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Vt. Engineer Designs A Good Life for $5,000 a Year
Today's global financial cloud got you feeling gray? Vermonter Jim Merkel sees a silver lining.
Jim Merkel, a former military engineer living in Norwich, now uses his skills to help people live with less. (Vyto Starinskas/Rutland Herald) Back
in 1989, the Long Island native was a weapons engineer who helped
design a cutting-edge computer that could transmit military secrets,
survive a nuclear blast and, a decade before the dawn of the
BlackBerry, fit in the palm of his hand. Sitting at a hotel bar in
Stockholm, Sweden, he was drinking in his accomplishment when a
bulletin flashed on television.
An oil tanker had hit a reef half a world away in Alaska, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil, contaminating 1,300 miles of coastline and killing more than 250,000 seabirds, otters, seals, bald eagles and whales. Video showed the culprit to be the Exxon Valdez. But peering into a mirror behind the bar, Merkel saw only himself.
He drove. He flew. He consumed goods produced with or propelled by fossil fuels.
"Of course, the entire industrialized world stood indicted beside me," he recalls. "Our ‘need' for ever-more mobility, ever-more progress, ever-more growth had led us straight to this disaster. But in that moment, all I knew was that I, personally, needed to step forward and own up to the damage."
Returning home to the states, Merkel decided to simplify. He not only cleared away stuff (enough for 13 yard sales) but also tapped his engineering degree from New York's Stony Brook University to calculate the economic and environmental savings. By doing so, he figured out how to live comfortably - and income-tax-free - on $5,000 a year.
To share his findings, Merkel penned a 2003 book, "Radical Simplicity: Small Footprints on a Finite Earth." That begat his Web site, www.radicalsimplicity.org. And those begat his continuing string of more than 1,000 speeches, workshops and classes, including this fall's "Moving Toward Sustainability" course at the Wilder campus of Community College of Vermont.
Most people monitoring the current fiscal crisis are fixated on what they could lose. Merkel is focused on what everyone could gain.
"This belt-tightening is good for us," he says. "We're swimming in a society that's super consumptive. Right now is such a beautiful opportunity for us to become sustainable."
He's ready to show people how.
Oil and water
Growing up, Merkel was the sixth of nine children of a politically conservative, meat-and-potatoes trucker. Now 50, he lives by himself in a 14-by-16-foot cabin on a dirt road in Norwich, where he grows much of his mostly organic vegan diet.
Merkel didn't make that leap in a day. Instead, he started with small steps.
Settling in California after the 1989 oil spill, he began by biking to work. Cutting his fuel consumption, he then joined the Sierra Club and gave money to other environmental nonprofits. But his biggest move came after he read an Amnesty International report about human-rights abuses in countries where he was marketing his military computer.
"There I was," Merkel recalls in his book, "a jet-set military salesman who voted for Reagan by day, and a bleeding-heart pacifist, eco-veggie-head-hooligan by night."
His two selves felt as separate as oil and water. One, seeking frugality and freedom, asked, "How much do I need?" The other, seeking long-term financial security, asked, "How much can I get?"
Merkel decided not only to quit the business of war but also to stop paying federal tax dollars that could fund government weapons. To do so, he aimed to live on an annual income less than the U.S. taxable level of $5,000.
For most Americans, that figure seems miniscule. But back when Merkel made his decision, it topped the worldwide average income of $4,500. (Today that sum has risen to almost $8,000, according to the United Nations. Even so, 3.6 billion people, or 60 percent of humanity, live on less than $520 a year.)
Seeking ways to cut costs, Merkel turned to the best-selling book "Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence" by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin. It asks readers to add up their cash assets, estimate the value of their possessions and then keep track of every penny they spend to see whether their purchases equate with their personal ideals.
"I knew how to run numbers on big business deals," Merkel says. "I started to run the numbers on my life."
‘I had a lot of toys'
Two decades ago, Merkel was living in a four-bedroom house spilling with stuff. To simplify, he sold almost everything. Out went his motorcycle, his pickup truck, his antique car, his speedboat.
"I had a lot of toys. And other things - you need a leather jacket to ride the motorcycle. And tools - when I felt empty, I would buy more tools."
Merkel cleared enough space to rent out three spare rooms, helping him cut his monthly bills from more than $1,000 to about $200. Four years later, he sold the house, banked the money and toured North America, Europe and Asia - he has traveled more than 17,000 miles by bike - to study how different communities and cultures are working toward economic and environmental sustainability.
In 1990, for example, Merkel visited Arizona to help distribute humanitarian aid to 300 Navajo families. He listened as an elder woman told how the government wanted to relocate her tribe so it could mine for an estimated $100 billion in coal.
"What can I do to help?" he asked.
"Go back to your people and tell them to live simply," he recalls her saying. "Then they wouldn't be out here digging up Mother Earth for coal and uranium."
Three years later, Merkel went to Kerala, India, a state of 30 million people who are educated and healthy though they earn 60 times less than the average American income. He saw how citizens harvested coconuts for meat and milk, used husks to fuel fires and wove fronds into hut walls, roofs and twine.
"There are no clear-cuts, no factories, no fossil fuels, no insurance and no marketing," he recalls. "Fuel, food, shelter, fishing nets, ropes - and they never killed the tree!"
In comparison, Merkel read the book "Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth" by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees and discovered that the average American's material consumption, calculated by the amount of land required for harvesting and waste disposal, equals 24 acres.
Can this change? Merkel founded the nonprofit Global Living Project in 1995 and figured out ways to reduce his ecological footprint to as low as 3 acres (below a person from China and above a person from India). He then shared his solutions in "Radical Simplicity," a 288-page book from New Society Publishers now in its third printing.
Merkel considers himself a better mathematician than a writer. But his book has garnered praise (and its foreword) from "Your Money or Your Life" coauthor Vicki Robin. Progressive historian Howard Zinn, for his part, calls it "the most persuasive argument I have yet seen for all of us to radically change the way we live day-to-day."
‘It's not a hardship'
So what's Merkel's solution?
"The easiest is simply to take less."
He also suggests "sharing" housing and transportation ("Share with another person and halve your impact; with four people, quarter the impact") and "caring" for what you have, be it properly maintaining household items or supporting communities by producing and purchasing goods locally.
Farm stands and mom-and-pop stores are close, but aren't supermarket prices cheaper?
"What you don't pay over the counter you pay in taxes, dirty air, dead animals, polluted water, clear-cut forests, sweatshops and strip-mined lands," Merkel writes in his book. "Small-scale bioregional producers, although their products might use less energy and materials and create less waste, don't get big tax breaks and bailouts or discounted access to resources because they wield less political influence."
In 2001, Merkel moved to East Corinth to help maintain 27 acres owned by The Good Life Center, curators of former Vermont homesteaders Scott and Helen Nearing's property in Harborside, Maine. Four years later, he became Dartmouth College's first sustainability director and moved to his fixer-upper cabin in Norwich so he could bike seven miles to the New Hampshire campus.
Pedaling aside, Merkel was paid to walk his talk. But the paycheck unexpectedly tripped him up. Earning more money than he had since leaving the military, Merkel almost doubled his annual spending to as much as $10,000. And so after two years on the job, he quit. He's working his way back to living on $5,000, which he reaps from part-time teaching, speeches and investment interest.
Merkel may sound pay-as-you-go old-fashioned, but he plugs into modern conveniences like the Internet.
"I have bills like everyone else. I'm just very conservative with things."
His monthly electric bill, for example, is "$9 and change" because he limits his use of lights and appliances. He fuels his 1992 Honda Civic (averaging 45 miles per gallon) only when he can't bike. He can't control his property taxes, but he can plant an eighth of an acre with summer fruit and salad fixings and winter root-cellar and canning staples including beets, cabbage, carrots, onions, potatoes and squash.
And, if necessary, he's willing to throw in the kitchen sink.
"You might wash dishes with wood ash as I did at Gandhi's ashram in India."
Seems like work? It doesn't have to.
"It's not a hardship - it's the frame of consciousness I put myself into." One example: "Say you are growing tired of weeding the garden. Many of the common garden weeds are edible and nutritious."
Coffee with that?
Most of Merkel's choices are calculated. Consider whether he should eat meat. He tapped a mathematical formula to determine that, because gardening consumes less land and resources than raising animals, a soybean-based tofu burger impacts the environment four times less than a chicken burger and 14 times less than a beef burger.
Merkel has enjoyed boiling maple sap into sugar. Then he discovered he had to burn nearly three cords of wood to make 16 gallons of syrup, "so I got a beehive."
Sending an e-mail requires a few seconds of electricity, while mailing a letter consumes a tree and truck fuel. But when the engineer weighed all the metal and plastic in his computer, he discovered an electronic message is three times as ecologically damaging as a letter.
That said, simplicity doesn't have to be complicated. Merkel has a shortlist of synonyms for "Earth-efficient": simple, safe, local, low cost, readily available, recycled. He has followed them for almost two decades, even as most Americans sought shelter in mortgages and credit cards.
Then the world's economy tanked this fall on a reef of bad debt.
"Every year this gets more pertinent," he says, "especially with this current economic adjustment."
Virginia's Longwood University has begun to assign Merkel's book annually to its more than 1,000 incoming freshmen. The author, speaking there recently, brought his own coffee mug to save a disposable cup. Then a student asked how the man who wrote about the dangers of coffee-plantation deforestation and "all the fuels needed to harvest, process, ship, roast, deliver, grind and brew the beans" could swallow the end product?
"My take is not to micromanage everyone, to say ‘good' or ‘bad,'" Merkel says.
Instead, he hopes people will think about each individual choice that, in combination with others, best balance what one wants with what one needs.
"For one person, the motivation may be saved money; for another, saved Earth; for another, more free time; for still another, creating conditions for world peace."
And for all, Merkel hopes simplicity will bring the same payoff: peace of mind.
Comments
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60 Comments so far
Show AllMy first reactions:this sounds like the 1970s (and earlier, the communes). I reduce the use of lights and have few appliances and my monthly electric bill is now around $65 (after a 22% rate increase by the electric company, recently) not the $9.of the guy in the article.
I am trying to figure out why a U.S. newspaper writes an article about one person, who is doing good things but is not really applicable to most people for a number of reasons: most of us live in cities and have to,(and want to), for one example. I remember the Whole Earth catalogues, which were wonderful. There are a huge number of poor people in this country who are already living the "simple life" and not by choice. Again, why is this article written? Is it to suggest there are individual solutions to the energy problem, which I think is oversimplification (to be charitable)?
Let's turn it around to government policies, not just "dropping out". Do you see it as dropping out? What about sustainable living? What about the communities that own their own electric power supply rather than the privatization rip-off of the public?
NYCartist
"Again, why is this article written? Is it to suggest there are individual solutions to the energy problem, which I think is oversimplification (to be charitable)?"
Excellent point!
"Do you see it as dropping out?"
I don't see this as dropping out - at least, not for him. What applies to one person won't apply to all, but let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. This man is answering his conscience - that is the message, and the reason for this article.
The native woman who asked him to show us how to live simply did that so that her land won't have to be raped. Everything we do and consume and throw out impacts everything else. Maybe we can all learn to do with less and still enjoy life. It isn't easy, as I have found out, but it is worth the journey, and in the long run, necessary.
Government policies are fine, but they are only a piece of the solution - we are the other part. Sometimes, the people have to lead.
I am learning how to incorporate permaculture into my life. It is just one way, but it is essential to start somewhere. My hat is off to anyone who has the courage to answer the call of conscience. They are the true leaders.
"All Nature's difference keeps all Nature's peace." Alexander Pope
Cheesedick Cheney said "the American way of life is non-negotiable". Perhaps the Gauleiter of Death and Thievery should meet this man. Mr. Merkel, however, will have to be very careful; the Veep might shoot him the face and Cheney won't even be shitfaced when he does it.
I love it when CD posts inspiring articles!
So do I. Life isn't all bleak.
"All Nature's difference keeps all Nature's peace." Alexander Pope
I'm with NYCartist. First, I applaud this man for his ability to reduce ecological impact. Good job, bro. However, beyond just 'I don't want to live that way,' a really major sticking point for me of this logic is that it's basically eco-friendly rugged individualism. It's earth-friendly, but not society-friendly. There's still a distinct lack of 'brother's keeper' aspect apart from the (admittedly impressive) minimal environmental footprint. If the conservatives and libertarians - not the parties, but the people - got fired up about environmental conservation, their plan would be something like this. Having an organized, productive and equitable society is not diametrically opposed to responsible environmental ethics, and I feel that presenting them that way is problematic.
Good comment.
I'll have to disagree with you. Merkel is being "society friendly" by giving tours, workshops, etc. Disseminating his knowledge and experience is not the sign of a hermit.
Ditto for myself. I'm off the grid as can be and remain comfortable. I barter for foodstuffs that I cannot grow/mill. I tutor students at the local high-school, and work with the local community in setting-up their computers, training, etc. A couple of times I have helped folk with their PV systems. I have a workshop that I fabricate stuff for people. I also trade good-old-fashioned muscle power when folk need help building walls, fencing, etc. I don't think that makes me a hermit, and a lot of people benefit directly when I help them.
I believe that most people who are eco-concious are still ably contributing to society. There are plenty of ways we can live sustainably, and yet still make plenty of non-taxable contributions to our neighbors and friends.
My hat's off to you too, WTF. You are showing the rest of us, by example, that we can live well and more sustainably at the same time.
I am not trying to criticize, but I often find that folks who can't do a particular thing (for whatever reason) often find fault with those who can and do. It's human, I suppose, but not very helpful. All methods are valid as long as they are honorable and take us in the direction we want to go. Let's use these opportunities to learn.
"All Nature's difference keeps all Nature's peace." Alexander Pope
I went to the web site mentioned in the article hoping to get some good ideals. All I found was books for sell.
Rickster
You cant be perfect but you can still do something.
Just eliminating a meat based diet reduces a helluva a lot of problems.
Far more than stopping driving(I dont drive).
People need transportation, people dont need to have a meat based diet.
All the arguments for it is just excuses and meat industry propaganda.
Amen!
Mankind is meant to eat meat, not only can we digest it, we have the teeth for it. What would reduce a helluva lot of problems would be to change the way we raise and process it.
Rickster
Mankind is not "meant" to eat meat. We /can/ eat meat. We are omnivores and opportunists. Neither do we need to eat meat and neither do we have to not eat it. The question I want people to ask themselves is, in our society, under current conditions, do you find it acceptable, personally, to eat meat and to be a part of that consumerism?
For me the answer is no. I am not an absolutist, but I also feel that regardless of culture you should minimize the pain and suffering you cause to other sentients. Thus, this also supports my desire to not eat meat (or eat it very rarely).
Mostly I want to steer people away from making absolute decisions and having absolute mindsets. Just do what you feel is right and try and keep your mind open to other concepts of what is "right," both for you and your community.
"Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow"
I would love to eat vegetarian, or even vegan, but I currently can't do so. I am very heavy and my dietician tells me I need too much protein for me to give up meat...but I do eat a lot less of it than I used to. There's also the problem I have with food textures, specifically the slightest crunch of a vegetable activates my gag reflex..I'm trying to experiment with different ways of preparing them to get around that problem, but it's kind of hard in a dorm room. But personally, I do think eating meat is natural, just not the way most people in consumer societies do it.
On this thread I might add that our family has gone meat-free for almost 9 years now, (since Jan 1, 2000) and we all enjoy excellent health and have no regrets.
"Mankind is not "meant" to eat meat."
What do you think our front teeth are for. Oh I forgot carrots are really tough. Our front teeth are ideally suited for biting through meat. There was a time we didn't have tools you know.
Rickster
There's no reason that the same principles can't be applied to a shared city life, provided the city is dense enough with good public transit. In fact, it may provide a better example than living off in the woods.
We don't live as low on the food chain as Merkel, but we've lived in SF without owning a car for 18 years, including raising a son. We're able to because most of what we need is close at hand: grocery stores, schools, libraries, hardware stores, pharmacies, second-hand stores, parks. And we're close to public transit that reaches around the Bay Area.
The city has some excellent examples of sharing resources that Merkel talks about. Dolores Park, near where we live, covers a mere 2 city blocks, but gets literally hundreds of visitors on a sunny day. Shared living spaces, i.e., apartments, generally use less energy than detached single family units. Garage sales and second-hand stores provide opportunities to share clothing and other goods.
The problem of overconsumption is largely one of private ownership. Like mom said: "Share your toys."
I like what Mom said.
There are movements afoot to shared/sustainable city life as well. Of course, they are not here, but in Europe, but everything has to start somewhere.
One such movement is Transition Towns: http://www.transitiontowns.org/.
"All Nature's difference keeps all Nature's peace." Alexander Pope
There's no reason that the same principles can't be applied to a shared city life, provided the city is dense enough with good public transit. In fact, it may provide a better example than living off in the woods.
We don't live as low on the food chain as Merkel, but we've lived in SF without owning a car for 18 years, including raising a son. We're able to because most of what we need is close at hand: grocery stores, schools, libraries, hardware stores, pharmacies, second-hand stores, parks. And we're close to public transit that reaches around the Bay Area.
The city has some excellent examples of sharing resources that Merkel talks about. Dolores Park, near where we live, covers a mere 2 city blocks, but gets literally hundreds of visitors on a sunny day. Shared living spaces, i.e., apartments, generally use less energy than detached single family units. Garage sales and second-hand stores provide opportunities to share clothing and other goods.
The problem of overconsumption is largely one of private ownership. Like mom said: "Share your toys."
It's amazing that this guy learned so much about how to live in America and American society from being outside America. That's what most Americans find impossible to understand. They can’t understand it because they don’t know much anything outside American culture. It’s not their fault. They are living in a vacuum. The media in America not only delivers the news, but also the lifestyles. It fills time but more importantly, it’s a filter as well. The media decides what we know of the rest of the world. This is what has to change if you want to live of 5 grand a month.
Hoa binh
We need more people like Jim Merkel--in our government, for instance. We have people who could teach us and lead us. If the whole country got behind lowering our impact on the world it probably wouldn't be that inconvenient. But it will never happen. After this last election, my opinion of America has lowered considerably. People are so busy seeing to it that citizens can't marry or have equal rights that they don't have time to think for themselves. Hope they aren't too disappointed when Obama cant or wont fix things.
He has good ideas, but he's practicing them in the wrong country. I wonder if the $5,000 includes premiums on health insurance. If so, he is truly a hero of frugality. If not, then after his first serious illness or injury the medical collection agency will take everything he has.
Indeed! I quit my high-flying DC job and moved to the NM mountains to live sustainably. With the profit I made on my MD house, I bought 10 acres outright, live in a trailer, harness all my own energy and water, and grow some food. I barter my talent for more food and consult when I need the extra pennies for property improvement.
Is this the good life? You bet.....BUT! Health insurance. We still need health insurance in the USA. I need health insurance, and the premium sucks up over $12K/year, plus the deductibles, etc. I've hurt myself a few times and the trip to the clinic for stitches and drugs is less than $600 each time (I'm neither brave nor agile enough to stitch my own wounds), but should I have a serious accident, I don't want to be destitute after the hospital comes for my property.
Jim Merkel is taking a major risk, and is thus NOT a good example.
"Is this the good life? You bet.....BUT! Health insurance. We still need health insurance in the USA. I need health insurance, and the premium sucks up over $12K/year, plus the deductibles, etc. I've hurt myself a few times and the trip to the clinic for stitches and drugs is less than $600 each time (I'm neither brave nor agile enough to stitch my own wounds), but should I have a serious accident, I don't want to be destitute after the hospital comes for my property."
Excellent point. You put your finger right on the real problem. Given real single payer insurance, many people might make different choices.
P.S. What are you using to gather energy?
Mostly solar. I am grid-tied as I think batteries are obscenely dirty creations. I generate over 100 amps which guarantees me a credit on my electric utility bill, even when I fire up the welder or other big electric motors in the shop. Hot water is from passive solar backed up by an instant water heater. Heating is by a trombe wall and wood. I still need propane for cooking. We use mostly candles for lighting. We do not receive radio, wireless phone, TV, so no need for all that stuff. The computer is our only contact with the world outside.
The golden handcuffs that restrain people from making real choices extend well-beyond the check that rewards us for 8-5 serfdom.
Health insurance is THE golden handcuffs in our society and the barrier to real change and progress.
I got the sense that Merkel is single. He is taking a risk, yes, but not with anyone else. Still, it is a risk.
I remember, after reading the book "How to Survive Without a Salary," that I wrote to the author, Charles Long, and asked him how he got around the health insurance problem. His reply: He and his family moved to Canada. Now there is an example of something that is not feasible.
Still, there is much we can do to lighten our load while keeping our jobs. It is not an all-or-nothing situation. Whatever we each do to lighten the load helps. Believing that we need to sell everything and move to a shack in Vermont to make a difference is not the answer. At least, not for most.
"All Nature's difference keeps all Nature's peace." Alexander Pope
That's what the National Health Insurance Act is for...let's hope we can get it passed.
"If not, then after his first serious illness or injury the medical collection agency will take everything he has."
They can't do that you know. People who lose their homes because of their medical bills do so by borrowing money against their homes to pay of the medical bills. Don't ever do that.
Rickster
Who IS John Galt?
.
If we all did this how would Wall Street finance Fascist Wars?
.
.
Well? Who would feed obese corporations?
.
Atlas just smiles.
This guy must have one of those retirement packages that includes 100% medical insurance and must live in aplace with very very low property taxes.
I could live on $5,000 per year if I didn't have to pay property taxes (that are now $3,500 per year and rise 6-15% each year), and medical insurance (that is now $6,000 per year and rises 12-18% each year). I have no spouse or kids, nor do I have any pre-existing conditions, so if anybody should be able to live cheap, I should.
Move to NM. My property taxes on my 10 acres is $60/year, and annual fee to use the trash dump is $20/yr.
"I have bills like everyone else. I'm just very conservative with things."
Don't you mean "conservationist", the exact opposite of "conservative"?
My friends and I used to live by the Mother Earth News. It gave lots of info about sustainable, earth friendly living. Looks like after the Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush Jr. consumption years, the yuppie scum will die and conditions will take us in a sustainable direction again.
There may be some irony in the fact that the Army we belonged to is the only institution dedicated to addressing the most important issue-- reducing our human population, though in the dumbest, cruelest and most wasteful way possible. Any good that may come from culling people militarily is offset by redistributing wealth upwards and contaminating the land available for our ecological footprints.
It seems rather obscene to be talking about the 'good life' while a group of people are being starved to death during a siege!
Then the same people have been suffering for sixty years at the hands of their cruel, inhuman, religiously-deranged invaders and occupiers who will stop at nothing to fulfill their dreams of a racist, elitist homeland. In fact their ambitions could bring about the end of our world!
Who am I talking about? You know! And if you don't check out:
www.dangerouscreation.com
Even though I know you're talking about Israel, this also sounds like it could be applied to conservative Christian governance of the USA.
Thomas Moore and NYCartist
"Again, why is this article written? Is it to suggest there are individual solutions to the energy problem, which I think is oversimplification (to be charitable)?"
followed by "excellent point!"
What are y'all smoking? The point is that we do not have to live in excess. There is an alternative "good life" that is more safe and more sane: sustainability.
The majority of humans from time immemorial have never "enjoyed the 'good' life" (wanton excess consumption) that Americans take for granted, yet this uncaring lifestyle by our tiny minority risks causing permanent ecological damage to "life on earth" (worldwide). The general degradation and eventual destruction of life on earth is immoral in so many ways that go beyond "brother's keeper" without entering politics.
Americans make up less than 5% of the human race and less than 10% of Americans have ever achieved the American dream. Therefore, to achieve filthy riches for half of 1% of earth's inhabitants you goodfellas think we should continue to destroy the earth blindly!?
Either you two are willfully blinded by political persuasion or you are being paid by right wing think tanks to muddy up the debates on a popular progressive website.
Excellently vacuous points good sirs!
myconscience: Do you think you are quoting me above? Go back and read my entire comment,please.
Okay I can agree that we cannot expect every soul on earth to accept such simplicity, that is unrealistic, but it isn't wrong either.
The fact that so few people can emulate the "good life" does not diminish its goodness. Ghandi and Jesus lived in a way that was so fundamentally good and right in spite of the fact that the world ignores their call to goodness.
I will not sit back idly as folks mock the shortcomings of goodness. That makes about as much sense as blaming God for giving people the freewill to choose evil over goodness.
myconscience:so you can reconsider. If everyone could do that, we'd all be closer to negotiating differences as individuals. Many people emulate a "good life". I do not mock "goodness" as you know. I think I am living as a good person. Most of us are. Even those of us who are atheists.
There is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but everybody can cut back in her own way. I have, since retirement. Simpler living is its own reward. I'm happier than I've ever been in my life, but I live alone.
A few old hippies won't do it. The government has to buy into the idea with single payer health care, shared living spaces, and other means for human contact. Most people need community.
Agreed, but we can all live more sustainably than we already are. It doesn't require moving anywhere - we can improve our situations where we are!
The government is needed and the people are needed and the old hippies are needed and the communities are needed. The answers are all around us, including...us.
Check out what one family is doing in the middle of suburbia: http://www.pathtofreedom.com/.
"All Nature's difference keeps all Nature's peace." Alexander Pope
No the point is that if you invent something to efficiently kill enough people, the survivors will not have to worry about over consumption. All our days will be consumed with finding food and shelter from hungry wild humans.
Maybe cannibalism is the future?
I hope not, due to my size I'd be the first person hunted down :-(
Sick!
Someone else on the right track of helping humanity. So many of us in so many far flung places, all doing from their hearts what they feel is a way to help others. There is hope after all!
My friend Burton Cummings always writes songs that grab at the heart and emotions. Although I haven't seen him for years, he too is quite a ways away, I was reminded of the inspiration that good tunes can also provide. Music is so very powerful to the emotions, especially so, when they evoke good ones.
These two musical scores I hope will help take you onward and upward. One is deeply enlightening, and the other, Burton's, is a great new rocker, that will also pick you up:
http://www.whatifthemovie.tv
and the rocker http://www.christiankeys.ca/AboutMe.html#Burton.Cummings
Turn up your speakers!
Whoa! Go back and challenge your basic assumptions. Just like you challenge the omnipresent advertisements for retail goods, you must question society's dependence upon the insurance industry. Countless people are enslaved by their perceived need to stay within a corrupt system so that their medical insurance will be paid. I find this incredible! How about choosing freedom (and wellness)? How about having faith in your own good karma and knowing that you will be able to confront and triumph over whatever comes along?
Yes, I am an iconoclast, but, believe me, I never regretted one moment of non-conformism. Can the "go-along-to-get-along" crowd say the same?
I've lived abroad for twenty years, total, and been back for ten, and guess what? CEDAW still hasn't been passed, women's wages have gone down, so has social security and Obama voted for FISA, the bailout and the war.
So, if you want real change, as Ghandi said, be it.
Yes, I had a fatal form of cancer, despite my phenomenally healthful life-style (hereditary?), which I beat in 6 weeks with no chemotherapy, radiation or drugs; just allowed it to be sliced off and my homeopathist did the rest. The group insurance policy of a company which called me to do a p/t job paid the surgeon and I barter reflexology for homeopathy.
When I recently broke my knee, falling off an illegal step in a local restaurant, their insurance company set $10,000. aside for my care. When that's gone, I can sue.
In the meantime, I've applied for social security and SSI because I want to write while I recuperate, so I can generate residual income from book sales to live the "simple life"!
Don't let people like Jim Merkel misguide you. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
The US did not become a hyper super military power by dreaming about living a good life on $5000 a year.
Good article. I laud anyone who can live a simple life. Ulitmately, a simple life will be what saves us humans from booting ourselves off this planet. Jim Merkel has found a solution suitable to himself. I'm sure many others will benefit from such a life-style.
Unfortunately, the whole planet cannot live as Jim does. If you will note in the photo, Jim has a galvanized steel roof on his cozy abode. I once lived for over a year in an even smaller house with an out house, kerosene lamp and a wood stove in Maine. I was actually quite comfortable.
I did realize that the steel for the roof, the iron for the stove and the kerosene for the lamp had to come from a more complex world than the one I was living in at the time.
While I lay in my bunk one cold winter night and feeling such satisfaction at living so well and so cheap, I had a stray thought.
"What would the landscape look like if 200 million city-dwellers decided to live like me and no one was willing to drill for or refine kerosene or work in a foundry to produce the steel for my roof and stove.?" Surely I would die without the roof and the stove before the night was over.
It took us a long time to get from 1700 to 2008. We cannot go back that fast.
I don't consider myself a packrat but I went into my storage closet the other day and discovered stuff I forgot I had. Worse yet, stuff I should have never bought.
Hats off to Mr. Merkel but I just can't live that frugally. Mind you, I'm not a gadget freak but there's way too much cool stuff out there...that I likely don't need!