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Iona and John Conner are downwardly mobile and loving it.
They have joined the small but growing ranks of Americans eschewing the pursuit of possessions for what is called "voluntary simplicity." They have traded secure government jobs, comfortable homes and a lifetime of collected clutter for pared-down lives.
"It's good for the Earth and good for the soul," Iona Conner said of her new life. "I've never been happier."
The Conners' relatively Spartan lifestyle is taking root even within the fast-paced Baltimore-Washington corridor -- a region associated with high ambitions, high incomes and high costs of living.
Their two-bedroom Columbia, Md., apartment, has no TV, microwave or cordless phone. Their furniture is second-hand or handmade. Iona Conner reads by candlelight to conserve energy and hold down the electric bill.
It is a long way from the New Jersey waterfront home where Iona Conner once lived, let alone her yacht club membership, 10 boats and two Jaguars. She ditched it all -- and a previous husband who thought that was the good life.
"It was a sick lifestyle. I wasn't happy," said the 49-year-old former community relations officer for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. "I am very much into simplicity now."
Some may view the Conners as modern-day hippies, retreating from the stresses and strains of the '90s. Others who have opted for simpler lives may have been pushed into it by corporate downsizing and then embraced it, rather than rejoin the rat race.
Whatever the motivations, voluntary simplicity is gaining enough followers around the country that author Duane Elgin -- a former researcher at the Stanford Research Institute, a California think tank -- asserts that they are at the forefront of a major social shift.
"We are at the beginning of a socioeconomic transition that will be at least as great as the transition from an agrarian society to an industrial society," Elgin said. "Down-scaled lifestyles will be a key element of a new way of life that people are inventing now."
The movement already has given birth to several newsletters. The quarterly Voluntary Simplicity has attracted 3,000 subscribers in just three years, Seattle publisher Janet Luhrs said.
Another Seattle-based simplicity apostle, Cecile Andrews, who runs workshops for professionals who want to pare down, estimates at least 150 study circles have sprung up around the nation in recent years among devotees of down-scaling.
"They are tired of working too much, spending too much and rushing around too much," Andrews said.
But Gerald Celente, director of the Trends Research Institute, cautions that the movement hardly qualifies as "a waking up of consciousness or anything like that. Some of these people are just aging hippies who want to return to the ideals they had during the Woodstock era."
For the most part, he said, the move to simplicity stems from the economic realities of the '90s: job cutbacks and slow-growing wages. But a new aspect, Celente said, "is that people no longer look down on you if you are scaling back like they would five, 10 years ago. There is a perception now that there is a lot of sanity behind it."
Baby boomers, growing reflective about life as they mature, began the movement. But Celente predicts that today's college students -- already accustomed to low expectations of achieving high-flying lifestyles -- will embrace simplicity in large numbers.
Down-scalers tend to place importance on enjoying small pleasures, building stronger relations with family and friends and protecting the environment. There is a decided aversion to wasting time on rat-race jobs, excessive consumption and TV.
William Seavey, a former New York City ad writer who founded the Greener Pastures Institute in Pahrump, Nev., says simple living is gaining popularity because "the scales of modern life have become too far tipped with negatives."
"Boiled down, voluntary simplicity is a pursuit of the experience of real happiness," said Elgin, author of a 1993 book, Voluntary Simplicity. "And the experience of happiness for most people is a lot different than the images of happiness we've been handed by Madison Avenue."
That is what attracted John Conner, 60, a former administrator for the Baltimore City Housing Department: "I am using the energy and the resources available to me in a way that I think will benefit others and the Earth, so in that sense I feel a far deeper sense of personal fulfillment than I've ever felt before."
He began scaling back after he left his city job in 1986 to start a nonprofit group, the Grassroots Coalition for Environmental and Economic Justice, to educate school and church groups about how to get involved in environmental causes.
John Conner eventually sold the dream home he had built in Howard County, Md.
"A simplified life allows you to focus your energy on your purpose for living," he said. "Having a lot of expensive, nice things doesn't make you happier or more fulfilled."
Elgin said the Conners fit the classic profile of those choosing voluntary simplicity: well-educated, progressive thinking and willing to take the risk of inventing a new lifestyle.
But the number of those only dreaming about down-scaling far outnumber those who actually make the switch, Seavey noted. The main reason: fear.
"Change is an intimidating thing," he said. "People tend to want to stay with what they know, even though it is not making them happy."
He and others who have made the transition say down-scaling is best done in stages, often over several years.
THE SIMPLE LIFE
There is no firm count of how many U.S. residents already have opted for simpler lives. But a 1994 report by The Trends Research Institute, of Rhinebeck, N.Y., found:
* Voluntary simplicity will emerge as one of the top socioeconomic trends of the next decade.
* About 4 percent of 77 million baby boomers are pursuing a pared-down lifestyle these days.
* During the next eight years, the number will grow to about 15 percent of all boomers, or 11.5 million people.
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