My mom (and, by extension, my brother and I) grew up in a subculture of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) that places strong emphasis on the Testimony of Simplicity.

I have always found that Testimony to be morally unassailable but spiritually flawed (in the sense that it lacks soul) because it devalues the pursuit of magnificence.

While pounding nails just now, I was listening to NPR on my crazy AM/FM/MP3 hearing-protector earmuffs, and I ran across a reference to magnificence as a cardinal virtue in Nicomachean Ethics. Huzzah! An ethical system I might want to fit into!

Fortunately, my neighbor on the other side of the fence is a scholar of Aristotle and Nicomachus. I will now bake him some cookies and run over there for a conversation.

_{Image CC-BY-NC-SA by Ibán}