Simplicity
There are perhaps a bumdle of ideas captured in what many refer to as the virtue of simplicity. Some that I would identify include:
Focused
Intentional, aware
uncluttered - not wasted - got it all togetherness
Voluntary simplicity involves both inner and outer condition. It means singleness of purpose, sincerity and honestry within, as well as avoidance of exterior clustter, of many possessions irrelevant to the chief purpose of life. It means an ordering and guiding of our energyu and our desires, a partial restraint in some directions in order to secure greater abundance of life in other directions. It involves a deliberate organization of life for a putpose. (Richard Gregg 1)
The simple person is simple. straightforward, unaffected. Simplicity is freedom, lightness, transparency. Simplicity is spontaneity, joyous improvisation, unselfishness, detachment, a disdain for proving, winning, impressing
Simplicity is not duplicity, complexity or pretentiousness. It is not unawareness or stupidity
"Achieving the simple life is not something that can be done for people. It is something that people have to want, have to value, and have to bring about in their own lives." (Segal Page 23)
Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited
Beauchamp, Tom L and James F. Childress (2001) Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 5th Edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Comte-Sponville, Andre (2001) A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues, New York: henry holt and company
Elgin, Duane (1993) VoluntarySimplicity, Toward a Way of Life That is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich, Revised Edition, New York: William Morrow and Company
Segal, Jerome M (1999) Graceful Simplicity, New York: Henry Holt and Company
1. as found in Elgin 1993 Page 23