But it wasn't until the start of the twentieth century that the rat race, as we currently recognize it, got under way. The man with the starting pistol was undoubtedly, for me at least, Frederick Winslow Taylor, the world's first management guru. All we want of them is to obey the orders that we give them, do what we say and do it quick. But so too is the desire to escape it, perhaps more now than ever. The theme resonates through much of our popular culture.
Terms come and go.
Terminology becomes trickier without the religious content. Its tenets were frugal consumption, ecological awareness and personal growth. Change your life and you can help change the world. Voluntary simplicity sounded all well and good in theory, but required seismic shifts of culture if it was to catch on in any significant way. In Western societies, nurtured on the belief that more, bigger and faster are almost always better, the idea of living better with less was largely anathema.