Simple living
Common practices of simple living include reducing the number of possessions one owns, depending less on technology and services, and spending less money.
Some cite sociopolitical goals aligned with environmentalist, anti-consumerist, or anti-war movements, including conservation, degrowth, deep ecology, and tax resistance.
More formal traditions of simple living stretch back to antiquity, originating with religious and philosophical leaders such as Jesus, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Zarathustra, Gautama Buddha, and Prophet Muhammad.
[9][10][full citation needed] Gautama Buddha espoused simple living as a central virtue of Buddhism.
[15] Many other notable religious individuals, such as Benedict of Nursia, Francis of Assisi,[16] Leo Tolstoy, Rabindranath Tagore, Albert Schweitzer, and Mahatma Gandhi, have claimed that spiritual inspiration led them to a simple living lifestyle.
[7][page needed] Sufism in the Muslim world emerged and grew as a mystical, somewhat hidden tradition in the mainstream Sunni and Shia denominations of Islam.
[17] Sufism grew particularly in the frontier areas of Islamic states,[17][18] where the asceticism of its fakirs and dervishes appealed to populations already used to the monastic traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity.
[18][21] Plain people typically belonged to Christian groups that practised lifestyles that excluded forms of wealth or technology for religious or philosophical reasons.
Such Christian groups include the Shakers, Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites, Amana Colonies, Bruderhof,[22] Old German Baptist Brethren, Harmony Society, and some Quakers.
He therefore concluded that what is necessary for happiness, bodily comfort, and life itself should be maintained at minimal cost, while all things beyond what is necessary for these should either be tempered by moderation or completely avoided.
[25] Henry David Thoreau, an American naturalist and author, made the classic secular advocacy of a life of simple and sustainable living in his book Walden (1854).
Thoreau conducted a two-year experiment living a plain and simple life on the shores of Walden Pond.
"[26] In Victorian Britain, Henry Stephens Salt, an admirer of Thoreau, popularised the idea of "Simplification, the saner method of living".
[29] British novelist John Cowper Powys advocated the simple life in his 1933 book A Philosophy of Solitude.
From the 1920s, a number of modern authors articulated both the theory and practice of living simply, among them Gandhian Richard Gregg, economists Ralph Borsodi and Scott Nearing, anthropologist-poet Gary Snyder, and utopian fiction writer Ernest Callenbach.
Economist E. F. Schumacher argued against the notion that "bigger is better" in Small Is Beautiful (1973); and Duane Elgin continued the promotion of the simple life in Voluntary Simplicity (1981).
[37] The "100 Thing Challenge" is a grassroots movement to whittle personal possessions to one hundred items, aiming of de-cluttering and simplify life.
[38] People in the tiny house movement chose to live in small, mortgage-free, low-impact dwellings, such as log cabins or beach huts.
[41] Tom Hodgkinson believes the key to a free and simple life is to stop consuming and start producing.
"[43] Forest gardening, developed by simple living adherent Robert Hart, is a low-maintenance, plant-based food production system based on woodland ecosystems.
The American political activist Scott Nearing was skeptical about how humanity would use new technology, citing destructive inventions such as nuclear weapons.
[48] Although simple living is often a secular pursuit, it may still involve reconsidering appropriate technology as Anabaptist groups such as the Amish or Mennonites have done.
One recent graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design said "her classmates showed little interest in living in garrets and eating ramen noodles.
The principles of the new economics, as set out by Robertson, are the following:[64] Media related to Simple living at Wikimedia Commons
