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Humanity is a Teenager — We Will Evolve Through Simplicity

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Sloww Humanity Voluntary Simplicity Evolution

This is the second post inspired by the book Voluntary Simplicity by Duane Elgin. You can see the first post here: Top 10 Most Common Reasons for Choosing Simple Living.

I truly think this may be one of the most important posts that will ever appear on this blog.

Why is it so important? It’s a complete mindset shift to think about simple living as progress instead of regress. It’s not reverting to a simpler time in the past or necessarily a back-to-the-land movement.

I believe this is critical to “marketing” simplicity to mainstream society: building awareness and belief, changing behaviors, and becoming a sustainable society of the future. Many more people will be on board if simplicity is viewed as sophisticated evolution.

Voluntary simplicity does not mean a return to a more primitive past but rather a movement ahead to a more sophisticated, compassionate, and collaborative future. — Duane Elgin

 

Simplicity is Evolutionary Progress, not Regress

Elgin offers the following definition of progress:

Integrating the historical insights of (Arnold) Toynbee and the material insights of (Buckminster) Fuller, we can redefine progress as follows: Progress is a twofold process involving the simultaneous refinement of the material and nonmaterial aspects of life.

Toynbee found a strong connection between simplicity and human progress.

And, Elgin summarizes the purpose and promise of the human journey as:

Humanity is on a heroic journey of awakening into the stunning reality that we are beings of cosmic connection and participation who are learning to live within a living universe.

A growing group of people are already aware of this and leading the way:

Pioneers of Earth-friendly living reveal that ‘small is beautiful.’ Small changes that seem inconsequential when viewed in isolation are of revolutionary significance in their cumulative impact.

And, of course, now that you and I have awareness from reading this, we are responsible too:

We are each responsible for the conduct of our lives—and we are each unique. Therefore we are each uniquely responsible for our actions and choices in this pivotal time in human evolution. There is no one who can take our place. We each weave a singular stand in the web of life. No one else can weave that strand for us. What we each contribute is distinct, and what we each withhold is uniquely irreplaceable.

A simple, sustainable, and sophisticated vision of the future sounds great! But, where are we today?

 

Humanity’s Challenges Today:

Elgin covers all the global adversity trends, including: unsustainable population growth, wide and deep poverty, profound climate disruption, the end of cheap oil, global water shortages, mass extinction of plant and animal species, and our unsustainable global footprint.

However, he believes there’s one challenge that’s bigger than all our physical crises: “a crisis of consensus around a collective vision for a promising future.”

Despite the severity of our physical problems, our deepest challenge is to overcome an invisible crisis: a lack of collective consensus and cohesion around a compelling sense of purpose. — Duane Elgin

 

Humanity is Currently in the Teenage Stage of Development

I thought this was an interesting exercise. Elgin has been a speaker all over the world over the last few decades. He would ask his audiences the same question:

When you look at the overall behavior of the human family, what life-stage do you think we are in? In other words, if you estimate the social average of human behavior around the world, what stage of development best describes the human family: toddler, teenager, adult, or elder?

And, regardless of region, continent, country, ethnicity, religion, or anything else, he would get the same answer:

With little hesitation, people consistently vote that, as a social average, the overall human family is in its teenage stage of development.

Around the world, there is clear intuition and understanding that, putting us all together, the human family exhibits many adolescent behaviors. Here are examples often mentioned: Teenagers are rebellious and want to prove their independence. Humanity has been rebelling against nature, trying to prove that we are independent from it. Teenagers are reckless and tend to live without regard for the consequences of their behaviors, often thinking they are immortal. The human family has been recklessly consuming natural resources as if they would last forever. Teenagers are concerned with outer appearance and with fitting in materially. Many humans are intensely concerned with how they express their identity and status through material possessions. Teenagers are drawn toward instant gratification. As a species, we are seeking our short-term pleasures and largely ignoring the long-term needs of other species and future generations.

 

The Simplicity Shift

Ronald Inglehart has been leading the work on the World Values Survey and has seen humanity’s values shifting over time:

Emphasis is shifting from economic achievement to postmaterialist values that emphasize individual self-expression, subjective well-being, and quality of life. As well, people in these nations are placing less emphasis on organized religion and more emphasis on discovering their inner sense of meaning and purpose in life.

As mentioned earlier, some people have been shifting for a long time now:

Beneath the surface of modern society, a deep shift has been under way for more than a generation. This shift responds to the excess of consumer society and reveals a search for greater balance in living.

The phase of material growth has matured and now requires a shift (or downshift) to growth in nonmaterial ways:

A portion of our species has experienced a period of extraordinary material growth and is now moving into a stage where further growth could be primarily of a nonphysical nature. In turn, this would liberate resources for those in desperate need and foster a more peaceful world.

 

Simplicity Supports a Higher Quality of Life

Elgin says, “Simplicity that is voluntary—consciously chosen, deliberate, and intentional—supports a higher quality of life.” He goes on to list the following rationale:

  • Fosters a more harmonious relationship with Earth
  • Promotes fairness and equity among people
  • Cuts through busyness, clutter, and complications
  • Enhances living with balance—inner and outer, work and family, family and community
  • Reveals the beauty and intelligence of nature’s designs
  • Increases resources available for future generations
  • Helps save animal and plant species from extinction
  • Responds to global shortages of oil, water, and other vital resources
  • Keeps our eyes on the prize of what matters most in life — the quality of our relationships with family, friends, community, nature, and cosmos
  • Yields lasting satisfactions that more than compensate for the fleeting pleasures of consumerism
  • Fosters the sanity of self-discovery and an integrated approach to life
  • Blossoms in community and connects us to the world with a sense of belonging and common purpose
  • Simplicity is a lighter lifestyle that fits elegantly into the real world of the twenty-first century

“Far from withdrawal, a path of conscious simplicity promotes our intimate involvement with life.”

  • With conscious and direct involvement comes clarity.
  • With clarity comes insight.
  • With insight comes love.
  • With love comes mutually helpful living.
  • With mutually helpful living a flourishing world civilization is made possible.
  • Rather than abandoning the world, those choosing a life of conscious simplicity are pioneering a new civilizing process.

Sloww Conscious Simplicity Quote

 

What do you think? Are you on board with the future of simplicity and the next stage of development in the human evolutionary journey? After all, we will only be here for 1% of recorded history. Please share your thoughts in the comments.

 

Top 10 Most Common Reasons for Choosing Simple Living

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Sloww Simple Living Voluntary Simplicity

I just wrapped up the book Voluntary Simplicity by Duane Elgin. I think I took more notes from this book than any other book I’ve read this year. Due to the sheer quantity of notes, I’m going to split them up into at least three different posts on the topic of voluntary simplicity.

Believe it or not, I was first introduced to voluntary simplicity when I read a random college thesis that I found online a few years ago. It was a great intro to the concept, and I wrote a summary of it here: Voluntary Simplicity: “Listening to the Quiet Revolution” (Thesis Summary).

This first post on Duane Elgin’s Voluntary Simplicity focuses on:

  • What Duane calls “the most common reasons given for choosing to live more lightly”
  • The common characteristics he sees in many who choose a simpler life based on decades of his research, and
  • Memorable responses and results from the Voluntary Simplicity Survey

 

Top 10 Most Common Reasons for Choosing Simple Living

This list comes directly from the book. I’ve added emphasis in bold.

  1. To find a healthy balance between one’s inner experience and its outer expression in work, consumption, relationships, and community.
  2. To search for a workable and meaningful alternative to the emptiness of a society obsessed with material consumption and display.
  3. To provide one’s children with more humane value systems and life experiences that are appropriate to the emerging world they will have to live in.
  4. To find a much higher degree of independence and self-determination in a mass society of alienating scale and complexity.
  5. To establish more cooperative and caring relationships.
  6. To acknowledge and, in small but personally meaningful ways, begin to reduce the vast inequities between the rich and the poor around the world.
  7. To cope in a personal manner with environmental pollution and resource scarcity.
  8. To foster nonsexist ways of relating.
  9. To develop the personal skills and know-how to survive a time of severe economic and social disruption.
  10. To create the personal circumstances of life in which one’s feelings, thoughts, and actions can come into alignment.

Sloww Simple Living Top 10

 

Common Characteristics of a Simpler Life

Duane Elgin has been studying simplicity for decades. Here are the common things he sees in those who choose a simpler life:

  • Tend to invest the time and energy freed up by simpler living in activities with their partner, children, and friends, or volunteering to help others, or getting involved in civic affairs to improve the life of the community.
  • Tend to work on developing the full spectrum of their potentials: physical (running, biking, hiking, and so on), emotional (learning the skills of intimacy and sharing feelings in important relationships), mental (engaging in lifelong learning by reading, taking classes, and the like), spiritual (learning to move through life with a quiet mind and compassionate heart).
  • Tend to feel an intimate connection with Earth and a reverential concern for nature. When people understand that the ecology of the Earth is a part of our extended “body,” we tend to act in ways that express great care for its well-being.
  • Tend to feel a compassionate concern for the world’s poor; a simpler life fosters a sense of kinship with people around the world and thus a concern for social justice and equity in the use of the world’s resources.
  • Tend to lower their overall level of personal consumption—buy less clothing (paying more attention to what is functional, durable, and aesthetic and showing less concern with passing fads, fashions, and seasonal styles), buy less jewelry and other forms of personal ornamentation, buy fewer cosmetic products, and observe holidays in a less commercialized manner.
  • Tend to alter their patterns of consumption in favor of products that are durable, easy to repair, nonpolluting in their manufacture and use, energy-efficient, functional, and aesthetic.
  • Tend to shift their diets away from highly processed foods, meat, and sugar toward foods that are more natural, healthier, simpler, and appropriate for sustaining the inhabitants of a small planet.
  • Tend to reduce undue clutter and complexity in their personal lives by giving away or selling those possessions that are seldom used and could be used productively by others (clothing, books, furniture, appliances, tools, and so on).
  • Tend to use their consumption politically by boycotting goods and services of companies whose actions or policies they consider unethical.
  • Tend to recycle metal, glass, and paper and to cut back on consumption of items that are wasteful of nonrenewable resources.
  • Tend to pursue livelihoods that directly contribute to the well-being of the world and enables them to use their creative capacities in ways that are personally fulfilling.
  • Tend the develop personal skills that contribute to greater self-reliance and reduce dependence upon experts to handle life’s ordinary demands (for example, basic carpentry, plumbing, appliance repair, gardening, and crafts).
  • Tend to prefer smaller-scale, more human-size living and working environments that foster a sense of community, face-to-face contact, and mutual caring.
  • Tend fo alter male-female roles in favor of nonsexist patterns of relationship.
  • Tend to appreciate the simplicity of nonverbal forms of communication—the eloquence of silence, hugging and touching, the language of the eyes.
  • Tend to participate in holistic health-care practices that emphasize preventive medicine and the healing powers of the body when assisted by the mind.
  • Tend to involve themselves with compassionate causes, such as protecting rain forests and saving animals from extinction, and tend to use nonviolent means in their efforts.
  • Tend to change transportation modes in favor of using public transit, carpooling, purchasing smaller and more fuel-efficient autos, living closer to work, riding a bike, and walking.

 

Voluntary Simplicity Survey Results

The simplicity survey was developed in 1977 when Duane was working as a social scientist and futurist at SRI International. It was included as a questionnaire in Co-Evolution Quarterly. He received more than a thousand pages of responses over the course of 18 months. It’s amazing how relevant these still are today.

  • “Overall, this survey revealed an important insight: The single most common factor among respondents was an emphasis on inner growth and being awake to the miracle of life.”
  • “According to the Voluntary Simplicity Survey…it was clear that people were not looking for more stuff but for more happiness, satisfaction…and life. In turn, it is life—in all its vastness, subtlety, and preciousness—that is the context within which simpler living acquires its compelling meaning and significance. People are reclaiming the subtle aliveness that has been bleached out of everyday existence by the obsessive materialism of the industrial era.”
  • Some memorable survey responses:
    • “More aware of the spiritual path before me; less nonsense in the way.”
    • “I don’t think of it as voluntary simplicity. I am simply going through a process of self-knowledge and self-realization, attempting to better the world for myself, my children, my grandchildren, and so on.”
    • One survey respondent described it not as a movement, but as “the People’s University.”
    • “Commercialism is making people live on only the periphery of their whole beings.”
    • “I am doing what Bucky Fuller calls doing more with less. He also speaks of education as the process of ‘eliminating the irrelevant,’ dismissing all that is not furthering our chosen articulation of value.”
    • “You gain access to parts of life that are otherwise inaccessible.”
    • “As desires become fewer, frustration diminishes. As life becomes less ego-centered, it comes more enjoyable.”

 

Have you read Voluntary Simplicity, or are you familiar with the concept? Please share in the comments what you’ve learned or incorporated into your life.

“Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life” (Book Summary)

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Sloww Ikigai Book

If you’re just looking for a quick overview of the ikigai concept, check out this previous post: Ikigai: The Japanese Purpose or “Reason for Being”.

This post is a summary of the book Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles. 

I’m currently working on an eBook about creating your life purpose and was hoping this book would be a deep dive into the “how” of ikigai. However, it’s more of an introduction to a variety of different topics including: the Blue Zones, logotherapy, longevity, flow, tai chi, yoga, resilience, and more. If you’re new to those topics, then this is the book for you.

 

Quick Summary of Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life

  • As mentioned above, this book covers many topics related to the “art of living.”
  • The authors define ikigai and the rules of ikigai; they conducted a total of one hundred interviews in Ogimi, Okinawa to try to understand the longevity secrets of centenarians and supercentenarians.
  • “What do Japanese artisans, engineers, Zen philosophy, and cuisine have in common? Simplicity and attention to detail.”
  • “The authors of this book wish you a long, happy, and purposeful life.”

 

What is Ikigai?

  • In Japanese, ikigai is written by combining the symbols that mean “life” with “to be worthwhile.”
  • “Translates roughly as ‘the happiness of always being busy.'”
  • “There is a passion inside you, a unique talent that gives meaning to your days and drives you to share the best of yourself until the very end. If you don’t know what your ikigai is yet, as Viktor Frankl says, your mission is to discover it.”
  • “Our ikigai is different for all of us, but one thing we have in common is that we are all searching for meaning. When we spend our days feeling connected to what is meaningful to us, we live more fully; when we lose the connection, we feel despair.”
  • “Our ikigai is hidden deep inside each of us, and finding it requires a patient search. According to those born on Okinawa, the island with the most centenarians in the world, our ikigai is the reason we get up in the morning.”
  • “Once you discover your ikigai, pursuing it and nurturing it every day will bring meaning to your life.”
  • “They have an important purpose in life, or several. They have an ikigai, but they don’t take it too seriously. They are relaxed and enjoy all that they do.”
  • “One thing that everyone with a clearly defined ikigai has in common is that they pursue their passion no matter what.”
Sloww Ikigai Book Diagram
Source: Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles

 

The 10 Rules of Ikigai

  1. Stay active; don’t retire.
  2. Take it slow.
  3. Don’t fill your stomach.
  4. Surround yourself with good friends.
  5. Get in shape for your next birthday.
  6. Smile.
  7. Reconnect with nature.
  8. Give thanks.
  9. Live in the moment.
  10. Follow your ikigai.

Sloww 10 Rules of Ikigai

 

Stress & Existential Crisis:

  • “Many people seem older than they are. Research into the causes of premature aging has shown that stress has a lot to do with it.”
  • “The American Institute of Stress investigated this degenerative process and concluded that most health problems are caused by stress.”
  • “Existential crisis, on the other hand, is typical of modern societies in which people do what they are told to do, or what others do, rather than what they want to do. They often try to fill the gap between what is expected of them and what they want for themselves with economic power or physical pleasure, or by numbing their senses.”
  • “Those who give up the things they love doing and do well lose their purpose in life. That’s why it’s so important to keep doing things of value, making progress, bringing beauty or utility to others, helping out, and shaping the world around you, even after your ‘official’ professional activity has ended.”

Morita Therapy:

  • “Many Western forms of therapy focus on controlling or modifying the patient’s emotions. In the West, we tend to believe that what we think influences how we feel, which in turn influences how we act. In contrast, Morita therapy focuses on teaching patients to accept their emotions without trying to control them, since their feelings will change as a result of their actions.”
  • “Logotherapy and Morita therapy are both grounded in a personal, unique experience that you can access without therapists or spiritual retreats: the mission of finding your ikigai, your existential fuel. Once you find it, it is only a matter of having the courage and making the effort to stay on the right path.”

Flow:

  • “The happiest people are not the ones who achieve the most. They are the ones who spend more time than others in a state of flow.​”
  • “In order to achieve this optimal experience, we have to focus on increasing the time we spend on activities that bring us to this state of flow, rather than allowing ourselves to get caught up in activities that offer immediate pleasure.”
  • “Concentrating on one thing at a time may be the single most important factor in achieving flow.”
  • “Japanese people often apply themselves to even the most basic tasks with an intensity that borders on obsession.”
  • “Our ability to turn routine tasks into moments of microflow, into something we enjoy, is key to our being happy, since we all have to do such tasks.”
  • “Artists, for example, who carry the torch of their ikigai instead of retiring, have this power. Art, in all its forms, is an ikigai that can bring happiness and purpose to our days. Enjoying or creating beauty is free, and something all human beings have access to.​”
  • “Artists know how important it is to protect their space, control their environment, and be free of distractions if they want to flow with their ikigai.”
  • “Many such artists might seem misanthropic or reclusive, but what they are really doing is protecting the time that brings them happiness, sometimes at the expense of other aspects of their lives. They are outliers who apply the principles of flow to their lives to an extreme.​”
  • According to Csikszentmihalyi, in order to focus on a task we need:
    • 1. To be in a distraction-free environment
    • 2. To have control over what we are doing at every moment ​

Ogimi, Okinawa:

  • “We realized right away that time seems to have stopped there, as though the entire town were living in an endless here and now.”
  • “Many Japanese people never really retire—they keep doing what they love for as long as their health allows.”
  • “The Japanese are skilled at bringing nature and technology together: not man versus nature, but rather a union of the two.”
  • “Okinawans live by the principle of ichariba chode, a local expression that means ‘treat everyone like a brother, even if you’ve never met them before.'”
  • Celebrations seem to be an essential part of life in Ogimi.​

Slow Living:

  • “Being in a hurry is inversely proportional to quality of life. As the old saying goes, ‘Walk slowly and you’ll go far.’ When we leave urgency behind, life and time take on new meaning.​”
  • “Looking back, our days in Ogimi were intense but relaxed—sort of like the lifestyle of the locals, who always seemed to be busy with important tasks but who, upon closer inspection, did everything with a sense of calm. They were always pursuing their ikigai, but they were never in a rush.”
  • “They are always busy, but they occupy themselves with tasks that allow them to relax. We didn’t see a single old grandpa sitting on a bench doing nothing.​”
  • “The restaurant is right by the sea and seems like something from the planet Tatooine, from Star Wars. The menu boasts in large letters that it serves ‘slow food‘ prepared with organic vegetables grown in the town.​”

Secrets of the Centenarians & Supercentenarians:

  • “Over the course of a week we conducted a total of one hundred interviews, asking the eldest members of the community about their life philosophy, their ikigai, and the secrets to longevity:
    • Don’t worry
    • Cultivate good habits
    • Nurture your friendships every day
    • Live an unhurried life
    • Be optimistic”
  • “Eat and sleep, and you’ll live a long time. You have to learn to relax.” — Misao Okawa (117 years old)
  • “I’ve never eaten meat in my life.” — María Capovilla (116)
  • “Everything’s fine.” — Jeanne Calment (122)
  • “Your mind and your body. You keep both busy, you’ll be here a long time.” — Walter Breuning (114)
  • “I just haven’t died yet.” — Alexander Imich (111)
  • “Food won’t help you live longer…The secret is smiling and having a good time.”
  • “My secret to a long life is always saying to myself, ‘Slow down,’ and ‘Relax.’ You live much longer if you’re not in a hurry.”​ (Note: Hooray for more slow living!)
  • “The key to staying sharp in old age is in your fingers. From your fingers to your brain, and back again. If you keep your fingers busy, you’ll live to see one hundred.”​

Longevity Diet:

  • “One hundred percent of the people we interviewed keep a vegetable garden, and most of them also have fields of tea, mangoes, shikuwasa, and so on.”
  • “Locals eat a wide variety of foods, especially vegetables. Variety seems to be key. A study of Okinawa’s centenarians showed that they ate 206 different foods, including spices, on a regular basis. They ate an average of eighteen different foods each day, a striking contrast to the nutritional poverty of our fast-food culture.”
  • “They eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables every day. At least seven types of fruits and vegetables are consumed by Okinawans on a daily basis. The easiest way to check if there is enough variety on your table is to make sure you’re ‘eating the rainbow.’ A table featuring red peppers, carrots, spinach, cauliflower, and eggplant, for example, offers great color and variety. Vegetables, potatoes, legumes, and soy products such as tofu are the staples of an Okinawan’s diet. More than 30 percent of their daily calories comes from vegetables.”
  • “Grains are the foundation of their diet. Japanese people eat white rice every day, sometimes adding noodles. Rice is the primary food in Okinawa, as well.”
  • “Eat fish an average of three times per week.”
  • “Consume fewer calories: an average of 1,785 per day, compared to 2,068 in the rest of Japan. In fact, low caloric intake is common among the five Blue Zones.”
  • “Tofu, Miso, Tuna, Carrots, Goya (bitter melon), Kombu (sea kelp), Cabbage, Nori (seaweed), Onion, Soy sprouts, Hechima (cucumber-like gourd), Soybeans (boiled or raw), Sweet potato, Peppers”
  • “Okinawans drink more Sanpin-cha—a mix of green tea and jasmine flowers—than any other kind of tea…Okinawans drink an average of three cups of Sanpin-cha every day.”
  • “White tea, with its high concentration of polyphenols, may be even more effective against aging. In fact, it is considered to be the natural product with the greatest antioxidant power in the world—to the extent that one cup of white tea might pack the same punch as about a dozen glasses of orange juice.”

Other Memorable Quotes:

  • “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” — Aristotle
  • “To be able to concentrate for a considerable amount of time is essential to difficult achievement.” — Bertrand Russell
  • “The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.” — Washington Burnap
  • “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” — Viktor Frankl
  • “Nana korobi ya oki (Fall seven times, rise eight.)” — Japanese proverb
  • “Metabolism slows down 90 percent after 30 minutes of sitting. The enzymes that move the bad fat from your arteries to your muscles, where it can get burned off, slow down. And after two hours, good cholesterol drops 20 percent. Just getting up for five minutes is going to get things going again. These things are so simple they’re almost stupid.” — Gavin Bradley

 

Have you read the book or found your ikigai? Share what was most beneficial for you in the comments.

You can check out all of my book summaries here.


Slow Down & Set Perspective with Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot”

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Sloww Pale Blue Dot Carl Sagan

I’ve been doing a bunch of research for my first eBook on the topic of life purpose. A few times during the research process, I came across Carl Sagan’s timeless Pale Blue Dot speech.

I always stop what I’m doing to take a few minutes to read or watch it again. It may be the single best thing I’ve ever found to set (or reset) perspective. You can check out a video (of the audio) or read the transcript below.

The Voyager 1 space probe took the famous Pale Blue Dot photo from 3.7 billion miles away from Earth — it had been traveling in space for over 12 years at the time the picture was taken.

I’ve mentioned the Pale Blue Dot on the blog twice before if you’re interested:

 

Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot

 

Pale Blue Dot Transcript

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different.

Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.

The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

— Carl Sagan

Sloww Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot

 

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Blue Zones: How Ikarians Live Simply for 100+ Years

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Sloww Blue Zones Ikaria

“The Island Where People Forget to Die” — That’s the title of The New York Times article I came across during my existential crisis in 2015.

I was searching through some emails recently and came across an email I sent to my dad in early 2016. Here’s exactly what I sent him:

I would say Ikarians (from the Blue Zones) are the most sane humans on the planet. Long healthy life, minimal impact on the planet, meaningful relationships (“us” vs. “me”), plant-based diets, drink wine and tea with family and friends, clear purpose based on satisfying low-level needs, no care about time, walkable communities, gardening, enjoy physical work and find joy in everyday chores, enjoy being outside, etc.

I decided to dig a little deeper to see if there was even more we can all learn from the long-lived people in Ikaria, Greece. If you’re curious about the Blue Zones in general, you can see a much more extensive post I did on Blue Zones here.

 

Why care about the Blue Zones Ikarians?

Well, this is pretty compelling:

Today, Ikarians are almost entirely free of dementia and some of the chronic diseases that plague Americans; one in three make it to their 90s. (Source)

Reaching the age of 90 at two and a half times the rate Americans do. (Ikarian men in particular are nearly four times as likely as their American counterparts to reach 90, often in better health.) (Source)

Dan Buettner is the leader of the Blue Zones research and author of several books under the name. He claims that genes are only 20% of the longevity formula — 80% is lifestyle. He says, “The environmental components…are portable if you pay attention. And the value proposition in the real world is maybe a decade more life expectancy.”

That means there’s hope for all of us!

 

What else can we learn from the Blue Zones Ikarians?

My little refresher course on the Blue Zones was even more eye-opening. Like most things in life, healthy lifestyle habits start by making daily choices.

If you dissect my summary at the beginning of this post, there are a variety of factors at play in the long, healthy lives of the Ikarians:

  • Connection: Meaningful relationships (“us” vs. “me”)
  • Modified Mediterranean Diet: Mostly plant-based diets, drink wine and tea with family and friends
  • Clear Purpose: Based on satisfying low-level needs (the popular purpose concept, Ikigai, comes from the Blue Zone in Okinawa, Japan)
  • Unlimited Time: No care about time or watching the clock (a totally different perspective on 24 hours per day)
  • Natural Movement: Walkable communities, gardening, enjoy physical work and find joy in everyday chores, enjoy being outside, etc

But, there’s even more. Somehow I missed the Blue Zones “Power 9” healthy lifestyle habits a few years ago. Here are some additional things to consider incorporating into your own lifestyle based on the Blue Zones research:

  • Down Shift: Little to no stress or anxiety (that leads to inflammation which leads to diseases). More good reason to get started with downshifting.
  • Spirituality: Practicing any faith can add years to your life
  • Sleep: Wake naturally, naps in the afternoon. Naps are having a comeback. Now nap science and research backs their benefits.
  • Environment: I’m sure it helps living near water (in this case, the Aegean Sea)

 

It’s based on Slow and Simple Living Principles

The Ikarians are the types of people who live the story of the tourist and the fisherman on a daily basis and over the course of their lifetimes.

In the original Blue Zones regions, life unfolds more slowly, more quietly, and with less urgency. People’s lives aren’t laced with worry, hurry and the constant need to be elsewhere. Not coincidentally, perhaps, they live longer lives. (Source)

A relaxed pace of life that ignores clocks. (Source)

With all the debate these days about following your passion (or not following your passion), it’s hard to argue with this:

Do something in your life that stirs your passion…When my husband died decades ago, I continued doing what I love…Do not want more than what you really need. If you envy others, that can only give you stress. — Ioanna Proiou, 105 years old

 

Here’s a nice overview video if you want to see the Ikarians in action:

I thought this was a beautiful comment on the video:

Poor in finances, rich in nature, friendliness and health. I can recommend it for people to be creative and fill up their soul batteries.

 

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