Back in the late 1960s. the word countercultural was invented to describe the hippies, the war resisters, the flower children, the free-lovers, the tree-lovers, the trippers. People who went to Woodstock were countercultural. People who lived in communes were countercultural. If you’re my age, you remember. If not, just ask us how that word got started. Some of us were countercultural. Some of us weren’t. (I’m not saying who is who.)
Today, countercultural includes some of those things as we as well as newer aspects. For instance, If you don’t use social media, you’re countercultural. Being countercultural can go in either a positive or a negative direction. On the positive side, when majority culture values and practices something unethical or unsustainable, it’s healthy to challenge it and choose a different way.
Take living simply in a consumeristic, competitive culture, for instance.
I grew up in a tradition that valued simplicity. It was counter to the broader U.S. culture then, and it’s even more so now. I believe simplicity benefits almost everything in life. Conventional wisdom says it’s easier than complexity, which is often true. But simplicity is about editing down. And that’s hard.
Think of a flourishing garden. It’s lush and healthy. producing fruits and vegetables according to each plant’s nature. If you’ve ever grown tomatoes or grapes, you know that lush and abundant branches do not mean a thriving, fruitful plant. When too much energy is going to greenery, it is not available to produce fruit. It’s a balance of energy production and energy use. If you want a bountiful harvest of the best fruit, you must prune out the suckers, the extra branches. This same pruning principle applies to our stuff, our schedules, and our speech.
Stuff and the simple life
Real Simple magazine is an example of popular culture and mass media. It’s visually beautiful. But have you ever noticed how much in this thing called Real Simple has prices attached? From the May 2022 issue, about hosting a patio party:
A flamingo punch bowl and ladle. $59 (Use it once, then where will you store it?)
Striped cloth napkins. 4 for $44 (I’ll sew them from a remnant for a couple of dollars.)
A casserole dish. $75 (My plain glass one works great.)
Bamboo trivets to protect the table from the casserole dish. 2 for $39 (Folded dish towels or tiles from Habitat’s Restore, anyone?)
A tool to scoop out an avocado. $15 (I use a spoon – easy peasy.)
It’s all about getting us to want more and go buy it. This, friends, is not simple. Can we not have a good time with friends with less fuss?
More, more, more. More gives momentary delight, not lasting joy. Neuroscience tells us we get a dopamine rush with each new purchase fulfilling a want. It’s the same feel-good transmitter we get from sex or good food. “Dopamine creates reward-seeking loops in the sense that people will repeat pleasurable behavior, from checking Instagram to taking drugs.” (Psychology Today)
Let’s stop a moment here to recognize it’s a privilege to be able to choose a simple life. For many, living with less is an economic necessity. On second thought, making your way with limited resources is not necessarily simple. You might have less stuff, but it probably takes more time and energy to provide what you need. And it’s complicated, not simple, to navigate our systems to find housing, transportation, and health care.
Back in 1980 Doris Longacre wrote Living More with Less, which became a go-to book for simple living. Since then it’s been updated and remains a great resource. She developed 5 life standards for guidance as we make daily decisions about our consumption and use of stuff:
Do justice
Learn from the world community
Nurture people
Cherish the natural order.
Nonconform freely.
I suggest we post these somewhere visible in our homes and businesses and use them to spur our thinking whenever we’re tempted to hit that “Buy now” button.
Can we become more aware of how interconnected we all are? Can we be more mindful and grateful? Can we focus more on sharing and less on acquiring?
Our Schedules and Simplicity
We need to talk about multitasking. It’s a myth. Brain experts tell us that what we call multitasking is actually serial microbursts of attention. We are literally rewiring our brains to not be able to focus as long, and it takes significant amounts of time to refocus. Let’s not kid ourselves here.
Michael Yankoski took a year to intentionally engage in simple practices that fundamentally reshaped his life. You can read about it in his book, The Sacred Year. See if his description of his before-life sounds as familiar to you as it did to me:
“I multitask incessantly, launching more and more things into nail-biting, ulcer-inducing flight: objectives and goals, people and deadlines, phone calls and text messages and unanswered emails, . . . . I spread myself impossibly thin because of the imperative that more is better – bigger is better, faster is better, broader is better – with the end result that I stagger through life in a harried frenzy, jittery and nervous as any addict.”
“I see it in other people too: the conversations with coworkers or friends who aren’t really listening, though perhaps they’re trying to convince me they are, . . . Who do they think they’re fooling, with eyes that don’t see me, glancing down surprisingly often at the glowing screens or trolling the room for another momentary distraction?”
“Day after day and decade after decade, we’ve taught ourselves how to give only a bit of our focus, a sliver of our fractured attention to everything we do. We rarely focus on something, rarely delve deeply into anything, all so we can scrape ourselves just a few molecules thinner over an ever-broadening area, so that we can fling yet another thing up into the air to join the juggled horde.”
I feel agitated just reading these words.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Countless books and podcasts have focused on how to set priorities and schedule our lives. I don’t think I need to revisit it all here; I trust you to find some. But it must be done, if we are edit our lives down to something manageable. And let’s be real, manageable is the low bar. We long for fulfillment, connection with others, meaning, soul-peace. So does everyone you lead. Prune out the busywork and relearn focus. This is what it means to thrive.
Speech and the Simple Life
Quaker and Anabaptist traditions value plain speech. Plain speech means speaking without spin or deception. Let your yes be yes, and your no be no. Speak with integrity. It’s definitely countercultural, especially now when the narrative around us is that you can’t know who to believe. The world desperately needs people who simply speak the truth, in love. People whose word is trustworthy.
What does plain speech look like?
It puts everyone on an even level. Honorifics aren’t routinely used. The same tone of respect is used for the rich and poor, the powerful and the vulnerable.
It’s direct without being rude. If someone asks you if you like broccoli and you don’t, say so, without making faces like a toddler or insulting anyone’s cooking.
It doesn’t take more words than necessary to say something. It generously makes space for other voices as well as our own. (Hint: do this in writing, too, and your readers will thank you.)
It means we don’t say we’ll do something and then not do it. Here is where it overlaps with the simplicity of time and attention: Don’t overcommit so you can’t keep your word.
What are the benefits of simple speech? Freedom from feeling like we need to weigh in on everything or fill the silent spaces in a conversation, and joy in the relationships we grow when we listen to other people.
But simple words are work, too, just like with the other simplicities. Pruning is still challenging. But it’s worth it.
How to move toward simplicity
Gratitude for what we have is a good antidote to the pull toward more.
So is the practice of noticing. I chose the word practice intentionally because that’s what it will take. Observe things outside of you, but also observe the inside. What are your senses telling you? What do you see, hear, taste, feel, smell? Our senses tell us a lot, and they operate in the now, not the future. Yes, it’s wise to make plans. But instead of always wishing for something more to come, which is a future orientation, practice living fully in the moment.
And finally, let’s make Longacre’s 5 life principles part of our decision-making about our stuff, our schedules, and our speech:
Do justice
Learn from the world community
Nurture people
Cherish the natural order.
Nonconform freely.
The result is more time and space in life for the things that are most important to us, for connection and true collaboration, for relaxation — and even some fun. Isn’t that what we all want?
What one decision can you make today to simplify your stuff, your schedule, or your speech? Then share with someone in your life how you are choosing to be countercultural.