

The less time we spend working for addictive organizations the more time we have to talk to our neighbors and keep an eye on our elected officials.

Dena

At 01:24 PM 7/10/99 -0700, Arnie Anfinson wrote:
>What are you all complaining about?  Didn't you hear that there are over
>250,000 millionaires in Silicon Valley and ...


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Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 12:19:21 -0500
From: Nan Hildreth 
To: positive-futures@igc.org
Subject: Re: [pf] economic boom and simple living

At 09:46 AM 07/12/1999 -0700, Dena Marchant wrote:
>Arnie, I agree with you when you say we can move toward David's 
>way of living.   <snip>

Simple lifestyles is fun. It gives you time to have a life. Also it's lighter on the earth.

My favorite role is change agent. Salesperson. This intangible product sells because it is good for people. I ain't pushing self sacrifice here.

Besides being stuck in an addictive organizations is enough to drive you crazy.

Nan


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Cc: positive-futures@igc.org
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 10:48:03 -0700
From: Dena Marchant 
Subject: [pf] Change Agents

But Nan, is it possible that all types are necessary and that you are biased toward the Change Agent? Even those who go around saying "Shopping is Good," the foot draggers, they make us prove our ideas. And that's good.

Dena

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Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 12:57:03 -0500
From: bill <hunger@hunger.org>
To: "positive-futures@igc.org" 
Subject: Repost[Fwd: [pf] interelations between economic boom]

Some of the list didn't get this last Friday. Don't know why.
Bill

William E. Dellinger wrote:

> Good question, Robert.
>
> 1. The economic boom is not equitably or equally distributed. It is an average. Gains of 10% do not mean 10% for all--it may mean 15% for some 5% for some, or anything. There appears to me to be unequitable distribution among classes, genders, and efforts. Nonprofit may not be experiencing the same boom, farmers are experiencing economic constriction, etc.
>
> 2. Economic growth is non sustainable, and many may object, and non-participate in rampant growth, simply because it is immoral to do so.
>
> 3. Rampant growth disguises a subtle inflation. (Subtle, hell, look at the cost of health insurance, college, autos, ad nauseum--everything except my wages and the price of food I produce.)
>
> 4. I'd like to see the productivity this boom is based upon--or any comparable underlying economic value, except the economic value of raw speculation. 'Don't bet the farm on speculation, and don't mortgage the mules.'
>
> Thanks for asking.
>
>
-----
> At 17:42 9/07/99 -0700, Robert Neunteufel wrote:
>In Europe we hear a lot about the ...

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Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1999 11:41:37 -0500
From: Nan Hildreth 
To: positive-futures@igc.org
Subject: Re: [pf] economic boom and simple living

At 10:37 PM 01/03/1996 -0800, [Tom and] Bev Feldman wrote:
>Dear Valley Girl,
>IMHO, every once in a while you come up with a great post.

Golly and gosh. Thanks for your patience with my struggles to learn and create with you all.

>> Nan, what do you say that we are addicted to?

One of the rules of addiction is don't talk, don't think, don't feel.

We environmentalists have a rule to keep silent on growth. The Holy Cow. Instead we have framed the question as stabilizing population.

Herman Daly, an economist who tries to imagine a sustainable globe, says we are addicted to growth because we are addicted to inequalities of income.

I've been musing on this for a year. It dawns on me that this points out the Great Unspoken Fear of my household while growing up. Poverty. Being a Valley Girl meant being pushed to work hard at school to get a good job to avoid that Dreadful Evil.

We were anxious strivers. We lived far away from Poverty in a dreafully lonely and sterile but Very Pretty suburb. When we passed through inner city Watts on the freeway I stared at it like a strange foreign land.

<snip>
>I love it, I love it.  But the corporations, Nan, are our true permanent
>government.

I promote efforts to limit corporate power. But don't give them your power. I was raised to revere power not take power or share power.

I hope we can transform both corporations and fundamentalists. Ted Turner of Turner Communications is a fine sustainability tugboat trying to turn around this Titanic. Houston Sierra is mostly corporation employees. Shell, Enron, Exxon, Sysco, Texas Instruments, etc. A new Sierra member called days ago. He was going on a trip, but wanted to volunteer to help us. He owns a chemical company.

Lester Brown last Feb pointed out to us jubilantly in Worldwatch the signs of Ameica's and corporate transformation in progress. One example was Enron, a Houston based energy company.
http://www.worldwatch.org/mag/1999/99-2.html I think of Lester as a doubting Thomas. And it's really true that the big boss supports sustainability. They aren't perfect, but neither is Houston Sierra.

<snip>  More and more of us need to be willing to tell the truth.  I try
>in my own world, but we need more grass-roots education on a large scale
>(folkschools?) so that more people can have their eyes and minds opened, 
>vision a future worth living into, and be willing to take on the corporations,
>not like war, but like the possibility of living in a sustainable world again.

We took on the corporations and won, for now, in the MAI battle (Multilateral Agreement on Investments). Environmentalists opposed this transfer of power from local and national government to corporations. Ralph Nader organizes on that:
http://lists.essential.org Conservative Pat Buchanan is his ally. I found a lovely agitation article about corporate welfare of Pat's on the fundamentalist Christian Coaltion website:
http://www.cc.org/publications/ca/0295/ca226.html What fun to learn that the group my friends demonized was struggling for integrity.

For the wonderful story of Pat's transformation from being a government official promoting corporate power to a campaigner against it, read his book The Great Betrayal: How American Sovereignty and Social Justice Are Being Sacrificed to the Gods of the Global Economy, 1998.

He says supporters spoke their truth to him and opened his eyes to the Other America. I laughed to read about how he naively rushed over to share his new insights with his old corporate loving allies. They wouldn't even listen. Pat got furious. About them he now says, "True believers will never be dissuaded. To them, free trade is not an economic theory or policy option, it is revealed truth about how the world should work, and it is held to the heart with a devotion that is almost religious. In its economic determinism, its utopianism, and its hold on the imagination, free-trade theory is first cousin to socialism and Marxism." (p. 44)

On folk schools, that's what simplicity circles are to Sweden. The first step is to clear away a space in my busyness to listen to my hearts. And talk together about things that matter. It's taken a year or two of creative expression and validation to believe what my heart tells me.

For you, is getting a life more fun than striving to get ahead in the world?

Nan, the Valley Girl


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Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 20:31:10 -0700
From: Robert Neunteufel <.-.-.-.@EUnet.at>
To: positive-futures@igc.org
Subject: [pf] economic boom and simple living

First of all, thank you very much for your very interesting and helpful comments!

I think that the economic boom is not only based on successful exports, but must have its most important "root" in the local (= North American) high level of consumption.

Do you have practical evidence, that the one quarter of the population who are "cultural creatives" are really so many and that their number is rising?

We can see some "no future" - and "we want everything and that immediately" - concept that seems to be very popular for the young generation.

Could it be, that "voluntary simplicity" is not really voluntary for most of the simple living people? It could be a reaction to the limits of the traditional way of working and careers. Personal limits (stress, health problems), restructuring of companies (unemployment, interruption of careers), automatization and globalization could be reasons too.

On the other hand: who is voluntarily living in the complex way of "work and spend"? Aren't there billions of $$ being invested in marketing activities?

Sorry, my English is not so perfect and I am in a hurry.

Once again thanks, and best wishes,

Robert Neunteufel



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