Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Saturday April 08 2017, @02:21AM   Printer-friendly
from the minimalism dept.

Phys.org reports:

The idea of a life lived modestly is gaining traction. Ten years ago, Samantha Weinberg, a mother of two young children, spent a year not shopping. Her aim was to reduce her environmental impact. The next year, Mark Boyle, founder of the online Freeconomy community, embarked on a life without money in order to sever his connection with it. Since then, others have joined this "Not Spending" movement.

Frugality has its limitations. Not everyone is able-bodied enough to cycle, and if we all started foraging for wild food it would deprive non-human species of nutrients and disrupt local ecosystems. While minimalism has found new converts, especially in Japan, this extreme approach is unlikely to go mainstream.

Perhaps a more realistic hope is for a steady rise in the number of people who discover that pursuing non-material riches brings greater happiness than the getting and spending of money. In fact, significant numbers of "voluntary simplifiers" have been choosing and enjoying lives of material simplicity for decades.

Have Soylentils found greater happiness through simplification?


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 08 2017, @10:23AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 08 2017, @10:23AM (#490792)

    Nothing to see here in TFA, really. Every generation has had its artsy ascetic minimalist movement. The famed (or infamous, YMMV) Counter-Culture of the 1960's was an expression of the same sort of anti-materialist impulse. Some of it was for show, like virtue-signalling/wanting to appear cool, and some was sincere, like the intellectual back-to-Walden types like myself. In retrospect, most of it was just adolescent rebellion. Every generation starts out wanting to change the world.

    Begin with putting aside the ancient media stereotypes of the 60's counter-culture, and recognizing that the flower child movement was a minority of incredibly over-privileged 60's kids who got recognition far in excess of our statistical significance. We called ourselves freaks for a reason, and with some pride.

    We were far from historically unique, and so are today's hipsters. Our artists and musicians were rebellious and cutting-edge, but so were other generations'. The tech toys are just baubles on the old lava lamp. Phonographs and radio for the Swing Kids, color TV for the Boomers, and hand-held gadgetry for the X'ers/Millenials certainly had an influence, but not a defining one.

    The greatest generation had the Depression and World War 2 to motivate its counter-culture. We had the civil rights movement and Viet Nam. Every generation gets their own special socio-political mill stone around their necks. Funny how that works.

    This too shall pass.

    Then again, where would civilization be without each generation's nonconformists, idealists, and rebels? Much poorer for it, I surmise.

    Now I think I'll just twist up a doob here in my little 3-room cottage and ask the wife to put on some Buffalo Springfield.