Solstice Inspiration.

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Mike Nickerson

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Dec 21, 2025, 7:23:49 AM (3 days ago) Dec 21

to Mike Nickerson

Greetings:

May this Solstice lead to brighter outlooks as it leads to longer days.

This note explains one way that we can visualize and advance a better world. The fundamental shift in priorities described below is starting to make sense to a broader population. We are looking for help to accelerate the process, both by sharing the "more fun, less stuff" meme and possibly with a financial contribution.

Moving Up To Sustainability

How the program works:

The aim is to bring an essential choice to popular attention. Do we want our collective labour (the economy) to aim for perpetual expansion (GDP), or do we want to work directly toward the long-term well-being of people and Earth? The meme “More Fun, Less Stuff” is a short, light-hearted, memorable, and easily shared introduction to the essence of this choice. As it becomes familiar, it will reveal how popular such a choice would be.

Imagine the world if we worked directly to improve the health and well-being of people and ecosystems. We have more than enough knowledge, skills, and ingenuity to provide what people need while securing a healthy planet. This goal would be a quick choice if consuming was not so aggressively promoted.

Before consumers were needed to absorb industry’s overproduction, people spent their spare time relating with each other, learning things, appreciating the world, playing sports and music, making art, and engaging in all manner of other life-based activities. Requiring little more than attention, life-based activities are limitless and draw only lightly, if at all, on the material world.

While enjoying ourselves may seem an odd solution for today’s social and environmental issues there is a logic to it. We need to reduce our collective impacts on Earth. The old way of thinking suggests cutting back on consumption. The new thought is to expand the fulfillment one gets from living to the point that one doesn't have time for, or much interest in, material consumption. They both address overconsumption; the first from a discouraging perspective, the other from an attractive one.

As the meme settles into people’s minds, the ability to envision a different value system opens up. In the new paradigm, the greenest dollar is the one not spent. Obsolescence, rather than being seen as a way to keep people working and the economy growing will be seen as a waste of natural resources and source of unnecessary pollution. People’s needs can more effectively be provided on a healthy planet.

Memes guide cultural evolution in a way similar to how genes guide biological evolution. Person by person, the realization will dawn that living within planetary limits is an essential goal. At a certain point, legitimacy, what it means to be a good person, will shift. How the new legitimacy can effect big changes is described here.

In particular, we aim to reach young people. At any time in history, the mental development of young people has evolved to grasp any new circumstances that they will be dealing with as their lives unfold. Note how quickly many of them master new technology. The older among us are less able to imagine a world fundamentally different from what we are familiar with. Young people are new to the world and are without preconceptions. Without the influence of old patterns, they can conceive new possibilities unencumbered. Further, they have the imagination and energy to implement their ideas.

Help bring “more fun, less stuff” to the attention of your family, friends, and associates. Try sharing it at a get-together this Season. Plant the seed, and give it some time to germinate and grow. Our times are calling for change. More fun, less stuff points the way.

While we have many leads to follow up on over the winter, our activity has been complicated by totalling our car in collision with a deer, and other unexpected expenses. If you are able, ways to provide financial support follow.

What we have already done:

Since our fledgling efforts in 1985, we have taken many steps encouraging sustainability:

Numerous educational materials are available. They include many articles, three books, and countless handouts and pamphlets. Most recently, we produced an 8-minute video “To Be Alive and Well; It’s Easier Than You Think” to explain how we can manage healthy life within reliable cycles.

Long-standing has been the Question of Direction program. A forerunner to more fun, less stuff, it uses 170 words to clearly define long-term well-being and to ask: Is it our collective will to grow until we drop? Or do we seek to secure satisfying lives for our children's children and the families they will want to raise?

Our publication Life, Money and Illusion: Living on Earth as if We Want to Stay, provides a thorough overview. Along with explanations of social and environmental aspects of sustainability, it offers a detailed explanation of the relationship between Growth-based economics and environmentally informed alternatives.

Articles written about “More Fun, Less Stuff”

A Key to Securing the Future

Getting from here to there

Origin of the more fun, less stuff meme

A Meme With Potential

It has been over a decade since we last asked for funds. Today we are asking.

Please donate to this effort to shift social priorities:

by Interac to: MoreFunL...@web.net

or by cheque to:

“Sustainability Project - WFF”

2799 McDonalds Corners Rd.

Lanark, Ontario K0G 1K0 Canada