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Of course many of us should be working fewer hours, spending more time with loved ones. But on the other hand, why should we think that "simpler living," as presented, encourages cultivation of the family? Simon actually proposes consideration of celibacy (in that case the literal elimination of the family) because family life makes "simpler living" so very hard to pull off. But recent studies show that family life is basic to both moral and economic development, so this advice clearly seems self-defeating.1
Should we really think, as advocates of "simpler living" imply, that our economic life (especially as it relates to the global poor) is the primary point of reference for our Christian ethics? What then happens to our broad concept of Christian vocation? What about the intellectual and aesthetic realms of life? What of someone who feels herself called to become an artist, a research historian, a nuclear scientist, a geologist, a mountain climber, professional baseball player or golfer? Did Joe DiMaggio miss his calling? Tiger Woods, too?
If "simpler living" is offered only as a "counsel," then these avenues of calling may remain open to Christians. But if it is held as a moral "command" then it seems clear that they have to be closed. For (no matter how much money one gives away) the occupations themselves simply require immersion in either gratuitous personal interests or (to the poor) useless pleasures. And many—such as professional athletics—necessarily promote the very kinds of personal consumption that advocates of "simpler living" discourage and even condemn as morally evil.
Which leads to the most basic problem with presenting "simpler living" as a Christian moral "command." It is that the truest moral intuitions of its defenders are utilitarian, and its advocates invariably translate these intuitions into the moral norms of modern utilitarian ethics. The main principle of modern pragmatic utilitarianism (in short form) is that it is always immoral to enjoy our material resources when it is within our power to use them instead to meet the material needs of others, especially those who lack necessities. No doubt, as an intuition, it holds in many situations and circumstances, but it cannot hold as a normative principle for an ethics of capitalism or for a distinctly Christian ethic. The development of Simon's own argument is enough to show that it cannot do so.
In the crucial chapter where Simon seeks to answer the book's question in ethical terms, he turns to Peter Singer—the most famous (and notorious) contemporary utilitarian philosopher.2 Singer's writes of Dora from Brazil, who unwittingly hands off an orphaned boy for $200, buys her very first television, and then is horrified to learn that the people she gave the boy to are selling human organs on the black market. Dora immediately returns the TV and sets out to save the boy from his ghastly fate. But, Singer asks, what if she had not done so? What if she had simply gone on, unfazed, enjoying her newly prized possession? Then, says Singer, Dora's enjoyment of the TV would have been equal to murder. And this, says Singer, exactly describes the moral character of our common enjoyments.
Simon wholeheartedly approves this rigorously utilitarian argument. "Singer's words are upsetting," Simon writes, "because they tell the truth." To purchase that wide-screen television you've been eyeing at Best Buy, he suggests, is morally indistinct from taking someone's life (though neither Singer nor Simon indicates how wide is "wide.")
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