The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less

307 Pages·2010·1.43 MB·English

by  John Robbins

ALSO BY JOHN ROBBINS

Diet for a New America: How Your Food Choices Affect Your Health,
Happiness, and the Future of Life on Earth

Reclaiming Our Health: Exploding the Medical Myth and Embracing
the Source of True Healing

The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our
World

May All Be Fed: Diet for a New World

The Awakened Heart: Meditations on Finding Harmony in a Changing
World (with Ann Mortifee)

Healthy at 100: How You Can—at Any Age—Dramatically Increase
Your Life Span and Your Health Span

Contents

Introduction
PART ONE: HEALING YOUR REL ATIONSHIP WITH MONEY

1. Rags and Riches
2. Getting to Know Your Money Type
3. Four Steps to Financial Freedom
PART TWO: LIVING THE NEW G OOD LIFE

4. Wherever You Live Is Your Temple—If You Treat It Like One
5. Life Is Too Short for Traffic
6. Eating Better, Spending Less
7. Kids: The Biggest Financial Decision of Your Life
8. Safe, Clean, and Natural
9. The Economics of Happiness
Acknowledgments
More from John Robbins
Notes
Who’s the wealthiest person you’ve ever known?
Most of us, when asked that question, think of the people we’ve known
who were richest in monetary wealth.
But what if you asked the question differently?
In terms of what really makes life worth living, who’s the wealthiest
person you’ve ever known? Have you known anyone who has truly made
the world a better place? Have you known anyone whose life is so filled
with joy, who cares so deeply, who loves so richly that—whether or not they
are financially abundant—their lives are a blessing to the rest of us?
When we say someone is a “success,” what do we mean? Do we mean
that she or he is an emotionally balanced, loving human being? Do we
mean that this person is creative and artistic and adds beauty to the world?
Not usually. Instead, most of us reserve the word “success” for people
who have made a lot of money.
This is how we impoverish ourselves.
This is why we need a new vision of the good life.
Introduction

W
e have now entered an entirely new phase in our nation’s and our
world’s economic existence. We have come to the end of the financial
world as we have known it.
The assumptions of the past are no longer reliable or credible. Not that
long ago, General Motors represented 10 percent of the U.S. economy and
was the world’s largest employer. But in 2008, the company lost nearly 90
percent of its value. The following year, the company that had long been
considered the backbone of the U.S. economy went bankrupt.
Is it possible that an entire nation could go bankrupt? It’s not only
possible, it’s already happened. Iceland was a model of strong economic
growth in the 1990s and beyond, and one of the world’s most highly
functioning economies. In 2007, Iceland ranked number one among all the
world’s nations in terms of the Human Development Index. But in 2008,
Iceland literally went bankrupt. Unable to pay its external debts, the
Icelandic currency, the krona, became essentially valueless in the rest of the
world.
What will happen in the U.S. economy in the years to come is deeply
uncertain. Although some economists and public officials have declared the
worst behind us, most of them have a vested interest in a positive outlook.
A sober look at the facts can be unsettling. The year 2010 began with nearly
one in three U.S. homeowners owing more on their mortgages than their
homes were worth, and that figure was expected to soon reach one in two.
Today, foreclosures are filed in the United States every seven and a half
seconds.
Facing daunting deficits, cities, counties, and states have been making
staggering and unprecedented budget cuts. Fearing bankruptcy,
governments at every level have seen no alternative but to dramatically
decrease services across the board, including some considered essential for
public safety. The cuts have been so severe, they haven’t been made with
scalpels. They’ve been made with meat axes.
The level of affluence many Americans had come to take for granted is
becoming out of reach for rapidly growing numbers of people. Today, more
Americans are going bankrupt than are graduating from college. In many
states, unemployment is1 at a seventy-year high, and the unemployed are
confronting a job market that is increasingly bleak. The ranks of the poor
are swelling with failed business owners, office workers, salespeople, and
longtime homeowners. In major cities, requests for emergency shelter are
doubling annually. People who have never before2 needed food aid are
applying for food stamps in record numbers. Millions of people are losing
their health insurance along with their jobs.
Ominous comparisons have been made to the 1930s, but there are
fundamental differences, some of which may actually make it harder for the
economy to recover from the current crisis. Then, we had no national debt.
Today, we have become the greatest debtor nation in human history. Then,
saving was seen as a virtue. Now, the average American owes 25 percent of
his or her annual income to credit card debt alone. Then, the environment
was relatively pristine, natural resources were abundant, and the United
States produced more oil than it used. Today, perils such as global warming
and dependence on imported oil threaten to undermine economic progress.
And in the 1930s, U.S. military spending amounted to 5 percent of the
world’s total. Now, it’s 45 percent.
Meanwhile, for the past few years, something extraordinary has been
happening at the North Pole. For an increasing number of weeks each
summer, the Arctic ice pack has melted sufficiently that it has become
briefly possible for a ship to travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific3 without
going through the Panama Canal or around the Cape of Good Hope. This
has never happened before, in all of recorded human history. Atmospheric
carbon dioxide levels are now the highest in three million years. These
trends foretell a future of melting glaciers, acidifying oceans, rising sea
levels, disappearing species, and an unstable climate—all of which will put
additional stress on an already beleaguered world economy.
Can a world that has plunged into harsh and uncertain financial times
find a way to switch from fossil to renewable fuels? Can a society that is
standing on unstable fiscal footing manage to halt the deterioration of the
environment? If not, will we come to liquidate the planet’s ecological
assets? And what will be the economic consequences?
Just about everyone at every level of monetary existence is impacted. In
2007, Forbes named Adolf Merckle as one of the fifty richest billionaires in
the world, with a fortune of nearly $13 billion “and growing.” He and his
family owned many businesses, including Germany’s largest
pharmaceutical wholesaler (Phoenix Pharmahandel), one of the country’s
major generic drug manufacturers (Ratiopharm), and large parts of a cement
company (HeidelbergCement) and a vehicle manufacturer (Kässbohrer).
You would think that a man of that immense wealth could withstand the
current crisis. But in January 2009, Adolf Merckle threw himself in front of
a train, committing suicide, utterly despondent over the extent of his
financial losses.
The anguish is palpable. The uncertainties in our financial system have
produced a crisis of confidence at every level. Is there any way that this
fiscal predicament, as disorienting and devastating as it is, could also serve
a positive and benign purpose? Is there any path by which we could
experience what has become a cascade of grievous economic events not as
victims, but with clear intentions, wise actions, and fulfilling outcomes?
Has there ever been a moment with a greater need to become more
intelligent and more conscious in our relationship to money?
Some of us experience economic hard times as frightening and
malevolent. But I think there is a genuine alternative. The challenges we
face truly do have another potential. We can experience them, with all their
very real hardships, in a way that brings out the best in us, but in order for
that to happen, we must transform our entire relationship to money. And
that is the point and purpose of this book. I want to help you achieve
financial freedom, even within a profoundly unstable economy and a world
too often succumbing to fear.
We all know the colossal importance we have come to attach to our
economic status. Regardless of whether we are rich or poor, it’s hard to
exaggerate the role that money plays in our lives. Is there any area of life it
doesn’t touch? The foods we eat, the clothes we wear, the places we live,
the kinds of work we do, the futures we dream of, whether we marry or not,
whether we have children or not, even who we love—these are all affected
by how we relate to the money in our lives.
I have a dear friend with whom I’ve become very close in recent years.
He and I talk about almost everything. We confide in each other to such an
extent that we even know details of each other’s sexual history and
experiences. But I’ve noticed something. Even with all that we have shared,
even with all the comfort we’ve created together, he isn’t able to talk freely
and openly about money.
Recently, when I asked him why, he said it’s because talking about
money makes him feel uncomfortable and vulnerable. In this, I don’t think
my friend is at all unique. Money issues seem uniquely capable of
triggering our attachments, hopes, and aversions, and of bringing up
feelings we are uncomfortable with, such as fear, envy, and shame. When it
comes to money, otherwise kind and sensible people sometimes become
fearful and crazy.
Here’s what I hope to convey in this book:
However much money you have or don’t have, your relationship to the
money in your life can be transformational. It can be a doorway into
greater consciousness, into greater integrity, and into greater freedom.
And one more thing. I do not say this glibly. I say this in all humility and
in all seriousness. It’s obvious that there are limitations and restrictions that
come with having financial challenges. What is not so obvious, and what is
crucial to realize, is that there are also opportunities, openings, and
possibilities.
This book is about your relationship to money. It’s about finding a new
freedom, a new truth, and a new joy in your relationship to it. It is a guide
to developing a relationship to money that is fulfilling, that is sane and
wise, that enables you to thrive, and that connects you to your powers of
renewal and creativity.
As I’ve realized how hard it is for most of us to talk openly and freely
about money, I’ve come to understand that there is profound human
treasure hidden in the darkness. By shedding light on an area of our lives
that has so much importance and yet can be so delicate and sensitive, we
can find new possibilities for healing. We can become more able to make
conscious and fulfilling choices around money. We can become better able
to align our money decisions with our deepest core values and our highest
commitments.
The goal, and it’s a far more reachable one than most of us realize, is
financial freedom. We tend to think that only if we have vast sums of
money can we be financially free. But becoming financially free, as we
shall see, is not determined by the amount of money you make. Part of
accomplishing financial freedom is what I call “the new frugality.” This
isn’t your grandmother’s frugality. This isn’t about deprivation. It’s about
choice and self-determination. Have you noticed that when you feel
deprived, you don’t stay on track? That’s true about budgets, diets, and
anywhere else we want to make changes. This book isn’t about self-denial.
You don’t have to move into an apartment the size of a prison cell, clip
coupons, and eat nothing but canned beans for every meal. Quite to the
contrary, the new frugality can be an adventure and a great deal of fun.
It’s a game, really. The object of the game is to see how much you can
lower your spending while raising your quality of life.
I will show you how radical and energizing it can be to play this game,
instead of playing the game most people play. Our consumer society wants
you to play the “you are what you buy” game. Our consumer society tells
you it is your patriotic duty to go to the mall even if you have to go into
credit card debt. Remarkably, this was President George W. Bush’s advice
to the country after the devastating terrorist attacks on the United States on
September 11, 2001: “Go shopping.” Deep down, we all knew that this
advice was wrong and would ultimately not address our needs for healing
or for community.
We’ve all seen bumper stickers that say “He who dies with the most toys
wins.” That’s the old game; that’s the old way of defining success; that’s the
old “good life.” In the new good life, the point is not to have the most toys,
but the most joys.
The new way of defining success is liberating. Now you’re playing a
game that lowers your cost of living and protects you from being exploited.
Now you’re playing a game that is good for your spirit, that is healthy for
your relationships, that is in service to the wider earth community—and that
is crucial for your financial sanity.
This game isn’t about denying your pleasures. It’s about plugging the
money leaks that you may have been only dimly aware of, but which have
been draining you. Some of us buy rich and expensive foods and then pay
for costly health care to deal with the problems that come from overeating.
Some of us buy things we don’t need and then pay for larger residences or
storage space to house the things we have accumulated. This book will help
you to identify where your spending patterns are inconsistent with your
life’s greater fulfillment. It’s about the joy of living with a purpose larger
than consumption. It’s about living less from image and more from the
creative spark of your own spirit. It’s about expanding the love and laughter
in your home rather than increasing the square footage of your home.
The point of this game is to achieve an overflowing life, a generous life,
an exciting life, a joyful life, while spending less. The rationale behind the
new frugality is not to become a miser (the word “miser” comes from the
same root as the word “miserable”). The goal is to live better for less. The
point is to have less stress in your life and more true wealth.
This isn’t achieved by depriving yourself. It’s accomplished by spending