Yes, the simple life is an
excellent opportunity—like Gnosticism in the Ancient World and Manicheism in
the Dark Ages—to practice that time-honored bait-and-switch in which we teach
men to think of themselves as angels, only to reveal the truth to them too
late. You may recall some of Screwtape’s
classic advice on using human chastity: let them think they’re above it all,
develop sense of pride about where they stand as opposed to ordinary people,
and then, when they’ve become just complacent enough to imagine that they’ve
developed some kind of virtue in the area, shoot off a volley of your best
imagery and watch the fireworks go.
Certainly, you can approach the matter of simple living in the same way.
But the appetite for possessions,
unlike the reproductive drive and the desire for nourishment, does not provoke
the same level of visceral disgust in human beings as gluttony and
promiscuity. Because it is more closely
connected to their rational than their animal natures, it is difficult for even
the most excessive manifestations of the appetite to become so obviously
subhuman. Exceptions exist, of course—the
extremes of hoarding reported by American TV, or the excesses of certain public
personalities in the matter of statuary and gold leafing may, perhaps, trigger
something like the instinctive revulsion that the refined man feels at seeing another
man “pig out”; but by and large it is far easier to tempt a person to despair
after an impulse towards gluttony or unchastity than after an impulse buy.
On the whole then, I do not think
the sudden attack is helpful against
those who practice Simple Living—in which group I include everyone from the
strictest minimalist to the casual recycler. Anyone who sees good in using or wasting little
is a potential target: one has only to take the good of frugality and make it
contrastive. From Mrs. DeForest wanting
to leave her grandchildren a healthy planet to Mrs. DeForest looking down on
Mrs. Frimp for putting bottles in the wrong receptacle is one short step for
mankind, one great leap for Our Father Below.
This is the kind of thing that the virtue Simple Living most naturally
lends itself too: the minor sins of vanity and uncharitability which, taken to
their natural conclusion, can eat up a lifetime of good works like a carpet of
ivy on a crumbling brick wall.
It is also possible, of course,
to simultaneously make the obvert choice of Simple(r) Living a shield under
which the native human condition of greed can take cover. Is it possible, you ask, for someone who owns
only fifty items in his Spartan apartment to be greedy? Oh, Wumpick, it is. Do you recall a certain man, known for his
singularly uninteresting clothing and his habit of emblazoning every product
his company produced with a faux-humble lowercase “i”, whose once-bare
apartment was adorned by a Tiffany lamp?
A single necessary item can become an object of great indulgence for
those who live simply. And of course,
this kind of hypocrisy is not limited to secular people: one recalls the nun
whose vow of poverty forbade her to use more than one pin, but who confessed guiltily
to her superior that she had been keeping a second one. Her conscience was bothered. But there is no reason that the ordinary
Simple Liver’s should be.
An additional use of Simple
Living is of course as an incentive to pride.
Vanity, and uncharitable comparisons to one’s neighbors, I have already
mentioned. But pride—not the desire to
be seen as better, but the deep-seated belief, needing no assurance, that one is better than, indeed on a whole
different level from other people—that
should be the real goal of a tempter whose patient shows an inclination to the
Simple Life. Comparisons will be
necessary; fortunately, as I suggested in my
last letter, many are already beginning
to be culturally established. A previous
generation, for example, would simply have thought Gothic Cathedrals in bad
taste, or (if they belonged to the stricter sort of Puritanism) said that it
was a wicked thing that the money wasn’t rather given to the poor. But our simple secularists see the very act
of living well as being something to be ashamed of. Take care that they compare that living well
to their well-living, and do not notice the similarities. Like Mrs. DeForest, let them begin by
imagining that they are doing this for others, but do not let them think about
it too much. They know intellectually that
no amount of abstemiousness on their part will—in and of itself—guarantee a bowl of rice for one more child; do
not let them ask what would. If the
question crosses their mind, let the little well of warm emotions radiate
briefly—they are thinking of others, after all!—before dissipating it quickly
with a question about whether Uber or Zipcars are less extravagant. And of course, make sure that they determine
the answer through extensive calculations leading to an arbitrary and contingent
conclusion which no amount of argument with their friends can shake. Let them think that they have mastered the
art of simplicity; purified their nature to the point of an almost angelic
abstemiousness.
For they do aspire to be like
angels, Wumpick—make no mistake about that.
That is what lies at the root of this attraction to simplicity after all,
just as it lies at the root of the love of mammon. Both the outrageously wealthy and the
unbearably simple are after one thing: autonomy. No human being, of course, can ever really be
autonomous. But we can tease them with
the prospect, encouraging them as they divest (or increase) themselves one good
at a time to think with each object that they are becoming more and more independent
from the world and the flesh. What a surprise
it will be to learn, finally, that all the time their “autonomy” was a mere
pale and impotent emulation of the autonomy of that third and greatest enemy
against whom the old monks, those earlier and more dangerous Simple Livers, so
carefully guarded themselves.
Then, if you like, there will be
despair—not the despair of having sinned through weakness against the god
Simplicity that they worshiped, but the despair of knowing that, in the end,
no human being is worthy or capable of measuring up to the glorious
self-sufficiency of Our Father Below.
Your affectionate uncle,
Slangrine
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