Simplicity is Bollocks

I'm in Brazil for work. I'm planning to visit a seaside village called Arembepe where there's a hippy village that Mick Jagger and Janis Joplin "got rolling" in the 1960s, according to Lonely Planet. It says:

"For a taste of a simpler life, the aldeia is a curious place to explore."

I went into the shower mulling on that line, and concluded that the term 'voluntary simplicity' is a pile of bollocks.

Dematerialising your sources of pleasure, meaning, identity and satisfaction is not simple. It's really really complex.

pic 1 by marilene
pic 2 by teresa

It's much simpler to use booze to kick back, clothes/music/cars/house/friends/income for a sense of identity, and tv/the pub/the odd show for a bit of fun.

OK so in reality few people are that shallow but here's the thing.

Paths to joy that don't use booze are less simple not more simple.

Paths to meaning and identity that don't use money and possessions are less simple not more simple.

Finding genuine satisfaction in life is a Fine Art.

Probably all of them take practice, and years.

To call a dematerialised lifestyle a 'simple' lifestyle is to look at it through materialist eyes.

...

I once collaborated on a project with a fine sustainability professional called Andrew Outhwaite.

One day he turned up in my office unannounced, came to my desk, and said, Briony, what are we doing? What are we actually doing?

We went to a meeting room with some big paper and pens, and spent a couple of hours talking and scribbling.

We ended up with a single line. A diagonal line going upwards. At the bottom end we wrote 'materialism'. At the top end we wrote 'spiritualism'.

'Spiritualism' is an icky term and I'm not sure we're talking about becoming a God-loving evangelist or a kirtan chanting hippy.

It's probably the wrong word.

But what is the word for how when we put down all our stuff, what we are left with is not nothing.

We are left with more than we ever had before. We enter a richer territory, a more subtle and nuanced world.

We still need things in this world. We still need homes, food, clothes, and ways to get around and communicate.

But then instead of all the rest of the crap, we actually need a bunch of services and practices that nurture our capabilities in the fine art of life.