PERILS OF THE SIMPLE LIFE

SURPRISE! THE GURUS WHO PROMOTE THE PLEASURES OF UNADORNED LIVING ARE BUSIER (AND RICHER) THAN EVER

Our life is frittered away by detail... Simplify, simplify. --Henry David Thoreau, Walden

PITY THE POOR VICTIM OF DOWNSIZING. If he was upscale, he's got to downshift by downparing and downspending. If he's lucky, he can get a part-time job outsourcing. If he was downscale, he can forget about upclimbing. It's enough to drive anybody bend-arounding.

Trouble is, life is too complicated. Everybody's running computers, shopping, working 80 hours a week, worrying about Clinton and Gingrich and the sorry New York Jets. What they need to do is scrape off the barnacles of quotidian life and get simple.

As it happens,...

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