This seems like a perfect place to post one of my favorite bits of poetry — from Horace Ode 3.16:

“True riches mean not revenues:
Care clings to wealth: the thirst for more
Grows as out fortunes grow. I stretch my store
By narrowing my wants; …
… Happiest to whom high Heaven
Enough — no more — with sparing hand has given.”

I really enjoyed your article. It reminds me of my husband’s advisor who told him if he ever wanted to come back to the university after working for industry, he should live on a professor’s salary and bank the rest. The point I take from this is that living up to or beyond our means narrows our options. Part of the happiness of living simply is keeping open the chance to find our own best ways to apply strengths in our daily occupations.

The link between Mind and Social / Environmental-Issues.

The fast-paced, consumerist lifestyle of Industrial Society is causing exponential rise in psychological problems besides destroying the environment. All issues are interlinked. Our Minds cannot be peaceful when attention-spans are down to nanoseconds, microseconds and milliseconds. Our Minds cannot be peaceful if we destroy Nature.

Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment.

Subject : In a fast society slow emotions become extinct.
Subject : A thinking mind cannot feel.
Subject : Scientific/ Industrial/ Financial thinking destroys the planet.

Emotion is what we experience during gaps in our thinking.

If there are no gaps there is no emotion.

Today people are thinking all the time and are mistaking thought (words/ language) for emotion.

When society switches-over from physical work (agriculture) to mental work (scientific/ industrial/ financial/ fast visuals/ fast words ) the speed of thinking keeps on accelerating and the gaps between thinking go on decreasing.

There comes a time when there are almost no gaps.

People become incapable of experiencing/ tolerating gaps.

Emotion ends.

Man becomes machine.

A society that speeds up mentally experiences every mental slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.

A ( travelling )society that speeds up physically experiences every physical slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.

A society that entertains itself daily experiences every non-entertaining moment as Depression / Anxiety.

Fast visuals/ words make slow emotions extinct.

Scientific/ Industrial/ Financial thinking destroys emotional circuits.

A fast (large) society cannot feel pain / remorse / empathy.

A fast (large) society will always be cruel to Animals/ Trees/ Air/ Water/ Land and to Itself.

To read the complete article please follow either of these links :

PlanetSave

TheHolisticWheel

sushil_yadav

This is an important distinction. I think if own an SUV you are in a special category of Kid in the Candy Store. You just don’t know where to spend all your money with all the goodies around. That’s a paradox of choice. While uncomfortable there are more difficult situations to be in.

For the majority of people, and increasingly of Americans, I would say that is not the biggest problem but still a very important one. To me, the problem is drawing the ever moving line of the safety net. How much is enough? It is too easy to believe you have enough when you don’t. Too easy to think you don’t have enough when you have too much.
The shopaholic-Scrooge continuum, for example.

The crazy consumerism is probably as much as symptom as a cause of discontent. My wife just got downsized from her job as a guidance counselor. I was downsized from a corporation and several other companies over the past 10 years and I’ll only be 30 in June. The steadiest job my family could obtain was in military. The point is that the term anxiously employed is a valid descriptor of the worker these days.

Buying brings a little burst of pleasure at the cost of a more stable and flourishing long term future. Yet the rub is this: how do you eat a dirt sandwich? In other words, how do you develop discipline to persevere through the lean times and make a financial safety net if you don’t have the signature strength of self-regulation?