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The
Soul of Living
by Debra Lynn Dadd |
As spiritual beings, we share a
commonality with Nature in that we are all created from
the same spiritual Source, regardless of the name by
which we call this Creator. Therefore, when we perceive
our place in life from our soul awareness, we feel our
interconnection with all life and sense our
responsibility to act with care and respect as we go
about our daily lives.
In order to do this, we need to
rethink our role as consumers. My dictionary defines
consumer as "one who consumes" and "one
who uses a commodity or service." To consume is
"to destroy or expend by use, to use up, to spend
wastefully." Because the very purpose of our
consumer culture is to destroy, expend, use up, and
waste, to be a consumer is not a soulful activity, nor
does it sustain life.
Several years ago, an article
appeared in my local newspaper called "What's
enough stuff?" It pointed out how, as a consuming
culture, we're hooked on stuff--not even necessarily
valuable stuff--just stuff. With every year that passes,
it said, it takes more stuff to have enough stuff, and
the frenzy is accelerating. The way people measure their
success is in terms of material possessions. Piles of
things, therefore, make consumers feel good about
themselves; having only essential necessities make them
feel like a failure. Instead of accumulating only what
they need, consumers are now moving into accumulating
more than they need: five televisions, twenty pairs of
shoes, a dozen kitchen appliances (I'm not
exaggerating). A professor of retailing and marketing at
our local junior college, who has held countless class
discussions on the concept of having enough said,
"We've come to the conclusion that...what is enough
is when your money runs out."
While environmental degradation
has been going on in varying degrees throughout the
history of the world, there has been no other time that
humans have taken so many resources from the earth and
created so much waste as we have since the beginning of
the industrial revolution, and particularly since the
creation of consumer culture. To be a consumer is not
the natural state our souls--our passion for consuming
has been deliberately cultivated in our minds and
emotions.
In the 1950s, marketing
consultant Victor Lebow wrote in the New York Journal of
Retailing, "Our enormously productive economy
demands that we make consumption a way of life, that we
convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that
we seek our spiritual satisfaction in consumption...We
need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and
discarded at an ever-growing rate." Instead of
buying items that meet our needs, the marketplace
entices us to buy things we don't need. We consume
because we've been conditioned by advertising to
consume.
Many of us, myself included,
were raised on this ethic--it's all we know. To be a
good consumer was the lesson I learned from my parents.
I was literally, in 1955, "born to shop."
Quality time with my mother was spent shopping at the
mall; she gave me my first credit card when I was
sixteen, and it took me years to get out of debt. Going
shopping was entertainment, a setting for social
interaction, a way to see things that were new and
different. I became so immersed in consumer culture that
I made a career of it as a consumer advocate.
When I first became interested
in living in a way that is in harmony with nature, I
looked to indigenous cultures for inspiration. There is
much we can learn from native peoples about living
soulfully and sustainably in our places, but we can't go
back to living in such a primitive way. Even though I
could see we needed to make a change in both how we
choose products, and the way we live, a basic piece of
the puzzle of what we need to do to live sustainably now
didn't fall into place for me until I started reading
Wendell Berry, particularly his The Unsettling of
America and Home Economics. Given that his writing has
been motivated "by a desire to make myself
responsibly at home in this world and in my native and
chosen place" (a very sustainable idea), I was
surprised that I had never been drawn to read his books
before. The reason, I believe, is that his books are
promoted as being about small-scale agriculture and
preservation of the family farm, but his insights on
being a consumer and keeping a household give solid
guidelines for creating a sustainable home and economy.
According to Mr. Berry, a
consumer buys everything they need for survival: food,
water, clothing, shelter, and as a consequence,
consumers need an ever-increasing, steady supply of
money in order to survive. As consumers, we put our
lives in the hands of those who sell the products and
services we rely on because we do not produce any of our
basic needs for ourselves. Our choices are dictated by
advertising, salesmanship and the amount of money we
have. We think we gain convenience and leisure, but in
the process we forfeit our creativity, our
individuality, our ability to fend for ourselves, our
human relationships, our connection with the source of
our sustenance, and our very souls as we "sell
out" our lives in exchange for the money needed to
survive in consumer culture. The whole idea of
consumerism is disconnected from and therefore
destructive of natural ecosystems and human needs. For a
consumer, domestic labor consists of buying things,
putting them away, and throwing things away; if they can
manage it, all domestic work is done by someone else.
Consumers need instant gratification and often live on
credit. It's a vicious trap that depletes financial,
human, and environmental resources. In many ways our
environmental crisis is fundamentally similar to our
consumer credit-based culture; we are living beyond our
means "eco"nomically--both financially and
environmentally.
What we have lost in becoming
consumers is the very sustainable and soulful art of
homemaking. Mr. Berry points out that, in contrast to
consumers, homemakers or householders are in some way
producers as well as users, providing some of their own
needs out of their own resources, skills, and
imagination. While homemakers do buy things, there's a
better balance of contributing as well as taking. In
learning domestic skills of cooking, gardening, sewing,
building, home remedies and personal health care,
householders become more able, valuable,
self-responsible human beings providing the basic
necessities of life, with something to give to others
and the earth. Instead of being dependent on consuming,
householders take pleasure in creating. Households can
be places to grow and prepare food, create energy, work,
socialize, learn, heal, amuse ourselves, our families
and friends. These activities can be more meaningful and
satisfying than working away from home all day to
indulge in consumer luxuries like the latest fashions
and new espresso machines.
Belonging hand-in-hand with
householding is the concept of sustenance. Sustenance
is, according to my dictionary, a "means of
sustaining life, nourishment"; it is that which
sustains us. Just as we need to learn how we need to
behave to sustain the earth, we also need to learn how
to behave to sustain ourselves. By being
consumers--destroying, using up, and spending
wastefully--we cannot even begin to hope to sustain
ourselves or the earth. What we need to sustain
ourselves is clean air, clean water, fertile land, fresh
wholesome food simply prepared, practical and attractive
clothing, shelter that is appropriate to where we live
and what we do at home, meaningful and profitable work,
creative expression, loving relationships, participation
in community, intellectual stimulation, spiritual
growth, and probably a few other things I haven't
thought of yet.
Our needs for sustenance are
basic and simple. But in our consumer culture, we
sacrifice our sustenance for a fantasy of material
fulfillment. Whatever it is we hope to gain by eating
packaged foods, wearing the latest fashion, and buying
electronic gadgets cannot satisfy the emptiness we have
inside when we give up the purity of our air and water,
our forests, and biological diversity in exchange. It's
having real sustenance in our lives that makes us feel
fulfilled and brings us happiness. Consumerism makes us
pursue more and more "luxuries" when we lack
our basic necessities. I'm not suggesting that we give
up shopping entirely, but rather that we take a
different attitude toward how we sustain ourselves--with
sustenance instead of consumerism.
*Sustenance is a hand-sliced
loaf of chewy organically-grown whole grain bread, made
at home or purchased from a local baker in a recycled
paper bag; consumerism is a plastic-wrapped loaf of
sliced bleached white bread full of preservatives baked
on an assembly line in a factory.
*Sustenance is saving and
investing a percentage of all the money you make;
consumerism is using credit to spend more than you make.
*Sustenance is fixing a special
meal at home for your friends; consumerism is meeting
friends at a trendycafe.
*Sustenance is exploring every
part of your local area--getting to know the people, the
wisdom, the arts, the flora and fauna, the weather
patterns; consumerism is a first-class trip to Europe.
*Sustenance is playing the
violin in a quartet with your neighbors or being in the
audience at a community performance; consumerism is
buying CD's.
*Sustenance is working at
something you enjoy for the amount of money you need,
plus a little extra; consumerism is doing whatever it
takes to get as much money as you can.
Again, I'm not suggesting that
one shouldn't take a trip to Europe or eat in a
restaurant, but rather that focusing on providing our
sustenance will lead us to make choices that sustain
ourselves and the earth in ways that making choices
based on consumerism does not.
Sustaining a home and creating
sustenance includes having a living relationship with
the land you inhabit and the others who live in your
community--the intent being to be responsible for and
take care of yourself, your family, friends, and
neighbors and the piece of earth you own or share.
Sustaining ourselves means
sustaining our health, our families, our relationships,
our communities, our land, our money, our culture, and
everything else that makes life move forward. Material
possessions are prescribed by fundamental human
necessities and responsibilities to each other and the
earth, rather than advertising and cultural
conditioning. Living in this sustainable way builds
strong local economies that add up to strong national
economies, and eventually build into a strong world
economy.
To live sustainably requires
developing the same virtues in ourselves that contribute
to living soulfully: self-restraint, thrift, frugality,
nurturing, prudence, wisdom, responsibility, an
appreciation of quality over quantity, cooperative
relationships, creativity, commitment, and love. Not an
impossible task, but one that requires fortitude,
thinking for oneself, and responding appropriately,
instead of following the dictates of consumer culture.
I've given up being a consumer,
and both my husband and I are working together to become
householders. It's a gradual process that we practice
every day. We buy less, prepare organically grown food
at home instead of buying packaged food or eating out,
we've planted vegetables and strawberries. We also make
some of our own products at home like cleaning formulas
and pest controls. We're built deer fences and remodeled
our kitchen--I've learned so many new skills doing
things I used to pay people to do, and it actually takes
less time for me to just do it than it takes for me to
earn the money to pay someone else! We both work from
home on a variety of income-producing projects, both
self-employed. Because we can set our own work hours, we
can choose to work for money, work around the house, or
work with friends and neighbors on community
projects--each has their own value toward our
well-being. As we take care of each other and our home
and the cultivated corner of our acre of land, we feel a
sense of pride and fulfillment that comes from creating
that is missing from consuming.
We happen to live in the
country, but these principles of sustainable
householding can be applied also if you live in a city
or suburbia. Suburban lots certainly have plenty of room
to grow food, and even in the city there are community
gardens. Everyone can learn to cook and learn to make
all kinds of household items from resources that are
locally available.
The most gratifying part for me
of living more sustainably has been a new level of
involvement in my community. By talking with others
about my interest in sustainable living, I now am
working with friends to explore how we can foster
sustainability in our community. One local project you
can take on is to make and use your own lists of
sustainable products that are produced or sold in your
area (businesses that sell them, and services that use
them--such as nontoxic cleaning services or hairdressers
that use natural hair care products) and share them with
your friends and neighbors, or publish them in your
local newspaper. There's no point in everybody having to
start from square one about this. Join with others in
your community to learn what are the most sustainable
options where you live.
In our consumer culture that
values money to buy consumer goods over all, the basic
skills required to sustain our home life have been
undervalued in favor of skills that can be marketed
outside of the home for money. As a result, we spend our
time pursuing money instead of creating a nurturing
home. Our success is measured in dollars, rather than
quality of life. For us to live sustainably in our
places, we need to restore the value of caring for
ourselves, our families, our communities, and the
earth--at home. And the guidance and courage to make
these changes comes from our souls.
© Copyright 2000 Debra Lynn Dadd.
All Rights Reserved.
Debra Lynn Dadd has been a
pioneering environmental consumer advocate since 1982.
Called "The Queen of Green" by The New York
Times, Debra is the author of six environmental consumer
guidebooks, including Nontoxic, Natural & Earthwise,
The Nontoxic Home & Office and Home Safe Home. She
also writes a feature column in Natural Home magazine.
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