Archives for August 2017

We live in a world, where political turmoil, ecological disasters, economic devastation and social injustice seem to be ever present.

It’s nothing we can touch. Hardly anything that we can see. But nonetheless, we are surrounded by it. Daily.

And it’s complex.

In fact, it’s so complex, that we strive for something more simple. For a life that is easy to grasp and to understand.

In search for a simple life

Gardening, cooking unprocessed food, living in tiny houses, making our own tomato sauce and dish soap. Living with what we need, in line with nature, simple.

A simple life seems to be the answer to all our problems.

We buy too much stuff, we have too many options, we work too much.

Wherever we look, whatever we do, there is too much.

A simple life promises us the opposite. It promises an escape from all that is too much for us to handle.

But hardly ever does the simple life give us what we were looking for.

More often than not, it’s feeding our habits of consumption.

More often than not, we don’t give up anything. We don’t leave anything. We don’t stop doing anything.

We replace it.

We stick to what we know.

If we are serious about it, we might make a change during times of fasting.

Living simple get’s hard. It get’s complex. It takes effort.

The Industry for a Simple Life

And hence, it needs a whole industry to make it possible.

The simple living industry is just that. An industry.

Before you can start living simple, you need a book how to do it. Once you have the book, you find out that you need different glasses, capsules, and boxes to store your foot. That you need different shoes that you can wear anywhere so you only need one or two pairs. You need all kinds of oils to make your own face rub. And you need new tools to start building and repairing.

We connect the simple life with being outdoors. The outdoor industry is blooming. It’s now hip to run around like you are going on a one hundred day adventure in Alaska when you are on your way to get some milk. Nature is the way to escape. But even here, the simple is becoming complex. People go on nature adventures in Africa. A Safari. Sleeping in little luxury “shelters”.

Eating simple, whole foods is en vogue. Organic food stores are shooting out of the ground like mushrooms. Amazon believes so much in the financial potential of organic that they bought the largest whole foods chain in the US. You can order your groceries via voice with Alexa.

Sustainable fashion to show our values, VW buses that take us on trips into nature, a guitar or the uke to show our creativity, zen-retreats to relax.

The whole idea of a simple life became an industry. It’s a marketable lifestyle.

People that want to live simple want to escape the consumerism. They judge the consumer junkies to not care about mindfulness, sustainability, and the global south. They wouldn’t buy their clothes at HM and Primark, fly somewhere for a weekend to get drunk nor eat Hamburger. That’s something the consumers do. It’s not them.

But isn’t the simple life just the other side of the coin? Are the same forces working as they always have? Is it just a trend that is marketed to us very well?

The Goal of a simple life

The simple life has always been around. Poets and philosophers have always been writing about it. Already around 308 B.C, in the Hellenistic philosophy stoicism flourished. The Stoics believe that a life of self-control and moderation is a path that leads to a good life. Ryan Holiday wrote an awesome book about their philosophy.

And isn’t this what the simple life is about. In the end, it’s about living a good life. 

The question how to live a good life is as old as people itself.

We ask what the good life means to us. We find an answer. And we go for it.

“If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much?“ Jim Rohn

The pursuit to live a simple life lets you do just that. To plan your own life.

The simple life gives you space to reflect on your life. To actively create your life and your habits and to not only follow the crowd. It turns your lives into a creative leeway. It gives your life a purpose and lets you move forward.

That’s why the simple life is not just another lifestyle. It fulfills an existential need that we have.

The simple life is simple

If you want to live a simple life, make it simple. You don’t need to go shopping or read millions of books. All you need to do is to reflect on your life, find out what stresses you or weighs you down and evaluate your solutions to improve it.

It’s not a weekend job, it’s not something you do in a year.

Living a simple life is something you pursue all your life. It’s never ending. It’s good. It’s simple.

“There is no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple.” Dalai Lama

A remark

Before I type these words, I change into my dress – sustainable brand -, wash my face in self-made face rub before I put coconut oil on it. I drink my fair trade coffee, water the tomato plant on my balcony and play a song on my ukulele to get in the mood. I set the timer on my smartwatch, I turn off my smart phone to not be distracted. I start typing these words on my Macbook while I tell Alexa to turn the lights off.

You say you want to change the world? To change how society works? How the economic system works?

That’s awesome. Congratulations.

What else did you plan on changing this year? It’s almost autumn now, what resolutions did you make ten months ago?

How is that going?

If you are like most people you have ditched your resolutions by January 17th.

If you are like most people you are back at where you started.

Don’t be most people.

Turn that change that you love to talk about into reality.

There is tons of awesome advice on how to change. We resist change due to our hardwired brains that became habits that – worst case – don’t serve us or the planet.

What’s rarely talked about is the pain change brings if we do decide to go through with it.

Think of a time when you went through with a resolution. You were doing great for two weeks and all of a sudden something was pulling you back. Back to your old ways of thinking and acting.

What happened?

For one, because your body and mind aren’t used to it, it’s unfamiliar and feels unsafe. The old is safe. Even if it doesn’t serve you. It has kept you alive, so in every cell, in your body, the information is stored as SAFE.

The second thing is that change can be soooo uncomfortable and lead to a lot of pain. Your old way of being was part of a life you created. Of a community, of a job, of a routine. If you change one thing, it might be, that everything else doesn’t hold true anymore. That your new you doesn’t get along with your old friends. That your new you feels unfulfilled in the old job that you were working to get half your life. That you see your spouse in a new light that is not attractive to you.

On the system level, a change in one thing might let the whole system collapse. What will happen if we don’t measure a countries worth on economic growth. The whole system, that we know, that we (in the industrialized world) consider safe, might become obsolete.

Worlds might crash. The change can physically hurt. And this is the crucial point.

Decisions 

Do you go back to your old you? Or do you go through with it?

What will it be?

Mostly we – unconsciously – go with the first option.

And down it goes….

And the old keeps up….

And the new… adieu….

We talk about change all the time. But we despise it.

On an individual level, concerning our very own lives.

And on a system level… How are we supposed to change a whole system, that is even more complex. That consists of thousands and millions of change-despising people if we can’t even change that one person, that is ourselves.

Conclusion

If you truly, really, honestly want change, you need to let go of the resistance.

You need to find the awareness and consciousness that it takes to become a hybrid for change.

To go through with it, no matter what it takes. Friends, partners, jobs, status. all those things that you are so connected to. If you have the ability to let go, you can make true change happen.

For yourseld. For the world.

I sit in my co-working place, it’s 5 pm. I am surrounded by people who want to change the world. Some just started. Some long in ‘business’. Everyone is passionate about what they do, full of ideas, full of good intentions. Looking in their faces gives me hope and confidence. And a sense of certainty that a different way of life is possible.

The atmosphere is cordial, at ease and open. In our cozy, artsy, self-made co-working bubble, it’s easy to forget. We are surrounded by like-minded people. Once we leave the office, there are endless events to choose from to meet similar.

It seems like we are so many.

We are only a few

But we are not. We are only a very small percentage of the world that seems to invade Berlin like grasshoppers.

While I drink a fair-trade coffee, I meet others in the chill out area. We talk about projects, ideas, possible cooperations. We constantly talk about changing the world. It’s typical. Put two of us in the same room and the topic is out. It doesn’t take more than a few minutes.

We search each other. We find each other.

Partly, because it’s interesting, partly because we need each other to support our ideals.

Because we are unrealistic daydreamers, utopians.

Some of us are.

As soon as one sounds a little over the edge or fails in an attempt to a different life, the masses – watching us from afar – feel confirmed.
They feel confirmed that our way of thinking and living is not sustainable, nor real, nor scalable. They call us daydreamers. Without a real job.

And they are right.

Everyone is right

In some way. Some of us will never find an answer. Some of us will fight and burn out. Some of us will choose to give up. Some of us will find it too hard to try. Some of us lose hope.

But so do they.

For some though it feels exactly right. The struggle, the despair, the complexity.

And so for them.

Everything we do comes with a price tag. 

For all of us.

We decide which price we want to pay. Some people pay the price of doing a job that is not in line with their values, they give up their ideals or accept a mortgage for a nicer home, while some people give up their safety zone, maybe their acceptance by a large part of society.

What we don’t realize is that we are the same. Each of us pays a price, it’s only a different one.

If it’s hard for one person to work in a job that doesn’t feel right, for another it’s not having a secure income. I can feel great about a new home – even with a mortgage – just as I can feel great about sharing a small apartment with other people.

What separates us is what unites us

What separates us is the question what we consider worth living. In our everyday lives, in the judgements we have of each other, in the brief encounters, there is not enough room or time for such existential questions.

So more often than not, we don’t face it.

We keep blaming and criticizing each other, we mistrust our differences.

The only truth we want to see is our own.

It’s easier. It’s safe. If we go there, we might question our very existence and our life’s path.

But what if there is no black or white? What if there is no ONE solution? What if the manager in the cooperate world is just as right as the change maker at Greenpeace? What if there is no good or bad?

In my co-working place, people are now closing their laptops, heading home or to an event. At night they wonder if they are doing the right thing.

A few kilometers down, in the industrial park of Berlin, people close their laptops, heading home or to an event. At night they wonder if they are doing the right thing.

I close my laptop. It’s raining. I ride my bike home, seeing sameness instead of difference.

Conclusion

Once you start seeing that you are just the same as everyone around you, life becomes easy.

“No human thing is of serious importance” Plato

I recently googled “first human being?”. The first ones, the homo erectus, appeared 1-2 Million years ago.

For my liking, this was a little unspecific. It’s like my spouse asking “How much money do you have in your account?” and I say “100-10.000Euro”. But the answer shows: it doesn’t matter.

In perspective, Albert Einstein, Plato, and even Jesus don’t play a significant role. The idea of Jesus has been around for 2000 years (I stick to being unspecific). 2000 years are nothing in comparison to 1 million. In fact, it’s only 0,2%. On this planet, you, as an individual, mean nothing. Even as a society we don’t mean anything. We drop in for a while, we disappear.

We might leave a disaster. We might leave the garden of Eden. For the planet, for the universe though, no matter which of the two we leave behind, it’s causing a little bump. In the history of the universe, humans are so insignificant you can’t even imagine.

At first, this might sound depressing. But I am not saying this to depress you. Quite the contrary.

Here are a few perspectives and ideas to consider:

• • Significance is a concept. It’s a word, an idea, a construct. It’s nothing real. It’s nothing that truly exists. Ask a squirrel if it is significant. Even if it was able to talk, it wouldn’t say “Hi, I am a very significant squirrel, because I eat all these acorns. I am the most important acorn eater on this planet.” Although as far as I know, the squirrel is the most important acorn eater. But nonetheless, if – due to a squirrel mass extinction caused by tomatoes (or I don’t know how squirrels might get extinct) – they would suddenly disappear from the planet we wouldn’t notice it all that much. I mean, we usually don’t notice any extinction in our everyday life. Anyways, I got a little distracted by the squirrel thing. So, the fact is significance itself is a human invention. Everything in the universe is insignificant except for any significance we give it.
  • When humans thought the sun spins around the earth, the common idea was that humans are the most significant species that ever existed and will ever exist. Today, we are bombarded with the message that not humanity is exceptionally awesome, but that you are, and I am, and everyone else. Not as humanity, but as a single human being. We are told that we are awesome, that we can be anything, that the world will change its entire course. Because we are on this planet and we are all that humanity has been waiting for.
    Devil’s advocates might call this narcism. The self-help industry calls it self-love. Whatever you want to call it, there is a significant flaw in this kind of thinking. If everyone was to be exceptionally significant, there wouldn’t be one anymore who is not exceptionally significant, which in turn makes no one exceptionally significant.
    Let me give you an example. Imagine that no human is able to draw an elephant. All of a sudden, one person can do it. That person becomes the super hero of humanity, because of this exceptional extraordinary skill. Why is drawing an elephant nothing exceptionally significant in our culture? Because most of us, some better, some worse, know how to draw an elephant. Just as not every single person can be significant, we as humanity can’t either.
  • Significance is a burden. If everything we as humans, or as individuals, do matters than we would be screwed. How often do we fuck something up? How about our destructive behavior towards the planet? If all this was significant we would cause a lot of trouble.

Isn’t the beauty of life to understand that we are not so significant, that we can play and try and fail without the world stop spinning. That we are here on this planet to do our best, of course, but that in the end, what we do doesn’t matter. That if anything matters, it’s not about what we do.

Conclusion

Significance is a cage.
Insignificance is freedom. To have fun living, choose to be insignificant.

Berlin. It’s April 11th, 1968 when Rudi Dutschke was riding his bike to the Socialist German Student Union house. While crossing the street, a man passes him and asks him if he is Rudi Dutschke. Rudi says yes. The man holds up his gun and shoots Rudi three times.

Rudi Dutschke was the most prominent spokesperson of the German student movement of the 1960s. He advocated a “long march through the institutions of power”. He wanted to create radical change in government and society by becoming an integral part of the machinery.

Berlin. April 2017. A girl from Iran had to flee the country. She moves to Lebanon. She is an artist. A philosopher. An activist. She has long, colored blond hair. She is tall and wears tank tops and short skirts. She is threatened, followed, kidnapped for her ideas. She has to flee again and lived with us. No end of story yet.

Listening to her story makes me realise: We are quiet. We don’t start revolutions. We don’t disobey the law. We don’t endanger us.

Instead of trying to change institutions, we start somewhere else.

Instead of moral sanctions, we want something else.

The way we try to change the world changed.

We want to create a world where everyone and everything flourishes.

In a way, we are still like Rudi Dutschke. We have an idea about how things could be different and we want to do something about it.

But we understand that the world is complex. Systems are complex. So complex, that we can’t grab it. That we feel powerless by the idea of starting somewhere.

Instead of starting somewhere, we start with us.

We can’t change the whole world. But we can change our world.

We can’t stop Monsanto, but we can buy at a local, organic farmer.

We can’t solve the refugee crises, but we can help a few to get a job.

We can’t make every employer pay a fair price, but we can make fair trade buying decisions.

We believe what Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world”. We believe that if we can’t make the change in our own lives, change won’t happen.

“If an egg is broken from the outside, life ends. If it is broken from the inside, life begins.” someone

A new time has come that changes the way we approach change. The risk we are taking, and the blame we get for it, is that we are not effective. That change doesn’t happen in our living room. That one person is not going to make it work.

So how do we oppose these contradictions. Fair enough, they seem valid and they can make us doubt if change from within is the right approach.

So here are six strategies to make your approach work.

1. Take responsibility: When you start with yourself, you automatically accept that you are also the cause of the trouble. Take this responsibility with you wherever you go. Always think that you are the one causing problems and think about what you can do to change it. That’s called consistency.
2. Believe that you can make a difference: If you don’t believe it, how are others supposed to. Create a ripple. First, you believe that you can do it. Then your mum does. Then your best friend. From there it spreads.“Our world view – our beliefs and theories, our maps, our metaphors, our myths, our interpretive assumptions – constellates our outer reality, shaping and working the world’s malleable potentials in a thousand ways of subtly reciprocal interaction. World views create worlds.“ Richard Tarnas
3. Show what you do: Starting with the outside had one advantage: It was visible. Starting with yourself and your inside doesn’t show others what you are doing. If you want to be effective, talk about it. Make it public. It’s never been easier than it is today. Facebook. Instagram. Twitter. Snapchat. Choose your favourite.
4. Collaboration not Competition: The old mantra tells us that we compete with each other. “Survival of the fittest” is the mantra we are used to following. But this is history. Nothing can be achieved if we don’t collaborate. Collaboration is key. Not just to make change happen, but also to have a good life. Studies show, that the most important aspect defining a good life is other people. So stop competing and start collaborating.
5. Don’t suffer: Suffering is not going to bring success. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t feel uncomfortable sometimes. It means that if you suffer too much to take it, it’s not going to bring long term success. You are not going to make much of a difference if you are burned out. So whatever it is you do to change the world, only put as much in as you can. You help nobody doing otherwise.
6. Don’t give up: You will doubt yourself. You will feel powerless. You will want to give up sometimes. Don’t.“Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine.” Jack Ma

Some last thoughts

You can create a world where everyone and everything flourishes. Starting from within is one way to create that change. Nonetheless, changing institutions “from the outside” is nothing to disappear. Both approaches have their validity. Gandhi was a proof of concept that change from within can be a first step. If his ideas are still valid in today’s times is to be shown.

Call to Action

Let’s prove him right.