It was already being spun off and marketed before the new wave came along.
And, as someone else said--you even implied--anti materialism is parasitic on materialism. That doesn't mean that I dismiss this; rather, I merely want to point out that moral superiority can't rest on that sort of binary.
Not for long anyway. There has to be a firmer ground upon which to stake those claims. Otherwise they're driving pylons into shale.
And I expect a whole hell of a lot more from the simplicity crowd because they ought to damn know better, since those I've run across consider themselves lefties.
It is rilly rilly annoying when some upper middle class people who've hit stumbling blocks in the trajectory of their careers wax effusively about the joys of the simple life, cotton, growing their own vegetables, picking berries in the wild and making their own jam, Sally's Boutique, the wonders of composting, bartering, not buying a new wardrobe each season, and washing out Zip-loc bags. For I'm impelled to say in reply: "Why you should meet my grandma, she'll teach you a thing or two; she taught me." It's like they fucking discovered it, while all around them the people they've been blind to--or rather the people they've felt superior to for other reasons their entire lives--have been doing quite the same their entire godamned lives. They should know better.
>It's one thing to have the have-nots revolt against a system that
>exploits them and denies them satisfaction. It's far more devastating
>to have the heirs of affluence turn their backs and say the game is just
>a waste of time. It delegitimates the whole affair from a truly
>unexpected direction.
Did anyone say it was a waste of time? Huh? I said that I didn't care for their moral superiority, for they're lack of any sophisticated theoretical reasons for doing what they do other than as a not-well-thought out response to the crises of late capitalism: specifically the Time Bind and downsizings here in the US. When a woman tells me about how she's dropping out of the rat race in order to simplify her and her family's life I'd say that she's misdirecting her efforts just a wee bit. She's failing to ask why is it a fucking rat race, why is it she must work more and more, why can't she find decent daycare, why do the schools suck, why her husband by the way isn't picking up his godamned share of the second shift. And worse, from my own experience, those very same women often were once the very ones to denigrate stay-at-home moms, failing to realize that staying home for a lot of women hasn't always been a choice. What choice is there, say, if you make minimum wage; it is much simpler and cheaper to stay home.
Besides when simplifying your life becomes a regular feature on Oprah and similar sorts of talk shows, then I think we have damn good reason to be suspicious.
Oh I'll not say this anymore, as I wouldn't want to deligitimate their efforts toward revolutionary change.
Voluntary simplicity is generally not that voluntary when you get right down to it. It does little to change things, it simply makes capitalism more damn efficient by creating a new sort of reserve army of the under- and unemployed, people who accept their situation since they think it's a fucking choice. Now, were these folks to demonstrate to me that they have more sophisticated reasons for doing all this, then yeah, I'd applaud it. I'd still be critical, but much more sympathetic. Shutting up because I might delegitimate the positive features of their efforts hardly seems the appropriate response. And, for me shutting up vitiates the very project of critical theory.
Kelley