Charlotte Allen on the Hypocrisy of the Simplicity Movement

Not Really Simple
http://incharacter.org/observation/not-really-simple/

Simplicity movement people always seem to shell out more money than the not-so-simple, usually because the simple things they love always seem to cost more than the mass-produced versions. On a website called Passionate Homemaking that's dedicated to making, among other things, your own cheese, your own beeswax candles, and your own underarm deodorant, you are also advised to cook with nothing but raw cultured butter from a mail-order outfit called Organic Pastures. The butter probably tastes great. It also costs $10.75 a pound - plus UPS shipping. At farmer's markets, where those striving for simplicity like to browse with their cloth shopping bags, the organic, the locally grown, and the humanely raised come at a price: tomatoes at $4 a pound, bread at $8 a loaf, and $6 for a cup of "artisanal" gelato.

Wealthy and well-born people admiring - and sparing themselves no expense in convincing themselves that they're cultivating - the virtues of humble folk is nothing new. Two millennia ago, Virgil, in his Georgics, heaped praise upon the tree pruners and beekeepers whom he likely could see toiling in the distance while he sipped wine on the veranda of his wealthy patron, Maecenas. Marie Antoinette liked to dress up as a shepherdess and hold court in her "rustic" cottage at the Petit Trianon. Other harbingers of today's simplicity movement were the arts-and-crafts devotees of the early 1900s who filled their homes with handcrafted medieval-looking benches and the 1960s hippies whose minibuses and geodesic domes that enabled their gypsy lifestyles usually came courtesy of checks from their parents.

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Charlotte Allen makes a devastating critique of the simplicity movement and its adherents. Basically, she is calling it for it what it is--bourgeois hypocrisy. It is rich people paying through the nose to look humble. She also gets a slam in on Leo Babauta.

I don't really know how to respond to what Allen has written. I tend to agree, but I also tend to agree with Babauta as well. Who's right on this issue?

Here is where I agree with Allen:

-Buying local and organic is pretty stupid especially when the food costs so damn much.

-Looking down on blue collar people with their "inferior" tastes is not cool.

-True simplicity should not be expensive.

I suppose I practice what I call "blue collar simplicity." Basically, I buy whatever is on the shelf at Walmart. I like Walmart.

People have different lifestyles, and I am cool with just about every damn one of them as long as it isn't forced on me. I know I find it easier to live with fewer things than accumulating a bunch of shit I don't need.

Some reader comments on the article I liked:

Finally! Thank you for this article! I admit that I fell prey to the affluent simplicity lifestyle and took great pride in living the lifestyle you mention (what can I say, I grew up in Marin County). But somewhere along the way, I too had an epiphany about this movement which often appears to be (simply) rampant eco-cosumerism and myopic self-righteousness. Once I shed this outward display of not-so-simple simplicity (which wasn't easy), many in my "simplicity" circle thought I was crazy (or worse, had lost money in the stock market). While some of your comments may be overly harsh, you are ultimately right on...this is merely a different kind of luxurious lifestyle and does not reflect a shared or sustainable human existence. To truly live a simple life, one must demonstrate humility and an outward gaze toward others. It's not about the butter.

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I think this article makes an important point. Actual simplicity -- that is, the conservation of resources by the general public -- is something that is sorely needed for the sake of environmental and economic sustainability. But our society is so angrily selfish that any such suggestion is met with outrage. The only way living simply, or living green, draws adherents is when it is turned into another snobbish commodity. The people who indulge in it should rightly be called on their actions.

It's possible to actually live simply. I know I will be called out as another self-important snob, but I don't have a car, a cell phone, a laptop, a TV manufactured after 1990, a microwave oven, a dishwasher, a washing machine... Yes, I'm using a computer, but it was bought new in 2002 for $600. All my furniture was either handed down or salvaged from the curb on trash night. I don't eat out. I rarely spend money on anything that isn't food, and while the food I buy is not organic (too expensive, sorry), my diet consists mainly of beans, vegetables, pasta, cheese, and chocolate.

Could I live more simply? Of course. But I don't do it as a movement, I'm just poor.

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Oh, the wailing from the self-appointed arbiters of what is "the right way to live". A simple article pointing out the stupidity and hypocrisy of the yuppie "simplicity" movement was bound to bring out a bevy of smug finger-pointers, eager to shriek their defiance. It's hilarious that these "simplicity" hawkers don't even see the irony in their sitting in front of a modern, mass-produced, electricity-consuming computer to voice their hatred of all things modern, mass-produced and electrical. But what isn't funny is the raw arrogance of their belief that they have both the right and the supreme knowledge to dictate to other people how they should (or must) live their lives.

How about this for a concept: you live your life, and let other people live theirs. You want to live "simply", go right ahead. Go build a little hut in the wilderness, turn your back on the past four centuries, pick your berries, dig your roots, eat insects, whatever it takes to feed your self-righteous, pompous feeling of superiority. But leave the rest of us out of it. Those of us who like living in the modern world and actually enjoy things like hot showers, plastic bags, a huge variety of inexpensive foods from all over the world, access to all types of music at the touch of a finger, the convenience microwave ovens, and ease of travel, don't share your simple-minded, irrational fear and hatred of modernity. Being well adjusted to an easy, modern life of comfort and convenience, without having to work fourteen hours a day at back-breaking labor just to survive, might not be your cup of hand-grown herbal tea, but most of us don't share your neuroses: we like it here in the 21st century. So you go live the way you want to live, and stop trying to make the rest of us join you in your 15th century delusions of la dolce vita.

Of course, that will never happen. These back-to-the-simple life hand-wavers love to kvetch and moan about the evils of modern industrial life, but if they ever had to do without the products of industry, they wouldn't last a month. Drop one of them in the wilderness, a hundred miles from anywhere, and they'd starve, succumb to disease, or die of exposure before they could crawl back out. Take away their computers, their cell phones, their Internet, and they'd be helpless; they couldn't stand not having an audience for their fire-and-brimstone sermons on the evils of capitalism, factories, and life in the modern world. And like any stump-preacher delivering a harangue on the way other people live is pure evil, they're hypocrites: they don't practice what they preach. You want simplicity? It's very simple: top lecturing the rest of us on how we should live our lives, and go live "simply" somewhere else. We'll stay here and leave "the simple life" to the simple-minded.

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"The problem with the simplicity movement isn't simply that you've got to be rich to live simply."

There are a lot of distortions and exaggerations in this article designed to shore up Allen's main point, which is that living simply is bad, baaaaaaad. It is clear that she's done her "research" from the comfort of a computer chair and hasn't really gone out and talked to people who are, well, actually living simply.

If she had, she would have found that the simple living movement is, at it's core, a rejection of the very kind of name-brand, high-dollar, boutique lifestyle about which she rails. People committed to simplifying their lives don't waste their hard-earned income on expensive flashy magazines full of high-priced goods. They buy their raw butter from local farmers at far more reasonable prices.

Living simply involves re-prioritizing how one's existing income is spent. Paying more for essentials, like food, is no biggie when you're not wasting your money on plasma screen TV's, fancy electronic bling, and a new car every year.

If Allen had done some real research, she would have known that that expensive butter cost far less, compared to the industrial gloop from the local food-mart. That's because much of what's found at the big-box store has been heavily subsidized by our tax dollars. Cheap food costs more than we realize, because we're paying for it in advance, every April 15th.

I'm also amused every time I see a corporate shill wail about the plight of the poor and their inability to afford the "simple lifestyle." The fact is that poor people are already living simply, but it's a form of simple living defined by McDonald's, Wal-Mart, and the Templeton Foundation.

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If you wanted to live real simple you could always just, you know, buy your groceries at the same store as all the normal people. Why do white people always have to make things so complicated?

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"Simplicity" has become another buzzword like "authentic" that has lost any substantive meaning.

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One of the funniest shows on TV is something called World's Greenest Homes, where every house costs a gazillion. An enthusiastic architect type goes round interviewing the owners of vast piles with teensy wind generators, big enough to power a dim bulb, and the like, in the most hilarious display of self-absorbed wankery in decades. Love it.

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I first saw the magazine when a well-meaning friend thought that it would be helpful to a Peace Corps volunteer in an impoverished Paraguayan campo. It had an ad for a $600 yoga mat; I laughed at the irony and cried at the idiocy.

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