A FEW INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS

Bob Corbett

One form of alternative life style is that which involves some form of economic simplicity.

1. Whether one is living in willing or unwilling economic simplicity makes an enormous difference.
2. Another important distinction is whether the economic simplicity is a central part of the value and life style, or merely incidental to it.
3. Some dominant motives:
   • religious simplicity: makes moral life more possible (e.g.: Christian claim that it is more difficult for a rich person to get to heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.)
   • republican simplicity: Roman model
     • Jefferson
     • Emerson
   • simplicity and justice: Common focus today
   • simplicity and environment: contemporary focus. Greens

According to David Shi the above groups tend to share a number of the following attitudes.

• hostility toward luxury, suspicion of riches
• reverence for nature
• preference of rural over urban
• desire for personal self-reliance through frugality and diligence
• a nostalgia for the past, skepticism of the claims of modernity
• conscientious rather than conspicuous consumption
• aesthetic taste for plain and functional.

Other motives for economic simplicity

• simplicity for personal reasons.
• simplicity for individual pleasure: 1960s drop outs
• simplicity and withdrawal: drop out and turn on
• simplicity for the arts: artists, musicians, actors

HOME