Voluntary simplicity
Chutney at MyIrony.com asks:
Does anyone know someone who practices “voluntary simplicity” who isn’t at least upper-middle class, white, and liberal? I thought not.
Go ahead and read the rest of his thoughts. I’m more compelled by those who are simple (and don’t make a to-do about it) than those who are conspicuous alternate-consumers.
So what drives the desire to live an artifically simple life, that is itself artificial in its implementation. Whistfulness? Embarassment? Or perhaps a dis-ease with the power that wealth brings.
There’s something proud (not the good kind of pride, either) and haunted about the voluntary simplicity movement. After all, what part of it should demand attention to itself, or, for that matter, an organized movement?
3 December 2003 at 11:48 pm
First — your page is all screwed up.
Per your post — if you aren’t at least middle-class, your life is very likely enforced simplicity. The reason you only see middle and upper class people doing it is because they’re the only ones with the incomes to live a more — what? compicated? — lifestyle.
4 December 2003 at 8:55 am
15 December 2003 at 5:49 pm
Hmm… Well, I’m definitely white, I’ll give you that much. But I don’t think we were “upper-middle class” even before we started moving towards simplicity, let along now! Oh, and I wouldn’t be considered “liberal” either unless you believe in the cyclical model where extreme right and extreme left meet: I’m more libertarian than anything else so I guess you have to classify me with those militia wackos if you want to disparage me that way.
18 July 2004 at 11:04 am
Desert island hymns!
Bless their hearts, the editors of Anglicans Online are soliciting readers’ all-time favorite hymns. They invite you to nominate the single hymn you’d take with you to a desert island. Hmm. A hymn is awfully portable — you don’t need…