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Archives: Insider Info/Member Update, Spring/Summer 2000

Contents

Thanks for the Feedback!
Progress Report
How You Can Help
Worth Reading
     Prism E-pistle
     Center for a New American Dream
     Living on Earth
     Trapped in the Cult of the Next Thing
     Time Article
     How to Deal with Pokemon?
     Meaningful Life
     10 worst corporations
     Joys R Us
     Globalization
Editorials
     Efficiency
     Small Victories
     Plague Alert!
     Cancer is big business
     Help Stop Editorializing in Weather Reports
 Recent Customer Comments

Thanks for the Feedback!

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Progress Report

IT'S OUT! "Simple Living 101: A Toolbook for Sharing the Joy of Simpler Living through Speeches, Workshops, Events & Study Groups/Simplicity Circles," $10 ready for your binder, or $15 in a binder made of recycled material.

"Stories and Songs of Simple Living" is now out on CD thanks to a member project grant.

We offer weekly specials on our Website, 50% discounts on selected titles.

Our Website catalog now has an alphabetical index by title.

By July 1, we expect to have many articles available in our Website Archives for personal inspiration and for editors.

Need a speaker or workshop leader? Alternatives "SLOw Down" Network now has over 500 North American volunteers.

Scheduled for 2001 is "Quotes & Art" (working title), a collection of serious, humorous, religious and secular quotations and illustrations on voluntary simplicity, sustainability, social justice and related topics for personal inspiration and for publications. Your contributions are welcome! Contact us for submission guidelines.

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How You Can Help

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Worth Reading

Prism E-pistle

Prism E-pistle is a free bi-weekly online newsletter of Evangelical Environmental Network, a ministry of Evangelicals for Social Action. Subscribe at http://www.creationcare.org/, or een@esa-online.org or 1-800-650-6600.

You may subscribe to ESA's and EEN's magazines - "Prism: America's Alternative Evangelical Voice" and "Creation Care" - through Alternatives. Call 800-821-6153 or visit www.SimpleLiving.org. Click on "catalog," then "magazines."

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Center for a New American Dream

Center for a New American Dream (CNAD) offers several online newsletters. "Step by Step: Connecting Our Dreams and Actions" is a free monthly service designed to replenish busy individuals through inspiration, action and humor. For details visit www.newdream.org/monthly/ (link no longer valid)

"In Balance," an E-Bulletin on Sustainable Consumption is distributed monthly to organizations working on consumption issues. (Back issues can be read at http://www.newdream.org/bulletin/ - link no longer valid?)

CNAD's bi-monthly syndicated column on "Consumption · Quality of Life · Environment · Values" is available on the web at: www.newdream.org/column/2.php (link no longer valid).

CNAD's quarterly listserv is surely one of the most stimulating we've found. To read some recent essays, visit www.SimpleLiving. org, click on "Information," then "Guest Editorial."

CNAD, a not-for-profit membership-based organization that helps individuals and institutions reduce and shift consumption to enhance our quality of life and protect the natural environment. Visit www.newdream.org/aboutus for more information on our organization and programs.

You may join CNAD through Alternatives and receive "Enough!" newsletter on paper by visiting www.SimpleLiving.org. Click on "catalog," then "magazines," or calling 800-821-6153.

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Living on Earth

Always worth our time is Living on Earth, a weekly 60 minute environmental program on National Public Radio. If your local station does not carry it, petition to have it added. Or listen via the internet at www.loe.org.

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Trapped in the Cult of the Next Thing

What is enough? I think I'm learning to live with enough, but what I call enough is staggering lavishness to most of the world.... And when we begin to live out the spirituality of enough, there comes a point when we see that maybe we have more than enough.

Most of us spend more time with advertisements than with Scripture.

Thankfulness is an act of subversion against the Cult of the Next Thing.... If ever there was a cult that gave us stones when we asked for bread, this is it.

Money, things - they don't give freedom.... The only freedom the Cult of the Next Thing grants us is acts of self-spite. Because it is bitter, and because it is my heart. Mammon has no need to hurt us. Worship him, you devour yourself. The stunning folly of this, the bewildering tragedy, is that we can choose otherwise. "Stay away from the love of money; be satisfied with what you have, For God has said, 'I will never fail you. I will never forsake you.'" (Heb. 13:5)

"Trapped in the Cult of the Next Thing" by Mark Buchanan. This essay won the first place in the "Faith and Consumerism" Contest. "Christianity Today," September 6, 1999 (submitted by Lauren Reimer, Duncan, BC).

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Time Article

Commendation to "Time" Magazine for the November 8, 1999, issue called "Beyond 2000: 100 Questions for the Next Century, Vision 21: Health and the Environment," pp. 64-128, especially pp. 102-120. For more details visit our Website. Click on Information: Archives: Newsletters: Worth Reading.

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How to Deal with Pokemon?

In response to our Consumo Must Go! campaign, Susan Presson, Ashville, NC, recently asked, "How do you deal with Pokemon?"

Here's a response from "Corporate American's Exploitation of Our Children" by Linda Coco and Ralph Nader in the "Journal of Family Life," issue 5/1. Linda researched "Children First: A Parent's Guide to Fighting Corporate Predators." For a subscription to "Journal of Family Life" (Now called Journal for Living) contact Alternatives.

"The sheer time, talent, image-making and resources that are extended in bringing children to the marketplace exists in a dramatic contrast to the poverty of 25% of America's children.

"Take the fantasy world of kids created by Kool Aid's advertising strategy. The objective is to bypass the parents as much as possible.... In one advertising campaign, Kool Aid showed kids visiting the [Wacky Wild Prize] Warehouse while their parents were out in a huge playpen. Kids ran about and collected Kool Aid toys in a frenzy while drinking Kool Aid. Please note just how premeditated these campaigns are: in the words of Grey Advertising's Bob Skollar, executive vice-president of advertising, who developed this campaign: 'All kids like to drink Coke, but they have to have their own drink. Kool Aid is going to be a kid's own world; it belongs to the kids. A world that only kids can understand and that adults just are not allowed into..."

The same goes for Pokemon. The kids memorize and imitate the characters non-English names, something few adults can do. The kids have their own world.

We suggest a response like this: "I love you too much to allow that stuff in our lives." That only works if adults are willing to deprive themselves of their "Pokemon" too.

What do the kids say to the other kids? "It's not for me. I'm not interested. My parents love me far too much to allow that stuff in our house and our lives. I'd rather use my own imagination to do something creative than to rely on mass marketed and expensive stuff -- expensive in dollars and in the cost to the Earth."


Susan replies,

Your response is reasonable and logical to me as an adult who's already concerned about these issues. Unfortunately, however, it really doesn't seem practical at all in speaking to my 5- and 8-year olds. It just "does not compute" in their world when all their friends are buying, trading, stealing Pokemon cards. Your response is rational, but I just don't think my kids have reached the developmental stage where they can be rational and logical.

Though it may sound like a cop-out, we are using Pokemon to teach about $1 and budgeting, about fairness (making fair trades, not taking advantage of kids), and though I know we're not supposed to bribe, we too often resort to that -- taking Pokemon away is a very effective threat. Sorry, we won't win any parenting awards, but for us that's REAL.

And by now Pokemon does not bother me quite as much (it's incredible how much they learn in detail about all the characters!), frankly, the whole trend toward technology -- Gameboy, Nintendo, Playstation, COMPUTERS is such an alarming direction for our whole society, much less kids, to be taking.

With computers, etc., we can interact less, go outside less, read books less and be less in touch with all of God's Creation. Our church -- a liberal Presbyterian church -- is getting computers to help with kids in Sunday School... Kids don't come to Sundays School to learn about Jesus, the Bible, God, etc. Sorry, but I think they really come to be with each other -- while simultaneously struggling through all their questions of faith, as well as values in a spiritual way, while living in our materialistic, exploitative, violent world. I'm not sure that even the best computer educational program in the world can help kids deal with drugs, sex, questions of sexual orientation, pressures of achievement, wanting to belong, bullying, etc.

Can you tell I'm struggling with all this as well? I work as a nurse practitioner in a student health center with volunteers, and I see how much these kids need love and attention. Yet they seek it through sex, drugs, fake nails, hair jobs, having babies, or they just give up and fall through the cracks or even commit suicide....

I'm sorry to go on and on. You hit on something I'm struggling with -- how to help these kids, to give them meaning, as well as how to help my own 5- and 8-year olds love the Earth love God, love themselves and love others.

I think Pokemon will pass with time -- as long-lasting an impact as technology will have on my kids.

I do appreciate Alternatives' work because I think consumption as well as technology is killing us. Some days I feel discouraged because I know I'm old-fashioned and I'm losing the battle. So rather than resisting change, I'm trying to figure out how to adapt to it. Sometimes I feel as if it's a major compromise of my values.

I must just have faith that ultimately God is in control in ways and timeframes that I am too small to understand. I am certainly and humbly very aware that I am NOT in control -- of the world, our society, my kids (who are truly wonderful even though they do love Pokemon and Gameboy). I can only try to be faithful.

Well, Gerald, more comment than you ever bargained for. It's been therapeutic and clarifying for me to write this.

Thanks for all your sincere and important work at Alternatives.

In Peace, Susan Presson, Asheville, NC

 

P.S. The enclose article was in our Asheville paper Sunday, April 9th. "Targeting ads to kids: Selling to children blurs ethical picture, say the critics" by Marilyn Elias (USA Today). It includes Tips for Parents from Center for a New American Dream(www.newdream.org)--

 

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Meaningful Life

"Self-fulfillment, like simple living, like personal success, are best as by-products, not goals." An intense and rich tapestry of events brought Bo Lozoff to the realization that a genuinely joyful and meaningful life is one that is not focused on self-fulfillment at every turn, but instead, is devoted to the benefit of others. "It's a Meaningful Life," "Simple Living Quarterly: The Journal of Voluntary Simplicity," Spring, 2000 (#30). For a subscription, contact Alternatives.

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10 worst corporations

Each year, to highlight the consequences of corporations and greed run amok, Multinational Monitor puts out its list of the 10 worst corporations. Their choices for 1999 were: Avondale (shipbuilder), Citigroup (financial), Fresh Del Monte Produce (bananas), Guardian Postacute (nursing home chain), Hoffman La Roche (pharmaceutical), Tosco (oil), Tyson (food processor), U.S. Bank, Whirlpool (financial), W.R. Grace (mining). "1999's Worst Corporations," reported in "Everyone's Backyard: The Journal of Grassroots Movement for Environmental Juistce" from the Center for Health, Environment and Justice (703-237-2249), Vol. 18, No. 1, Spring, 2000. For more, visit www.essential.org/monitor/monitor.php

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Joys R Us

"It's easy enough to sneer at the "voluntary simplicity" movement, the quietly speading notion that we might want to reduce the quantity of getting and spending in our lives.... The spread of the simplicity idea is enormously interesting, precisely because it comes from the richest parts of the rich world.

"The problem with protest politics has always been that it's easier to organize the oppressed than the oppressors. The former have only to throw off their fear; the latter have to discard their habits."

"The middle and upper classses have reached a saturation point where new things no longer provide an added increment of pleasure.

"What does comes increasingly as a thrill, I think, are those things that money cannot buy. Time, chief of all."

From "Joys R Us," by Bill McKibben, from "Mother Jones," Nov./Dec., 1999, reprinted in "Utne Reader," March/April 2000. McKibben, author of "Hundred Dollar Holidays" (available from Alternatives) is scheduled to be the featured writer in "Whose Brithday Is It, Anyway?" for Fall, 2001.

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Globalization

"The disempowerment of national governments and the systematic subordination of environmental concerns to private profit expresses the deepest religion of our time. This is devotion to economic development understood primarily as growth as measured by the Gross Domestic Product. I call this religion 'economism.' Economism arose from the ashes of a discredited nationalism at the end of World War II, and it has continued to triumph over the remnants of that nationalism since then. Even the United States, whose nationalist spirit makes it unwilling to accept any authority on the part of the United Nations or the World Court, has agreed that the World Trade Organization can overturn congressional legislation designed to protect the environment. Most nations have far less ability to resist the service of global capital than we do."

"From Economism to Earthism: Reflections on Our Prospects for the Next Century" by John R. Cobb, Jr., in "Earthlight," Winter, 2000, with six responses. For a subscription to "Earthlight," contact Alternatives.

"The victory of global economism we have witnessed in the past two decades bodes badly for the Earth. It is designed to speed up economic growth, which means the rate at which resources are used and pollution is increased. Its 'theology' tells us that government interference with the independence of economic actors is in principle wrong. The majority of our representatives are sufficiently convinced of this (or controlled by those who advocate it) that even the modest proposals for slowing weather change that came out of Kyoto have no chance of passage. For the sake of economic growth, environmental concerns that transcend the immediate context of American voters are ignored. Sometimes this ideology is supported as providing hope for the poor, but in fact the policies in which it is expressed make the poor poorer while concentrating wealth in fewer and fewer hands. Without a displacement of this theology (or ideology) that now rules the world, it is too late.

"Fortunately, with many ups and downs, another religious force is emerging and gaining power in hearts and minds, if not yet in seats of power. The 1970 Earth Day gave it its first public expression. The NGO meeting accompanying the United Nations Earth Summit at Rio gave it a global visibility. I call this new religion 'Earthism.'

"The consensus that emerged at this NGO meeting was based on the recognition that the dominant economism is the common enemy of environmentalists and those concerned for the poor, for human rights, and for indigenous people. These groups can no longer be played off against one another. The disempowerment and impoverishment of the poor leads to destruction of the environment, and the degradation of the environment leads to the worsening of the lot of the poor. Earthists understand the Earth as inclusive of its people, and focus on those people whose lives are most closely bound to the natural world. The successive NGO meetings accompanying those of the United Nations have further developed this consensus.

"The central issue between these two religions is whether human beings should serve the acquisition of wealth or whether wealth should be in the service of ordinary people and especially those in greatest need. It is an issue on which Christians should not find it difficult to make a choice. But thus far the churches have been hesitant to speak clearly. Perhaps there is fear that the alternative to the present global economic system is too poorly envisaged to constitute a real option.

"A livable future for humanity depends on envisaging a real option and then restructuring society, including its economy, so as to embody that option. If we can do that soon, it is not too late for there to be a positive future for humanity and many other species on this planet. But every year in which our treatment of the Earth, including its people, is geared to the further concentration of wealth in the hands of a few makes that prospect dimmer."

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Editorials

Efficiency

Efficiencies are tricky. They allow us to get more work out of a machine using less fuel. So, as studies prove, we tend to reverse the benefit of efficiency by using more machines. We use even more fuel than we did before. It's like the media. They said TV would kill radio, that VCRs would kill movies. Not so. We just use more of both of them. A hot economy will use anything , including efficiency, to sell us more stuff, to make us more reliant on things instead of relationships with life, people, plants, animals, Earth, God.

Yes, we follow the first "R" by reducing natural resource consumption when we strive for efficiency. But we must at the same time strive to reduce the use of appliances that are getting ever more efficient. Otherwise, there's no net gain for Earth, for us, for future generations.

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Small Victories

My neighbor Vern's never met a garden chemical he didn't like. His lawn is unnaturally immaculate. He slaughtered twelve mature trees in his back yard last year because they dropped seeds in his dog's water dish. I couldn't bring myself to talk to him for a month.

I clear the snow from my drive with a large manual scoop. Works slick. Gives me good exercise. Makes me feel strong. Vern hires a guy with a blade on the front of his truck. Our drives are about the same size.

Wow was I shocked when Vern came over one morning last winter and asked to borrow the scoop. I loaned it to him in a flash. The next time it snowed I didn't even wait for a request. I plopped it in front of his house. He used it, thanked me, asked where I got it.

Influencing neighbors and relatives is tricky. We'll see what happens this coming winter.

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Plague Alert!

The new magazine REAL SIMPLE should be called FAKE SIMPLE. It claims to be "dedicated to helping you simplify every aspect of your life: your home, food, money, clothes, health, looks, work, family, and holidays." But its REAL purpose is to sell the self-centered more high-end stuff! It is the latest and one of the most disgusting examples of coopting of the voluntary simplicity movement for commercial gain. Vickie Robin of "Your Money or Your Life" more delicately calls it "Faux Simplicity."

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Cancer is big business

Cancer is big business. A real cure for cancer is prevention. That will only happen when pollution subsides. Some of the same businesses that manufacture pollutants are making a fortune curing cancer, not preventing it. The economy fuels pollution. Let's tax pollution, not work.

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Help Stop Editorializing in Weather Reports

I'm glad when it's hot. I'm happy when it's cold. I feel so blessed to be alive! So it gripes me when weather reporters editorialize. This is no small thing for those who believe in the power of language as I do. "It's a nice day today, temperatures in the mid-70's, no rain. But the weather turns bad on Friday with lightning and thunder." Sound familiar? But who's s/he to say it's nice or bad. I happen to relish lightning and thunder!

This is merely a symptom of general editorializing in the news reporting. It used to be that editorials were marked as such. Now the choice of positive or negative words in a "hard news" story converts it to an editorial. This isn't surprising considering so much combative discussion programming on TV and radio, let alone overtly violent talk shows.

What to do? Drop a note to your local stations and let them know that you prefer your weather reporting without the petty stereotypes. Give it to us straight. And while they're at it, clean up the news reporting too.

If you're want to know more about Media Literacy Education, subscribe to C.M.L. C*O*N*N*E*C*T, "your on-line connection to resources, news and ideas for media education," a bimonthly e-letter published by the CENTER FOR MEDIA LITERACY. Subscribe or unsubscribe any time at http://medialit.listbot.com/

CML is a non-profit organization established to promote critical thinking about the media and to provide leadership, training and resources for media education in schools, religious and community organizations. In the global media culture of the 21st century, CML believes in "empowerment through education" for children, young people and adults.

Thanks for listening. Your responses are welcome. -- Gerald Iversen, National Coordinator

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Recent Customer Comments

We get so many Customer Commments that we now put them on our Website and update them weekly. Visit www.SimpleLiving.org, click on Feedback, or Archives.

I just LOVE your Resource Guide. I have passed on "Whose Birthday Is It, Anyway?" to several people. They all loved it. Thanks for all your HARD work!!! I appreciate it. Jane A Rainey, Eastham, MA

Thank you for the "12 Steps to a Simpler Life, a 40-Day Guide for Lent or Anytime." My pastor shared it with the body. Oh! What a blessing. I request that copy of this same guide be sent to ___ in prison. Aldith Diaz, Bronx, NY.

We plan to include "Simple Living 101" in our church library because our community suffers from "Affluenza" and we need a cure. G. Anne Fortman, Geneva, IL.

I plan to use "Who's Risen from the Dead, Anyway?" in Sunday worship. It's well laid out, lots of ideas, cost effective, well done. Emmanuel Lutheran, Norwood, MA

My wife and I have been working through your "12 Steps to Simpler Living" guide for Lent. Thank-you for a wonderful resource. I think step 2 might take me a few years, but with God's help I'll get there. wes bergen (email)

I plan to use "Whose Birthday," "What Is a Gift," "Gifts of Peace," and "Shalom Connections" for an alternative Christmas Market. I have been using your resources for years. Good content, attractive, recyclable, good price. Your resources are the best! Joyce Georgieff, Santa Ana, CA

I plan to use "Unplug the Christmas Machine" and its workbooks for a workshop. Excellent materials. Prices are very reasonable and it is appreciated. Ms. B. McNamara, Rockford, IL

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