In fact, more often just the opposite holds true. The plain life means the good life. Since moving to Japan, though, this lesson has not always been easy to put into practice. Here, as in the U.S., development has become a kind of religion, and the god of technology is now firmly in place alongside the traditional revered deities. For every benefit come drawbacks, and environmental degradation is one of the worst outcomes of the industrialized worlds high-tech, convenience store lifestyle.
Numerous products have a short lifespan and are then discarded.
Chemical waste and plastics go up in smoke daily. I put the phrase in quotes because its a misnomer. As writer and plain-living advocate Wendell Berry said of the phrase, I wouldn't use the word simple. I think I'm living more complexly. We soon realized, though, that practically everything we ate came packaged with some sort of plastic ramen in plastic bags, tofu in plastic containers, fruit in saran wrap, mushrooms on Styrofoam trays and foregoing all this involved major changes in our diet and a more complex way of life.