In her book “Epicurean Simplicity,” author and activist Stephanie Mills analyses what is wrong with our modern way of life – and she goes back to the philosophy of Epicurus to find a cure. Mills’ book is as beautiful and relaxing as it is inspiring – a passionate plea for a life well-lived, a life that is less wasteful and more meaningful.
This article is part of The Ultimate Guide to Epicurus.
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What is the best human life available today?
The central question in any critique of modern life is: how can we live a better, less alienated, more satisfying, more valuable life in today’s world?
What is Alienation?
One of his best known concepts of Marxism is the idea of “alienation” that describes how human beings get estranged from their work.
Stephanie Mills, an environmental activist and writer of books about the wonder of small things for five decades, begins her book “Epicurean Simplicity” (2003) with a description of her life in the US countryside.
She lives in a cottage in the Upper Midwest of the United States, a rural place surrounded by forests, rivers and lakes. A place that is peaceful and that allows her to live in contact with nature, but that is also demanding: its winters cold and long, and its summers hot and dry.
In this situation, Mills lives alone, sharing her life with the land all around her home (she famously and publicly early in life decided to not have children , for ecological reasons). In the book, she describes bicycle trips for shopping in the small town nearby, swimming in a pond, skiing through a pine forest in deep snow and observing a wide variety of wildlife around her house.
In the beginning of the book, she asks how we can today justify living the way we do:
And her answer to the question “How am I to live?…” is, simply: “more locally.” The long-distance supply lines we’ve set up for our most common everyday needs and wants are an immense burden on the environment and threaten our very existence in the relatively near future: Strawberries from California, fish from Vietnam, milk from Indonesia, steaks from Argentina, fruit from New Zealand, butter and cheese from Denmark, eggs from Poland, pesto from Italy and pasta and juices from Greece. This is just a random assortment of things I saw …
Read the full article which is published on Daily Philosophy (external link)
