Simplicity: Notes, Stories and Exercises for Developing Unimaginable Wealth

Simplicity: Notes, Stories and Exercises for Developing Unimaginable Wealth eloquently explores voluntary simplicity as a richly rewarding and socially fulfilling lifestyle -- a practical, enriching alternative to our destructive and often unsatisfying culture of consumption.Simplicity is a hands-on manual for personal and community-wide change. It focuses on practical exercises for expanding awareness of one's own patterns of consumption and taking steps to reduce them, as well as a section on engaging one's family, friends, and colleagues in the challenging but joyful process of simplifying one's material gains while enriching one's emotional, social and spiritual life.

Politics & Social Sciences

BURCH, Mark A.

Philosophy

New Society Pub

The voluntary simplicity movement has become stereotyped for being solely concerned with a thrifty life-style-but simple living has more implications than just cleaning closets and selling off a second car. In Stepping Lightly Burch considers not only the deeper rewards of voluntary simplicity for individuals, but the practice of simple living as a thoughtful approach to solving modern social and environmental problems. Burch begins by asking the question: how can a person best live so as to be love, to be non-violence, and to be in harmony with ourselves, other people, and the Earth? With an engaging and eloquent style, Burch offers an answer to this question by first exploring the meaning of "voluntary simplicity"-which turns out to be much richer and more complex than is first apparent-and then evolving the concept of simple living beyond personal enrichment to a powerful tool for making a better world. Global consumerism is destroying human communities and the natural environment. Burch persuasively argues that the individual practice of voluntary simplicity is an essential part of the solution to the overall problem of sustaining human communities and the planet into the distant future. He asserts that one's personal commitment to voluntary simplicity forms the individual and cultural foundation which liberates time, money, and creative energy-allowing for both individual activism and collective problem solving. Readers from a variety of perspectives-whether already engaged in simple living or searching for a deeply committed approach to actively promoting a sustainable society, economy, and planet-will find here a wealth of intelligent and compassionate arguments for living lightly for both the soul and for the Earth. Mark Burch is the author of Simplicity: Notes, Stories and Exercises for Developing Unimaginable Wealth. He has practiced simple living since the 1960s and is a freelance writer, speaker, workshop leader, and teacher of college courses on voluntary simplicity. He lives in Manitoba, Canada.

Stepping Lightly

Self-Help

New Society Publishers

The Hidden Door: Mindful Sufficiency as an Alternative to Extinction

Religion & Spirituality

Mark A. Burch

SET IN THE YEAR 2027, Euterra Genesis is the birth story of a way of life, an aesthetic sensibility and a spiritual intuition that survives the Ruination to carry its members into a very different future. As the storm clouds of the Ruination gather on the horizon, the seed of Euterran culture is quietly germinating in the former ghost town of Badger Coulee. Is Beamer Farris just a young man alienated from the enticements of consumer culture, or is he a reluctant prophet in troubled times? Are his visions born of compulsion and anxiety, or are they authentic "openings?" Can the love he shares with Tatum Barnes survive in the crucible of social chaos and environmental upheaval that is gathering around them? And what does any of this have to do with Laurel Fey's Periodic Table?

Euterra Genesis: A Novel

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Fantasy

Many people sense that consumer culture is dragging us toward extinction. We feel trapped in a cell of our own making. If humanity is to have any sort of future worth living in, we must discover an exit from our confinement. There is a door, hidden in plain sight. What sort of culture might appear if we took seriously the essential values and principles that form the deep structure of voluntary simplicity and used them to inform a new perspective of the good life? Might we discover an exit from the confining cell of consumer culture? Can we find the passage leading beyond individual lifestyle choice to cultural renaissance? This book aims to help seed this renaissance by widening the conversation about how we transition from the road to extinction to a path with heart that has a future.

Education & Teaching

Schools & Teaching

Simplicity Institute Publishing

Simplicity: Notes, stories and exercises for developing unimaginable wealth

Sustainability may seem like one more buzzword, and cities and towns like the last places to change, but this book provides inspiring examples of communities that have made dramatic changes toward sustainability, and explains how others can emulate their success.  Chronicled in the book are towns like Overtornea, whose government operations recently became 100 per cent fossil fuel-free, demonstrating that unsustainable municipal practices really can be overhauled. Arguing that the process of introducing change -- whether converting to renewable energy or designing compact development -- is critical to success, the authors outline why well-intentioned proposals often fail to win community approval, and why an integrated approach -- not "single-issue" initiatives -- can surmount challenges of conflicting priorities, scarce resources, and turf battles.

Stress Management

Simple living has much deeper implications than just cleaning closets or selling off a second car. In Stepping Lightly, Mark Burch considers the deeper rewards of voluntary simplicity for individuals, and how the practice of simple living can be an essential part of the solution to our social and environmental problems.

Stepping Lightly: Simplicity for People and the Planet

Motivational

New Catalyst Books

LA VOIE DE LA SIMPLICITE

Reference

ECOSOCIETE

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Books by BURCH, Mark A.