Chapter 74The Happiness (?) Of Doing Without
There is a philosophy which teaches that we
can eliminate our needs by eliminating their causes. So
we can. For example, we can eliminate our need for shoes
by cutting off our feet.
But I do not want to make light of this phi-
losophy by citing extreme examples. Indeed, there is con-
siderable merit to it-not in the extreme of cutting off our
feet-but in our moderation of desire, in our restraint of
acquisition.
When I was a very young man, I read a little
book entitled, «The Tyranny Of Things." It taught a com-
mon-sense lesson which I failed to heed, and I'm not sure
I should have heeded it anyway. But since it is an unavoid-
able problem for each of us, let's face up to it, this tyranny
of things.
Let's first examine, briefly, the case for sim-
plifying our lives by disdaining the abundance ~hich is so
lavishly spread before us. We have merely to diScipline