Akesis – Sybarisis

The cen­tral para­dox of my life will, I pre­dict, be the tan­dem sybarit­ic and ascetic zeit­geists with­in which I move and between which I can dis­cov­er no func­tion­al oppo­si­tion, how­ev­er coun­ter­in­tu­itive that may seem. To find vir­tu­al­ly noth­ing at odds in liv­ing both with extreme thrift and great indul­gence, hav­ing far in excess of need while con­sum­ing less than those in the bot­tom quin­tile. A para­dox for sure, but not one that is too dif­fi­cult to tease out if you avoid start­ing with for­mu­la­ic ide­olo­gies. Ours is an era that could be char­ac­ter­ized by a kind of fru­gal, low-key, wide­spread deca­dence, min­i­miz­ing con­sump­tion while pre­serv­ing and pro­long­ing the plea­sur­able­ness of yesterday’s prodi­gal­i­ty and sunk-costs. A set of cir­cum­stances that could only fol­low from the out­ra­geous sur­feit that pre­vened them… It’s an intrigu­ing time and one the poten­tial of which I’m sure we’ll squan­der through macro rather micro immoderateness.