We wake to a phone that can reach almost anyone on the planet in seconds, for next to nothing. We step into a hot shower that runs for as long as we like. We drive, or get driven, wherever we need to go, and on the way we can order dinner, check the weather on another continent and catch up on a series.
Not long ago, much of this would have seemed remarkable. A call abroad was something you planned and paid for. Plenty of households heated water on the stove for a bath, and many had no car at all.
These are real gains, and few of us would give them back. Yet the list of things we feel we 'need' keeps growing. The phone wants replacing every couple of years. The car should be newer, the kitchen bigger, the holiday further away.
We work longer hours to pay for it all, and we tell ourselves the reason is a better life: a happier one, a more comfortable one, perhaps a more secure one.
But what if a good share of that effort is aimed at the wrong target? What if the extra things we strive for add less to our lives than we expect, and cost us more in worry, time and attention than we notice?
It seems that more and more people are asking some version of this question, and that a simple life has become something many now want rather than something they put up with. The idea is far from new, though, and there is perhaps no better philosopher to turn to than Epicurus.
That may sound odd. His name survives in the word "epicure", a person devoted to fine food and wine, and he is usually filed under philosophers of pleasure. He was one. But the pleasure he cared about was mostly the absence of trouble: a body free from pain, and a mind free from fear and anxiety.
Around 300 BCE he lived with a circle of friends in a modest house and garden outside Athens, and ancient accounts describe him as content with plain bread and water, with a small pot of cheese counted as a feast.
For Epicurus, the way to that kind of contentment ran through understanding what we want. In his Letter to Menoeceus and the Principal Doctrines , he sorts our desires into three kinds.
1. Natural and necessary desires
These are the desires we cannot ignore without harm: food when we are hungry, water when we are thirsty, shelter, warmth and rest. Epicurus also put friendship and peace of mind in this group, since he saw them as necessary for happiness itself, and not just for staying alive. The good news, in his view, is that these are easy to satisfy.
Today that might mean a filling meal, a safe place to sleep, a decent coat in winter and a handful of people you trust enough to call when something goes wrong.
2. Natural but unnecessary desires
These are variations on our natural needs. They don’t remove any more pain than the basic version does; they only change the flavour of the pleasure. Hunger is natural, but needing it met by a tasting menu rather than a bowl of rice is not.
Modern examples are everywhere: the craft beer in place of a glass of water, the rainfall shower head over ordinary hot water, perhaps a goose-down duvet when an ordinary one would keep you just as warm.
The trouble starts when we make our happiness depend on these things, because the more we rely on them, the more their absence hurts.
3. Empty desires
The third kind are neither natural nor necessary. Epicurus thought they grow out of mistaken beliefs about what we need, and he listed wealth beyond what we can use, fame, power and status among them.
Their defining feature is that they have no natural limit.
A meal leaves you full, but there is no point at which you have enough followers, enough money in the abstract or enough admiration. Today we might think of chasing likes, buying a watch mainly so that people notice it, wanting a promotion for the title rather than the work, or feeling we have to match the holidays our friends post online.
So what would Epicurus make of us?
Set our modern list of wants against these three categories and something stands out. A great deal of what we work so hard for falls into the second and third groups, while the things Epicurus believed mattered most cost very little.
He probably wouldn’t tell us to throw out the phone or sell the car. Epicurus didn’t think hardship was good for its own sake. His point was about dependence.
In that same letter, he argues that the people who enjoy luxury most are those who feel the least need for it, and that natural appetites are easy to satisfy while the others are hard to satisfy. He adds that getting used to plain food keeps us healthy and leaves us better able to enjoy richer fare when it comes along.
Seen that way, a simple life can still include some luxuries. What changes is that our contentment doesn’t rest on them, and we notice when a want has turned into a need.
That may be the most useful thing Epicurus offers now. He doesn’t give us a figure for how much is enough. He gives us a question to ask before the next purchase or the next push for more: is this something we need, something we would enjoy but could happily do without, or something we want mainly because other people will see it? Most of the time, answering that honestly is enough to make the choice for us.