ABSTRACT
Any number of examples exposes us to the contexts, complexities, and stakes associated with the idea of quality of life (hereafter, QOL). My first highlights concerns that are common motives for QOL pursuits in developed societies: environmental and economic sustainability, personal mindfulness of the treadmill of work and materialism, the preservation of environmental and urban amenities. I turn to Southern California’s Central Coast, a region in the western United States comprising an approximately 200-mile stretch of open space, large ranches and vineyards, coastal settlements abutting the Pacific Ocean such as Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Ojai, and Ventura, and swelling inland cities like Santa Maria, Paso Robles, and Thousand Oaks. Long before the eighteenth-century Spanish conquest, the area was home to the indigenous Chumash. Yvon Chouinard, noted outdoorsman and founder of the Patagonia Company, a Ventura-based designer of internationally popular, environmentally friendly outdoor wear and local champion of green principles, takes the story from here:
Near the headquarters of Patagonia, on the central coast of California, the Chumash Nation enjoyed a good life for thousands of years. They lived in small villages and possessed fur blankets, intricate baskets and soapstone pots decorated with shells. They painted elaborate abstracts in mountain caves. In every village were game-playing fields and sacred buildings. Almost every day, most Chumash enjoyed a cleansing sweat in the village temescal. In each village was a granary for stockpiling food that would later be distributed to those in need.
