Potential simplicity is the ability to store up the ability to
simplify one's life (reduce consumption), in advance of needing
to. Trustworthiness is proposed as a source of potential simplicity.
Trustworthiness is Potential Simplicity
Degrowth: intentionally shrinking the economy. Overall, everyone
consumes less and works less.There are different reasons why we might
want to make this happen. We can live simpler lives. We can have
more time to think, walk, socialize, sleep, pray, listen to music, stare at the
wall, meditate -- anything time-consuming but not resource-intensive.
Also, we can impose less of a burden on Earth: less soil depletion,
species extinction, fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and so on -- all
of which affect how much we and our descendants have to suffer, and
how likely we can survive as a civilization -- maybe even as a species.
How can we consume less as a society? To an extent, we can blame
the rich. They do consume more than poorer people. But both rich and
poor have to consume less. And we all have to consume less of the
things that make our personal lives function. Everyone needs to
eat, most everyone needs some kind of shelter sometimes, most everyone
needs to get around, and there are a few other basic needs. We have
to shift our basic needs from expensive versions of them, to inexpensive
ones. The poor in the United States, for instance, make less than
$12,480 a year (the official poverty line). $12,480 is a huge amount
of money compared to what the poorest in some other countries make (closer
to $500 a year). Poverty is expensive in the US.
So everyone in the US, on average, has to consume less, pay out of their food,
housing, transportation. Somehow this is possible -- people in other
parts of the world already do it.
It's possible to crash the economy by the average person consuming
too little, too suddenly. So rather than suggest that everyone simplify
their lives (no more restaurants, suburban houses, or minivans; everyone
switch to peanut butter and white bread, SROs, and bus-riding), I think
it safer for now to encourage everyone (as many as possible), to
increase their potential to simplify.
How would this work? One way is to explore simpler lifestyles so
that they seem less psychologically daunting. Take it one element at a
time, and go back to full consumption whenever you want to try a
different element. If society is comfortable with simplification, we
will have more political will available if there's ever a time we can
simplify all together, at once, in an economically safe way.
(If you really like a simpler lifestyle, you can spend what you save
from simplicity on charities, such as those that alleviate poverty in
developing countries. I am not an economist, but I think in our
global economy, if the charity spends the money, or gives away the
money, in some part of the world, global spending will remain the same
as if you spend at home, and the global economy will have as much cash
flowing through it as it's already balanced to function with.)
Another approach is to amass any kind of non-economic wealth that can
help out economically. One example is given here, which I will call
"potential simplicity". An object in motion can run into things and
cause a scene, and can have a lot of kinetic energy. An object at rest,
doing nothing visible may, depending on its position, can have a lot of
potential energy. The economy is a somewhat delicate system that can't
handle too many wild or sudden energies. But potential economic energy,
in the form of potential simplicity, for instance, shouldn't be a
problem, and can be built up with gusto. Here's an example of potential
simplicity related to housing:
When you pay $800 for a room in a house, what are you paying for?
Some of that money goes to maintain the house itself. But a lot of it
goes to some property owner, and they spend it on food, housing, cars,
etc, and who knows what else. Well, what are they doing for you,
the renter? You can maintain the house itself without paying them.
Who builds houses in the first place? People with money. So they
would only do this act if they thought they could get their money back
through rent. So built into the housing market is the cost of building
new houses. If an area is easy to build in, housing prices are lower.
If people want to live somewhere badly enough, developers will find some
expensive way to accommodate that desire.
In my neighborhood, there are some apartment buildings, and some tract
houses, built long ago when the area was the edge of town. Because rent
in San Diego is going up (or perhaps partly for other reasons), gradually
these tract houses are being converted to rental properties.
The rental properties (I would guess) use each of their available
bedrooms, or close to that level of occupancy. But the tract houses can
easily have fewer than one person per bedroom. San Diego has high rent
due to lack of supply relative to demand, but could accommodate its
current demand at a lower price, and build fewer new units (use less
energy, fewer material resources) if tract house occupants used all of
their rooms.
Why would anyone buy a house and not use all its bedrooms? Sometimes
people use bedrooms for purposes other than living quarters. A home
office or gym, for instance. Can these uses be converted to housing
people? If the value of a room is $800 a month (about what it can be in
my city), then it might be worth finding a way to make alternative uses
of the space. Being a regular at a coffeeshop ($150 a month) (or just
working in a different part of your own home) could replace a home
office, and a gym membership could be less than $100 a month.
Another reason is that people bought a house when their children were
young, and the children have "left the nest" and now they don't want to
move. In this case, they do not rent for different reasons, some of
them being that they haven't thought of it, and also, importantly, that
people aren't always trustworthy and wouldn't make good tenants. It's
not worth saving some money if you go crazy or get taken advantage of.
"Trustworthiness" can be reckoned different ways. (Consider the hierarchy of betrayal). If you have to
live with someone day in and day out for years, you might not be able to
bear issues that you could pass over for a week or two.
As people age, they tend to get isolated. So what if, as you are in
your twenties, thirties, and forties, you invest in relationships with
people with whom you could share your house when you are in your
retirement years? This would be a way to store up potential
simplicity.
So far I've only talked about the gains that could come from using
all bedrooms as single bedrooms, rather than for other uses. But some
people share bedrooms, usually cohabiting couples or spouses, or
siblings, but in principle, any two sufficiently compatible people could
share a room. The potential gains in space from this cultural
innovation (or re-discovery) would enable San Diego to house something
less than twice as many people without building any new units. Judging from
my bedroom, two people like me (I don't have too much stuff) could share
a ~11x13-foot space with a certain amount of inconvenience / adjustment.
One adjustment would be to coordinate sleep schedules and times to have
the room to oneself. This would be workable, if the other person were
trustworthy.
There are two angles to this problem of finding trustworthy people:
finding people who work for you, and making yourself someone who works
for more other people. There are parallels with dating. Fortunately,
the two pursuits overlap a lot, so that energy spent in one area has a
return in the other. One would pursue friendships, learning what
kind of people work and what kind don't, turning away from the aspects
in you that do not respect other
people, learning to forgive, accepting back people who can be trusted
and moving on from people who can't, learning to not be addicted to
people but instead being in some sense emotionally independent.
Some attention needs to be paid to the art of living with other
people, and developing attitudes of the heart specifically optimal for
living with other people, overcoming bad habits that don't come up when
you have more space. Not as much as in a marriage, because these
rooming or housing partnerships don't have to be as long-term or as
personally involved, but comparable.
A group house of four or eight people has different dynamics than a
studio apartment shared by two people. So it is good for some people to
learn how to spend time together and manage common resources as a
group.
In order to pursue friendships, one would seek groups of people from
which to find friends. One might also develop the life path of being quiet
and not needing as much human connection, to share a house or a room
with someone like that. Trustworthiness varies -- as far as humans are
concerned, only consists of not betraying some other person and society
at large.
Trustworthiness is both a trueness of heart, inner strength, and a
learned skill. People call some people "real, deep, legit" -- such is
good material for trustworthiness.
Interpersonal trustworthiness, directed toward shared housing, can be
an economic and environmental asset. Fortunately, it's a value shared
both by the left and the right. Also, it's a value that pays dividends
to individuals even if society as a whole does not commit to the norm of
shared housing. It can be extended piecemeal. The poverty of the
materially rich is isolation and broken relationships, and the poverty
of the materially poor can include these as well -- a message that can
be profitably heard by people from all different socioeconomic groupings.
As it is a potential for economic change and not a direct economic
change, it may be able to pass under the radar of the forces that try
to constrain individual spiritual lives to patterns which preserve the
economic or political status quo (which is both oppressive and fragile
and could fall apart).
I have focused on housing so far, but how does this affect
transportation? Probably the "cleanest" solution to transportation
problems is to find ways to locate people closer to their jobs or
anything else they travel to regularly. People who know and trust
more people have more choices of where to live with other
people, allowing them to move closer to work. It would probably
make sense to create "company town" type scenarios (cluster
complementary workplaces in neighborhoods where their workers and
support personnel live). This involves a certain amount of
uprooting and rerooting of people, which is easier if people have
strong relational ties with those they live with, overall emotional
bases, and a greater ability to get along with strangers, and
improved by working on trustworthiness.
What about food? The spread of vegetarianism and veganism is a
low-hanging fruit, but we may still need to eat less per person.
How can we deal with constant hunger? To some extent, we can
adjust to it, get to where we don't need as many calories. But to
a certain extent, it will never comfortable. How can we get
through mass discomfort? The skills of patience (endurance and
waiting) are improved by trustworthiness toward others, as well
as having a good relationship with yourself. When you relate
well to yourself, you can tell yourself "no" and believe yourself
when you promise yourself that things will be better in the
future, when you will get what you desire. (Much of what we seek
from other people in relationships, and what we get from the process
of increasing trustworthiness overall, is really about our
relationships with ourselves.)
There are other basic needs, which should be considered in more
detail elsewhere. In general, it is easier to consume less of a
resource if you have some compensating factor, a rich relationship,
a lack of abusiveness in your life.
When a certain number of people are ready to simplify, a regulatory
body (probably a government) can put out advertisements encouraging
people to cut back on their consumption, for instance by moving into
their friends' houses to free up housing. We will all know what's going
on and be able to plan for the decrease in housing construction as a
society, or whatever other consequence comes from simplification.
This article has been mostly written with those on the left in mind,
more secular people, or religious believers with some degree of sympathy
with secular culture, or at least those accustomed to it. But the
basics of this article are valid and obligatory for those on the
Christian right as well. (My sympathies lie with them as well as with
those on the left.) How so?
Perhaps what follows will seem like something out of left field to
secular readers, but it's important to remember that the world
we all share is large and contains many different points of view.
Sin is that which God finds unacceptable. God does not like it when
we do not respect him, or other people. Much of what is considered
sin falls under that category of disrespect. God does not want us
to sin. So if we are in tune with God, we will sin less. Are we ready
to be in the Kingdom? Or are we holding on to sin? I like the motto of this site: "Overcome Sin, for the Kingdom
of Jesus Christ is Coming Soon". Maybe the end will come through
climate change, or maybe not. People have thought the world was
ending before and been wrong. Maybe the world is ending in a year.
There's a lot we don't know, but the Kingdom is coming soon, and so,
overcome sin.
It's the Christian's task to build up the Church, which often
means, building up a particular local congregation. "They will know
that we are Christians by our love" -- "Let love be genuine" -- so
relationships within churches need to be strong and not abusive,
characterized by respect. This is a good in itself, but can also
connect to surviving on Earth in difficult times. Even if climate
change is a left-wing hoax, building up trustworthiness is a good
idea.
Simplicity is a Christian value. You can't serve both God and
Mammon (possessions). You can have possessions without serving them
in your heart, but if have more than you need and are unwilling to
give them up to honor God, then you are serving them. Forget about
degrowth. That's a secular agenda. Be simple for Christian reasons.
So, many different kinds of people can see the use of simplicity and
trustworthiness which feeds into it. Therefore, potential
simplicity (and then simplicity itself) could actually be adopted as
a mass value and put into practice. In 50 years, or 20, (or sooner?),
policymakers could use this resource to lower rents and cut
greenhouse gas emissions. And Christians could be closer to God.
And for more pessimistic minds, trustworthiness and relational
wealth, and the ability to live with less, are a good thing for
everyone to develop, in the event of societal collapse.
