'자발적 가난'의 양상과 생태주의적 의미

Abstract

"Voluntary poverty" makes a demand for fundamental changes to people's immoderate consumption fundamentalism born out of industrial capitalism. It is also an active resistance movement against the deteriorating ecological crisis and infinite competition between people. There has been, however, little interest in it except for a couple of researches with a religious approach or based on the tradition of Oriental ideology. As a result, similar terms are chosen according to individual researchers' personal taste with confusion emerging in specific content or methodology. In the aspect of terms, "voluntary simplicity" recognizes a philosophical implication of specifying changes to people's life attitude. It, however, has its share of limitations such as being very moderate in dealing with the reality of rapid ecosystem destruction and tolerating individual deviation more than "poverty." The meanings of absolute poverty connoted in the term "poor" can be erased by the preceding modifier "voluntary," which means one's own choice. It has been known that "voluntary poverty" began with Richard Gregg mentioned by John Lane, but the present study demonstrated that Thoreau's Walden came before it in that it used "voluntary simplicity" as a synonym. "Voluntary poverty" stemmed from the issues of the exhaustion of the Earth's resources, the destruction of the ecosystem, human alienation due to the massive technological civilization, and further the imbalance between the economic growth and emotional satisfaction at the result of those phenomena. The major content of "voluntary poverty" can be summarized as awakening to the huge consumption desire of people, harmony between poverty in the material world and abundance in the spiritual world, and small-sized labor thanks to human technologies. Finally, the practice of "voluntary poverty" involves realizing the current Earth-wide ecological crisis at the personal level, agreeing with people in pursuit of it, and expanding the "voluntary poverty" movement through social and national policy supports. Ecologism is different from other literary trends or movements for its original characteristic of having to evolve into ecological ethics or changes to the real life. "Voluntary poverty" is a principle of life in today's ecological crisis across the Earth and significant flow to drive changes to the fundamental human values.