The holidays can
be emotionally and environmentally wearing. According to the Center for
a New American Dream (www.newdream.org), over 5 million extra tons of
trash are produced in the US between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day.
If you’re in the mood to make any New Year’s Resolutions, consider
curbing your consumption, helping not only your sanity but the health
of the planet as well. Here are books that’ll get you started. (If you
buy one, share it with your friends.)
Timeless Simplicity—Creative Living in a Consumer Society
By John Lane, Green Books, 2002
Timeless Simplicity, artist John Lane’s thoughtful meditation on
the merits of a pared-down existence, stands head and shoulders above
most of its rivals to date. In turns absorbing, provocative, and life
affirming, the book insists on both the superiority of the simple life
and the fact that it is now an absolute requirement if we are to
survive as a species.
The phrase “Timeless Simplicity,” states Lane, embraces all of the following:
A state of consciousness; those who are in retreat from
industrialism; those making a personal response to what they see as an
increasingly wasteful world; and those seeking to discover a deeper
personal fulfillment than that which they are finding in their
stressful work and extravagant life.
Over the course of a mere 100 pages, Lane includes a historical
background that mentions Christian ascetics, medieval mystics,
Transcendentalist poets and Taoist hermits. He shows us how simplicity
is one of the few unifying features among almost all of these faiths.
In contrast, Lane shows us, the average man in today’s world is
depressingly concerned with the mundane. Bowed down by the strain of
surviving in a materialist society, he thinks of little beyond the next
paycheck, the accumulation of more possessions, the booking of the next
tropical holiday. Our first step then, if we are to rekindle the
sanctity of human existence, is to loosen the bond with wage labor,
decrease our consumption, rekindle our belief systems and, perhaps most
importantly, to slow down.
With this as its premise, Timeless Simplicity sets out to
provide practical advice by which we can return our attention to both
life’s important questions and to its plain pleasures. No doubt this
book will find its way onto many of the essential reading lists of
2002. Literary, profound, erudite, this is one of the most eloquent
hymns yet to a more considered way of life. Lane’s voice resembles that
of an English Krishnamurti: a commanding, sagacious voice urging us to
change our ways before it is too late.
Further Reading
Do Americans Shop Too Much?
by Juliet Schor, Beacon Press, 2000;
Money Makes the World Go Around
by Barbara Garson, Penguin Putnam Inc., 2002
The Overspent American: Why we want what we don’t need
By Juliet B. Schor, HarperCollins, 1999 (paper)
Confronting Consumption
by Thomas Princen, Michael Maniates, Ken Conca, MIT Press; 2002
Affluenza; The All Consuming Epidemic
by John De Graaf, David Wann, Thomas H. Naylor, Berrett-Koehler, 2001;
Culture Jam: How to Reverse America’s Suicidal Consumer Binge—And Why We Must
by Kalle Lasn, Quill, 2000
Coercion: Why We Listen to What “They” Say
by Douglas Rushkoff, Riverhead Books, 2000
Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic: The Aesthetics of Consumerism
by Daniel Harris, Da Capo Press, 2001
Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping
by Paco Underhill, Touchstone Books, 2000
The Soul of the New Consumer: Authenticity—What We Buy and Why in the New Economy
by David Lewis, Darren Bridger, Nicholas Brealey 2000
Lead Us Into Temptation
by James B. Twitchell, Columbia University Press, 2000
Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from the Baffler
by Thomas Frank (Editor), Matt Weiland (Editor); W.W. Norton & Company 1997
The Consumer Society Reader
by Juliet Schor (Editor), Douglas B. Holt (Editor), Douglas Holt; New Press, 2000
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