Andy Couturier has looked deep into the future of the most advanced economy on this planet. Japan is the most urbanized nation with over 96% of its population perched into cities and a consumer saturation which can hardly be matched by any other market. Sadly, it is also a society suffering from an epidemic of elderly loneliness and one of the highest suicide rates on this globe. Join Andy to discuss what we can learn from the Japanese counterculture movement of living in rural self-sufficiency. He shows with ten case studies that an abundance in well-being opens up through a deliberate choice of less despite the omnipresent availability of material affluence. Find out more here: https://taol.greeninitiatives.cn/

About the Speaker

Andy Couturier is the American author of two books, Writing Open the Mind: Tapping the Subconscious to Free the Writing and A Different Kind of Luxury: Japanese Lessons in Simple Living and Inner Abundance. The Abundance of Less, his latest, is a revised and updated edition of his previous work.

He is the founder and creative director for The Opening, a center for creative writing. His essays and articles on ecology, sustainable living, and the problems inherent with nuclear power have appeared in The Japan Times, The North American Review, Adbusters, Kyoto Journal, The Oakland Tribune, and Creative Non-Fiction.

Note: The Abundance of Less is available at The Bookworm!