One must smile when Seneca, the ancient Roman and Stoic essayist, describes frugality. He does not want his chef to prepare too fancy a meal, he tells us, nor does he insist that his servants wear lavish clothing. No, says Seneca, he wants frugality.
The different between frugality and simplicity is the difference between quantity and quality. Our foods may be simple by culinary standards but they may represent ecological extravagance, waste, and destructiveness. Our clothing may not look ostentatious, but what havoc to land, air, water, resources, and other sentient beings does it represent? With a little reflection and information, perhaps even Seneca would understand the economic context of our lives.
A plastic trinket from a box-like retail warehouse may seem an exercise in frugality versus buying something else, but it is not. To produce that trinket, a global socio-economic exploitation and the same incalculable environmental damage is inevitable. Frugality is where quantity and short-term cost is the only criteria.
Simplicity accepts the limited intention of frugality but makes it holistic and qualitative. Where frugality is based on mass appeal and thoughtlessness, simplicity is based on individual values and conscious or mindful attention. As with any exercise in values, simplicity means knowing the true nature of a thing before we appropriate it. We want to know how it came into being, its history, who was involved in its crafting, and in what manner it came to us. This genealogy gives the object an opportunity to unfold itself into our consciousness, and we can accommodate ourselves to it as an enhancement to our lives.
Such a reflectiveness is not a fetish or a ritual, as is often the case with frugality. Rather, simplicity invites a mental check that puts a thing into perspective, just as we ourselves try to put ourselves into perspective regarding society, the world, and the universe.
Simplicity is the unfolding of the objects all around us, and our right thinking and being with them. With frugality we think we are beating the system and saving a few pennies as a reward, but at the foolish expense of the rest of the world, human and natural. With simplicity we drop the mask of acquisitiveness and make a relationship to the world of objects around us. Simplicity is a participation in values and an exchange of being.