The Good Life: How to Create a Sustainable and Fulfilling Lifestyle

Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. For many people, consumer culture has lost its appeal. So have debt accumulation, time poverty, exteriority, and social alienation. The Good Life traces one woman's journey toward a deeply fulfilling lifestyle-and points toward a way of life that values freedom, interdependence, caring, community, and our connectedness with nature. The Good Life offers a guide to finding p For many people, consumer culture has lost its appeal.

The Good Life offers a guide to finding personal freedom through a sustainable lifestyle. It invites readers to view the recent global market downturn as an opportunity to transform our dead consumer culture into a living post-consumer society. The book is packed with information on emerging alternatives, such as co-housing, slow money, vegetarian and raw foods, permaculture and organic gardening, voluntary simplicity, green building, and more.

Each chapter ends with a very practical "Dozen Things That You Can Do" to create a more sustainable and fulfilling lifestyle. Paperback , pages. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about The Good Life , please sign up.

• !
• Great Sites;
• Istanbul & Its Surroundings!
• See a Problem?!
• Happy People: 438 Secrets of Happy People From the Book of Proverbs.
• Mechanisms and Emerging Therapies in Tremor Disorders (Contemporary Clinical Neuroscience).

Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Mar 24, Zinta rated it it was amazing. So have debt accumulation, time poverty, exteriority and social alienation. The Good Life traces one woman's journey toward a deeply fulfilling lifestyle-and points toward a way of life that values freedom, interdependence, caring, community and our connectedness with nature. It was a year-old wonderful farmhouse outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan, surrounded by field and forest, and I was looking for a good read that fit my surroundings. Oh, and did this book ever fit the bill!

All my life I have been longing for …. To live a nature-centered life that is built around real values, and not just consumerism. Ackerman is a philosopher by background, a professor, and this book incorporates more than just notes on how to garden and be organic. It goes far beyond that, weaving a philosophy of life into why we live as we do, and why we feel so empty when we ignore our true needs.

She is a modern day Thoreau, only her call is also a call back to community. Who of us has not noted that to live in the crowded city or in the sardine-packed suburbs does not equate to isolation? Our lives are ever more empty, and the recent market crash and other economic woes have only sharpened our awareness that this path was the wrong path. How then to find our way? Ackerman takes on our dissatisfaction with work. Work should not be a burden, but a blessing, an extension and expression of ourselves.

Yet too many of us work merely for a paycheck, living to work rather working to live. American workers are forgetting how to fly. The only fly in the ointment was that people were not happy. There are currently approximately 19 million clinically depressed Americans, or 9. Depression currently affects so many people that it is often referred to as the common cold of mental illness.

She urges the reader to consider the European lifestyle and compares it to the American culture of making heroes out of those who work long hours in the office rather than spend time with friends and family. Time enjoying art or reading a book. Americans, Ackerman writes, now read less than one book per year. One hopes, then, that the one book will be The Good Life! We are missing out on the quality of life. We are losing our compassion, our kindness, focused on getting ahead in the rat race and getting the biggest sale on the newest piece of stuff. Our worth is now measured by what we own, which has come to own us.

Ackerman has us consider, too, how we treat others around us, and not just other human beings, but other life forms. Here is our true worth. In the same way that consumer culture has moved toward valuing profit over people, it has put profit over nature. But it does so at a high cost to the environment, animals and humans. In the long run, there is always, without exception, a cost to be paid for pursuing cheap.

Is this the best that humans are capable of? And perhaps we have gone too far in that cheap and unsustainable direction, now watching the results in terms of a faltering economy, health, global climate conditions, wars, disease, environmental degradation. Yet one must hope for better, and regardless of how far and how long we have lived in this manner, there is reason and need to change.

The Good Life offers a story about those who have chosen to live otherwise, including the author herself and her family and friends. These are changes we should all emulate. It is the right thing to do, and it will return us to that pursuit of lasting happiness. Jul 30, James Prothero added it. But, one day the handcuffs start to feel tight. They might even chafe the wrists. A bubble-priced home is suddenly under-water. Many start to wonder, Is this the American dream?

This is the threshold of Transition. In order to unplug we need to change our thinking. Unplugging begins in the head. We have to mentally unplug before we can physically unplug. Every time people run out of an item, they automatically assume that they need another one. The same is true of things that get broken, lost or worn-out. The meme is that everything has to be replaced: This is simply not true. We already have enough stuff in our garages, attics, cellars and storage sheds to patch-in for anything that really needs to be replaced. Chances are, we already own a dozen other items that can do the same task.

I thought of her the other day when I needed a small embroidery hoop. How could I make do? What would Grandma have done? After a bit of thrashing around, I seized upon the idea of using the ring from a lid of a wide-mouth canning jar and a rubber band. But to pull this off, we have to stop the automatic impulse to go get it and, instead, cultivate an impulse to create it. We have to replace buying with making. Do we evict our tenant with whom we have an informal rent-control agreement in order to raise the rent on a newbie?

This happen every day of the week. Let me say that again: Do you remember where your grandfather worked? If someone fell into hard times, everyone passed the hat. They guy who plowed the snow was part of the family—he got a big box of cookies for the holidays and a rag-doll for his child. Sure, people watched their pennies.

They knew they needed each other and that their community was only as strong as the weakest member. This is going to require a big shift in the head. Contemporary Americans feel justified in getting the cheapest—no matter the hidden cost of the so-called bargain. We have to start looking at the big picture again. Enlightened self-interest needs to replace simple self-interest. Marcuse called it choosing not to participate in one-dimensional society. So, jump in wherever works best for you—but keep at it. Keep unplugging one step at a time until you start to feel free. Fewer bills, less rushing around, better health and more happiness!

Friday, November 4, The Good Life: Bridging Heaven and Earth. Monday, July 18, Making Friends with Vishnu. The concept of sustainability has always been there—right from the beginning. Every Wisdom Tradition has its own ways of reminding us to honor the Earth, to Love each other and to value the lives that we are given. Brahma is the first member of the Hindu Trinity, Vishnu being the second and Shiva, the third. Brahma is the god of creation. Shiva is the god of destruction. Destruction and creation go hand in hand.

They are like two sides of a coin. For example, the destruction of morning is the creation of noon and the destruction of noon is the creation of night. This chain of continuous destruction and construction maintains the day. Similarly, the destruction of childhood is the creation of youth and the destruction of youth, the creation of old age. In this process of birth and death the individual is maintained. Vishnu is the god of maintenance. The gods representing creation, maintenance and destruction, are essentially one and the same.

They, however, appear quite differently. We love to dance with Shiva. We are seduced by creation. We are excited by starting projects--feeling the surge of juicy creativity. We feel just as powerful when we are destructive. Destroying something gives us a sense of closure—of power. Our egos thrive on the excitement of beginning and ending. Maintenance is a whole different matter. No bells and whistles. So, poor Vishnu—the god who holds everything together--gets forgotten. All of our creation and destruction is wreaking havoc with the Earth.

We are filling landfills with our destruction, depleting resources with our creation. We buy too much and we throw too much away. We are too industrial and too wasteful. How sustainable is it to spend a lot of money on expensive seeds and bedding plants to build a garden and then let it be taken over by weeds—only to be tilled under in the Fall? Vishnu wants us out there weeding, mulching, watering, and tending.

He wants the plants to be cared for so that they can grow into food. Vishnu wants us to maintain everything. He wants us to maintain our lives: He is the god at the very heart of a sustainable lifestyle! When we hear the word, it conjures up ideas of our grandmother, sitting in her rocking chair, darning socks. Sewing on buttons, fixing small tears, and reinforcing frayed seams all extend the life of clothing exponentially. I know, I know.

Too many times people chuck a piece of clothing because of minor damage that can easily be corrected with a needle and thread. It behooves one to learn how to sew, as this simple skill can save you lots of money, even without owning a sewing machine. If learning isn't an option, even paying a seamstress to mend your clothes will save you money, as repairing clothes is cheaper than buying new.

And, there is the issue of not supporting sweatshops—where so much clothing is currently manufactured. Here is some really basic gardening advice: Garden plants are not knick-knacks. They are living entities that depend upon their caregivers for continued life. Well done, a garden is a work of art—a thing that is beautiful to behold. Badly done, it is tragic. And, it means that I spend a lot of time with Vishnu. I water, I harvest. A garden is a great lesson in, literally, reaping what you sow! This is an area that can save a family big money.

And, a lot of time, as well. Most people find that by planning, and shopping for, menus on a weekly basis reduces their grocery bill exponentially. Grocery shopping with a plan limits pricey impulse purchases and return trips to the store for forgotten items.

Speaking of trying to eliminate those return trips to the store for forgotten items…! Vishnu wants us to consolidate our errands. I try to advance plan my trips to town so that appointments, errands, shopping needs and so forth are all consolidated. This takes some forethought and some list building: This also slows the pace of life.

Not everything is an emergency! I have found that by sitting down in the morning with a piece of paper and pencil can save me a lot of time throughout the rest of the day. First, I make a master list of what I would like to accomplish that day no attachment to the outcome, though! Then, I move the items around into clusters that naturally go together. Am I, for example, able to tele-conference with my editor at the same time I water some new transplants in the garden? Or, how about listening to an important podcast while filling the food dehydrator? The other day I experimented with seeing how many yoga asanas I could incorporate into my posture while weeding the garden.

It was really neat! I cross things off my day list as they get done. Sometimes everything gets crossed off. Not that often, though. What matters is that I stay focused throughout the day, allowing more to get done with less hustle. This point speaks for itself. Doing home repairs saves money, time and eventual deterioration. This is the easiest place to see Vishnu in action.

Plugged drains, loose shingles, sagging porch rails, peeling paint are all calling out to Vishnu. Without his intervention, they will soon be in rot and ruin. There is a Wiki on everything—many complete with video instruction! There is something incredibly liberating about fixing your own faucet. Sure, it takes a little time. But, if you do the math, it actually saves you time. Did fixing it yourself take ten hours? These are some simple, elementary ways to start making friends with Vishnu. You will find that the better friends the two of you become, the more Flow you access in your life.

Resources are not wasted. Energy needs are reduced. Living well is spirituality in action. It is an integration of the spiritual principles of simplicity, integrity and mindfulness with day-to-day lifestyle practices. The bridging of Heaven and Earth! The book springs off from her 22 years of living on a back-to-the-earth commune in Central Vermont and offers practical ideas for not only surviving--but flourishing--in today's challenging conditions.

So, how did it happen?

The Good Life: How to Create a Sustainable and Fulfilling Lifestyle

How did we all get complacent enough to accept the phrase "commercially produced food" without even blinking an eye? And, not just to shop, but to shop for food. Food is the hub of the wheel. It's the one thing that we all have in common: And, we are what we eat. Recent statistics regarding the number of people with early onset cancer, degenerative disease, diabetes and dementia all point to a decline in the quality of our food.

So, when food becomes a profit motive, a lot goes out the door. Some of the things that fly out the door are health, money yours, not theirs , environment and energy. Big Agriculture is unconcerned about the environmental carnage left behind by pesticides, GMO crops, soil depletion or erosion. Big Agriculture is unconcerned about how much fuel it takes to run those mega-machines to produce, harvest and transport crops. And, Big Agriculture doesn't care how much food costs you and your family.

They care about directing profits to already rich corporate interests. Most of the food in your supermarket travels thousands of miles in trucks or planes to get from the farm to the shelves. Think about how much fuel us used to transport those items. What kind of impact does that have on the environment? What kind of impact does that have on your wallet? While organic foods have grown in popularity, many commercially available foods are still sprayed with pesticides, herbicides and preservative formulas to prevent disease and spoilage. The USDA currently allows "57 trace pesticides" in foods labeled organic.

Are you scared or angry yet? Not only can these chemicals pose health risks to you, they also impact the environment through air and water pollution. The concept of "commercial food" really gets at the heart of the differential identified by Scott Nearing. Nearing made a clear distinction between "use production" and "market production". Use production is when you produce something in this case, food for your own household's use. Market production, obviously, is producing for sale on the open market. Nearing argued, and I agree, the "use production" was, in the Big Picture, the most efficient and effective economic model.

Food grown from seed costs a lot less than store-bought. By preserving your harvest you can reduce the amount of food you throw away due to spoilage. There is no packaging. There are no middle managers.

In addition, you can save the seeds from the fruits of your plants and replant them next year. By following these practices you could feed yourself indefinitely.

Food that you grow yourself just tastes better. Food in markets, even health food stores, is often in cold storage for up to a month before being sold. Fresh food is more nutritious and has better flavor than the stuff that comes from the store. I grow my own food. I "get my groceries off the ground". When I walk through my garden and cut fresh greens for salad--and eat them no more than an hour later--the benefits of Nearing's "use economy" are evident. Nothing, absolutely nothing, that I can buy at a market even a Farmer's Market comes close to the level of quality that I can produce right outside my window.

It's my vision that more and more people will wave goodbye to "commercial food" and replace it with a "use economy" model. As we get deeper into Unplugging from the Man, we invariably come face-to-face with our addiction to petroleum. Sure, we like to sit around and do the "ain't it awful" with our peers, but we keep using gasoline. And, tomorrow never comes. So, what's the solution? Even with the recent surge in gas prices, consumption has only reduced by 0.

We all know that we are past peak oil. We all know that our three wars are contingent upon our lust for oil. Yet, our societal behavioral changes seem to lag behind our knowledge. We are suffering from cultural cognitive dissonance. Let's look at some practical things that we could do, easily, to stop pumping and start Unplugging: Get a bicycle, equip it with a basket for carrying groceries.

You'll be getting heart-healthy at the same time you stop stressing about escalating gas prices. You'll notice more things along your route. And, you will no longer be held captive by the oil barons. Bicycling is good for the Planet, good for your health and good for saving money. We all think that we don't have time to bicycle places. It's just a head trip. Recently, my partner needed a large bunch of mint to put in his recipe for the evening meal. So, I hopped on my bicycle and went a couple of miles down the road to a large pond, where both peppermint and spearmint grow abundantly along the south shores.

Within a few minutes, I had filled my bike basket and was peddling back home, enjoying the fragrance of fresh cut mints. I can bicycle eight miles per hour even on a bad day. That puts my transportation time at roughly fifteen minutes. The actual wildcrafting takes about ten minutes, including the time spent watching some ducklings learning to bob for fish, bringing my total time investment to about twenty-five minutes.

This is roughly ten minutes less than it would be to drive into town and go to the market. So, we do have time to bicycle places! How hard would it be to share rides with others? Sure, it involves some planning, but that's about it.

New Dream | The Good Life: How to Create a Sustainable and Fulfilling…

Planning means that you will be talking with your neighbors and colleagues. And, what's so bad about that? Wouldn't that be community? Have you ever gone to your son or dauther's sporting event and noticed that all of your neighbors are there, too--and that you all fired up your own, individual gas guzzling machines to drive down there? Sharing the ride with just one other person can cut your commuting costs in half. Think of all of the more interesting things that you could do with that extra thousand dollars!

Again, a little planning can go a long ways. Instead of firing up your rig to run into town and back every day of the week, designate one day as "errand day". Train yourself to get sufficiently organized to do everything that you need to do in a single trip to town: Work around already existing commitments. If, for example, you have a weekly Wednesday afternoon appointment or meeting, go into town a little earlier on Wednesdays and also do your shopping and errands. We are so incredibly used to instant gratification that this will make us uneasy for awhile.

We are used to running into town to pick up a single lag bolt, right? Or, a bottle of olive oil? Once, though, the savings start to show up in the household budget, we'll be really excited about the whole list-making and planning process! There is real money and time to be saved here. You will be surprised how fit you will get in a very short time by making this lifestyle change.

When you feel like a trip to town just to "get a java" at the local coffee shop, ski in. It makes the outing even more fun than it would have originally have been. Maybe you could invite a friend to share the foot-transport with you. Of course, we keep pumping because we think, erroneously, that we "don't have time" for alternative forms of transportation. But, why are people in the most technologically advanced civilization in the world starved for time? One of the hooks that keep people locked into the consumer culture is the lure of convenience.

We are told that convenience frees up time. Convenience does, superficially, create more time. But those conveniences are expensive and, in the long run, require people to work more hours to make more income to pay for them. In other words, people end up working more hours—thereby having less available time—to make enough money to pay for convenience.

The final product of convenience is time famine. The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, argues from statistics what I have figured out from experience. Averaging only sixteen hours of leisure a week after jobs and associated travel and communication responsibilities, working hours are longer than they were forty years ago. This, in large part, traces back to our addiction to gasoline. It strikes me that by dealing with our gasoline addiction--which is really a "convenience addiction"--we will be freed up to enjoy more leisure.

And, that's a pretty nice perk for Unplugging from the Man. This blogpost was the fifth in a series of articles about Unplugging from the Man.

• .
• Account Options.
• The Risk of Heaven (Dr. Risk Mystery Series Book 2).

Stay tuned for more suggestions and ideas about achieving personal freedom. So, we've made up our minds to Unplug from The Man. We want to loosen the noose and pursue personal freedom. Our wrists are chafed from the golden handcuffs and it's time to shake them off. We are in Transition and we need to continue to hammer out our blueprint for liberation. In Part 3 of this series, I put forward some good preliminary ideas for starting to Unplug.

But now, in this Part, let's go deeper: It has to go. The TV keeps you shackled to the Establishment. It programs you as to what to buy, what to think and what to say. It's subtle, but it's there: TV watchers stop thinking for themselves. A slow, incremental exteriorization happens. The advertisements get to even the most vigilant. It is subliminal and insidious. Don't tell me, either, that "there are a lot of good programs on TV". For every "good one", there are a dozen "bad ones".

You are just rationalizing. Take a deep breath and pull the plug. Get a bicycle, equip it with a basket for carrying groceries and you've got your Transition transportation. You read that right. Get rid of your landline. Nobody needs one anymore. And, nobody really needs a smart phone, either. Sure, they're fun, but they're also expensive not to mention that they track your whereabout and, starting in , will issue daily "terror alerts" from the White House.

Try Google Phone for a pleasant--free! You can get your own number. It has voicemail, caller ID and call forwarding. And, all calls within the US are free. The US is currently among the most propagandized nations in the world. The commercial, corporate news sites don't really report "news" anymore. It's, instead, a steady stream of ideology funded by vested special interests.

The independent, alternative news sites are the only operative venues of real, uncensored information. Let's not let them die from malnutrition. Without them, we will be proverbial sheep. Unplugging from The Man is an essential component of our own personal versions of Power Shift It's going to mean adjusting to some changes, but the sweet taste of freedom is worth it! This blogpost was the fourth in a series of articles about Unplugging from the Man. Tuesday, May 3, Revolution is not a Photo Opportunity. One of my young philosophy mentees contacted me yesterday.

She was, understandably, upset about the socio-political apathy in her generation. She had recently attended a non-violent demonstration in Portland, OR, with some seemingly politically oriented peers--only to discover that they were, for the most part, more interested in taking pictures of one another "demonstrating" to post on Facebook than they were in the actual socio-political issues. She reported that she overheard comments like "stand closer together so that I can get you all in the picture" and "turn the sign this way so that it shows up in the photo" repeatedly.

It was a party, an event, a gala--not a real show of dissent. It was a photo opportunity--which they had confused with a revolution. Revolution requires the willingness to assume risk--of arrest, of uncomfortability, of anonymity and, of course, of being misunderstood. The real revolutionary, even when part of a group, is alone.

They are real friends. Not people to tag in a Facebook picture. Real revolutionaries don't carry their cameras to a rally. Nor do they carry their tracking-deviced cell phones. They would be just as happy if nobody even knew that they were there.

The Good Life: How to Create a Sustainable and Fulfilling Lifestyle

But there are there. They are there because they can't not be there. And, they can't not be there because they care so much about the issue. It's not about them, it's about the issue. They care--from deep down inside themselves--about all of the Bradley Mannings, the environment, the economy, The People. That's the defining line: It's about all of us!

I'm calling it Unplugging from the Man. Seeking liberation from a system that is choking the life-blood out of our humanness. Once we've made up our minds to Unplug, we need to map out a blueprint for doing it.

The Good Life: How to Create A Sustainable and Fulfilling Lifestyle

There's a lot to do and we can only do a bit at a time. So, jump in wherever works best for you--but keep at it. Keep Unplugging one step at a time until you start to feel free. Let's turn our attention to some super easy places to Unplug that will give you a lot of bang for your buck.

Let's look at doing things at home wave goodbye to commercial culture and by hand wave goodbye to industrial culture: Marcuse, in his Essay on Liberation, says that if our lives were more aligned with The Beautiful and I would say, therefore, Good Lives! Cooking at home turns an otherwise sterile kitchen into the living heart of a home. The smell of a fresh pie, the sound of a stirfry, the sight of a quiche fresh from the oven all spell connectedness. It is the sensory experience of community. Stories are told, news is shared, gossip is swapped.

We are a part of something bigger than ourselves. Homecooked food is more nutritional, more cost-effective, creates less waste and builds community. And, so much the better if the food that you are preparing was grown right outside your kitchen window. Take out your lawn and put in a vegetable garden! I have just returned from a tiny town in rural Portugal where there wasn't a lawn in sight. Instead, every single yard was full of lemon trees, orange trees, vegetable gardens and potato patches. The edible yards were really beautiful--alive with color and interesting layouts.