And so, the 'sexier' option is finally being presented by mainstream media...

I've long maintained that change on a societal level is often not the beast we think it is.

Yes, there's incremental change that's hard to notice, versus the kind of change that results because of a major crisis or development. But I'm referring primarily to lifestyle change. Like, for example, how we eat. How we regard work. How we recreate, how we educate, how we see our physical selves, our fitness, our health...how we define our living spaces, and thereby, how we live our lives.

Within these 'lifestyle' choices, I believe that change happens...outside the cataclysmic, famine and drought, war and depression-type occurrences...because something 'sexier' is introduced.

Horse -> Car

Theatre/Vaudeville -> Cinema

Radio -> Television

Records -> CDs -> MP3s

Cinema -> Home viewing

Home cooking -> Pre-packaged, processed foods (-> Crap health/Obesity pandemic)

Activity -> Leisure (-> Obesity pandemic/Crap health)

Because of this approach to how I see change, I've been skeptical of how the notion of 'Less is more' as a lifestyle choice could ever gain traction. Despite believing that the consumer society is doomed, that our only hope of survival is to migrate from our materialistic, acquisitional, consuming culture to an 'experiential' one, I felt that unless the 'sexier' element was in play, nothing would result. Bottom-line: nobody wants to be forced to reduce their -perceived- 'standard of living'. (That's why Duane Elgin's book is called 'Voluntary Simplicity'.)

Well, this past weekend, I got a chance to have my cynicism eroded just a mite with the New York Times article by Stephanie Rosenbloom 'But Will It Make You Happy?', also found at MSNBC as 'Side effect of the new frugality: Happiness'.

Please give it a read. I'll be taking a look at this whole issue in the next while under the label of 'Commentary indulgence'.

Namasté.