ABSTRACT
The truth is at the heart of utopia. Authenticity has been a central value for utopians and grasping the truth about the Anthropocene crisis – a dense field of hyper-objects seemingly too big to comprehend – is one of the greatest challenges of students and scholars epoch. Utopians need to pay attention to the truth of time. Living simply can involve a trade-off between reduced consumption and increased time and life satisfaction. It involves a rejection of the conspicuous consumption and extravagant materialism of the rich. Voluntary simplicity is one expression of enoughism, which draws on a wide range of influences, including early Christianity, Buddhism, American transcendentalism, Tolstoy, Gandhi and European bohemianism. Duane Elgin has described voluntary simplicity as an ‘outwardly poor, inwardly rich’ lifestyle which stems from ‘a deliberate choice to live with less in the belief that more will be returned in the process’.
