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He makes some good points about not cluterring up your life and your home. To many Americans do have an addiction to novelty and they end up flooding their homes, their garages and eventually some rented storage space and it makes your life less than optimal.
With that said, poverty is terrible, simplicity and thrift are great but they are not so great if they are forced upon you by having no money. I know some people who have downsized their lives and are frugal they enjoy life. What the writer of this article forget is that most people who are thrifty and relatively non materialistic still live like Kings compared to most people on Earth.
The writer of this artiicle would fit in well in the various rich but quasi neo hippie communities in California that I have see nand lived in during my life. In Central Coast Wine Country, in the Hills of Ventura County, in Downtown LA and even in Orange County, I come across adults who are so privileged that they truly consider "downsizing" from eight to five bedroom homes and deferring a few electronics purchase by a year or two to be some sort of virtuous excercise. Wearing cashmeres from more than a year ago does not make a person into an ascetic. The most extreme example of these materialistic, self proclaimed non materialists is when they have a maid and still claim that they are living simply. Having "help," IMHO, invalidates claims being a latter day Thoreau.
With that said, poverty is terrible, simplicity and thrift are great but they are not so great if they are forced upon you by having no money. I know some people who have downsized their lives and are frugal they enjoy life. What the writer of this article forget is that most people who are thrifty and relatively non materialistic still live like Kings compared to most people on Earth.
The writer of this artiicle would fit in well in the various rich but quasi neo hippie communities in California that I have see nand lived in during my life. In Central Coast Wine Country, in the Hills of Ventura County, in Downtown LA and even in Orange County, I come across adults who are so privileged that they truly consider "downsizing" from eight to five bedroom homes and deferring a few electronics purchase by a year or two to be some sort of virtuous excercise. Wearing cashmeres from more than a year ago does not make a person into an ascetic. The most extreme example of these materialistic, self proclaimed non materialists is when they have a maid and still claim that they are living simply. Having "help," IMHO, invalidates claims being a latter day Thoreau.