Ryan Jordan

Sticker Seen on SUV: Live Simply

Terry Hamrick posted this tidbit on Twitter today:

    The "Live Simply" sticker on your SUV is a tad disingenuous, don't you think?

It struck me funny because the tweet highlighted the social perception

    that SUV owners live anything but simply.

But the fact that this SUV owner identified themselves with the message on that sticker challenges the validity of the "live simply" paradigm as an absolute frame of reference rather than a contextual frame of reference, or perhaps something else.*

In other words, to live simply may mean something different to a Tibetan nomad than it does to a middle-class American walking the fine line between riches and desire.

Which is argument enough for us not to *live and ponder life's questions within the boundaries of our own social bubble.

Absolutes do indeed exist, contrary to the beliefs of populists, but seeing them clearly does require that you eliminate the boundaries that fog your vision. Unfortunately, the anti-populists live in dreamworlds of absolutes within their cloudy bubbles.

Perhaps this is why the two-party system of American politics and the misguided components of each (with the Democrats adoring context but failing to recognize absolutes and the Republicans failing to recognize any sort of context that would validate their absolutes) will never cure the U.S. economy from its cyclic affluenza epidemic of buying stuff, or wanting to buy stuff.

So, yeah, live simply. But be real about it, too. It's not just your bubble.