What is compassion? In Winnipeg, Canada, transit bus driver Kristian Doubledee brought passengers to tears when he stopped his bus to give a barefoot homeless man the shoes off his feet. In view of widespread socioeconomic and environmental challenges, could such acts of compassion transform our society? As we look...

Humanity is converting the Earth into a gas chamber by pouring lethal amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The consequences are profound: Scientists estimate that in less than a single lifetime from now, we will be living in a planet far different from anything that our ancestors have experienced...

A new superpower is emerging on the Earth. This new superpower is arising from the combined voice and conscience of the world's citizens mobilized through the global communications revolution. Although often chaotic, fragmented and confusing, the emergence of social movements such as the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement demonstrates...

The film The Hunger Games presents a heroic struggle in a world that has failed to make the transition to some form of sustainable prosperity. People are barely surviving on a ruined Earth and in a society that has regressed to ritualistic, annual killings for past misdeeds.

This is a...

The next five to ten years represent an unprecedented break in the human journey. We are between stories, or the guiding narratives, that serve as beacons for our collective future. For example, the "American Dream" that pulled the U.S. forward for at least three generations is fast becoming the world's...

We have a crisis of conversation in our democracy. People want to be heard and to have a voice in our future. It's time for citizens -- you and me, all of us -- to come in from the cold. Whether conservative, liberal, or independent, we are all citizens united...

"Occupy Wall St." is a spontaneous uprising of citizens. It is both a protest against corruption, poverty, homelessness, and greed as well as a call for citizens to come together to build a better world. For many, this is a '100 percent movement' that recognizes we are all in this...

Modern cultures have put great emphasis on measuring "progress" in terms of material growth. Does the understanding of progress change in a world with dwindling supplies of cheap oil, climate disruption, looming shortages of fresh water, massive extinction of plant and animal species and much more? As we run up...

It is important to recognize inaccurate stereotypes about the simple life because they make it seem impractical and ill suited for responding to increasingly critical breakdowns in world systems. Four misconceptions about the simple life are so common they deserve special attention. These are equating simplicity with: poverty, moving back...

To portray the richness of simplicity as a theme for healthy living, here are eight different flowerings that I see growing consciously in the "garden of simplicity." Although there is overlap among them, each expression of simplicity seems sufficiently distinct to warrant a separate category. These are presented in no...

Although many recognize that individuals can be conscious of themselves, we seldom consider whether a whole society can be conscious of itself. Certainly at moments of great tragedy or great triumph there seems to be a capacity for millions of autonomous individuals to awaken to a collective consciousness. For example,...

Many people are aware of a mind-body connection when it comes to their personal health, but few apply this important wisdom to our mind-body health as a society. Just as mental habits impact the physical health of individuals, our collective mental habits -- manifested through the mass media -- impact...

The wisdom of simplicity is a theme with deep roots. The great value and benefits of living simply are found in all the world's major wisdom traditions.

Christian Views

Jesus embodied a life of compassionate simplicity. He taught by word and example that we should not make the...

Death is an important ally for appreciating life. I am not referring to a morbid preoccupation with death. Rather, I mean the felt awareness of our finitude as physical beings -- an honest recognition of the short time we have to love and to learn on this earth. The knowledge...

It is ironic that green ways of living that emphasize voluntary simplicity -- a life-way that can take us into an opportunity-filled future -- are often portrayed in the mass media as regressive ways of life that turn away from progress. Here are three portrayals of green lifestyles and simplicity...

Einstein famously said that we cannot solve problems with the same level of perception that created them. We have to step up to a higher and more inclusive level of seeing what is going on in order to understand and solve great challenges. Certainly climate disruption represents one of the...

What does a thriving way of life look like in a post consumerist society? Many aspects of a thriving future can be found by stepping into a contemporary co-housing community or eco-village.

To illustrate, my wife and I lived in a co-housing community in Northern California for nearly two...

There is a common misconception that living more simply requires a life of sacrifice. In fact, it is just the opposite: When we live more lightly on the material side of life, we create the conditions for greater satisfaction and meaning on the non-material side of life. Lifestyles emphasizing consumerism...

The phrase "axial age" has been used to describe the relatively brief period of time -- roughly 700 years -- when the great religions of the world arose: Hinduism and Buddhism in India; Confucianism and Taoism in China; and monotheism in the Middle East. The period from roughly 900 BC...

Virtually every forbidden topic imaginable has been covered on television, except for one. The last taboo on television is television itself -- and how it is profoundly biased toward high consumption lifestyles that the earth cannot sustain. In the U.S. the average person sees more than 25,000 commercials a year...