Simple living, therefore, is not about opting out of the human community. Rather, it is about looking at our social structures and examining them in terms of the purposes for which they were originally created in order to see whether they actually serve those purposes. If they don’t, we should reconstruct them from the ground up, if necessary, making them no more complicated or extensive than they need to be. The starting point is to see, as we have been seeing, that school is not education, work is not a job, money is a means, not an end, a home is not a lifetime financial responsibility, science and technology need to be informed by our ethical values, nature is not just a stockpile of raw materials, and simple living is not just about economics, but is a deinstitutionalization of our lives so we can live more fully and with more satisfaction.
I think this expresses so much of what I've been feeling over the last few years. I've never looked at our adventures as trying to recreate the life of the pioneers. Instead, we have been searching for a better quality of life. I have come to believe that in order to get that better quality we need to have less stuff. Simple is a very good description of what I want. For me, the idea of simple is one where we can live without the constant fear of losing our home because of yet another downsizing or because our expenses outstrip our income. So that is my goal, working towards a place where we can work hard and live within our means and be satisfied with what we have and have done. I always did have large goals...
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