Frugality

To deal with the explosion of information available to us, we’re told to avoid the filter bubble by seeking out a variety of sources. Or we’re told to pursue a low information diet. But we’re also told that to be informed is one of the duties of citizenship. What are we to do? Here are some other options:

1. Stop caring about what doesn’t affect you. There’s apparently a Syrian refugée crisis in Europe. It’s unfortunate; but I won’t read about it. What good does it do? Nothing. So why bother reading about it? My sphere of interest should coincide with my sphere of influence. I feel bad about their situation; but all I can do it live my own life as simply as I can.

In the popular sci-fi movie series “The Matrix”, a handful of humans discover that the perception of reality has been artificially engineered by computer software. By taking the red pill¹ a person can be released from the deception, thereby seeing things as they truly are. About material “stuff”, I’ve had the same sort of epiphany.

Three years ago, we decided we needed to build a house. We weren’t pleased with our previous neighbourhood; and we happened on a piece of land that seemed to fit our needs. We began working with a builder to design a house. Despite our intent to build a smaller house, the design ended up being considerably larger than the house we were already in. Everything was to be custom-designed and fabricated. All of the fixtures were selected. We had spent hundreds of hours thinking about the designs, going to meetings, reading books, looking at photographs. It was an enormous investment of time and a significant investment of money.