downshifters

a story about a young texas family who decided to stop acquiring stuff:

Chasing a utopian vision of a self-sustaining life on the land as partisans of a movement some call voluntary simplicity, they are donating virtually all their possessions to charity and hitting the road at the end of May.

…

 Their rings — his gold band and her one-carat diamond — may be “red-paper-clipped,” Mrs. Harris said: bartered for something better that could in turn be bartered for something better still, as in the Internet celebrity Kyle MacDonald’s tale of a paper clip that ultimately produced a house.

“They don’t fit us anymore,” Mr. Harris said. Sure enough, his band was loose on his finger, but that was not what he meant. “They don’t fit our lifestyle,” he explained.

it’s easy to underestimate how subversive an act it is to voluntarily opt-out of consumption.  the mainstream left and right both agree on the value of economic growth, differing only on implementation.  but what if they held a sale and no one came?

gandhi helped bring an end to the most powerful empire the world has ever known by spinning khadi (thread).  martin luther king helped bring success to the civil rights movement through songs and storytelling.  massive change comes out of the smallest actions.

was this what you think gandhi meant when he said “almost everything you do will seem insignficant, but it is very important that you do it?”