Leisure Ethic Archives - William Powers, Author of Dispatches from the Sweet Life

Getting Away from It All… If That’s Still Possible

January 20, 2011 by William Powers Leave a Comment

Radio Eco-Shock interviewed William Powers this week; it airs on two dozen university and community radio stations this week in the U.S. and Canada. Enjoy!

Listen: William_Powers on Radio Ecoshock

About the interview: There is an emptiness that invites us all to escape. I did, for a while, living for 10 years without electricity in a self-built cabin in Northern Ontario, Canada.

William Powers did. And who is he? Google tells me about an American from Long Island, an international development and aid worker in poorer countries, a man concerned with the extinction of people, languages, and Nature.

“Mommy, I want something ‘wrapped in garbage, please”

December 27, 2010 by William Powers 9 Comments

Now we’re really stuck. The snow keeps dumping on my sister’s family dome on ten glorious white acres in Richmond, VT.

My sister lives in this dome in Richmond, Vermont

Flights are cancelled for the next days, and my parents, myself and everyone else here visiting for the holidays is stuck in Vermont.

And? My nephews—Leo (7), Huck (4), and Roy (2)— certainly don’t mind the blizzard. They dwell blissfully in the now, sledding down the hill toward the freezing creek and playing with legos by the wood burning stove. No TV for distraction here, just old-fashioned play and books and simple toys. Oh, and Another Culture.

More Joy in your Life through the Leisure Ethic?

November 9, 2010 by William Powers 3 Comments

As I travel the country, a number of people have been asking me: What’s the Leisure Ethic?

Working 24/7… 24 hours a week; 7 months a year

While living in a 12’ x 12’, off-grid house, I noticed people reclaiming the right to be idle! They are ratcheting down from overdeveloped to developed, from too much to enough. Dr. Jackie expressed it to me once like this: part of the joy of simplifying one’s material life is that you don’t have to work long hours to buy and maintain a bunch of stuff. This leaves time for open-ended chats — like the kind I began to have in North Carolina. Doing nothing is a carbon neutral activity!

Your brain on computers.

October 1, 2010 by William Powers Leave a Comment

This fascinating NY Times article show that scientists claim that “juggling e-mail, phone calls and other incoming information can change how people think and behave. Our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information.”

Further: “These play to a primitive impulse to respond to immediate opportunities and threats. The stimulation provokes excitement — a dopamine squirt — that researchers say can be addictive. In its absence, people feel bored.”

Have you experienced this? Does the distraction of too much technology inflict nicks and cuts on your creative edge and sense of peace? Or do you simply see Facebook, Twitter, texting, calling—and, yes, blogging—as simply another tool that enhances your effectiveness, while still staying focused on what matters?

Declare Independence from Stuff

July 15, 2010 by William Powers 4 Comments

The fourth of July has come and gone, but each of us can continue to declare independence every day: independence from stuff.

Can our own personal economy and the Leisure Ethic come together as rebellion? I’m on Cape Cod now, rained in during a family vacation, and my mind is wandering back to my time in Jackie’s tiny 12 foot by 12 foot house. Her lifestyle is a twenty-first-century Boston Tea Party, but she hasn’t thrown just one product overboard; rather, she’s tossed the whole lot of planet-killing junk.