Three exceptional figures: frugality as a moral and political protest against the established order - lifestyles of Epictetus, Henry David Thoreau, and Mahatma Gandhi

Epictetus (50-125 A.D.)

* Frugality implies care or sparingness in the use or supply of food and other resources. The first "frugal" people were those who lived by gathering fruit (fruges in Latin), and were designated as frugal by the Romans, whose life has also been described as "a frugal thing, sparing in food, temperate in drink, modest in clothing, cleanly in habit." I would suggest that a frugal person is one who is able to make informed decisions concerning his or her use of resources, and does so believing that moderate consumption allows other pleasures or benefits to be enjoyed.

The lifestyles of frugal individuals illustrate how the idea of "frugality" differs from others such as meanness or prudence. If frugality is to do with making rational choices about consumption and how to live one's life, frugal persons must have the opportunity not to be frugal and yet choose to be this way. To adopt a frugal way of life is to adopt an ethical, if not a political, position. Here are some examples:

Stoicism was prominent between 300 B.C. and 180 A.D., as a philosophy and a guide to right conduct. Roman Stoics were interested, almost exclusively, in ethical and political issues of concern to all people, not only the privileged few. Four beliefs characterize the Stoics' view of the world: that all people are radically equal and part of the natural universe; that there are natural laws; that a person should live in perfect conformity with nature; and that fate is determined. The text Encheiridion contains Epictetus' thoughts, many of which reflect his attitude towards consumption and frugality. Here is his advice to a young man sitting down to a great feast: "But if when things are set in front of you, you do not take them but despise them, then you will not only share a banquet with the gods but also be a ruler along with them." Here is a sign that frugality is a political action. Choosing to control, strictly, how you consume is a controversial act. Epictetus warned about this too, and discouraged his followers from showing off: "When you have become adapted to living cheaply as far as your body is concerned, do not make a show of it, and if you drink water do not say at every opening that you drink water. If you wish to train yourself to hardship, do it for yourself and not for those outside."

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

A young, Harvard-educated American, Henry Thoreau chose in 1845 to live alone for two years in a wooden forest hut not far from Concord (Massachusetts). While his university contemporaries were away making small fortunes, trading and dealing, Thoreau built his hut using a few hand tools and some old planks, planted beans and listened to the water ripple in Walden pond. Ridding himself of the trappings of a "civilized life" and trying to live self-sufficiently, he was repeating the experience of the early American settlers. The difference was that he wrote about it, and celebrated the virtues of a simple life. "The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich inward," he enthused, hoping to emulate them in both respects. His book Walden (1854) is a manifesto against modern industrial life and an account of the two years when he drank water from his pond, had a diet of pulses and possessed a minimum of objects. He wrote that he would rather "sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion." In his hut there were only three chairs: one for solitude, two for friendship and three for society.

He did all this by choice, aware that he had an option to return from such a life to a more "comfortable" one, but confident that "the so-called comforts of life are ... positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind." However, Thoreau eventually chose to opt out of his life-style, and after two years he returned from the woods to write and publish his book. But because of his experience he felt he had become a wiser observer of human life "from the vantage point of what we should call voluntary poverty."

Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

'The Great Soul" Gandhi is a powerful example of a man who used issues of frugality and poverty in his philosophy, politics and private life. In 1888, when he moved from India to Britain, he joined the London Vegetarian Society. There he met George Bernard Shaw and the travelling lecturer and socialist Edward Carpenter, who was then known as the "British Thoreau". At that time he read the Bhagavadgita, which would become his "spiritual dictionary", and became fascinated by two Sanskrit words in particular, aparigraha (non-possession) and samabhava (equability). These influences led Gandhi to have an "irresistible attraction to a life of simplicity, manual labour and austerity", and the belief that man has to jettison the material goods that cramp the life of the spirit.

Ever since St. Francis of Assisi sought a life of poverty, chastity and humility, those who have preached such values have been seen as dangerous by authorities. Thus, when Gandhi moved to South Africa and set up as a farmer near Durban, where he and his friends could live a simple life by the sweat of their brow, he took the first step towards becoming a controversial political activist. Gilbert Murray later warned, about Gandhi, that "Persons in power should be very careful how they deal with a man who cares nothing for sensual pleasure, nothing for riches, nothing for comfort or praise."

Six years later, Gandhi moved nearer to Johannesburg, and set up another farm, which he named Tolstoy, after the great Russian writer with whom he corresponded. Soon he began his political career, campaigning against racial laws in South Africa and the removal of voting rights from "coloured" voters. Back in India, he took frugality to its extreme, by conducting fasts for political ends (he also fasted to "stir the conscience and remove mental sluggishness"). In 1947 he fasted in an attempt to stop rioting between Hindu and Muslim communities in Calcutta. Four months later, in Delhi, such a fast brought about another communal truce.

ADAM ROBERTS, of the United Kingdom, helped to prepare the first World Forum on Youth Recycling for Development (1996) and is currently engaged in research on the ethical implications of recycling.

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