Response to Radical Simplicity by Jim Merkel

You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.

Radical Simplicity by Jim Merkel is aptly named. Merkel's journey into sustainability and living a bare bones life is at some points inspiring and others merely terrifying. He earns little, spends little, and tries to use as few of the earth's resources as possible. While it is a noble endeavor, it isn't something that any old person can go out and do. You have to have enough money stored up to buy a house and live mostly off the interest from the rest of your savings, and that is not an easy amount to come by. You also have to have an objective view of your place in society and on earth in order to be able to make the necessary sacrifices, and that is something that is even harder to come by. You need to be able to recognize that currently we are skydiving without a parachute; we are using resources at an unsustainable rate and assuming that we’ll be gone before it becomes an issue.

At the heart of the problem is the idea that we can be anything, do anything, and have anything we want, but in reality this is not the case. We cannot all become Nobel Prize winning scientists, or else the Nobel Prize would no longer hold prestige. We cannot all become rich, because there is a finite amount of money in the world. If we had all the money we wanted, money would no longer hold value. However, that rarely translates that to the idea that I personally should take less so that others can have more. Merkel is able to understand that idea and apply it to his life, something that few others are capable of. Many people never learn that what is best for them may not be best for humanity as a whole, and that lesson is central to living as Merkel does. Rarely is it mentioned that succeeding in following your dreams usually means that someone else failed in pursuing theirs.

I know that my footprint of over twenty acres is unsustainable, and that it means that someone somewhere else must live off of much less, but my personal goals get in the way of being able to accurately weight the costs and benefits of my lifestyle. I want to become a physicist, a career path that isn't conducive to 20-hour workweeks. I want to live in the city and travel across the world and pursue a Ph.D. None of those things fit into a simple life a la Merkel, and he understands that. He knows that very few people are going to abandon their dreams in order to live a more equitable life, because that’s just not the way humans are programmed. In the long run, we must be willing to reduce our population by extreme measures like government mandated family planning or else alter the idea that hard work and professional success are goals to strive for. Personally I would push for the first of those options, but it would be a very unpopular campaign.

While I may not drop out of college and go live in the woods, Radical Simplicity has given me some ideas for making my life more sustainable. I can’t implement many of the ideas just yet, as I live in university housing and eat in the dining halls and don't own a car or control where my tuition dollars go. However, in the future I can grow a garden, ride my bike, and buy fewer packaged goods, and I plan on doing all of those things. While I probably won't give up my car or live on $5000 a year, I already have started thinking twice before purchasing goods, especially those that come in a lot of packaging. I have gotten ideas about how to live more sustainably, but in the end, I do not want to live in the woods like Merkel does. I want to accomplish certain things in my life, not just survive, and on some level all humans have that desire. Unfortunately that leaves us in a bit of a bind, and eventually we will have to sacrifice control over some aspects of our lives, either in the area of reproduction or productivity.