THE VALUE OF VOLUNTARY SIMPLICITY

PETE'S JOURNAL, APRIL 2003

 www.seekeronline.org

THE VALUE OF VOLUNTARY SIMPLICITY

by Richard B. Gregg

Author of The Power of Non-Violence
Acting Director of Pendle Hill 1935-36

Published by

PENDLE HILL

A Quaker Center for Religious and Social Study
Wallingford, Pennsylvania
1936

Price Fifteen Cents
(Two or more copies at tea cents apiece.)

THE VALUE OF VOLUNTARY SIMPLICITY
[An excerpt]

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I. INTRODUCTION AND DEFINITION

Voluntary simplicity of living has been advocated and practiced by the founders of most of the great religion: Buddha, Lao Tse, Moses and Mohammed,—also by many saints and wise men such as St. Francis, John Woolman, the Hindu rishis, the Hebrew prophets, the Moslem sufis; by many artists and scientists; and by such great modern leaders as Lenin and Gandhi. It has been followed also by members of military armies and monastic orders,—organizations which have had great and prolonged influence on the world. Simplicity has always been one of the testimonies of the Mennonites and of the Society of Friends.

Clearly, then, there is or has been some vitally important element in this observance. But the vast quantities of things given to us by modern mass production and commerce, the developments of science and the complexities of existence in modern industrialized countries have raised widespread doubts as to the validity of this practice and principle. Our present "mental climate" is not favorable either to a clear understanding of the value of simplicity or to its practice. Simplicity seems to be a foible of. saints and occasional geniuses, but not something for the rest of us.

What about it?

Before going further, let us get a somewhat clearer idea of what we are discussing. We are not here considering asceticism in the sense of a suppression of instincts. What we mean by voluntary simplicity is not so austere and rigid. Simplicity is a relative matter, depending on climate, customs, culture, the character of the individual. For example, in India, except for those who are trying to imitate Westerners, everyone, wealthy as well as poor, sits on the floor, and there are no chairs. A large number of Americans, poor as well as rich, think they have to own a motor car, and many others consider a telephone exceedingly important. A person in a certain rank of society considers it necessary to have several kinds of shoes, of hats or other articles of clothing for purposes other than cleanliness or comfortable temperature. What is simplicity for an American would be far from simple to a Chinese peasant.

Voluntary simplicity involves both inner and outer condition. It means singleness of purpose, sincerity and honesty within, as well as avoidance of exterior clutter, of many possessions irrelevant to the chief purpose of life. It means an ordering and guiding of our energy and our desires, a partial restraint in some directions in order to secure greater abundance of life in other directions. It involves a deliberate organization of life for a purpose. For example, the men who tried to climb Mount Everest concentrated their thoughts and energies on the planning of that expedition for several years, and in the actual attempt discarded every ounce of equipment not surely needed for that one purpose.

Of course, as different people have different purposes in life, what is relevant to the purpose of one person might not be relevant to the purpose of another. Yet it is easy to see that our individual lives and community life would be much changed if every one organized and graded and simplified his purposes so that one purpose would easily dominate all the others, and if each person then re-organized his outer life in accordance with this new arrangement of purposes,—discarding possessions and activities irrelevant to the main purpose. The degree of simplification is a matter for each individual to settle for himself, but the meaning of the principle is now perhaps clear enough for discussion, even though the applications of it may differ. I will not attempt more exact: definition at this point, trusting to the discussion to clarify further the meaning of the topic.

VIII. SIMPLICITY AND RELIGION

Besides these social or moral considerations there are religious implications in the matter of simplicity.

We are told by St. John that "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. . . . He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. . . . Let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth." (I John 4:12, 16; 3:18. ) Living simply seems to be an important element in this effort to manifest love and human unity, and hence, to live in accordance with Jesus' commands. Love is the sentiment which accompanies the realization of human unity. It expresses that unity and stimulates and helps to maintain it. We have seen in the case of St. Francis how simplicity aided in his attainment of unity with his fellow creatures. Likewise simplicity helps to express and aid love.

The greatest gulf in society is between the rich and the poor. The practice of simplicity by the well-to-do helps to bridge this gulf and may be therefore an expression of love. The rich young man was advised by Jesus to sell all his goods and give to the poor and thus simplify his life, in order to perfect his religious life. No doubt such an act would have resulted in more than simplification of the young man's life, but that would have been one of the results.

Hinduism and Buddhism have also emphasized the value of simplicity.

The anonymous author of "The Practice of Christianity" believes that tender-heartedness,—gentle kindness,—is the supreme virtue and the essence of Jesus' teachings. She shows that such virtues as sincerity, courage, loyalty, esprit de corps, obedience, self-denial and temperance are displayed in every unjust war, in all forms of political and economic repression, in religious persecution, and often indeed among criminals. They make a strong character but not necessarily a good character. Goodness is not merely an assemblage of other virtues. The essence of the sort of goodness which Jesus describes in his parables and sayings and illustrates by his life may be summed up, she says, in the phrase "tender-heartedness."

Tender-heartedness, together with great intelligence and strength of character, has in the cases of such leaders as Buddha, Jesus, St. Francis, George Fox, John Woolman and Gandhi, resulted in simplicity. Tender-heartedness seems to have been one of the elements which compelled those men to recognize human unity and to live in accordance with it and to share their property and lives with those who had need. Thus simplicity is, perhaps, a part of utter gentleness, and may be essential to those who would really practice religion.

The practice of simplicity means that you have decided to lay up your treasure in heaven rather than on earth; that your treasure will consist of intangibles rather than physical things; that it will not lie in the realm of material power; that you prefer to cultivate and amass the reality of human trust rather than its symbol, money. Practicing simplicity means not only that you have made this decision, but that you are doing one of the important parts of it, you are conforming with one of its essential preconditions, you are expressing your preference by actual conduct.

The heart of the problem of simplicity is spiritual and lies in inner detachment. But the inner state must be expressed by an outer act, in order to have sincerity, in order to prevent self-deception, in order to strengthen the inner attitude and in order to gain further insight for the next step. "By their fruits ye shall know them." "Not he that saith Lord, Lord, but he that doeth the will of my Father," is the truly religious person.

Christianity needs a means of implementing its ideals of human unity into a social program. While simplicity alone is only one element, it would seem to me to be one of the necessary elements in such a program. Simplicity would constitute part of a code of moral hygiene necessary for a healthy and vigorous spiritual life. The verse, "He that loseth his life shall find it," may mean, for one thing, that he that loseth his keen sense of separate individuality and acquireth a strong sense and practice of human unity shall find his truer and more enduring and richer life.

IX. SIMPLICITY AND PERSONALITY

It is often said that possessions are important because they enable the possessors thereby to enrich and enhance their personalities and characters. The claim is that by means of ownership the powers of self-direction and self-control inherent in personality become real. Property, they say, gives stability, security, independence, a real place in the larger life of the community, a feeling of responsibility, all of which are elements of vigorous personality.

Nevertheless, the greatest characters, those who have influenced the largest numbers of people for the longest time, have been people with extremely few possessions. For example, Buddha, Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, Kagawa, Socrates, St. Francis, Confucius, Sun Yat Sen, Lenin, Gandhi, many scientists, inventors and artists. "The higher ranges of life where personality has fullest play and is most nearly free from the tyranny of circumstance, are precisely those where it depends least on possessions. . . . The higher we ascend among human types and the more intense personalities become, the more the importance of possessions dwindles."

The reason for this is something that we usually fail to realize, namely that the essence of personality does not lie in its isolated individuality, its separateness from other people, its uniqueness, but in its basis of relationships with other personalities. It is a capacity for friendship, for fellowship, for intercourse, for entering imaginatively into the lives of others. At its height it is a capacity for and exercise of love. Friendship and love do not require ownership of property for either their ordinary or their finest expression. Creativeness does not depend on possession. Intangible relationships are more important to the individual and to society than property is. If a person by love and service wins people's trust, that trust will find expression in such forms as to preserve life and increase its happiness and beauty.

It is true that a certain kind of pleasure and satisfaction come from acquiring mastery over material things,—for example, learning to drive a motor car,—or from displaying ownership of things as a proof of power. But that sort of power and that sort of satisfaction are not so secure, so permanent, so deep, so characteristic of mental and moral maturity as are some others.

The most permanent, most secure and most satisfying sort of possession of things other than the materials needed for bodily life, lies not in physical control and power of exclusion but in intellectual, emotional and spiritual understanding and appreciation. This is especially clear in regard to beauty. He who appreciates and understands a song, a symphony, a painting, some sculpture or architecture gets more satisfaction than he who owns musical instruments or works of art. The world of nature and the museums afford ample scope for such spiritual possession. Such appreciation is what some economists call "psychic goods." Entering into the spirit which lies at the heart of things is what enriches and enlarges personality.

There is the simplicity of the fool and the simplicity of the wise man. The fool is simple because his mind and will are incapable of dealing with many things. The wise man is simple not for that reason but because he knows that all life, both individual and group, has a certain few essential strands or elements and outside of those are a vast multiplicity of other things. If the few essential strands are kept healthy and vigorous, the rest of the details develop almost automatically, like the bark and twigs and leaves of a tree. So the wise man confines most of his attention to the few essentials of life, and that constitutes his simplicity.

We cannot have deep and enduring satisfaction, happiness or joy unless we have self-respect. There is good reason to believe that self-respect is the basis for all higher morality.18 We cannot have self-respect unless our lives are an earnest attempt to express the finest and most enduring values which we are able to appreciate. That is to say, unless we come into close and right relationships with our fellow-men, with nature and with Truth (or God), we cannot achieve full self-respect. Or, as Rufus Jones puts it, we must keep our "honor before God."

Simplicity of living is, as we have seen, one of the conditions of reaching and maintaining these right relationships. Therefore simplicity is an important condition for permanent satisfaction with life. And inasmuch as national self-respect is a necessary condition for the maintenance of a nation or a civilization it would seem that widespread simplicity, as a cultural habit of an entire nation, would in the long run be essential for its civilization to endure. At any rate, in the two civilizations which have endured the longest, the Chinese and the East Indian, simplicity of living has been a marked characteristic. The wealthy Indian rajahs, often considered so prominent a feature of India, are, most of them, not greatly respected in India. With but few exceptions they are not moral or intellectual leaders, and in politics they are all creatures of an alien government. True, the simplicity of living of the Indian masses has been largely the enforced simplicity of poverty. Nevertheless, among the real intellectual and moral leaders of India, the Brahmans and social reformers like Gandhi, voluntary simplicity has been and still is a definite and widely observed element of their code and custom. This is true also, I believe, of the leaders of China, the scholars.

Those by whom simplicity is dreaded because it spells lack of comfort, may be reminded that some voluntary suffering or discomfort is an inherent and necessary part of all creation, so that to avoid all voluntary suffering means the end of creative-ness. Refusal to create may result in loss of self-respect.

Simplicity is clearly a sign of a pure heart, i.e., a single purpose. Also, because environment has an undeniable influence on character, simplicity of living would help to stimulate and maintain such singleness of purpose.

X. SIMPLICITY A KIND OF PSYCHOLOGICAL HYGIENE

There is one further value to simplicity. It may be regarded as a mode of psychological hygiene. Just as eating too much is harmful to the body, even though the quality of all the food eaten is excellent, so it seems that there may be a limit to the number of things or the amount of property which a person may own and yet keep himself psychologically healthy. The possession of many things and of great wealth creates so many possible choices and decisions to be made every day that it becomes a nervous strain. Often the choices have to be narrow. The Russian physiologist, Pavlov, while doing experiments on conditioned reflexes with dogs, presented one dog with the necessity of making many choices involving fine discriminations, and the dog actually had a nervous breakdown and had to be sent away for six months' rest before he became normal again. Subsequently, American psychologists, by similar methods, produced neuroses in sheep by requiring many repetitions of mere inhibition and action; and as inhibition is an element in all choices, they believe it was that element which may have caused the neurosis in Pavlov's dog.21 Of course, people are more highly organized than dogs and are easily able to weigh more possibilities and endure more inhibitions and make more choices and nice distinctions without strain, but nevertheless making decisions is work and can be overdone.

One effect of this upon the will, and hence upon success in life, was deftly stated by Confucius: "Here is a man whose desires are few. In some things he will not be able to maintain his resolution but they will be few.

"Here is a man whose desires are many. In some things he will be able to maintain his resolution but they will be few."

If a person lives among great possessions, they constitute an environment which influences him. His sensitiveness to certain important human relations is apt to become clogged and dulled, his imagination in regard to the subtle but important elements of personal relationships or in regard to lives in circumstances less fortunate than his own is apt to become less active and less keen. This is not always the result, but the exception is rare. When enlarged to inter-group relationships this tends to create social misunderstandings and friction.

The athlete, in order to win his contest, strips off the non-essentials of clothing, is careful of what he eats, simplifies his life in a number of ways. Great achievements of the mind, of the imagination, and of the will also require similar discriminations and disciplines.

Observance of simplicity is a recognition of the fact that everyone is greatly influenced by his surroundings and all their subtle implications. The power of environment modifies all living organisms. Therefore each person will be wise to select and create deliberately such an immediate environment of home things as will influence his character in the direction which he deems most important and such as will make it easier for him to live in the way that he believes wisest. Simplicity gives him a certain kind of freedom and clearness of vision.

XI. SIMPLICITY AND BEAUTY

The foregoing discussion has answered, I think, much of the second strong doubt which we mentioned near the beginning, the doubt that parents have as to the harm that simplicity might do to the minds and general cultural development of their children. In regard to aesthetics, simplicity should not connote ugliness. The most beautiful and restful room I ever entered was in a Japanese country inn, without any furniture or pictures or applied ornaments. Its beauty lay in its wonderful proportions and the soft colors of unpainted wood beams, paper walls and straw matting. There can be beauty in complexity but complexity is not the essence of beauty. Harmony of line, proportion and color are much more important. In a sense, simplicity is an important element in all great art, for it means the removal of all details that are irrelevant to a given purpose. It is one of the arts within the great art of life. And perhaps the mind can be guided best if its activities are always kept organically related to the most important purposes in life. Mahatma Gandhi believes that the great need of young people is not so much education of the head as education of the heart.

XII. A CAUTION

If simplicity of living is a valid principle, there is one important precaution and condition of its application. I can explain it best by something which Mahatma Gandhi said to me. We were talking about simple living and I said that it was easy for me to give up most things but that I had a greedy mind and wanted to keep my many books. He said, "Then don't give them up. As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, you should keep it. If you were to give it up in a mood of self-sacrifice or out of a stern sense of duty, you would continue to want it back, and that unsatisfied want would make trouble for you. Only give up a thing when you want some other condition so much that the thing no longer has any attraction for you, or when it seems to interfere with that which is more greatly desired." It is interesting to note that this advice agrees with modern Western psychology of wishes and suppressed desires. This also substantiates what we said near the beginning of our discussion, that the application of the principle of simplicity is for each person or each family to work out sincerely for themselves.

XIII. CULTIVATION OF SIMPLICITY

Inasmuch as the essence of the matter does not lie in externals but in inner attitude, let us discuss certain ways by which that attitude can be cultivated. Since simplicity means the supplanting of certain kinds of desires by other desires, the best aid in that process is directing the imagination toward the new desires. We must try, of course, to understand intellectually all the implications of the new desires, but further than that, make the imagination dwell upon them in spare moments, and just before going to sleep and just after awakening. Read books or articles dealing with them. Associate with people who have ideas similar to those which you wish to cultivate. Exercise your discrimination in the relative values of different modes of living, and in the little details that compose them. Practice the desired simplicity in small ways as well as the large. Provide as many small stimuli as possible for this line of thought and conduct. Inasmuch as competition and emulation, especially the variety known as "keeping up with the Joneses," lead to complexity of living, and inasmuch as competition is encouraged by a sense of diversity and exaggerated individualism, we will help ourselves toward simplicity by cultivating a strong and constant feeling of human unity. Try to cultivate the ability to work without attachment to the fruit of works. If you realize that the purpose of advertising is to stimulate your desires for material things, you will be wise to avoid reading many advertisements. At least exercise selection in so doing.

Other elements of character which will be desirable to cultivate for this purpose are: strength to resist the pressure of group opinion; ability to withstand misunderstanding, unfavorable comment, or ridicule; sensitiveness to intangible values and relationships more than to sense impressions; greater sensitiveness to moral beauty than to beauty perceptible by the physical senses; persistence, endurance and strength of will. If simplicity is a valuable thing, then to attain it we must pay a price. Estimate that price carefully against what you believe to be the value obtainable.

The religions which have had a characteristic specific body of custom and daily physical observances as an essential part of them have endured longer than other religions. I refer to Judaism and Hinduism. Part of their vitality seems to come from this intimate blending of idea and action, this expression of inner belief in routine details of everyday life. If this be so, and we want simplicity to be a vital, enduring part of our lives, we must express it in the detailed physical warp and woof of our lives. For example, we will be wise to express our ideal by observing simplicity and moderation in food. The kind of self-control that is developed in curbing one's appetite for quantities and delicacies of food is of great value as a foundation for self-control in regard to desires of possession. It may be, as the modern psychologists say, that intellectual skills are not transferable from one subject to another, so that the mastery of Latin does not help to a mastery of mathematics, but moral qualities which are cultivated in one sphere are usable in allied spheres. Gluttony and other forms of greed are not far apart.

Knowledge of diet will not only help control of food appetites, but it is essential in order to select food wisely so that we may be healthy while maintaining simplicity. This is especially true for mothers of growing children. Modern discoveries about vitamins, mineral content of foods, calories, food mixtures, sunshine and fresh air show that it is entirely possible to live simply and have an optimum of health.

For people in industrialized countries, discrimination will be needed in the selection of machinery for personal and home use. The amount of drudgery in household and other tasks depends partly upon the kinds and extent of complexity of living. Some machinery is truly labor saving with a minimum of harmful byproducts or remote effects. In our American mechanized environment it will take intelligence to change successfully from living a complex life to a simple life.

As Ruskin said,"Three-fourths of the demands existing in the world are romantic: founded on visions, idealisms, hopes and affections; and the regulation of the purse is, in its essence, regulation of the imagination and the heart. . . . We need examples of people who, leaving to Heaven to decide whether they arc to rise in the world, decide for themselves that they will be happy in it, and have resolved to seek—not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure, not higher fortune, but deeper felicity; making the first of possessions, self-possession."

End Excerpt

The Value of Voluntary Simplicity