REMEMBER the “Voluntary Simplification Movement”? The trend-spotters fingered it a couple of years ago and Style editors duly responded with features. Practitioners of Voluntary Simplification, we learned, threw out their microwaves and talked a lot about “stopping to smell the roses.” Their goal was to break their dependence on machines that go ping! and revert to simple household items like scrub boards, clothes lines, carpet sweepers, rug beaters, and, if they could find one, a zinc box to replace the fridge.
They seemed to be a composite of Luddites, nostalgia freaks, and environmentalists, but a closer examination revealed some stark differences. Take the matter of automatic transmissions versus stick shifts: Luddites hate both.
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