A new way of life is taking root in the United States. It is called voluntary simplicity, and its adherents number in the millions. And as energy shortages, pollution, and a loss of social purpose lead more people to question the quality of their lives and the survival of our planet, the list of advocates grows.
This book is about these pioneers and the ideas that power this new approach. Voluntary Simplicity is not a book about living in poverty; it is a book about living with a balance. It illuminates the pattern of changes that increasing numbers of Americans are making in their everyday lives—adjustments in day-to-day living that are an active, positive response to the complex dilemmas of our time.
“Voluntary Simplicity is a clear and compelling presentation of how life could be, and is becoming, in the 1980s. It shows that what this nations needs is not so much a change of policy as a change of mind, and that individual citizens, acting on their own, can do more to solve our energy and inflation crises than can any national administration. A copy of this book in every American household could change the course of history. It is an important contributions to the growing literature of transformation.”
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“This is a very inspiring, hopeful book. Duane Elgin has done a superb job of describing the changes in attitudes, values, beliefs, and lifestyles that give credence to the notion that we are truly at ‘the dawning of a New Age’”
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“Voluntary Simplicity, as expounded by Duane Elgin, well might become one of the self-transforming efforts that go hand in hand with social change and, indeed, with the future of humankind. It is an historical imperative, and we will hear much, much more about it.”
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