As Is: A Downsized Life (2005)

Life comes without guarantees or warranties. Life comes to us "As Is". Still, we are all immersed in a culture where the primary, if not primordial, message is: "more, more, more." Earn more, spend more, consume more and possess more of everything - the implicit promise is that happiness and fulfillment will be yours if only you have more. "As Is" explores that fundamental premise through the stories of nine divergent people from the USA and abroad who must re-examine the value of their lives as they encounter economic simplicity. Earning less and spending less runs contrary to everything they've been taught. All were once distinctively upwardly mobile. While "As Is" presents four gritty real accounts of the fallout of unemployment, displacement and deprivation, it is saved from utter bleakness by the earthy and hope-infused accounts of five other people who embraced voluntary economic simplicity for reasons ranging from the spiritual and environmental to personal development and artistic growth. Former Disney artists, entertainers, physicians, monastic nuns, educators all dispossessed and challenging the axiomatic "more, more, more" with the idea that a well lived life has less to do with more and more to do with better.