Video: What if money didn't matter?

We're bringing up children to live the same kind of lives that we don't want to live in order they may justify themselves by bringing up their children to do the same things; it's all retch and no vomit. It never gets there. And therefore, it's so important to consider this question:

What do I desire?

the new normal

i've been meaning to pass this post on for a lil while now - i came across the most beautiful post on simple lovely last month and bookmarked it; it was only yesterday while i was going through my bookmarks that it refreshed my memory and intentions. i'm just going to go ahead and quote it because i think she captures the notion absolutely.

joslyn says:

"I loved this piece entitled “The New Normal” from Tuesday’s All Things Considered... I've been thinking a lot about the idea of recalibrating our lives due to the economic situation and what specifically that means for my family (beyond the spending hiatus.) Call me an optimist, but I'm convinced that this period of re-thinking how we live, dialing back and becoming more mindful (whether forced or voluntary) will absolutely change our lives for the better.

My favorite line from the piece is the prediction that we will "drive smaller cars and live larger lives."

Larger lives…I like that."

sometimes i think, despite all of the hardships and job loss that this recession has caused, that a careful analysis and re-calibration of one's life is always beneficial and - provided that people actually stick with their resolutions - better for them in the long run.

take a moment today and read through the comments in both simple lovely and npr - i think that a lot of them tie in with the story of stuff so very well.

smaller cars and larger lives... i'll most definitely second that motion.

photos via victoria pearson

enough.

at the moment, we have a society that disconnects us from our inconvenient realities. we are disconnected from our forebears, the people who got us here through their striving and yearning for just-enough. If we could hear them, they would say to us, 'you lucky gits, i hope you're having a fantastic time standing on our shoulders, on the peak of all that we sacrificed and achieved'. instead of appreciating this, instead of being grateful, we carry on grumpily chasing more. we ignore the wisdom of our ancestors because the world of more reviles yesterday, disdains today and preaches an obsession with some mythic perfect tomorrow.

we are also disconnected from the people who struggle to live in the poor four-fifths of the world. if we listened to them, they might say, 'you lucky gits, aren't you having a fantastic time on the back of our cheap resources and labour?' instead of wondering at our own actions or even being grateful, we grumpily continue chasing more. we ignore their voices because the world of more tells us to obsess about ourselves. and in our wealthy developed world, we are disconnected from each other, because our culture emphasizes our tiny differences rather than our huge commonalities, in the interests of fostering unlimited material competition.

it is time for us to disconnect ourselves from the world of more. it is time to say 'thanks very much' to it, and to continue onwards with the wider progress of our species. our more-more- culture has done it's job fantastically well; it has brought us to the point where we can begin to develop a world based on enoughism. we now have all that we materially need to revisit and explore anew our old, nourishing and truly sustainable natural human resources - qualities such as gratitude, generosity and the urge for human connection. and we have all of the eternal now in which to explore these bounties (unless the planet catches fire first). in the western world, material life is pretty much as good as it can get. there is no point in chasing more. from here on in, we will just be bringing our own wasps to the picnic. it is time to be grateful - and to say 'enough'.

excerpted from 'enough' by john naish

pages 251-252

a good dose of perspective

"we often feel compelled to buy our status-boosting goods because our tribal instincts make us measure ourselves materially against our peers, to see if we are doing ok in life. in the developed world, this massively distorts our idea of what we need to be just averagely ok.

wealthy londoners, for example, no longer feel very rich because they don't mix with less affluent people anymore. we need to look wider to the global neighbourhood that technology and travel has brought to our doorsteps.

about half of humanity lives on less than $2 a day. more than 852 million people do not get enough to eat, around 1.6 billion have no electricity and a third of the world's people have never made a phone call.

meanwhile, a fifth of the earth's people buy nearly 90% of all the consumer goods.

that's us, the stressed out guys in the wealthy neighbourhood."

taken from
enough: breaking free from the world of more
by john naish