| BOOK CORNER December Book of the Month
Graceful Simplicity: Towards a Philosophy & Politics of Simple Living by Jerome Segal
The Simple Living Network notes that Jerome Segal’s 2003 book Graceful Simplicity: Towards a Philosophy & Politics of Simple Living offers a new vision in which the central social objective is to make simple living feasible for all. Going beyond the well-known but more individually-focused simplicity guide, Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin, Segal argues for institutional and societal change.
In the magazine YES!, John de Graaf, independent television producer and coproducer of the TV special “Affluenza” and co-writer of the book Affluenza, reviewed the book in this excerpt:
________________
Jerome Segal’s book, Graceful Simplicity, is more challenging to read and to contemplate.
At the outset, Segal is unfair to Dominguez and Robin, almost mocking their efforts to help people on the road to financial independence. For most people, such independence is a pipe dream, argues Segal. He fails to acknowledge that the steps Robin and Dominguez laid out in Your Money or Your Life can be valuable to anyone in gaining control of runaway, unconscious spending. In fact, followers of their nine-step program reduce their spending by an average of 25 percent.
But Segal’s central thesis is right on target. He argues that the voluntary simplicity movement is too absorbed with personal change when we really need a simplicity-friendly society.
Segal promises to make the case for this premise and succeeds admirably. He shows how difficult it is for average citizens to drastically simplify their lifestyles while the price of real necessities continually rises. It has become very expensive, for example, to find even an ordinary home in a safe neighborhood with good schools – a reasonable expectation for anyone.
Segal takes fascinating but over-long sidetrips into history that detract from his central political message. He looks into past adventures in American simplicity and international attitudes toward wealth and plain living, from the ancient Egyptians to the Hebrew Torah to the Stoics and Epicurians of Greece. It’s not unenjoyable stuff, and there’s much to be learned from history. But some readers might feel it takes them too far off track and set the book aside.
That would be unfortunate, because Segal offers suggestions for political changes that would make simpler, more sustainable lifestyles a real option for many more people. Most importantly, he suggests that it’s time to reduce the workweek again, something that hasn’t been done in more than 60 years, despite a tripling in labor productivity. Americans now work the most yearly hours in the industrial world, having passed Japan last year.
If one 40-hour job could procure an adequate family wage 40 years ago, why couldn’t two 25-hour jobs do the same and then some today? Segal poses such questions and shows how a reduced workweek, national health care, limited guaranteed incomes (a “simple living credit”), alternative taxation policies, and other reforms could make the simple living ideal a reality for millions of Americans.
Segal shows that now, perhaps for the first time in history, it is possible to create a society where all people can live simply but gracefully, with time for the things that really matter – deep friendships and relationships, a beautiful and clean environment, and freedom from fear and insecurity. All that is needed is the political will.
After a voluntary simplicity conference in Santa Clara, California, I and the other speakers gathered, at Vicki Robins’ suggestion, to discuss strategy for the simplicity movement. Where should the movement go from here? How can we best prepare for the time when the big bubble of prosperity bursts and people are ready for the message of simplicity once again?
This book, despite [its] flaws, provide a starting point for that discussion. Give it a read.
View previous Class Action Book of the Month selections...
November Book of the Month: All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life
October Movie of the Month:The Milagro Beanfield War
September Book of the Month: Tearing Down the Gates
August Book of The Month: Staff Picks
July Book of the Month: Theory of the Leisure Class
June Book of the Month: Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons
May Book of the Month: Death in the Haymarket
April Book of the Month: Food Politics
March Book of the Month: Psychology and Economic Injustice
February Book of the Month : What's My Name, Fool?
December Book of the Month:
Dead Heat: Global Justice and Global Warming
November Book of the Month: Awol
October Book of the Month: Class Passing
September Book and Video of the Month: Beyond Silenced Voices and Declining By Degrees
August Books of the Month: Human Cargo and Gathering the Sun
July Book of the Month: The Overworked American by Juliet Schor
June Book of the Month: More Money Than God by Steven R. Leder
May Book of the Month: Global Class by Jeff Faux
April Books of the Month: Classified and Strapped
March Book of the Month: Welfare Brat, A Memoir by Mary Childers
February Book of the Month: Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
January Book of the Month: Invisible Privilege: A Memoir about Race, Class, and Gender by Paula Rothenberg
View last year's Book of the Month selections...
You can buy this book through Powells online bookstore. When you shop through this link, you are supporting Class Action directly.
Download our Annotated Class Action Bibliography on Class issues
This resource list has been prepared by Class Action with input from many friends and allies. We welcome your additions and suggestions; Submit a Resource if you like.
|
