Radical simplicity is the search for genuine alternatives to the way we do things - not any kind of alternatives, but simpler, saner and healthier ones. In order to do this we need to step back and find a vantage point outside, as it were, of our everyday way of seeing things, and look at what genuine alternatives already exist, and why we are so remiss in implementing them.

Here are some examples.

Do I need to spend $100,000 or more for a house, and on top of that, interest, insurance and taxes, and then spend 20 or 30 years trying to pay for it in order to have a roof over my head? Does this really make sense? If I do this, will I have time to be home and enjoy what I am spending so much effort to acquire? There are people who claim they can build a comfortable house out of earth, straw bales, whatever is around, for a fraction of the cost of a normal home. Is this true? If so, why don't we do it? There is more to this issue than alternative building materials. There is the question of alternative economics, and an alternative way to look at community.

Do we need to create, maintain and support an enormously complex and costly school system stretching from preschool to graduate school in order to be educated? What are we really getting for this tremendous outlay of time, energy and money? Does this system really work? How many children have their instinctive love of learning extinguished in school? Doesn't this school system encourage us to put on the "teacher" our own responsibility to learn and to teach? What would happen if schools as we know them disappeared?

Who can apply the outlook of radical simplicity to other parts of our normal life like health care, dying and death, entertainment, jobs, etc.?

Now it is your turn to contribute to this discussion.

(from the innerexplorations.com web site; gratitudes to Jim and Tyra Arraj)