Simplicity has become so elusive and desirable because the modern age is so troublingly, infinitely noisy and abundant. Industrialisation has made a vast array of products available to almost anyone at very low cost. We are bathed in options, surrounded by too much information with too many competing visions of happiness. We crave simplicity not because we are simple, but because we are drowning in complexity.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 6)