Americans are seeing beyond the messages that we’re not good enough if we don’t have the next piece of bling. They’re very interested in fulfillment and sufficiency.
Todra Payne isn’t crazy about the fact that she has to drive two hours to the big city to get her fashion fix. She could also do without the soggy carrots covered in cheese that some friends in her hometown of Harrisburg, PA, equate with vegetarian cuisine. And it gets tedious having to explain to neighbors why 980 square feet is more than enough house for her and her husband.
Still, she wouldn’t go back to her old life for the world.
Payne, 40, left New York City with her husband six years ago, seeking a more reasonably-paced life. While in her 20s, Payne had bombed through the Big Apple as a celebrity makeup artist, trotting the globe on photo shoots and living the high life of Manhattan high fashion.
Then Payne went on a volunteer trip with her church and spent two weeks working in an orphanage in the Philippines. After witnessing the poverty and destitution there, she found the opulence of the New York fashion world nearly impossible to stomach. Then came 9/11, solidifying Payne and her husband’s commitment to escape the big city lifestyle. The couple settled on Harrisburg, a rural glen in the heart of Amish country.
Payne is one of thousands of mainstream Americans seeking creative ways to escape the go-go pace of modern living. Whether driven by concerns over the impact of their consumption on the planet, or simply looking to better their quality of life, these simplicity-seekers are deflecting from the rat race in increasing numbers, consciously ignoring the cultural pressure to earn and acquire ever more. Twenty of their stories can be found in the new book Get Satisfied, a collection of essays from people who, according to the book’s subtitle, have “found the satisfaction of enough.”
The book was published last month by the nonprofit organization Simple Living America. SLA codirector Carol Holst said the organization hopes the book will speak to the tens of thousands of Americans who, research shows, are sick of trying to keep up with the Joneses.
“The days of completely materialistic culture are rapidly coming to an end,” Holst says. “Americans are seeing beyond the messages that we’re not good enough if we don’t have the next piece of bling. They’re very interested in fulfillment and sufficiency.”
Simple living movements have ebbed and flowed throughout American history — from the Shakers, to Henry David Thoreau, to the communes of the Sixties. The most recent incarnation started about 25 years ago and has been reflected in bestsellers like Voluntary Simplicity and Your Money or Your Life, as well as the PBS documentary Affluenza.
Still, the movement has largely remained on the fringes. While the average American understands intellectually that money doesn’t buy happiness, few of us seem to be able to resist vying for ever-larger salaries and more stuff-stuffed lives. Simple living is still considered a drag, a choice requiring discipline, deprivation and sacrifice, much like going on a diet. Holst and Simple Living America hope Get Satisfied will help show the masses how much you gain when you give up the pressure of endless acquisition.
The book arrives at a time of mounting empirical evidence for what the sages have long-professed. Recent happiness studies have demonstrated that, after certain survival thresholds are met, wealth is not necessarily correlated to sense of wellbeing. In fact, in several cases, increases in a nation’s wealth have been correlated with rising levels of depression and other mental illness in the population at large.These findings seem to contradict the promises of capitalism — that in a market economy, the citizenry’s wellbeing will be assured by allowing individuals to pursue self-interest and amass greater wealth.
Tim Kasser, psychology professor at Knox College in Illinois and author of The High Price of Materialism, has a theory for why capitalism might be failing us. Kasser is one of the few psychologists in the country studying the impacts of a capitalistic mindset on an individual’s psychological wellbeing. In his research, Kasser has found that people who have materialistic mindsets have lower levels of happiness than people who are focused on other things.
The mechanism, he says, works like this: People with materialistic mindsets are focused on accumulating wealth, status and power over pursuing their innate talents, forming close relationships with other people, and working for a cause greater than themselves. But recent happiness research suggests that it is those very pursuits that bring lasting happiness. So, people with materialistic mindsets, hypothesizes Kasser, are less satisfied not so much because they are pursuing materialistic goals, but rather because they are not pursuing those goals which research has shown to deliver happiness.
“These findings are hopeful,” Kasser says. “They suggest that [in asking people to live more simply], we’re not actually asking people to move to something worse. We’re asking them to move to something that the empirical literature suggests might actually make them happier.”
Those who have chosen to take steps toward living more simply say increased happiness is the exact reward they’ve reaped.
For many years, Bill Lord was an Emmy-award winning television producer for ABC News, executive producing Nightline with Ted Koppel and World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. Over a decade ago, Lord, 65, and his wife moved to Maine where they took steps to live more sustainably. Lord has become best known for the model solar home he built outside of Kennebunkport and for his evangelizing on behalf of alternative energy.
But other changes Lord has made — ones that might look like sacrifices from the outside — have also returned intangible rewards. Until earlier this year, he taught journalism at Boston University. To get to work, he left his car at home and hopped on the train instead, even though it added two hours to his daily commute. He made the tradeoff because it vastly improved his quality of life. When he wasn’t grading papers or catching up on reading, Lord engaged in energetic discussions with other passengers. “I’ve had more fun arguing politics with new friends,” he says.
When Chicago resident Micki LeSueur, 39, joined a group focused on reducing consumption earlier this year, her friends thought she was nuts. “We’re quite comfortable financially, so people expect me to shop,” she says. But LeSueur had never been much of a shopper, so joining the Compact, a loosely affiliated national movement encouraging participants to eschew the purchase of new goods, enabled her to do what she’d been wanting to do anyway: put the kibosh on shopping.
LeSueur remembers walking through the kitchen section of a department store earlier this year, while looking for her daughter’s prom dress (LeSueur’s children and husband were exempt from her Compact project). She says it was enormously liberating not to have that little voice inside her head compelling her to take a look at the wares on display. “Before this, I would have thought ‘I could probably use that’ or ‘I could need that.’ There’s a pressure to always make sure things look good,” she says. “Now I don’t have to go out the door and get nicer dishes or more interesting tablecloths.”
Forgoing new clothes, though, has been tough. But LeSueur says her increased awareness of the environmental costs of consumption, particularly those paid by people in other parts of the world, has enabled her to stay committed. Earlier this year, she replaced her old car with a 1982 turbo diesel Mercedes that runs on vegetable oil, even though many of her friends drive Lexus SUVs. She says her new choices feel less like going a diet than fulfilling a commitment to the world community. “On a diet, if I eat that chocolate, I get fat,” she says. But with regard to resource consumption, “if I eat that piece of bread, someone else starves. What we do cannot be done by everyone else.”
Los Angeles resident Ken Justice, 39, discovered an unexpected aptitude for handiwork after a used espresso machine he bought on the Internet turned out to be broken. Justice joined his local Compact group about a year ago, which was why he bought the espresso machine used rather than new. Justice didn’t have any experience fixing appliances. But he opened up the machine, found the busted part, ordered a new one, and fixed the machine himself. His success has inspired him to try his hand at fixing other items as well, including most recently a computer laptop, which he bought broken and repaired himself using diagrams he found online. “A lot of times people discard things before their service life is used up,” he says. Living by the Compact principles “has made me more aware that I can fix a lot more than I thought I could.”
After doing an inventory of everything she owns, freelancer E.B. Boyd was alarmed by the ratio of accumulated clutter to things that are truly useful or meaningful. She lives, writes and de-clutters in San Francisco.
Downsize Your Impact, Upgrade Your Life
Whether you want to live more sustainably for the planet’s sake or more simply for your own, downsizing from your current way of life to a simpler or more sustainable one is a lot like taking on healthier eating and exercise habits. You know you’ll feel better for doing it, but it’s really difficult to get your rump off the sofa and start. To ease the transition, here are a few tips from those who have gone before.
Make a list of the five things that are most important to you. It’s easier to make sensible choices when you’re clear about what you want to get out of life. The Center for a New American Dream recommends starting out by simply putting on paper the five things that are most important to you. Use this list as a filter for evaluating whether a particular activity or choice is going to help you get more of what you want — or is simply a seductive distraction.
Take an inventory of what you own. Take a look at what you already have and figure out which things really make you happy. “The idea isn’t that you’re going to become bereft of stuff,” says Berkeley psychologist Allen Kanner, who has worked with Tim Kasser on the psychological impact of materialism. “You’re going to become much more skilled at identifying the things in the world that are going to make you happy.”
Tune out commercial messaging. Even though it makes us feel like curmudgeonly spinster aunts when we say it, turning off the TV and cutting out tabloid magazines and other media that celebrate consumption is key to quieting the incessant drumbeat programming you to believe that the solution to any problem lies in a new purchase or seasonal upgrade.
Count to 10 when faced with a consumer choice. “The immediate reaction when we walk into any place of business is ‘What do I need to buy?’” says Chicagoan Sarah Frankel. To resist the urge to make a purchase, Frankel says she takes a moment to check in with herself after walking into a store or a coffee shop to find out what — if anything — she really needs. Similarly, Ken Justice says he usually waits a month before committing to a large purchase. If after a month, he still wants it, he’ll get it. Otherwise, he’s dodged a consumer bullet.
Simplify with the Joneses. Whether you join a regional Compact group, one of the Simple Living Network’s Simplicity Circles, throw a Get Satisfied House Party or simply form a group on your own, it helps to have other people to talk about the changes you’re making in your life. Not only can you share good ideas, but just being in regular touch with others on the same path can help you resist the pervasive cultural pressure to consume and earn more.