Voluntary Simplicity and Charity
One thing I have noticed and felt initially a little uneasy about in my own attempts to live a simpler life is that cutting down on what I spend and how much I am prepared to work to get more disposable income means that I have very little money to contribute to charity.
The generation of surplus income, it could be argued, could be used to benefit those less well-off or to help fund ecological or social justice programmes. Living a simple life could be interpreted as a bascially selfish endeavour wherein one makes sure one has enough for oneself (if even that is very little) and refuses to involve in a level of economic exchange that can also bring benefit to others.
There is something in this argument if indeed one uses simple living to merely cut one's dependency on society. However, I think that even though a person living a life of voluntary simplicity may indeed have less money to give to charity than they might otherwise if they engaged fully in the "rat race", I believe that choosing voluntary simplicity can been seen as an attempt to turn one's every act into an act of charity and a step in the direction towards reducing the need for charity in the world.
The world's second-richest man, Warren Buffet, has reported given away upwards of $37 billion of his $42 billion fortune to charity in June 2006 - the biggest charitable donation in history. I can only praise such a generous gesture - it will surely do a lot of good. But, I wonder if Mr. Buffet is really just salving his conscience. In accumulating so much wealth (through stockmarket investment) how much harm did he do? Is the charitiable work his donation will fund only undoing the effects of the injustices that the multinational capitalism that his investments fuelled have perpetrated? Without campaigning against the structures that allow injustice to flourish isn't charity only ever able to treat the symptoms and not the disease?
Simple living, for me, means living a life where the happiness of others is paramount. By actively seeking not to engage in the kind of behaviour that causes suffering to other beings I believe that one is doing better than making donations to charity. Why work within a system that causes injustice and suffering and then uses the profits of that system to try to allieviate suffering? Seems crazy to me!
The generation of surplus income, it could be argued, could be used to benefit those less well-off or to help fund ecological or social justice programmes. Living a simple life could be interpreted as a bascially selfish endeavour wherein one makes sure one has enough for oneself (if even that is very little) and refuses to involve in a level of economic exchange that can also bring benefit to others.
There is something in this argument if indeed one uses simple living to merely cut one's dependency on society. However, I think that even though a person living a life of voluntary simplicity may indeed have less money to give to charity than they might otherwise if they engaged fully in the "rat race", I believe that choosing voluntary simplicity can been seen as an attempt to turn one's every act into an act of charity and a step in the direction towards reducing the need for charity in the world.
The world's second-richest man, Warren Buffet, has reported given away upwards of $37 billion of his $42 billion fortune to charity in June 2006 - the biggest charitable donation in history. I can only praise such a generous gesture - it will surely do a lot of good. But, I wonder if Mr. Buffet is really just salving his conscience. In accumulating so much wealth (through stockmarket investment) how much harm did he do? Is the charitiable work his donation will fund only undoing the effects of the injustices that the multinational capitalism that his investments fuelled have perpetrated? Without campaigning against the structures that allow injustice to flourish isn't charity only ever able to treat the symptoms and not the disease?
Simple living, for me, means living a life where the happiness of others is paramount. By actively seeking not to engage in the kind of behaviour that causes suffering to other beings I believe that one is doing better than making donations to charity. Why work within a system that causes injustice and suffering and then uses the profits of that system to try to allieviate suffering? Seems crazy to me!
posted by voluntarysimpleton at 3:13 AM
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