Simplicity, Antonym

I looked up the definition of simplicity today. One definition was: the absence of luxury or showiness; plainness.

I have been thinking about simplicity lately. It seems it's a part of common rhetoric in today's "greening" society. (On a related note, google "freeganism" and you will see how Micah and I will be living if we don't get any pell grants this next year). In addition, I am getting poorer and poorer. I have gained some new perspectives, which all came into play when my backpack zipper broke the other day.

You see, my backback is over 4 years old. It was given to me as a gift by the Bells in Bountiful. I vowed it would last me all through college. When the zipper broke, my immediate thoughts were: "Great, how will I afford a new bag?" Then, I thought about simplicity. About being responsible with resources. And I thought: "I will not buy a new bag. I will just fix this one, even though the time it might take to do so might be more than it would take for me to earn the money for a new bag."

So what does the above picture have to do with simplicity? Well, that's the point. It doesn't. I got this picture from Anthropologie's new catalog. Anthropoligie is a store, that like many others these days, makes a consumer feel that they are buying into a simple, quaint, romantic and charming life. However, I would like to point out something about this trend: it is a farse. Simplicity simply does not imply buying more and more things that look old, rustic, quaint. This is the opposite of simplicity.

Observe: in order to get the look in the above picture alone, I would pay over $5000 for the items from Anthropologie. Then, if I went even further, I could buy 1600 sq. yards of fabric and sew that fabric to each and every one of my walls. Then I could sew up the windows, etc. etc.

Point taken?