Good Life

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Living a Simple Life
“We have unintentionally achieved a human population explosion which is ruining quality of life in many parts of the world. The planet’s ecosphere and resources base may not tolerate even two more doublings of world population (to 20 billion). Either we limit our reproduction or nature will limit it for us by starvation and disease”. ( Milbrath, p.199 )
In his article, “Redefining the Good Life in a Sustainable Society” Lester W. Milbarth argues, that living a good life does not imply more consumption and the pursuit of material goods. He criticises the world of today and the people living in it by illustrating that we have created a society where growth and consumption are considered to be the two most important aspects of living a happy and prosperous life. In his view, quality of life can be achieved by a sense of happiness, physical well being, completeness, hope, and confidence more than continuing to grow in material consumption. His argument states that we are destroying the biospheric system and our lives are being spent in a way that would destroy many of our resources and would lead us to starvation and death. He goes on to say, that even if we became more technologically efficient through inventions we would not want to live a life that is defined by material quantities.
Opposition to this view could say that through technology we can maintain desired consumption and create substitutes for resources that are scarce. Mark Sagoff argues that nature sets no limits to economic growth and even if the current population of the world doubles our environment and technological changes would be able to support human needs in any circumstance. He believes that the idea of resource scarcity and starvation is quite naive.
This paper disagrees with the latter view in that, we need to distinguish quality of life away from consumption of material goods. The simple life can be interpreted as a focus on pr...