It’s time for a new way of valuing the world and our place in it. The good news is that curing the pandemic of over-consumption at both the personal and cultural scale is not about giving up the good life but getting it back. What will we give up? Mostly unwanted side effects like rising sea levels, debt, depression, waste, war, and inflation. Which would you rather have -- a moderate, joyful lifestyle with fewer of these side effects, or the same old blowout with an even more miserable hangover?
When we change a few key priorities, many of our material wants will cease to be obsessions. It’s not just that we won’t need the next generation of gadgets or clothes; we truly won’t even want them. Instead of fidgety, addictive consumption, our lives will be filled with the real wealth of sanity, health, hope, caring, connection, participation, and purpose.
When we choose real wealth, we can have things like healthy, great-tasting food; exciting hobbies and adventures; work that challenges and stimulates us; and spiritual connection with a universe that’s infinitely larger than our stock portfolio. Instead of more stuff in our already- stuffed lives, we can have fewer things but better things, of higher quality; fewer visits to the doctor and more visits to museums and friends’ houses. More joyful intimacy, more restful sleep, and more brilliantly sunny mornings in campsites on the beach – bacon & eggs sizzling in the skillet and coffee brewing in the pot. Greater use of our hands and minds in creative activities like playing a flute, building a table, knitting a sweater, or harvesting the season’s first juicy, heirloom tomato. These are the things that matter, and we can choose them, if we spend less time, money, and energy being such obedient consumers.
The emerging lifestyle is not about guilt, shame, judgment, or sacrifice – it’s about a strategic, enlightened reduction in our use of resources, and a corresponding, deliberate increase in efficiency, quality, care giving, trust, and teamwork. Using tools like these, it’s quite possible for each American to gracefully reduce her or his resource consumption by half, along with all the stress, anger, and dysfunction that often goes with it. This book offers many ideas for how to do that, showing that by reducing our reliance on energy hogs like aluminum cans, airplane travel, feedlot meat, and suburbs-without-stores, we can each reduce our “ecological footprints.” By meeting basic physical and psychological needs better we can and will make the transition to a lifestyle that feels more comfortable in the present and doesn’t clear-cut the future.
As a special bonus, we can ensure that the planet we call home doesn’t ultimately resemble a fried egg, sunny side up.