LOW MAINTENANCE LIFESTYLES

(I wrote 98% of this blog post in 1995 in an attempt to sketch out issues I believed we were facing as a species & the solutions I felt were necessary to resolve them.)

We've around 6 thousand million years of consuming, building, wasting & living possible before our star goes nova.

 It's unsustainable. So how can we change course to a lifestyle sustainable for the years ahead?

We have seen exponential growth in almost every area of life in the last 200 years.

We can't go on this way or we will wind up with a totally grey, concreted, polluted planet.

~

The mindless game producers, merchandisers and marketing men are playing must be obvious to everyone now. Buy. Consume. And do it, Forever....

To survive in the long term we must disconnect from their game plan.

A Low Maintenance Lifestyle solution consists of several integrated elements:

i. The self-created pursuit of a low maintenance lifestyle.
ii. Government support and underpinning of a 'Be All You Can Be' culture.
iii. Introduction of a country-wide 'Citizens Entitlement Grant'. (UBI)
iv. Resource release from all subsequently redundant government agencies.
v. A planetary community.

i. The self-created pursuit of a low maintenance lifestyle.

This is the oldest form of lifestyle on the planet. Through it, everything possible was used to aid survival. Energies were used wisely and nothing was wasted. If these principles were not adhered to you died. It was as simple as that.

We are realizing that we are not immune to these realities, that we were fed an illusion of security in order to make us buy. This dream-state is rapidly turning into a nightmare. Now it is starting to become very real to us that, just like the ancients, we too must survive the future.

With the coming of this latest pandemic the stone cold reality we face as a species is hitting us hard. We can no longer afford to feel that individualism and competition is the most successful way of all to see us through. Past survival was much more built on cooperation and mutual caring than selfish individualism.

The broad background to the long history of low maintenance lifestyles is the story of mass survival, or as close to it as the ancients could get by sharing and working together, not against each other..

In the modern world there are several possibilities available to us to achieve mutual and mass survival that were unavailable to the ancients:


We can use the collective energy as focused through government to provide the basic essentials for your daily survival.

We can seek to maximize Being as opposed to mere Doing and Having.

We can organize the communal use of tools to maximize utility and to minimize waste.

The essence of a Low Maintenance Lifestyle is:

Buy Less.
Waste Less.
Share tools and resources.
Care for one another.
Don't be elitist.

The cycle we are on now is that we must buy ever increasing numbers of goods to keep everyone employed so that they are able to buy ever increasing numbers of goods and so on ad infinitum and ad nauseam.

The final product is of course everyone owning everything on a concrete planet and feeling totally miserable.

This is obviously madness... Yet that is the future we are facing.

The politicians call endlessly for "More growth. More growth." But we can already see and feel what is growing all around us. We already feel sick of this modern world with its stress, greed, criminality and selfishness. Do we want another 6,000 million years of that?

The marketing people want to fill you with the obsession to have without limit. They want you to be filled with longing for their products. They want you to be endlessly dissatisfied with what you already have. They want you to be in a state of constant longing for satiation and to never achieve it.

Keep in mind:

Most of the true happiness you ever find has little to do with possession.

Most true happiness is gained by useful co-operation with others.

Points ii, iii & iv would begin to weaken the hypnosis of the mass marketers:

ii. Government support and underpinning of a 'Be All You Can Be' culture.
iii. Introduction of a ‘Citizens Entitlement Grant'. (UBI)
iv. Resource release from all subsequently redundant government agencies

All four elements contain the essential ingredients for a sustainable life for the indefinite future.

There is no avoiding the fact that government will have to be the agency which creates any reform. We and our immediate ancestors have transferred almost all real power to this agency, so now it must work for us and for the (almost) endless generations to come.


ii. Government support and underpinning of a 'Be All You Can Be' culture.

Element ii. is easiest to achieve - but it would need to be constant and deeply integrated into every area of government policy - from education to conditions of work.

Elements iii., iv. & v. are the essence of how the future can be survived.

iii. Introduction of a ‘Universal Basic Income'.
iv. Resource release from all subsequently redundant government agencies

The largest change involves a move to a ‘Universal Basic Income’.

I believe every citizen deserves the basic wherewithall to live a decent life. The only agency available to control such a task is government. We all know that the resources are now available on this planet to do it. Hopefully we all can plainly see that these resources are flowing up and out of reach of a greater proportion of us.

In case you are unfamiliar with the concept of a universal basic income (UBI) it works like this:

Each person over an agreed age receives a state-agreed amount in their bank account each month. This payment is made whether you are employed or not. Everyone receives it. Why should the rich receive it you might ask? Because a payment to everyone is almost without any administrative cost at all. You need no adjudicators constantly determining whether this or that person’s income is too high because a cut-off amount would have to be set, then an appeals-handling system etc. etc. A simple payment to everyone above a certain age is straightforward with no need of administrative overheads.

How would such a costly exercise be funded?

Initially it would be funded like so many things are funded when perceived to be needed, such as the bail-out to the banks in 2007-8 or the current multi-trillion fund for big business hit by the coronavirus pandemic.

Later, point iv. comes in - Resource Release.

In a long transfer process, once citizens have the basic resources to live routinely supplied, then government can start to close all its agencies, offices and let go it personnel dealing with unemployment benefit, health and social security and many, many other departments.

With increasing automation, robotics and Artificial Intelligence we will need to change our whole focus from mass employment to something else... and why not replace the emphasis on having and doing to the joy of being, learning and inter-communication?

The UBI would mean you didn´t have to work. However, if you still wanted to work and many would, you would still receive the grant - this leaves the incentive there to all those still ambitious to have a higher lifestyle.


Q1. What about the people who don´t use the money for the necessities but spend it all on booze or drugs?

It´s possible to visualize a perfect system but usually the people within it have to be perfect too. However, with everyone having a stake in the community, a solid foundation and plenty of opportunities to learn new skills in the environment of being and learning more, this problem is likely to reduce over time.

Q2. Wouldn’t those working feel bad that some were getting a free ride?

The basic income provides a stable foundation for everyone. It doesn’t supply a plethora of luxuries. If desired these would have to be earned alongside everyone else. But those living the basic life could get involved in all the voluntary and community work he or she wished. In this was communities could be vastly enhanced.

Q3. What main differences could I expect to see if this was to be enacted?

The hope is that communities would draw closer together and that poverty at its most extreme would be eliminated altogether. Each family would have the knowledge that they would always have a strong foundation to rely upon due to receiving a regular income.

Q4. Wouldn’t people simply save most of the money they received?

The rich no doubt would. But those it is most designed to help, those at the bottom of an particular society would without doubt spend it and most likely in their local communities.

Q5. What might be the long term benefits?

If everyone receives a basic income the most likely long-term benefit would be stability. If also, in this new world now being born free health care was available then a stronger, healthier more cohesive society could very well be born.

Q6. What are the likely eventualities without a UBI?

We can see the trend occurring now and why should it diminish, wealth ascending ever faster to the most wealthy elites across every nation. Corruption and crime following in its wake as a percentage of those excluded use their own methods to gain wealth outside of the normal job ladder which is increasing pulled out of reach. Increasing discord, envy, division, frustration and and ultra-competitive aggression.

If it isn’t the gaining of a Universal basic Income and the living of a low maintenance lifestyle that we change to... at least now with the present just-started breakdown of our existences we do know that SOMETHING has to change.

The status quo is not going to work anymore and for even more reasons than the current crisis due to this coronavirus pandemic.

Right now and for many reasons we are on the road to ruin... and a majority of us know it, or soon will.

We can either make the change. Or wait for things to change around us. Our choices have reduced to those two.

~

Finally...

Something to look forward to:

v. A planetary community.

This is a vision for a better future planet-wide. Winning a decent life for all people. Resource planning & redirecting with a hybrid form of compassionate democratic socialism and well-regulated ethical capitalism. The whole world with the fundamental basics of life guaranteed and freed to focus on being and playfully communicating - sharing ideas, songs, dance, stories, experiences - ultimately a global harmony of being.

Pie in the Sky? Perhaps... but "old" ideas such as compassion, love and mutual respect are about all that can save us now....

Connection, communication and cooperation.

We are all here together on this beautiful island world.

Perhaps we should all begin to be, to live that way and think that way?

Why don’t we start to work together for a future that involves less work, less money, less stuff......... but more life?

Here are some phrases for a better future:

First and foremost: Buy Less.

Remember our childhoods when treats were rare. Didn’t they feel good?

Minimum is Maximum - Reduce to the Max.

Let us change to: practice Voluntary Simplicity.

And do our best to live a Low Maintenance Lifestyle.

The reward: Connecting to REAL Freedom, to Childlike Lightness and Wonder, to a world of never-ending Fascination and Inquiry... to the joy of BEING.

Recommended reading: 'To Have or to Be?' by Erich Fromm (ISBN 0-553-23100-6)