A Call for Simplicity

Throughout history, there have been those who have taught and sought a simpler life.  As our lives grow more complicated, comprehensive and hectic, the idea seems more attractive to me.  What I think of and what many others have embraced is a lifestyle that allows for a more authentic existence.  In addition, questions are being asked about our world today.  What does it mean to experience?  What is our purpose?  German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once proposed that our existence is not about enjoying ourselves.  He was only a more recent in a long line of thinkers who have questioned the society around them and offered another vision.  It is worth considering.   

Siddhartha Gautama was a Hindu prince who, upon seeing the world and its misery around his protected palace, decided there must be another way.  The Buddha, living between the 500s and 400s BCE, felt that the only way to remove suffering was to remove desire and want.  In keeping with philosophical and religious practices, the Buddha explored many ways to eliminate want, including an ascetic lifestyle.  The Buddha endured pain and deprivation to find a purer way of living.  For the Buddha, the reward of a simpler life includes the cleaning out of our mind and soul those things that are not important.  Even in our most treasured values in the U.S. – the concept of choice, for example – the Dalai Lama has warned that within it lie a paralysis and ultimately, a misery.   

Jesus of Nazareth also warned of the dangers found within the society.  Christianity has a long tradition of embracing the ascetic lifestyle and is based on Jesus’ admonishment of those who sought to hold on to luxuries and wealth.  Instead, he said that man’s role was to serve, not to be served.  He famously quipped that a wealthy man could no more easily enter the kingdom of heaven than a camel could pass through the eye of a needle.  Jesus attempted to convince Jews that they must return to the values of their ancestors.  Similarly, the Prophet Muhammad turned his back on his more wealth-oriented clan members in Mecca and worked to convince Arabs that the traditions that existed prior to the trading wealth of the Arabian Peninsula had been forgotten and needed to be embraced once more.  Today, when a Muslim prepares for the obligations of the Hajj in Mecca, they put aside their modern clothes in order to embrace the simple and humble ihram clothing.  What exists outside of Mecca is detrimental to a clear mind and heart. 

In 19^th-century United States, a philosophical movement known as New England transcendentalism emerged in response to the growing industrialization within the country.  At the head of this movement were thinkers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Amos Bronson Alcott.  In explaining what Kant referred to as “transcendental philosophy,” writers like Thoreau spoke of the struggle that existed in the U.S. between the growing technology and a simpler concept of living, typified in his book, Walden.  Like de Tocqueville, Thoreau and others questioned what was being lost with the growth of industrialization.  In such writings is an emphasis on the true nature of living – that being the forces that surround us but with which we’ve lost contact as we surround ourselves by the trappings of our age.   

When I see people goofing off on their iPhones or me on my work-mandated computer, I wonder what is being lost, what skill is not being perfected as a result.  One of the reasons I enjoy nature so much is as an exercise of getting away from everything.  I do not want my phone or any other component of modern society.  I want to engage in the world around me without such things.  Each day, I seek ways to simplify my life.  With simplification, we grow healthier and cleaner – in mind and in heart.  Without complications, we grow stronger in our abilities and in our faith.  Early observers of Japan’s age of the samurai marveled at the daily commitment to occupation and community without distraction.  Perhaps it is easier to see that Wittgenstein was correct. 

Hi-ho, Hi-ho...

Noël Coward, the English playwright, once said that “Work is much more fun than fun.”  I think in the perfect world, it’s possible, but I’m not sure that many of us live within a perfect world.  Most of us are given a life, we choose a path and we make the most of what we can.  But work?  My efforts at defining my work are complicated by two things – one, many people (most within the profession) label it a “calling” which adds a religious component with which I’m not always comfortable; two, a great many of people have little to no respect for it, which allows many people to feel free to comment on how they think it should best be done.  Which, in the end, still leaves me still pondering how to view work?  There are three major ways one can do so. 

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche saw work, partially, as one’s salvation – the means by which to break through difficulties and emerge stronger in the end.  A later German philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, spoke more plainly when he said that he was not sure why we are here on earth but he was certain it was not to enjoy ourselves.  This type of approach is often characterized by one who buries themselves within their work.  However, this can be damaging.  It does not bode well for one with a family, friends or any semblance of “life.”  It is also potentially damaging to one’s identity.  The one who defines themselves by their work are in a precarious position when something happens to that work.  What happens to one’s identity?  Does the work go on?  Does the true acolyte of Nietzsche say that a “job” is not as important as the “work?”    

Cannot the notion of work be condensed to the Aristotelian idea of contributing to society and having nothing to do with our personal lives?  The best life is not an actualization of oneself but wrapped in the duty one performs to the society as a whole.  It is a reaffirmation of the notion that our lives are not for ourselves but for others.  This is a self-sacrificing way to view one’s labor and there are certainly noble and amazing individuals whose work was their service to others.  Yet, like the one who buries themselves in work, do not the words of Epicurus remind us of a danger?  One looks upon the example of Mother Teresa or Gandhi.  Can one live a life if they do not experience it?  That is not to say that those two heroic figures did not know life but is it an example for others to follow?  I would say that the person who is absorbed by their work and the one who is absorbed by the needs of others run the same risk, however noble the latter is.   

Or, we could look at work as merely a method by which to enjoy life.  By “enjoy”, I don’t mean some sort of Aristippus notion of pleasure but merely to take part in the wonders of life.  The work is only a means to an end.  One works to enjoy life – work during the week to camp or hike or relax on the weekend.  Yet, this taken to its logical conclusion could lead to a life without work.  I think it is a legitimate idea to consider whether a life without work would be a moral life.  On some level, this is a selfish approach to one’s life and can one truly be moral and not consider the needs of others?  I would imagine that adherents of the first two concepts would not have much respect for a follower of the third.  Certainly, Wittgenstein would suggest that such a life is a wasted one.  The fact that God gives us talents and skills are not there for arbitrary reasons. 

Most Americans’ viewpoint of work is based on a Puritan concept of the importance of a work ethic, but the Christian concept of work only discusses the need for it and not the way it should be approached.  Gandhi viewed all work as noble and the nobility of work is its own reward to both the individual and the society.  After this little exercise, I’m not sure I’m closer to understanding the nature of work than I was earlier.  Like most things, there is a value in each approach but also a danger.  Perhaps, one needs to take the dedication of the first approach, the awareness of the second and the balance of the third.  By doing so (and this certainly is no easy task), perhaps we grow closer to a true answer to our question and an understanding of ourselves.