The Oppressive Gospel of ‘Minimalism’
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
You can call this "sour grapes" or "making a virtue of necessity", depending on how generous you're feeling, but I think there's more to it than just posing.
But you have to keep constantly vigilant. Much like training for a marathon, where every day has at least some portion of it taken up by training, each meal involves making good decisions, and kiss your Sundays goodbye because you won't be doing much after that 20 mile run other than taking a nap. The minimalist weighs every potential purchase, has to figure out to get to that party without a car, has to figure out how to cook supper with a single spork. And like anything that takes up a significant portion of your day, you'll talk about it...constantly. At least for the first marathon. After that, you realize that no one else cares but you, so you learn to dial it back.
So like Paleo, CrossFit, and marathons, let's circle back in a few year as you suggest and see how it's going once the novelty wears off. Because all of the chatter of "minimalism" strikes me as n00bs all fired up about their new "hobby", and they'll quiet down when the new wears off and they want to watch a movie on something bigger than 10".
I pared down a lot of what I owned simply because I didn't use it and the clutter bothered me, plus I had to move apartments by myself.
At first, it was really great. No clutter, only what I needed, super basic life.
But then you walk into your apartment where you only have a (simple) bed and desk, maybe a few pieces of clothing on the ground and you feel empty and depressed. It isn't because I want stuff... I actually really don't like buying things (that is another aspect: I have major anxiety around money so I hoard money, which is convenient for a "minimalist". Think "money anorexic") It just feels empty. Like another poster mentioned: it consumes you. You constantly have to consider the space / minimalism implications of buying something. It is weird to describe.
Yeah, all of this sounds overly dramatic but I do feel sad when I look at my apartment some times.
My partner is pushing me to buy a couch because they don't like laying in my bed when they come over. Also it is a little embarrassing to pull out the sleeping bag and air mattress when I have guests come over...
It is the same when decluttering. I don't know about what other blog posts have written about it. I decluttered in the same way I meditate: the feelings that arises when you contemplate throwing something away are the various stories, narratives, and attachments you have about that particular object. They are coming to the surface as a chance for you to really examine whether it is necessary or not. For example, someone might buy an object to fill up a room, but they are not even aware of the deeper motivation of staving off loneliness. That loneliness does not surface up until something such as decluttering comes up. The internal attachment you have to an external object creates a kind of feedback loop to keep that object in that place, and anchors your memories. Stir up your possessions, and you also stir up your psyche.
The koan "do you own these things or do these things own you" still apply. If you are obsessing abut what you buy in the space, then these objects -- or rather, what the lack of objects says about you and what social signals they give to other people owns you. That is confining to your spirit. It's not real freedom.
Minimalism, I think, is a great aspiration but I personally don't think is something you should try to live as a lifestyle.
Time will tell I guess.
For me, good minimalism is selling things I haven't used in a long time, or furniture that doesn't "fit" in the floorplan of my house (for example, no one needs two kitchen tables). Stuff that just occupies space.
Bad minimalism is getting rid of decorations (art, photos, plants) and key furniture.
I want my house to feel like someone lives there, so a bare room with a laptop in the middle is OUT.
A much easier razor than "is this minimal or not" is, "am I going to wind up selling this in six months because I don't use it, god that'll be a pain"
I find it better suited as a tool to examine your life and peel away things that aren't needed. That extra space and lightness that is made gives you freedom to do more of what you want and less of things you are forced into.
I personally started minimizing my wardrobe. By having radically fewer individual pieces of clothing, then I can more consciously consume. Case in point, if I have 20 pairs of jeans that I randomly picked up because they looked nice or more likely, I was bored and wanted to distract myself with shopping, then I was much less likely to buy something from a brand that treats it's workers and the environment responsibly; something I personally care about.
I would like to save money so that I can have the freedom to travel for extended periods while I'm still young. Getting rid of alot of things I didn't use but, were taking up space in my apartment allowed me to see just how much space was taken up by things I didn't really need and more importantly weren't adding value to my life.
Ultimately, minimalism for me is trying to give myself the room and the lightness to reach a certain escape velocity from the life I feel I have to live just to survive in my environment to the life I tell myself that I want to have.
It's easy to say, if I had the means, I would travel full time or I would bike across the United States or I would hike the PCT or Appalachian Trail. It's almost a comfort to say, I can't afford it, or I could never take the time off, or what would I do with my apartment for 3 months? It's entirely another thing all together to watch yourself answer those questions and resolve those roadblocks and to see if you really have the will to be the person you tell yourself you really are on the inside but, because of circumstances you don't have to opportunity to be.
Alot of people of financial privilege find appeal in this minimalist life only because it's easier and clearer to see that having everything or almost everything you want doesn't actually make you as happy as you expect you it will. At a certain point there are many people who feel working hard to get more stuff is a losing bargain.
Having less stuff and (for me at least) less carrying costs for having so much stuff, such a nice apartment, such a nice car, so many nights out, so many ways to keep up with the Jones' was something I gladly shrugged off once I saw how much of a difference it was making in my life.
Will I end up a hyper-minimalist in the end? I don't honestly know but, I do know that what I have done so far has impacted my life in real and amazing ways. Having less stuff isn't magic. What is magic is how your life grows when you give it space.
By going to a system of clothes, I have both fewer clothes, less time to shop for them and more outfit options while spending less time wondering what combination I would wear.
Encouraged by that, I'm planning on moving out of what seems like my huge luxury apartment into a smaller one both to have less space to fill up and also to save money.
Saving money and making a plan to confront who I really am. Am I the traveling, freewheeling, wake up in a different country, lover of the outdoors person that I tell myself I am or will I shy away from the new back toward the familiar? Does that even actually make a difference to who I am?
All of those questions can't be answered unless I change my life in an effort to answer them and that's what minimalism is doing for me, allowing me to start answering those questions.
It's at that point you realize that you need to make your own fun and creativity. You're free to start adding creativity to your life in the form of music, art, writing, etc.
I don't know why, but to me that image feels lonely, not empty.
Unless you're in SF, y'all forced all the artists out so there aren't any local ones anymore.
I also have a painting from a street painter in Vietnam (you know, a guy that paints generic "traditional" art for turists) and I love it.
Maybe try treating it as an aesthetic preference rather than a fundamentalist religion and you'll be happier.
Over the weekend the FT published an interview with the famed Japanese architect Tadao Ando https://www.ft.com/content/e0112c50-9f55-11e6-891e-abe238dee.... A wonderful read, and featuring a quote which seems apt:
“Architecture has a function. But at the same time a home is a home for the spirit”
Consciously making a decision before deciding to buy a new thing is a laudable practice; it's the mindless spending of money that really kills you.
It is said that it took Steve Jobs ten years to buy a couch. Without making a value judgement one way or the other on that long decision, I'll just point out that in the end, he did buy that couch.
For me it was largely getting rid of stuff that I simply didn't need. I don't think it's a positive interpretation of minimalism to try to own as little as feasible, even if you don't really want it.
http://khanism.org/perspective/minimalism/
..and I had scaled down originally when I started my journey and moved to Australia. It's easy when you have flatmates because almost everything you own is in your room and I could always pack up almost all of it.
After 11 months of backpacking though, it really wore on me. Being in hostels and hearing people snore every night. Even when I was staying with friends for a month or two, it was still different from having a place of my own.
Now that I have a place to myself again, I just see all the just I've accumulated in such a short time and I remind myself I need to put stuff on eBay soon. I buy things in terms of wondering when and how much I'll sell it for (I just think of it as renting stuff).
I have a feeling I'll always scale down ever few years. Next trip won't be as extreme as two backpacks. I'll probably buy a car (sold mine 5 years ago) and road trip this time.
I will say this tough: that 11 months was totally worth it. I've never felt more okay with my life, healthy and happy about the world. I see engineer jobs as just a paycheck; saving up to see if I can sustain myself longer next time.
Having less stuff is really freeing. It was easy for me to travel, change apartments, let friends stay at my place etc. I had to get creative when I needed something for only a little while. For example, I bought various lenses for my DSLR that I rarely used. So I sold most of them and then in future, I would buy a used lens off Craig's List and then re-sell it after I was done with it.
Most of my hobbies didn't involve a lot of tools. Photography, videography, video games, books, painting, running, and of course, programming.
Now as a married man with a house, it is really hard to avoid collecting things. I used to sell anything that I didn't use often. I have so many things at home at I rarely touch like guitars, exercise equipment, different kitchen utensils. And to be honest, we are not hoarders, in fact, we still own less stuff than most people we know.
It has been 4 years of homeownership and I am still not used to owning so many things. A lot of this clutter actually really bothers me. Many times I go to the kitchen to cook something but cannot find the right pan that I just give up and eat frozen dinner.
So I have to say if you are naturally inclined to be minimalist than it would be great for you otherwise you may miss things or feel empty.
You didn't really reply to the parent comment. They said much minimalism is due to people living in small spaces. I live in Montreal, where up until very recently I didn't have that much space.
At one point, things were too full. So I systematically reduced my possessions. Sold some, gave others away. What did I do with the extra space?
* I bought certain items in bulk. Paper towels, toilet paper, cleaning supplies, etc, thus reducing my trips to the store * I got more useful things. Over the years I had to add more business equipment. I had space for it based on decluttering.
I do periodic declutters whenever things start piling up. Mostly, what happens is something was once useful, but then no longer is.
Using the principles people talk about in minimalist posts, I've been able to reduce and better organize my living space. But I still have a decent amount of stuff. It's just on average more useful than it used to be.
[0]: https://zenhabits.net/
[1]: http://mnmlist.com/minimalist-faqs/I don't understand the people that are content with this kind of self-imposed "I can do with just the bare essentials" lifestyle. Unless you're traveling, or doing something of that nature, I am generally distrustful of people who can be gone in an hour. There's something about this kind of lifestyle (I've known several minimalist people well) that is synonymous with fear of commitment and general instability in their life.
A lot of people I met have adopted the lifestyle because it's a learned behavoir from either years of instability, an off-beat childhood, or some kind of abusive relationship. Human beings need stuff around them, and it's perfectly normal to accumulate stuff if you've lived somewhere any length of time.
On the other end of the spectrum of minimalism would of course be hoarding. Not saying that either lifestyle is "bad", but you wouldn't call hoarding exactly normal, would you?
Martial arts, computer games, books, TV, programming, art of various sorts, creativity of various sorts (writing, 3D, digital painting, etc), just off the top of my head.
Unless you consider a mobile phone or a laptop with a teeny tiny screen acceptable for computer games, tv and programming but that means you're not getting very deeply into it.
Now that I think of it, these aren't anywhere near my hobbies that take more space/stuff even. For every hobby that doesn't need a lot of stuff, there's one that needs many kgs of equipment.
You put the above very nicely. Old school we'd call this type of behavior "weird". (If the person was wealthy we'd call them eccentric.) Bottom line is I would guess that anyone who adopts this lifestyle has something missing in their life and is looking to make a drastic change in order to find 'the answer'. Depression as certainly the obvious possibility. Unless there is a specific reason.
And there is nothing wrong with 'stuff'. I have a nice car or two. I enjoy driving it it makes me happy. If it doesn't make someone else happy that's fine but I go with what gives me positive feelings (even if a set of knifes that I don't use) and leave it at that.
Climbers have all kinds of equipment. Music production requires recording and sound absorbing gear, and also playback. Programmers used to have plenty of books and extra computers - nowadays will almost certainly have Arduinos and Raspberry Pis around (and gaming gear). I don't know much about digital art, but I strongly suspect most of their practitioners also practice the non-digital real works counterparts.
All you need for climbing is some shoes and a chalk bag. Possibly a crash pad. You're a hobbyist, and even pros (see: Alex Honnold, or anyone that primarily does bouldering) can climb with only that.
All you need to make music is some software, a playback device, and possibly a microphone (purely electronic music is a thing, of course). It's a hobby, you're not a professional producer.
Don't needlessly raise the barrier to entry.
Because maybe your style is best complimented by a Strat running through a Big Muff Pi into a Fender Twin?
And then there's the tuner, cables, guitar stand, cleaning & care products, a good case, a toolkit for making adjustments, maybe a few other pedals, some chord books or tuitional material.
And of course, most serious players will have more than one instrument anyway...
And as you enter your 40's you'll need a Telecaster too.
Also odds are good you'll be in a music store at some point and play a Music Man or high-end Jackson or Charvel for the first time and realize one of those are a necessity too.
This is if you're a strict minimalist.
Caught me off guard, still laughing :)
There's plenty of people here saying they work 60 - 80 hours weeks. Maybe they really don't have hobbies or interests, and don't get friends on their house (I've seen plenty of people that only go "out").
If I had no time to use anything on my home, I'd call it clutter too, and would probably be happy seeing it go away (I'm happy seeing things go away most of the time already, but have plenty of them).
Well, it's kind of a dick move to have people over frequently or until late when you live with two or three roommates. Which is how most people I know in SF and NYC live.
1) I sold my car when I moved here, and I usually walk or take Uber.
2) I sold many of my clothes when I got here (because my closet is small) and now use Rent the Runway Unlimited to have a revolving supply of designer clothes.
3) I do not have a washer or dryer so I use an app called Cleanly to pick up my clothes, wash, and return them.
4) I do not have a dishwasher or a microwave, so I never bought many dishes/utensils, and I order most meals I eat at home from seamless or PostMates.
5) I don't have a vaccum, a broom, a mop, a dustpan, cleaning supplies, etc so I use an app called Handy that sends a cleaner that has these things to my apartment every two weeks.
So, technically I own less things. But only because I can afford to pay to rent them (uber, rent the runway) or pay someone else to make up for not owning them (postmates/cleanly/handy). I imagine that the same is true for many of the people who live the lifestyle the author is describing. So in a way, I can see her point: we're not really minimalist, we're just rich enough to not have to own stuff.
But on the other hand, isn't it cool that technology has created a world where I don't have to own all this stuff to have a convenient, clean, fashionable life? I am not even a minimalist but I do think that the aesthetic idea of minimalism has influenced some of the technological advances that have led to some of the most innovative "shared economy" and peer to peer service companies. And if the people who came up with the ideas for these apps want to live in a white apartment with succulents, who cares?
How much does that cost you on a month to month basis? I have no point of reference due to living out in the burbs but my knee jerk is "jesus that must cost so much overhead" and I'd like to see if that's a false assumption or not.
For level playing field/full disclosure, my list looks something like: 1. Car costs: ~40$/month for gas (mostly bus), 20k amortized over 10 years of ownership ~160$/month (assuming no major maitanance, given how little I drive) 2. Clothes: ~20$/month (assuming I spend <100$ yearly on clothes which is probably accurate, probably avg. 1 pair of shoes + one full outfit a year, and that's likely a high estimate) 3. Washer/dryer: This one is hard since it's merged with the water/power bill, but as a point of reference I pay about 100$ water and 120$ power monthly for a 3b2b house. 4. See above re: utilities, food probably comes to ~200$ per month buying at costco (two trips monthly of ~150-200 each for the wife and I) 5. Cleaning: "free" (time isn't free yadda yadda)
All together probably between 650-700$ monthly on non-mortgage necessities, the largest portions of which are car+utilities+groceries in relatively even thirds, which is a hard bar to push lower for me so I'm looking for ways to be creative. :)
2. Rent the Runway: $150 a month
3. Laundry: ~$40 a month + Dry cleaning (can be the in 100s)
4. Water is payed for by the building, electricity averages $100 a month.
5. Food: This one is tougher. If I order pad thai, I can eat it for two days and its $6 a day. If I order lobster pasta, its $40 and I eat it all right then! According to mint I spend $500 a month on average. But some of what I pay for is in cash so it could be more.
It's definitely not cheaper to live like this but it's much less friction! :)
Food I can definitely see, and if I would splurge this is probably where I'd do it. Those uber costs though, - not having your own car as well seems like a much harder trade.
You're not a 'minimalist' - you're 'lazy'. Ha - sorry, I'm kidding. A 'Millenialminimal' ... ha.
You will one day (soon) discover that food is part of life, and you'll enjoy making it, and having it around. Eating and preparing food is as old as time, it's part of what living is for, many cultures revolve around that. I think it's embedded in our nature, so my bet is that you'll feel that pull within a couple of years.
What you're doing is related to - but not quite - 'minimalism' - you should invent a word for it :).
Don't forsee the cooking enjoyment thing, particularly with travel schedule, lack of dishwasher, excess of stairs (5th floor walkup + grocery bags=sad), and the fact that I literally can only make scrambled eggs, but maybe you're right.
I think the lifestyle is definitely related to minimalism--I'm not outsourcing all of these things because I don't have time, but I also wouldn't consider myself a particularly lazy person. I simply like the feeling that my life is a well-oiled machine--everything is handled, no laundry folding necessary. It gives me less things to worry about so I can spend more time working, reading, exercising, writing... (and yes, sometimes, watching netflix).
I think my point was that the concept of minimalism (owning less things, being responsible for less choice, etc) has led to a bevy of innovations that are actively freeing up time for me to use my brain more, if I so choose--and isn't that the dream of technology, in the first place?
As it happens, I have a laundry basket and a scale handy, so I'll call one load 10lbs and I do, oh, 3 loads a week. That makes the washer/dryer 20 weeks.
Our current washer and dryer are 8 years old. I'd say that amortizes pretty well.
[1] https://cleanly.com/pricing/
[2] https://www.lowes.com/pl/Popular-ge-tl-energy-star-pair/4294...
Minimalism is having one very good knife that works extremely well instead of 10 that work so terribly they never get used "just in case".
The poser proudly boasts that they freed their lives from the tyranny of owning knives, but doesn't mention that they substituted eating out all the time for cooking.
I'm not really joking - in Taiwan we ditched the fridge and gave up on cooking. Ended up saving ~50$ USD/mo because it turns out it's just cheaper to eat and drink out there than it is to cook in, combined with the fridge and stove electric savings.
EDIT: I think it's worth noting that electricity was disproportionately expensive compared to other costs of living when I was there.
Am I right it assuming that going out was also relatively cheap?
A fridge uses something like 30 kWh per month. At 10 US cents per kWh, that's around 3 dollars per month.
Even if the fridge is very old and eats twice or three times as much electricity, you can't really save 50 dollars per month from that. Electric stove is not much different, either. You must have miscalculated something.
(According to [0], consumer price for electriticy in Taiwan is 9 cents per kWh. Cheaper than US, cheaper than in all EU countries except Bulgaria and Romania.)
[0] http://www.eiu.com/industry/article/1670907751/taiwan-electr...
However, it still doesn't come even close to 10 $/month for a fridge.
[1]: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/... [2]: http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/refrigerators.html
I have a santoku and a paring knife. I wouldn't know what to do with more knives. Of course I don't cook gourmet meals either.
Aside: I also used to cook for a living, and these days my "roll" is just an 8" chef, a 6" utility (which for me doubles as a boning knife), a 4" paring and a steel.
Turns out, a framing hammer is not a substitute for a tack hammer, and the axe blade on a roofing hammer is more useful for roofing than a claw.
It's hardly more than a design trend. Similar to naturalism in the 1970's, when the walls of your home and your television set had a wooden finish.
>We misinterpret material renunciation, austere aesthetics and blank, emptied spaces as symbols of capitalist absolution, when these trends really just provide us with further ways to serve our impulse to consume more, not less.
Not really. It's more the fact that a guy called Steve Jobs reanimated a dying computer business into a global mega-cult, wholeheartedly embracing and thereby popularizing ideas of people like Dieter Rams.
While some alternatives to minimalism would be nice, I think what the author is (rightly) dissatisfied with is our economic system and the exchange of goods, not the actual way in which those goods are selected and consumed.
Oh, I always wondered why that was. Now I know why, the aesthetic trend of naturalism.
I suppose thats one way to look at it, but a counter example. I'm getting into hardware debugging/hacking/etc... so I've a need for an oscilloscope and a logic analyzer. I could get an el cheapo oscilloscope for about $450, and a logic analyzer for about another 400. But then both of these are separate, and the logic analyzer depends on my computer as well.
So instead, I'm saving up for a Rohde and Schwarz MSO oscilloscope that while much more expensive at about ~$3,000 with all the options, takes up less space and does everything. (it also has no fan which i'm huge on)
Yes this is arguably minimalism, but i'd argue the trend is more rooted in modernism of the 20's. I'll spend more to reduce clutter, I don't really have a glut of space in which to put it all.
Minimalism is great, but it makes you either completely dependent on others and services for your everyday needs - cooking, cleaning, repairing, making, hobbies - or means you can't do or have those things. IN cities like SF and NY, I have many friends that just rely on apps and services to get stuff done, and would rather pay the bike shop $100 for a tune up than buy $100 worth of tools and never need to pay for a tune up again. They are often the same friends that are very specialized in their fields or in single hobbies and don't tend to look outside of those things they do well.
I reject that philosophy completely. In general, I find minimalism fights with experimentation, creativity, and serendipity. The more you try, and the more you learn, the better off you are, I think.
Take this example: I recently bought a drone. I didn't know anything much about drones except for a few reviews before buying one. If I had been a minimalist, I would have considered that a drone would further clutter my office (very cluttered already), and potentially would be hard to resell given how fast the technology advances. My risk then is having a drone I don't like and taking some financial loss on something I didn't enjoy. As someone who is not a minimalist, my worries were that it would be hard to fly, or that I would regret not getting a different drone. As it happens, the latter is true, and I likely will take some financial loss in selling the one I bought, but by happy accident, I am now writing and researching commercial drone use for work and using the drone I have to prepare for getting licensed as a commercial drone pilot. I didn't anticipate there being any connection to my work when I got into it, but because I did I ended up gaining some benefits I wouldn't have otherwise had. (it also turns out that I have most of the equipment from woodworking and metalworking to make my own drones, so I'm looking into that angle as well now).
The contents of your living area is a reflection of the contents of your mind. Memories inside of you are attached to the external objects. A disorganized room tends to be a reflection of a disorganized mind. I've seen myself and others leave trash on the floor for months, because it is anchored to some piece of trash internally that one is reluctant to get rid of.
This stuff has more to do with your experience as a consciousness rather than social signaling. The article here, and many of the comments here discusses minimalism as social signaling. Yet the people who originated the ascetic practices got rid of stuff not as a response to social trends, but as part of their personal practice to pare away the wrapping in their _consciousness_ and find their true selves. Going against the social grain is a powerful way to detach your identification. Yet if you blindly follow minimalism or boroque as a social trend because other people are, then you're still jumping from one attachment to the next.
Another major simplification I've done was to dress almost the same everyday. I own multiple items of the same clothes. All my tshirts are the same, all my socks/underwear are the same. I also buy the same shoes and jeans again and again. I look better and I feel much better!
I also quit all social media except LinkedIn and HN and stopped reading the news.
The thing I'll try next is to eat the same meals everyday. Maybe it won't work but I'll try it.
I would also like to live in a bedroom with not much more than a futon and a desk. But it's going to be hard because my girlfriend doesn't share my enthusiasm.
This is anecdotal, take it with skepticism if you want, but I regard this changes as some of the best decisions I made in my life.
At least in my n=1 experience, it's not that bad. Just have to accept that 99% of the stuff will be your girlfriend's. One positive is that she'll have difficult time complaining to you that you need to clean up, since it'll always be her mess.
In my n=1 experience, this is an assumption that won't necessarily be borne out in practice.
I moved to Shanghai a while back and sold / gave away / disposed of most of my earthly possessions. The really tough one for me was my books. I had 12 large boxes which I had been collecting since college and donated the entire set to a local library. Once the truck drove away I remember looking around at the empty bookshelves and having a very odd combination of sadness and freedom.
Once I got to Shanghai I bought 5 black Uniqlo t-shirts, 5 Airism undershirts, a bunch of boxers, a bunch of red socks, and that was my new closet. Was a wild feeling. I love it.
Of course, good luck getting the New York Times to tell that story. Why demonize the landlord when you can demonize the person he kicked out?
People who are truly unburdened by their possessions do not need to spend much time thinking about them.
It might not work for everyone, but it works for me.
Clearing your mind and physical space is something every one should strive for in my opinion but there is no use in this ultimate minimalism where you are living with no furniture.
I'm trying to figure out why minimalism gets such a negative reaction from people. Is it because aesthetic minimalism is too popular on instagram/tumblr, and now it's cool to hate on the popular thing? No one's forcing you to get rid of your stuff, no one's forcing you to read minimalism blogs.
Pretty much 99% (I made that number up; pretty much everyone) of the people are controlled by impulses and confuse them for their real selves. I have seen people who identify themselves as minimalist do the same -- though they might be a slave to an idea rather than to a physical object. I've seen myself slip into that frame from time to time.
Depending on who I talk to about this, I might get a thoughtful response, or an angry response. But yeah, unless you are going to be impeccably honest about yourself, you're likely to be a slave to your possession and a consumerist sheep and don't know it.
Yet at the same time, within each person, buried under all those layers of consumerist sheep, is an amazing being. It is rare for someone to actualize that, but it's there. If you pay attention, you can see it. And it has nothing to do with your tastes, likes, wants, desires, fears, ambitions, goals, passions, possessions, profession, race, gender, creed, politics, morality, or personality for that matter. This amazing self has nothing to do with the conditioned or social self.
And for some reason, people get offended when I dismiss their conditioned self. For me, it is, "hey, look at this amazing being underneath all of that," and the response is, "How dare you! I like my conditioned self just fine, thank you." "Uh, sure, ok..."
Consider that maybe instead of 99% of people being consumerist sheep, you do not possess the knowledge or authority to judge accurately when the actions of others are impulsive, or in service to a different ideal.
I believe that maybe stripped of all my possessions, socializations, and thought patterns you might indeed find some foundational, unformed version of me. However, in finding that thing, you would have stripped away many of the structures and artifices that I have constructed myself out of. You would find something that was more like an alpha-version, in potentia, stateless. That may be what you want, but it would be incomplete compared to the version of me you would meet in real life.
You are confusing your actualization with your identity. What you think of as your "real self" isn't. What you are saying here is the mainstream view of what someone's authentic self is. If you and I make a bet to talk to 100 random strangers in an arbitrary city, likely, all of those 100 people will agree with you and not with me. That's fine with with me.
I do not identify myself as a software engineer. Software engineering is a skill I have (for now), and it is a role I adopt. It is a profession I presently have. But this is not me. Skills fade, roles will retire, professions will disappear. I remain. When the time comes, the time comes. That time will come for you as well as everyone else.
This is something that meditators and mystics have been saying consistently for a while. I am not the first to say this and I won't be the last. This is something discovered anew for each person that dives into it. Not everyone is exploring this and I don't expect people to. This does not have anything to do with knowledge, authority, or judgement. People are more impulsive than they think they are, and so long as someone is owned their possessions, socialization, and thought patterns, that person is not acting freely.
Stripped of all your possessions, socializations, and thought patterns is something far more amazing. This doesn't have to do with what "I want", but has to do with your natural self.
No one is making you strip yourself of possessions, socializations, or thought patterns right now, or ever. You are welcomed to think like this and act like you are, and neither require mine's or anyone else's judgement or approval.
If so, how can the self be anything but the collection of patterns, behaviors, and memories, as seen at a particular moment, that, starting with the initial genetics, have accumulated thus far during a person's life? Through continual interaction with the universe, the accumulation (the "self") constantly changes, as each moment passes by.
Occasionally, these changes result in new behaviors that others might describe as "becoming a new person" -- this does not mean that some hidden potential self was finally activated.
If you are speaking highly metaphorically, then that is a different matter, of course.
Rational materialism is a powerful frame, but it is not complete in and of itself. "How can the self be anything but the collection of patterns, behaviors and memories" -- all those things, patterns, behaviors, and memories arises, and will eventually passes. Only awareness remains. You can test this empirically for yourself (though not necessarily for other people).
It isn't that there is a hidden potential self is finally activated. That true self was already present before the conditioning started, and is still present.
I am not speaking metaphorically.
"You would find something that was more like an alpha-version, in potentia, stateless." and in relation to what you were talking about with actualization.
This is addressed in medieval, classical Tantra, specifically the philosophy (the View) of transcendental non-dual Shaiva Tantra. Before encountering that, I was struck with that paradox of seeking that "stateless, in potentia". Yet the little bit of reading I did (via Christopher Wallis's Tantra Illuminated) shows that classical Tantra has powerful answers to the concerns you raise. Despite being hundreds of years old, the classical Tantra View addresses ills we have yet to resolve from modernity and post-modernity. And it does it in a way _without_ advocating extreme austerity and asceticism that seems to be the trend in Western Buddhism these days. It favors beauty, passion, and yeah, very much so self-actualization, stuff that your typical Vipassana practitioner will attempt to eject from their life.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure how accessible that philosophy is. I have difficulty talking about insight meditation and mindfulness to people (and your response is very typical) much less something like Tantra which requires a sufficiently clear mind, or at least some sort of experiences to really start grokking it.
I totally get the idea of curating the ideas, beliefs, and things in your life. I also think that a minimalist practice can reveal some of those things, but if it is minimalism for it's own sake ...
I also thought of something else -- I read this article: http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2016/09/philosophy...
I only superficially read on existentialism in high school, via one of Albert Camus's book. I did not like it :-) Part of that was a bias where my mother accused me of being an existentialist (at least, it felt accusatory at the time). Reading that review made me realize, there may be something in Western philosophy that has a similar base with the medieval Tantra I was reading six months ago.
That idea that existentialism is a search for meaning (I'm not explaining this from first principles and I'm explaining this badly), and being able to develop a philosophy from a cup of coffee is appealing. So maybe there are aspects of Tantra that are not as inaccessible as I thought, and existentialism has a lot of interesting things to say.
Lastly, another bit of Western philosophy I'd like to deep-dive into is Rene Girad's mimetic philosophy. From the superficial reading, it seems the central idea is that our desires are not intrinsic, but instead are mimicked from other people. That can paradoxically lead to mimetic rivalry (where the mimicked desire becomes an object to contend over) and from there, mimetic violence.
So far, in my reading, I don't find it complete in and of itself. From the Tantric perspective, it explains a lot about the workings of the conditioned or acquired self. Non-dual Tantra also offers an explanation of will that arises from the transcendental ground. I'm not sure how this all maps to each other. I do wonder, though
I think, minimalism, when taken as _mimetic_, leads to the things criticized in that NY Times article. But so can another other philosophy or view.
In closing, I'd encourage you to read "why we make things and why it matters" by peter Korn. Takes from persig, but gets much more into the philosophy of work.
Here's a more insightful blog post that is not really about minimalism, but about Gollumization: http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/01/06/the-gollum-effect/
"And, as with watching birds or going Paleo, talking about [minimalism] is just as important as actually doing it."The implication is that, like your friends who "went Paleo" or your CrossFit buddy, bird watchers will...not...shut up about it. But I don't think I've ever known a single person in my relatively long life that would go on and on about bird watching, so I don't get the comparison, either.
In contrast, all the people I've known who go on and on about bird-watching have been single.
Anyway, this piece strikes me as a critique looking for a cultural phenomenon. Of course most First World minimalists, including myself, realize there is a vast infrastructure supporting the few things we have in our possession. To say otherwise is just a straw man. This isn't the privilege of being a minimalist; it's the privilege of living in a rich and well-connected society.
Despite the author elaborating the history of minimalist aesthetics in modern Western culture (which is only superficially related to minimalism as a lifestyle), it has a far richer history than merely "pop philosophy". Minimalism is an important component of philosophies as culturally distant as Cynicism and Buddhism, but none of these even get a nod.
To the author's credit, I'm sure it's much harder to write an article about real people than Silicon Valley caricatures upending their lives for a fashion statement or a productivity panacea.
You can always find a group of people on the internet into the idea in question and stuck in a filter bubble and completely out of touch. For any trend you want to discuss.
Yes, our culture is able to apply more social pressure on the poor and disadvantaged to buy status symbols. Encouraging them to ignore the system built to keep them poor by selling them overpriced garbage with lifestyle marketing is the act of an ally. Of course having purchasing habits considered weird in a culture of conspicuous consumption is easier for the privileged. That's what being privileged means, doing anything different is easier.
And I'll argue that the minimalism hipsters are a good thing. They are carving out a space where saving money and not engaging in conspicuous consumption carries social status. It would be great news for the disadvantaged and poor if that caught on more.
You could apply this argument to getting exercise, eating a healthy diet, having social activities other than watching garbage TV. All done by privileged people, many of whom turn it into performative virtue signaling to get attention and annoy everyone.
I rather suspect that if you suggested that any of the minimalists described in the article, or those that occasionally pop up elsewhere having discarded their earthly possessions, were trying to save money, then they would be somewhat offended.
Or, on the other hand, perhaps they're like Paul Erdős and and somehow psychologically impaired.
What people basically want is simplification in an ever increasing world of sensory overload. That's it folks.
However, like most extremes it comes with a price. Primarily isolation and anxiety in this case. Gone are the days where buddies come over to work on motorcycles and cars in your garage. You can also forget about hosting a fun party in your boring minimalist studio. You probably won't have guests at all. And while most people don't think about the impact taking a long flight, as a minimalist that flight may double your carbon footprint leading to anxiety.
If you take this path it's up to you to ensure you stay balanced and not pass a tipping point.
If your goal is to improve your quality of life, then there are two guidelines that I think are generally applicable. There are other ideas like "earn more money," but that's an external process and I wanted to focus on the internal processes:
1. Practice mindfulness, especially appreciation for both the big things and small things.
2. Learn not to depend on unimportant things for happiness (aka fear of missing out). These things are often possessions, activities, or even relationships.
Generally as you do both of those things more, you feel less of a desire for non-essential physical possessions. It shouldn't be about trying to see how minimal you can go. It should be about finding happiness internally, and as a consequence not depending on a cultural performance (gadgets and fashion are common examples) for validation or identity.
In that sense I think the decluttering movement (I'm aware the article isn't just about decluttering) has things kind of backwards. Removing distractions is good, but if you don't learn the underlying lesson about mindfulness, then you'll just end up emotionally dependent on something else, like seeing just how much you can throw away.
The broader point is that minimalism (in the lifestyle sense, not the product design sense) isn't an end. It should be a result of learning to appreciate what is essential, not a result of removing everything until you think you've found what is essential. Some people might learn the first from doing the second, but not everyone does. I've seen friends get lost in the act of trying to simplify their lives, only to not end up any happier because they forgot to learn to appreciate what was left.
Also, minimalist lifestyle and minimalist aesthetics are certainly different things.
I have been into minimalism (the lifestyle) for about a year or so, reading a lot about it, so here is my summary of it: it is an optimization tool among others, kind of like code refactoring.
In my case it helped me focus on what's important (family, passions), have more energy and more time. And believe me, when you have a young child, you need as much time and energy as possible.
Less stuff is less useless stuff, all fun, meaningful or useful stuff is still there, I just spend less time and energy making decisions about what to wear, cleaning and tidying stuff, etc.
Less distractions is less meaningless distractions, by all means I have more fun spending time with my family than playing video games.
Knowing from experience that my family and me don't need much to be happy is extremely important and gives me confidence to face the future. Our financial situation is not so good, but I know that we can still do great whatever happens.
On the same topic, if you know you can do well with not so much, you are less afraid to take risks, for example starting a business.
Minimalism isn't a thing for me. It's not a sense of aesthetics, though I do like the ascetic and pared-down aesthetic ... but also the decadent and baroque of Victorian and steampunk.
What I do and what I am got confused with minimalism because I actually practice meditation, and I actually know what kind of effect things, objects, emotions, thoughts, and narratives have on the psyche. Minimalism, when it becomes a a thing one identifies with, as a form of social signaling, and as a form of narrative about yourself tells me that that person is no longer practicing impeccably.
"Do you own the object or does the object own you?" still applies even if you become obsessed with minimalism. You might have purged a number of consumer goods out of your life, and yet the very _idea_ of minimalism continues to possess and obsess you.
It has never been about getting every little thing out of your life. It's sufficient for it to reveal enough of your truer self. It's about shedding your social identities, not heaping ostentation upon more ostentation.
Look for me on a future episode of "Hoarding: Buried Alive".
Is it possible to overdo minimalism? Sure. It's also possible to overdo exercise. It's also possible to overdo generosity and community service. But materialism is a far worse problem than minimalism.
If you have an argument to make against minimalism, as practiced by mainstream minimalists, then make it. But attacking it just because it's not a cure-all and because you don't like its advocates, just makes you sound like a petulant child.
Buy, own, keep things that you love and need.
If you enjoy having a cozy rug in your bedroom under your desk while you work because it brings you joy and happiness then you should own one!
If you have guests over often and having them sit on your bed bothers you, makes you embarrassed; buy a small functional couch.
Don't buy excess amounts of things; buy what you need and love.
If you do art often, it's a passion, etc then it's OK to own a closet or cupboard with supplies.
Take care of what you own, invest in quality items that will last, and make sure it's something you love, use and need.
Not everyone buying minimalist wallart from urbanoutfitters and posting it on instagram is necessarily representative of people who have organized their thoughts time, schedule, social life, work life and have a resulting apartment decor that represents that.
1. Addressing the claim that minimalism is for the elite, I think its a result for people who have the luxury of time and money to take a thorough look at their life needs, have the time and structure in their life to have long term goals and then organize their life to fit those goals and optimize their things around their life which is centered around a busy work schedule.
Absolutely, if you are a poor refugee you are making ends meet from day to day. you are not organizing kitchen ware, you are at Salvation Army buying clothing for your children and just as you have a spare $60 in your paycheck your sons discount coat's zipper is broken in the middle of winter so you need to buy a new one, but you only have $60, ha probably a fraction of that to figure out a solution. You are not on Amazon finding a long term investment triple wool down Northface jacket that is light yet warm and will last your son until college.
It is true that it takes time, organization and a higher initial capital to invest in long term sustainable products that are planned in advance to meet a lifestyle you have planned, but that does not mean its arrogant.
There will be people who aspire, just like they aspire to every "trend" to emulate this hoping to fit in with an image as a result, but it's not fair rational or logical to assign the whole group of people to that when the pioneers of this in technology ended up living this life as a RESULT of trying to optimize their life, not deciding in advance this is what they wanted. It ended up that optimizing your life helps you work more, live more organized and have less hiccups in life when time and efficiency is of the essence.
2. It's also not fair to assume the same people who had wealth 50 years ago living in mansions and lavish wealth are the same genre of people who have "dissavowed the advantages that helped them obtain wealth". The people using this lifestyle mostly in technology are new people creating new wealth and were never associated nor did they grow up with the lavish lifestyle they are supposedly disavowing. Steve jobs started his company in a garage and basically always lived out of his backpack, and the saying goes he didnt even leave the office long enough to unpack into his new place for months after going back to Apple. Is that arrogance of just living efficiently and not putting trinkets and pictures on your wall to stare at while youre on the couch because youre never on the couch?
3. Personally, I've gone minimalist as a result of being a tech graduate with student loans so constrained money, and also not knowing if I'm going to be living on the east coast or west coast in two years. I have a very minimalist apartment and everything I buy I base the quality of whether it's something I'm willing to ship across the country in the next few years or something I am fine to give away when it's time to move 3,000 miles, and in general most of the time I decide not to buy it at all.
I am not doing this so I can take minimalist photos on instagram of my blank living room apartment, I'm doing it because for my lfie style, clutter is a result of downtime not scraping by on day to day needs like refugees which I totally sympathize with but my minimalism is not arrogant or looking down on them, it's how I choose to live life for me, not to put my nose up to poor people, and not to tag it on instagram.
This article is not even journalism, it's opinion with barely any facts excepts the numerical results for clicking the "minimalism" hashtag on instagram.
This is also entirely leaving out that given the housing crisis and the economy, people in their 20s like me, my generation has way less trust in stocks, the economy and the promise of the American Dream aka owning a house with a wife a 2 kids (given college is outrageously expensive and the divorce rate and broken families of this country is outrageous as well and the finances associated with it that atleast half of us in this country grew up wtinessing first hand), and companies do massive layoffs and on average people in my generation switch jobs every 7 years as opposed to more than double that 20 years ago. We are economically incentivized to be mobile and adept learners so electronics aid us in that, not houses and long term relationships that lock us into a lifetime of financial debt if they don't work out. I think this is the most valid reason why it catches on regardless of the elite few who initiated the lifestyle out of in my opinion efficiency not arrogance, yet the composer of this article is like "maybe its this" in one sentence (referring to the summarized version of everything I've said in Part 3) or maybe its arrogance and pomposity and spends the majority of the article on that, and then refers to the "elite few" to blame for this instead of the usual mass of people who are always going to jump on anything trendy.
There is a component of elitism here. If you're poor, you hang on to stuff, because it may come in handy. If you have enough money and some left over, you can get rid of stuff, because if it turns out you really needed one of the things you got rid of, you can buy a new one. But if you can't afford the new one, you keep stuff "just in case".
But, even if minimalism may require a certain level of financial not-on-the-edge, for many of us, it's not a pose. For myself, I just hate clutter. As Paul Graham said, a cluttered scene takes more mental energy to parse. If there's enough clutter that you have to move around stuff, it takes more physical energy just to walk across the room. I don't have time in my life for that kind of waste.
Yep!
This is my exact argument for why minimalism works well for more well-off people.
If you can afford to buy a $3 screwdriver again, why keep it around if you only use it once a year. It is just clutter.
There is another argument of using Craigslist as storage (sell what you don't need, buy it back when you need it). It also relies on having free money to be able to do such a thing though.
My solution: I just buy a new bucket at that point, throw the old one away, and don't have to put up with a place that has to store all those random pieces of metal. On the other hand, yes, I keep a toolbox, with several screwdrivers.
Do you?
I found when I was poor, I had to get rid of stuff because when I had to move towns to get work and couldn't afford to transport it all around.
It's like being jealous of a girl at school just because her family can afford nicer clothing than you.
The author is addressing the resulting fashion trend, and not the lifestyle, and assuming a bunch of rich people with mansions gave it all up just to try a new hairstyle persay, at the expense of the dignity of the masses, which is far from how I would see it.
I think refugees are being pragmatic as well, its function not form: http://qz.com/496220/photos-what-syrian-refugees-carry-in-th...
This is the same for every generation going back several decades.
- In the 60's it was the Vietnam war and the feeling of helplessness fighting "the man". Political assassinations, Watergate and Kent State.
- In the 1970's the feeling of being burned out from the 60's and the yet to arrive boom of the 80's. The 1970's gave them three horrible presidents in Nixon, Ford and Carter.
- In the 1980's it was Generation X. The first generation to be told we wouldn't have social security to fall back on. The first generation to have it worst than their parents. Over indulgence, political and global turmoil made the Gen X'ers introverted, depressed and self loathing.
- In the 1990's it was several wars in the Middle East, inflating costs of attending college, the fear of the draft being reinstated and a failing economy at home. Many of my peers before we had even graduated HS were saying they would stay in college until the economy turned around since many predicted a long, deep recession right before the election.
- In the 2000's it was the Generation Y, or Millennials. An economic collapse in early 2000's, then more war, more terrorism, increasing housing costs and cost of living going stagnant. Less and less opportunity to advance in your career.
So yeah, pretty much every generation has had the right to say they felt like the "American Dream" was lost. Comparatively speaking, I feel more for the Millennials because ten of fifteen years ago, the cost of living was still manageable where you could rent a place with your buds for like $300/month and then go to school on student loans, or work part-time and be completely independent. Now? There's just no affordable way to do that. The cost of living has completely outstripped the ability of the Millennials to get out and be independent without some major financial hardships. And yeah, you hear those people saying, "Aww c'mon, if I could live on Ramen, you can too!" but its not that simple. When your entire two weeks paycheck goes to your rent, and you can't afford food, or heating or internet, what good is having one or two or three jobs when you can't even keep your head above water on a month-to-month basis?
While few of us will ever go quite that far, it is an intriguing study of how far one can go in minimizing, and the costs & benefits of doing so.
I would point for a middle ground between minimalism and suburban hoarding: essencialism.
He grew all his own vegetables and probably did not know what 'organic' meant.
He made solar panels to heat the water in his store, but 'green' was just a colour to him.
He made preserves every year, but wouldn't know what the word 'hipster' meant.
He was pretty 'minimalist' and probably had never even heard the word in his life.
I think he would have called himself 'frugal' if you really pushed him to, that said, he was just the same as everyone else around him ...
Minimalism advocates can be dogmatic and that tends to be bad, but taking cues from minimalism isn't a bad thing when it makes something better.
Will it be better for all time? Probably not, but that's ok.