The Millennium Development goals of the UN..works this principle..!
@ ayesha i m also a member of this community and glad to be a part of it .

Maybe I’m way off base. Maybe the “we were happy then” came from the satisfaction of facing down harsh conditions over which people had little control.

On the third hand, maybe the choice to be happy has nothing to do with wealth or poverty.

The reason that I say this is because the agricultural leanings, and associated increases in population, are what caused the destruction of the native peoples of the US, and either the peoples or entire cultural leanings of others throughout the world. I guess that agriculture without massive increases in population is OK, but it is not all that realistic.

Jan, I really like the term poverty, and I’m not wild about “voluntary simplicity” personally, so I don’t think I’m going to change that. As you can tell from some of my other posts, I’m very picky about words. For example, Rabbi Akiva, in the Talmud, says, “Poverty is as lovely an ornament to the People of Israel as a red ribbon against the neck of a Red Heifer.” There is a long history of a voluntary poverty movement in Christianity – indeed, early Christianity embraced communal wealth as a basic principle. And “poverty” derives from a fascinating latin principle – that of the person whose power to dissent is not limited by their wealth. Literally, the word poverty derives from “the ability to sue regardless of your ability to afford court fees.” I like that inherent in the word “poverty” is the implication that power and wealth are not inherently linked.

Besides, as Stephen points out, sometimes relying on your harvests does mean literal shortfall, and, while I hope that we are able to maintain a life where shortfalls can be made up (boy am I grateful that when I run out of potatoes, I can buy more!), subsistence agriculture represents a vulnerability I think better represented by “poverty” than “voluntary simplicity.”

I respect your preference for other terms, but I dislike the term “simplicity” personally – first, because I do not think it is necessarily accurate – there is often nothing simple about this life – but also because both “plain and simple” with its implicit reference to a theology I don’t hold to and “voluntary simplicity” which implies you can have everything you want but you choose not to, seem wrong to me, as does frugality.

Does any of this make sense?

Sharon

By using the “P” word, I think you play into the hands of those who are entrenched in today’s “more, more, more” way of life.