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Radical Simplicity and the Middle-Class: Exploring the Lifestyle Implications of a “Great Disruption”
Radical Simplicity and the Middle-Class:
Exploring the Lifestyle Implications of a ‘Great Disruption’
Samuel Alexander
1. INTRODUCTION
How would the ordinary middle-class consumer – I should say middle-class citizen – deal with a lifestyle of radical simplicity? By radical simplicity I essentially mean a very low but biophysically sufficient material standard of living, a form of life that will be described in more detail below. In this essay I want to suggest that radical simplicity would not be as bad as it might first seem, provided we were ready for it and wisely negotiated its arrival, both as individuals and as communities. Indeed, I am tempted to suggest that radical simplicity is exactly what consumer cultures need to shake themselves awake from their comfortable slumber; that radical simplicity would be in our own, immediate, self-interests. In this essay, however, I will only defend the more modest thesis that radical simplicity simply would not be that bad. Establishing that thesis should be challenging enough.
Of course, if a radically lower material standard of living were to be imposed upon us suddenly by force of circumstances and without anticipation and some preparation, I acknowledge that most people would find such a dramatic change terrifying and painful – an existential disaster. Such a response would be quite natural and understandable. But I will argue that if such dramatic change were to be stoically anticipated and prepared for, it would not be that bad. If this argument is correct, it would seem that the middle-class could benefit greatly from anticipating and preparing for radical simplicity, even if it never arrives, which, in our lifetimes or even our children’s lifetimes, it may not. Then again, it may, for any number of ecological, economic, political, and social reasons, and this possibility, whatever its likelihood, is ultimately my reason for addressing the subject of radical simplicity. It is my assumption that consumer lifestyles have a time limit and that this time limit is fast running out. If the global financial system does not collapse under the weight of its own debt, perhaps induced by rising oil prices, then at some point our trembling ecosystems will collapse, taking industrial civilisation down with them. Either way, consumerism and the growth paradigm that supports it have no future, a diagnosis that I will not attempt to defend here but rather take as given (Alexander, 2012a-f). When consumerism’s time is up, we will all be living more simply, to varying degrees, whether we want to or not.
No one can be sure exactly when time will be up, or how the closing bell will sound, but whether time runs out next year, next decade, or next century, the inevitable demise of consumerism is a subject that deserves our consideration today, because time will eventually run out, and probably sooner than most would like to think. It would be best that this event is prepared for, preferably by adjusting the way we live at once, but if that is too much to expect, then at least by adjusting the way we think. It should go without saying, of course, that it would be far better to embrace simplicity by design than have it embrace us through disaster.
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The full essay is freely available here: http://simplicityinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/RadicalSimplicityandtheMiddle-Class3.pdf
6 Comments on "Radical Simplicity and the Middle-Class: Exploring the Lifestyle Implications of a “Great Disruption”"
BillT on Thu, 4th Oct 2012 4:15 am
Will read the article later, but the idea has merit. I laugh at how he dances around the ‘when’ not the ‘if’. “When’ is soon. There is no ‘if’. Anyone who looks outside the MSM prestitute propaganda will see the collapse is already happening in slow motion, but will pick up speed in the coming years.
The “Middle Class” is dissolving into the past. There will be no middle class in the future, only the Lords & serfs. If you are not already a Lord (top 1/10%) you are, and always will be, a serf.
Welcome to the 3rd world where a laborer makes $5. per DAY and eats rice most of the time. (That is what the laborers make that are building the condo tower beside mine.)
A registered architect here makes all of $200. per WEEK.
Electric is $0.24 per KWh.
Gas is $5 per gallon.
Milk is $1.50 per quart.
Rice is $0.50 per pound. etc.
Arthur on Thu, 4th Oct 2012 7:41 am
Radical simplicity… Hmmm, happiness is a beam of sunlight on the wall… and not a ferrari, that needs ages of work to generate the necessary income and all the subsequent trouble of maintenance, fueling, insurance…
Newfie on Thu, 4th Oct 2012 5:46 pm
Maybe the Serfs will dispense with the Lords. Guillotines are not hard to make.
DomusAlbion on Thu, 4th Oct 2012 7:13 pm
Most people will never accept this idea. It will be imposed on them by external factors and even then the people will fight it to the death. Just look at Greece and Spain. They still believe there is some magical political solution to their overwhelming debt problems. Those examples are just the edges of the grindingly slow collapse we are in the middle of. Next stop may be your home town.
Arthur on Thu, 4th Oct 2012 8:07 pm
“Just look at Greece and Spain. They still believe there is some magical political solution to their overwhelming debt problems. ”
There is a ‘magical solution’: default. That is what de facto is happening now in Greece. The state has no money, the Greeks are on their own. And guess what, they opt for survival and start to organize on grass roots level, obviously on an ethnic bases. The press, the (former) main stream parties, the EU, are all crying ‘racism’, but the ordinary Greeks do not care, they are too busy creating a parallel state, complete with food kitchens, even blood banks, harvest squads, sort of police (para-militia’s), etc. Predictably they motivate themselves with nationalist stories of a heroic past. The militias are combatting foreign illegals, who are seen as invaders. It will be the same in the US in a couple of years when the US state defaults on its debt. Study Greece if you want to prepare for what’s coming in the US. Life in Greece may be hard, but part of the population is past the state of lethargy.
Arthur on Thu, 4th Oct 2012 9:27 pm
Just on the news an item about the explosive growth of shopping via the internet… in China! It’s much bigger than in the West. One of the reasons is that the Chinese are far less mobile than Westerners. This illustrates that the internet has the potential of substituting the car with an internet infrastructure, that has a far smaller energy footprint. One hour driving in an average European car costs 30,000 the amount of energy of interacting an hour with an iPad. Shopping is one thing, working via the web, cloud and skype another.