Two years ago I wrote some pieces which Pendle Hill then published under the title Functional Poverty. There I tried to show how a willing simplification of life to a point felt by most of us as poverty would open the way to a freer choice of work, to greater effectiveness in work, and to more true leisure. I there defended a chosen poverty as a keen tool for accomplishing work, and as a straight road to a clearer relationship with our world, and as freedom.
Now after two years and all that they have exhibited, I must go farther. I shall impugn our admired standard of living, elevated to an ideal, as a main cause of the distress and violence of our world. I shall announce the choice of poverty a reasonable corollary to our refusal to participate overtly in that violence, almost a condition to our constructive approach to that distress. I shall have to say that, to me, it no longer seems possible to reconcile pacifism with physical ease, or with the effort to get and to hold property. Security I shall not add, because the most avid in getting and keeping now knows that there is no security that way. The mere fact that, knowing it, we still strive to get and to keep, shows how urgently we need re-orientation.
