Live Simply, Think Freely

“The American people are free to do exactly what they are told.”

- Ward Churchill

Question the media and you're a conspiracy kook. Criticize the government and you're a Russian agent. Oppose war and you hate your country. Defend Palestinians and you're an anti-Semite. Suggest cooperation and you are a dangerous socialist.

Demand a better, simpler world and you are an enemy of the state.

The biggest threat of all is thinking for one's self. Thinkers will be dealt with in the harshest of terms, to be reprogrammed into drones, serfs, peasants, consumers - to be used and abused and disposed of as the establishment sees fit.

Around the world, governments have claimed ever greater control over, and enforcement of, ever more private aspects of our lives.

Edward Bernays, pioneer in the field of public relations, in his 1928 book called Propaganda, said:

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. 

Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. 

We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.

Independent thought is the only way to break free of the ruthless manipulation that turns limitless lives into a ground hog day loop of earning/borrowing/spending, and trying to keep up.

It is difficult to find the time to think in a regular 40 hour work week, which is exactly the idea behind it. They need us to occupy 100% of our time in our struggle to keep up, to survive. Most of us have little time or energy to think, let alone to push back against the mind oppressors.

Choosing to live more simply allows one to work less, leaving more time for important things like thinking. This may be the most subversive thing about simplicity (besides gardening), and the main reason it is such a threat to the powers that be.

Unplugging from the constant barrage of control and surveillance may be hard, but it is not impossible, and is certainly worth doing. Living more simply is an excellent start.

Start your simpler life today, and break free of the pushers of propaganda, and the thought police that enforce compliance with it.


Debt is freedom. Simple is complex. Too much is not enough. Depression is happiness. Endless war is perpetual peace.

“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of the man who can fabricate it.”  

- Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)