by Duane Elgin
Instead of viewing simplicity as a lifestyle of limitation, it is important to recognize it as a path of global opportunity. Gandhi’s principle of “live simply that others may simply live” is profoundly relevant. If the human family chooses a path of moderation and fairness, then hope will grow as billions of people assist one another in building a future of mutually assured development.
Earth-friendly, or green, ways of living are no longer alternative lifestyles for a pioneering few; instead, they are becoming conventional lifestyles for the mainstream majority, particularly in developed nations. Even with major technological innovations in energy and transportation, we will require dramatic changes in patterns of living and consuming if we are to maintain the integrity of the Earth as a living system. Simplicity is simultaneously a personal choice, a civilizational choice, and a species choice. We will make the choice for a sustainable future with much greater enthusiasm when we recognize that it is a necessary part of a future path that calls forth our species potentials and leads us into ever-greater communion with the living universe.
Creating New Kinds of Community
Our communion with the universe is mirrored in our expressions of community with one another. It is through community that we can most fully realize and celebrate ourselves as citizens of a sacred cosmos. Modern neighborhoods with isolated, single-family dwellings have been compared to tiny, underdeveloped nations where the potential for community and synergy has yet to be realized. A new architecture of life is required. In a shift similar to that which nature makes—for example, in the jump from simple atoms to complex molecules, or from complex molecules to living cells—humanity is being challenged to make a jump to a new level of community.
Because much of the urban infrastructure is already in place around the world, this means that a revolution in green retrofitting lies ahead as we reconfigure our lives to be sustainable in this new era. Rebuilding our cities and neighborhoods into islands of relative self-sufficiency—reducing dependency on distant sources of food, energy, and other material needs—will become the basis for a global economic revolution. A global “green village” movement is a healthy response to a world systems crisis because it will create a strong, resilient foundation for living.
Current patterns and scales of living do not suit emerging needs. The scale of the household is often too small, and a city too large, to realize many of the opportunities for sustainable living. Taking a lesson from humanity’s past, I believe it is important to look at the in-between scale of living—that of a small village of a few hundred people. Whether newly built, or created by retrofitting an existing neighborhood or building, I believe great opportunity exists for the development of small, ecologically integrated villages (“eco-villages”) to be nested within a larger urban area. I will use the term eco-village to describe the diverse expressions of new urban villages where the strength of one person or family meets the combined strength of others and, working together, something is created that was not possible before.
To illustrate from my own life, my partner Coleen and I have lived in an eco-village or co-housing community of about seventy people and we have seen how easily and quickly activities can be organized on that scale. From organizing fundraisers (such as a brunch for tsunami disaster relief), to arranging classes (from yoga to Cajun dancing), cultivating the garden, and creating community celebrations and events, we have participated in numerous gatherings that emerged with ease from the combined strengths and diverse talents of the community.
Looking ahead, I can imagine families in the future will live in an “eco-home” that is nested within an “eco-village,” that is nested within an “eco-city,” and so on up the scale to the bioregion, nation, and world. Each eco-village of several hundred people could have a distinct character, architecture, and economy. Most would likely contain: a childcare facility; a community house for meetings, celebrations, and meals; an organic community garden; a recycling and composting area; some revered open space; and a crafts/shop area. Each could offer their talents to support aspects of the local economy—the arts, healthcare, childcare, non-profit learning centers for gardening, green building, conflict resolution, and other skills—that would provide fulfilling employment for many. These micro-communities could have the culture and cohesiveness of a small town and the sophistication of a big city, as virtually everyone will be immersed within a world rich with communications. Eco-villages create the possibility for doing meaningful work, raising healthy children, celebrating life in community, and living in a way that seeks to honor the Earth and future generations. In looking at intentional communities emerging around the world, it is clear to me that a spiritual dimension is important in many of them. In turn, with the support of a conscious community, we can each grow into a more intimate relationship with the aliveness of the universe.
Because eco-villages, or co-housing communities, typically range in size from a hundred to several hundred people, they approximate the scale of a traditional tribe. Consequently, eco-villages are compatible with both the village-based cultures of indigenous societies and the needs of post-modern cultures. With a social and physical architecture sensitive to the psychology of modern tribes, a flowering of diverse communities—most created through retrofitting—could replace the alienation of today’s massive cities. Diverse forms of eco-villages could provide the practical scale and foundation for a sustainable future. I believe new villages will become important islands of community, security, learning, and innovation in a world of sweeping change. These smaller-scale, human-sized living and working environments will foster diverse experiments in community and cooperative living. Overall, sustainability will be achieved through differing designs that are uniquely adapted to the culture, economy, interests, and environment of each locale.
Despite the appeal of eco-villages as a design for sustainable living, there is not the time to retrofit and rebuild our existing urban infrastructure before we hit an evolutionary wall. Climate disruption, energy shortages, and other critical trends will overtake us long before we have the opportunity to make a sweeping overhaul in the design and function of our cities and towns; therefore, it is important to learn from experiments in eco-villages and co-housing and to adapt their designs and principles for successful living to existing urban settings. Without the time to retrofit into well-designed green villages, we must make the most of the existing urban infrastructure and creatively adapt ourselves within it. Global challenges will produce a wave of green innovations for local living—technical, ecological, economic, social, architectural, and more. Lessons learned in eco-villages and co-housing will be important sources of invention and inspiration for a new village movement as existing urban architecture is transformed into human-scale designs for sustainable living.
Becoming Media-Conscious Citizens of the Earth
The mass media are a window through which we see the world. If the infusing aliveness of the universe is not recognized and celebrated in our media, then it is much less likely that we will see it in our everyday lives. If the media present diminished images of ourselves as isolated consumers who want to be entertained, then we will tend to fulfill that self-image. However, if we see portrayals of ourselves as citizens of the cosmos who are actively engaged in a heroic journey of awakening, we will tend to fulfill that self-image. Because the mass media are so powerful in presenting and reinforcing our self-image as a species, it is critical that we use this storytelling machine of mass culture to tell ourselves bigger stories about where we are, who we are, and where we are going.
Learning to see ourselves in the collective mirror of the mass media is as important as learning to see ourselves in the mirror of our personal consciousness. Once there is inclusive and sustained social reflection, we can build a working consensus regarding appropriate actions for a promising future. We are a visual species; we cannot consciously build a positive future that we have not first collectively imagined. When we can see a sustainable and promis
ing future, we can build it. Actions can then come quickly and voluntarily. Voluntary or self-organized action will be vital to success because hundreds of millions of people will be required to act in cooperation with one another. With local to global communication, we can mobilize ourselves purposefully, and each can contribute their unique talents to the creation of a life-affirming future.
At the very time that humanity requires a dramatic new level of human communications, the converging media of television and the Internet are making the world transparent to itself. Our world is bursting with conversation from the grassroots, and bringing an entirely new layer of conversation and connection into global culture. We now can see climate disruption producing crop failures and famine in Africa, destruction of rain forests in Brazil, coastlines eroding from hurricanes in the United States, violent conflict fueled by religious differences in the Middle East, and the impact of skyrocketing energy prices around the world. Television and the Internet make every person a global witness—a knowing and feeling participant in world affairs. We have access to a world of vastly greater diversity and depth than ever before.
There is a weakness in the very strength of the Internet. The vast outpouring of views and voices from the grassroots is flooding us with a confusing avalanche of messages. Without a way to discover a working consensus, we are paralyzed. To coalesce our collective sentiments, we require regular opportunities for millions, and even billions, of persons to gather and explore our common future. We have all the technology needed to hold interactive electronic town meetings (via television and the Internet) that dramatically advance the conversation of democracy and provide us with a powerful voice in choosing our future. We need only the social will to claim that potential.
The scope and quality of our collective attention is the most precious resource we have as a human community. If we don’t pay attention while decisions of monumental importance are being made, then we effectively forfeit our future. The bottom line is this: If we are to take practical steps to awaken our society, then citizens must make their voices heard in creating a more reflective and responsive media environment. I recognize many people feel profoundly disempowered when it comes to media change. Nonetheless, it is essential to leave that disempowerment in the past. The media are the most visible representation of our collective mind. As the media goes, so goes the future. Currently, our collective mind is being programmed for commercial success and evolutionary failure.
Building a culture of sustainability will require as much creativity, energy, and enthusiasm as we have invested in building cultures of consumption. It is vital we begin conversations about sustainability at a scale that matches the actual scope of the challenges we face—and often these are of regional, national, and global scale. The world has become intensely interdependent. Our consciousness and conversations need to match the scale of the world in which we live. This is a time for rapid learning and experimentation locally, all the while being mindful of how we connect globally.
At this pivotal moment in our history, a citizen’s movement for a more conscious democracy could turn humanity’s primary attention machine—television—from the distractions of adolescent entertainment towards a mature reflection on matters of momentous concern. As the world’s systems problems converge into the singularity of a global systems crisis, we could pause in our normal affairs and finally tell ourselves the truth. The business-as-usual focus of global media on commerce and entertainment could be replaced by a critical period of planetary truth telling in which we humans work to heal the wounds of history and then, together, forge a vision of a sustainable and meaningful future.
It was communication that enabled humans to evolve from early hunter-gatherers to the verge of planetary civilization, and it will be communication that enables us to become a bonded human family committed to the well-being of all. At the very time that we need an unprecedented capacity for local-to-global communication, we find we have the necessary tools in abundance. Electronic gatherings will blossom from the local to national to global scale and make the sentiments of the body politic highly visible. When everyone knows the “whole world is watching”—when economic, ethnic, ideological, and religious violence is brought before the court of world public opinion through the Internet and the other media—it will bring a powerful corrective influence into human relations. As groups and nations see their actions scrutinized and judged by the rest of the world community, we will become more inclined to search for ethical and nonviolent approaches.
Because communication is fundamental to our common future, it is critical that the human community work consciously to bridge the digital divide, extend the communications culture to all corners of the globe, and build an effective “social mirror” for the human family—one that authentically reflects both the adversities and the opportunities of our times. All cultures will be naked—their history forever exposed in a world made transparent by the electronic media—and confronted with the need to make amends for wrongs committed in the past if there is to be release into a promising future. A supreme challenge will be to hold a steady and undistorted social mirror as we struggle for collective understanding, respect, and reconciliation. Societies without a tradition of freedom of speech will find this both liberating and extremely demanding as new skills of inclusion and reconciliation are required to participate effectively.
One of the most helpful and powerful actions we can take as we move through this transition as a species is to increase opportunities for conscious reflection from the personal to the planetary scale. Personal reflection refers to seeing ourselves in the mirror of consciousness as individuals and to observe the unfolding of our lives. By analogy, social reflection refers to seeing ourselves in the mirror of collective consciousness by using tools such as the mass media.
The more widely and accurately our time of initiation is witnessed by the people of the Earth through the global media, the more strongly the lessons of this time will be grounded in our collective lives and memory; in turn, the less likely it is that we will have to relearn these lessons in the future. If we can see disasters in our social imagination, we may not need to manifest them in our actual experience. As societies, we can collectively imagine futures that we do not want to enact in experience—futures marked by profound climate change, resource shortages, famine, and conflict. If we use our collective imagination to see that perpetuating the status quo produces a future that few would want, then we can consciously turn in a more promising direction.
With social reflection from the local to global scale, we can explore the core questions raised here: Is the universe dead or alive? Who are we as a species? What kind of journey are we on? As our capacity for social reflection grows, we can choose social conversations more wisely and look for promising pathways more effectively. Actions can come quickly and voluntarily as we develop a capacity for building consensus for a promising future. With a shared vision, each person can contribute unique talents in creating that future. Voluntary, self-organizing action will be vital to our success. Our swiftly developing world situation is far too complex for any one individual, group, or nation to design remedies that will work for everyone. While being mindful of the conditions and needs at the global scale, we can work creatively at the local scale to adapt to changing conditions. This is a time for diverse local experimentation undertaken in a context of rich communication from the local to the global levels.
Bringing Our True Gifts into the World
At this time of supreme testing, we are being challenged to give nothing less than our highest and best gifts to the world. The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh describes how we each have what can be called “near gifts” and “true gifts.” Near gifts, he says, are those things that we are pretty good at doing. Often we make our living and have our lives absorbed in our near gifts. He also said that we each have true gifts. True gifts are those things in which we are soulfully gifted—activities in which we feel at ease, where we naturally excel
, and that bring us happiness in our personal lives and the lives of others. I believe the times ahead will be so demanding that our near gifts will not be sufficient to get us through. At this rare moment in history when our human capacities are being tested to their utmost, we are each challenged to bring our true gifts into the world. The window of opportunity is brief. Don’t hold back. Give your gifts to the world at this pivotal moment in the human journey.
The Promise of the Journey Ahead
We have come full circle in the great story of our journey of return to our cosmic home. Now we can look again at the three questions that have oriented this inquiry.
Where are we? The combined wisdom of science and spirituality speak with stunning clarity. We live, not in a dead universe, but in a living universe that is almost entirely invisible, flowing with an immensity of energy, continuously emerging anew, and brimming with sentience. We live in a universe that is vastly larger, more alive, subtle, intelligent, purposeful, and free than many of us have begun to imagine. With humility, we can turn back to the cosmos and freshly rediscover our home.
Who are we? Life exists within life. Our life is inseparable from the aliveness of the living universe. Our aliveness and consciousness extends beyond our biological bodies and into the further reaches and depths of the living universe. Our physical bodies comprise only the smallest fraction of the full scope of our being. Our bodies are biodegradable vehicles for learning that we are subtle beings of light, love, music, and knowing. We may have thought we were physical beings in a material universe, but now we are discovering that we are beings who are an integral part of the life stream of a living universe. With renewed feelings of wonder, we can open to a larger sense of self that connects into the subtle aliveness of a living universe.
