Living Simply in the 21st Century
“Living simply” has become somewhat trendy in recent years, but what does it realy mean?
We asked Mark this very question. Have a look at what he has to share:
When we depend less on industrially-produced consumer goods we can live in quiet places. Our bodies become vigorous; we discover the serenity of living with the rhythms of the Earth. We cease oppressing one another.”
These words resonated with me when I bought and read my first hippie “sustainability” book in 1971. Alicia Bay Laurel wrote “Living on the Earth” as a guide to living ‘simply’ with less: building simple shelters with discarded materials, growing vegetables and fruit, making your own soap, re-using glass jars and steel cans for other purposes, making compost and preserving the food surplus. Alicia said “this book is written for people who would rather chop wood than work behind a desk”. She was talking to me!
All these habits and behaviors are what we now call the Seven Actions of Sustainability:
- Reduce
- Reuse
- Refil
- Repurpse
- Repair
- Remove
- Recycle
A set of guidelines for living when it wasn’t an easy or convenient thing to do. Of course, I still did need a paying (desk) job but now 50 years later, I understand how
adopting a simpler approach to life has impacted my choices about environmental restoration. Growing cuttings, collecting local seed, using indigenous plants, making my own mulch, making bird and bat boxes from my own milled timber, hand-pulling the weeds, reusing discarded materials for tree guards and saving water for later use.
1971 was also the same year I read Rachel Carson’s landmark book “Silent Spring” on the impacts of pesticides in the US and around the globe. My awareness about an ecological approach to food production grew as I started my Agricultural Science degree, two years later.
Despite my strict science training, I have always tried avoiding the use of insecticides and herbicides, have sought out organic fertilizers and have always eaten or selected any produce regardless of its shape, appearance or imperfections. These are the ‘simpler’ approaches that have guided some of my behaviors. My habits don’t work for everyone in a range of situations but they are satisfying as they help to limit my impacts on my surroundings and the sentient beings in the ecosystem.
My understanding about environmental management continues to evolve and change as we realize the extent of our global impacts on natural ecosystems. Looking for clues in the way animals and plants interact at the simplest level can lead to deep insight. We can adopt much simpler approaches that create subtle changes without artificial manipulation of those systems and at least cost. Many of my ideas originated in E F Schumacher’s (1973) seminal economic analysis “Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered”. Small elements of his landmark thesis have infiltrated my approach and have stayed with me. People and creatures do matter at the micro scale if we unlock our natural potential to conserve, protect and cause minimal harm. We will all be better off for that.
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