I saw a bumper sticker the other evening that caught my ire. It is “Living simply so that others may simply live”
Huh?
Why? If you want to do something to truly help others why not build those that need help up? Why lower yourself? I just don’t understand that mindset. I am all for helping your fellow man, that’s a good and noble cause. Lowering yourself however is a weak, lazy way out. It doesn’t help others, it’s just a pat yourself on the back feel good notion. If I cancel my cable and get rid of my cell phone that’s not going to feed some starving pigmy somewhere in the nether reaches of the world. It’s more difficult to help others. It requires more effort. I guess that’s where the adage of “anything having is worth working for”. Remember your grandparents telling you that? It’s true. Now when you help someone you become partially responsible for their outcome. Not totally because everyone has to have responsibility for themselves ultimately but you do share some responsibility on the outcome. I’ve written about this before here.
August 25, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Kinda like the old adage “give a man a fish and you have fed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you have fed him for life”.
First of all I agree with everything you have said. Now I will take a turn back to my dark side and add that in America we dont want the RESPONSIBILITY that comes with lending that helping hand. Its easier to anonymously give a dollar and feel good about what we did, and in America, its all about the instant gratification.
If we wanted to help those on welfare we would teach them skills and give them the opportunity to have jobs. We would also make sure they made less money on welfare than working those jobs. Lets not reward the wrong thing here, people are simple and normally can see the obvious. Pay me more to stay home and watch Springer than if I went to work….I think Ill practice my JERRY chant. But its quicker to say we are helping if we throw money at the ones who need help, and in Politics you need to show you are doing something NOW.
I wonder how many people would say I am helping my kids by doing their homework rather than teaching them how to do it themselves? Probably not many. So why isnt teaching people the skills they need instead of handing them money a better solution??
And if the answer to that question is..”They dont want to work”, why in the F**K are we helping them?!
September 8, 2008 at 2:53 pm
In principle, I agree. Why spread the misery? Why try to revert to “Little House on the Prairie” living conditions when there is no real need to do so.
But I have to confess. I’ve sort of moved down the rung on the “overly complicated living” scale. I earn as much as ever…but I’ve simplified my life a good deal.
It should be no secret to you and your wife that I’m somewhat of a non-conformist. I march along to the beat of my own drummer most of the time. That’s why I followed Thoreau’s advice to “simplify”.
To that end, as a non-conformist, I have a HUGE problem with mass consumerism. Consumerism tells you what to wear, eat, think and do. I don’t really cotton to that sort of thing, and hate seeing my kids be fashion conscious at 10 years old.
That’s why I have chosen for my family to live more simply. We reduce, reuse and recycle wherever we can.
1- We did a garden this year, we’re canning our own vegetables and the like. We have also taken advantage of local farmer’s and markets and the like to increase our food supplies at less cost than the grocery stores were charging.
2- We recycle aluminum cans, because as long as the kids and Margo are going to drink root beer and diet coke…might as well recycle the cans.
3- I’m trying to find secondary uses for everything we have. We use dryer sheets to keep the South Georgia gnats out of our faces.
4- We only buy what we can’t make. We only buy American when we buy. We repair whatever is broken rather than buy new. For example, rather than buy new shorts for the kids this summer (like my wife wanted) we cut off and hemmed their school shorts to get them through summer and only bought new clothes at the start of school.
That’s the kind of thing I think is good for America and Americans. Our chief problem is that no one remembers how to make do anymore or work with their hands. It has become easier to replace than reuse. So people get in financial trouble because they over buy what the TV tells them to buy.
I still have satellite dish, I still use a cell phone, and still (obviously) use a computer and the internet. But I live simpler than ALOT of other people I know.
That’s what I mean by living simply.
September 8, 2008 at 3:23 pm
I’ve always been a proponent of living within your means. That’s just being resposible. I do believe though that having desires for nice things is not a bad thing. My boys wanted a Wii video game system. They saved their money and earned it. They have their own resposiblities in the house that come from just being part of the family, doing those don’t get them any money, that gets them fed and clothed:) Seriously, once they are done with those they ask for more that would earn them money for what they want. That’s fine. In fact I encourage that as much as I can. They learn a work ethic from the start and they learn the value of money. We also let them make bad buying decisions, within reason, so they learn to make the right buying decisions when they’re older.
As far as working with what you’ve got and getting the most out of what you already have, I agree completely. That only makes sense. You are right, people do tend to waste so much they dont even realize.