Halving and Pooling: A New Kind of American Dream

During the chill of economic downturn, my heart was warmed up a bit today by the Salwen story. The Salwen family in Atlanta, Georgia, downsized their spacious, 6500-sq ft home by 50% and donated half of the sale proceeds to help over 200,000 people in 30 poor villages of Ghana.

This concept of "halving", or scaling down by half, was the brain child of a young teen named Hannah Salwen and embraced by her parents and young brother. It represents a new kind of American dream.

Without realizing that I was similarly living this new American dream, I started doing this "halving" thing a few months ago. I decided to eat only one small bowl of rice for dinner, as opposed to two. That effectively cuts down my food intake by about half. Coupling this with no breakfast, I estimate that I have saved close to half of food resource every day.

This idea of halving every wasteful or undesirable thing can have a profound effect. If we lose our temper only half of the time, our home will be a doubly peaceful place. If we kill only half of the time idling or goofing around, we would have redeemed more time for serious and worthy stuff. If we lavish on ourselves with only half of budget and desire, we would have stacked up more to support the needy in the world.

Many have dreamed about communal living where a group of breadwinners pool their earnings to support each other in times of thick and thin. When one or more breadwinners are temporarily between jobs or permanently disabled, the pooled resource can easily support every family. This style of communal living has been tried throughout human history, from the patrilineal or matrilineal tribes, to the Essenes in Qumran community, to Jerusalem Christian commune (see Acts 4:32) in apostolic age, to the monasteries of monks, to Zinzendorf's Herrnhut, to the Opus Dei (exposed thanks to Da Vinci Code), and, unsuccessfully, Chairman Mao's commune system in China.

If you feel led to pool material resources and settle together in a new development, you are not alone. We may have to rekindle the right idea of right living in this global village.

In a very small step toward pooling, Jack and I have started car pooling to work. It saves gas and lessens air pollution. It augments our interactions and fellowship.

Care to pursue a new kind of American dream by halving? Care to pursue responsible communal living by pooling?

Halving and pooling may well be the mightiest arithmetic of subtraction and addition.

Let's go halving.

Let's go pooling.