Minimalism conceals the messy realities of society

https://newrepublic.com/article/156800/hollow-politics-minimalism

by prismatic • 6 years ago

163 160 6 years ago

grawprog• 6 years ago

Minimalism's an odd thing. I find it really depends on context. Minimalistic story telling in a video game or some such thing, is awesome, the same thing in a book, not so great and in movies can be hit or miss.

From a ui design standpoint, I can't stand minimalism most of the time. The lack of immediately apparent information and context can be infuriating. Whereas a minimalistic design in some kind of manual tool would tend to make things more straightforward and easy.

Minimalistic music can be great for setting atmosphere under certain contexts, but wouldn't be great for a dance party.

Minimalism is a tool that should be applied.to situations where 'having less is more'. Otherwise it just detracts from whatever you're trying to do and should be used sparingly.

nixpulvis2• 6 years ago

Minimalistic dance music (MDM) sounds like exactly what I'm missing in my life. I mean I have a bit already, but sometimes it gets to poppy. Just gotta tug on the right notes, ignore the rest.

Mix it up, but only when you need to. Don't overthink it, yet spend the time needed to make it juuuust right.

As Mark Twain famously said:

“I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

P.S. `less` is literally `more` on most UNIX systems.

coverup2• 6 years ago

Minimal techno had a big moment in EDM circles in the '00s as the bombastic productions of the '90s started to be seen as cheesy and overcooked.

See for example: https://youtu.be/daSid6Lh9Vs

DubiousPusher12• 6 years ago

Two ideas which often I encounter together yet I have grown to find incompatible are self reliance and minimalism. If you wish to become more self reliant i.e. more able to handle for yourself rather than through another's labor the impositions you create in the world, you will find yourself needing to masters, access and eventual own many more tools and material.

My father, a man capable of building or repairing almost anything to his need lives with a shop entirely full of junk. And frequently the scrap iron or 2x4 I have mocked him for retaining has come to the rescue and helped us avoid the 60 mile trip from his home into town.

The reality is, if you wish to combine self reliance and minimalism, you essentially must embrace a life of poverty.

cheez• 6 years ago

What is poverty in this respect?

DubiousPusher12• 6 years ago

Not necessarily a lack of wealth but a decrease in the material quality of life we take for granted.

For example, most people take having bread for granted. If you wish to become minimalist, the best way to attain bread is to buy it. If you wish to become self reliant then you must possess ingredients and tools for making bread such as flour, yeast, a pan and an oven. To be minimalist and self reliant you must forgo bread and eat instead for grain something like wetted millet.

laurentdc• 6 years ago

I've always thought at its extreme minimalism is for those who are rich enough they can buy two/three of everything (including houses and cars). So if anything goes bad you just have a replacement ready. Everyone else better have a soldering iron, a good set of mechanic tools and boxes of spare parts

DubiousPusher12• 6 years ago

Yes, that or a high amount of liquid wealth that you can use to pay for other people to use their tools for you.

hanniabu3• 6 years ago

There's plenty you can get done with a basic variety of tools. There's also different levels of minimalism, but yes at it's extreme I'd agree.

smoe5• 6 years ago

I guess I'd fall in the category of being minimalist[1].

A good part of the few things I own, are actually tools to fix the other things with or build them in the first place. Also buying fewer things, means I can optimize more easily for quality and longevity, and that there are just fewer things that can break.

Arguably, taken minimalism to the extreme, the basic tools is what you should be left with. In my opinion, the biggest problem with minimalism is, that it should be highly individualistic, whereas most societies have a big group-think component to it about how you should behave, what you should own, etc.

E.g. I don't have any specific tools or spare parts related to fixing a car, because I don't have a car, because it wouldn't add more value than cost to my life. But just because that is true for myself, doesn't make it so for someone else. And on the other hand, I own things that I value highly, but that would just gather dust in another household.

[1] I identify more with the Swedish term "Lagom", which roughly translates to "just the right amount", and is more about appreciation of what you have, not about pushing for reduction.

pfranz2• 6 years ago

I have noticed that people pushing minimalism...or at least the idea of "throw it away and buy it if you ever end up needing it" is a luxury that I think many people take for granted. Even if you're not privileged I think there's value in consciously assessing where in your life you want to be minimal and where you don't. I just went through my old tech stuff and recycled cellphones so old they may not even connect to the network, cables and adaptors to hardware I no longer own, and piles of network cables that came free with things. I slimed them down to just a few of each with the recent free time I've had.

As I got more serious about cooking I donated a lot of extra pans and doo-dads. Previously, I would just collect things and as I learned more about what made something good and why, I could narrow down to 1 or 2 higher quality items (knives, pans, etc). As I learned more techniques, I needed fewer specialty items.

To your point, having a lawn service means not needing a mower. Hiring out a painting service means not having old buckets, brushes, tarps, etc, laying around.

I do think (at least Americans) hoard. I know there's been a few times where I know I had something, but I didn't know where and considered just buying another. To me, that's worse than donating or giving it away years before. I know a lot of people pay monthly for self-storage, but probably don't know what's in there or wouldn't take the time to retrieve something. To me, this is what the Marie Kondo book was targeting.

voxl• 6 years ago

There is another side to this where "stuff" becomes a liability. If I know I'm going to be moving frequently, having stuff is expensive, minimalism becomes a frugal option.

To this point, there is a certain luxury in being able to keep stuff around, to even have the space for it to begin with. If I own a studio apartment I don't have room for random 2x4's to come save the metaphorical day.

hannob• 6 years ago

I have noticed that people pushing minimalism...or at least the idea of "throw it away and buy it if you ever end up needing it" is a luxury that I think many people take for granted.

I am inclined to disagree here and will say you're not making the full calculation.

One of the biggest costs that most people have in their life is paying for a place to live (be it rent or buying and maybe paying back for that). If you have fewer things this allows you to have a smaller space to live in. The reduced costs from that will more than make up for the occasional "I have to buy something that I might still have if I hadn't gotten rid of it a few years ago".

wiz21c• 6 years ago

> As I got more serious about cooking I donated a lot of extra pans and doo-dads. Previously, I would just collect things and as I learned more about what made something good and why, I could narrow down to 1 or 2 higher quality items (knives, pans, etc). As I learned more techniques, I needed fewer specialty items.

Same experience here. Conclusion : if we'd educate people better on how to cook rather than showing them hours of advertising on the latest magical tool to cook a steak, we'd make their life easier and so much more minimalist.

So, in my experience, if you learn to cook and accept that cooking takes a bit more time you mainly need (for french cuisine) :

- 1 or 2 frying pan (buy a large one, multi-ply, heavy stuff, it's expensive : around 150 euro each, but will outlast you) - a cast iron casserole (for long cook) - just one teflon-like pan for frying fish (frying fish without that is possible but requires a lot of fat) - a few cooking pots (buy inox) - a short knife (buy expensive, around 60€, make sure the blade goes to the end of the handle) - a chef knife (ditto) - a big wooden cutting board (it allows you to use your chef knife efficiently) - 2 or three large bowls (inox or earthenware, no plastic) - a hand blender - a whisker - learn to use your oven if you have one, it's very useful - baking paper is very useful and cheap the rest just comes from regular stuff (glasses, regular knife, spoons, etc)

with that material you can go a loooooong way.

(forget about KitchenAid, Cookeo, and many other things)

etc.

ctdonath2• 6 years ago

having a lawn service means not needing a mower. Hiring out a painting service means not having old buckets, brushes, tarps, etc, laying around.

Minimalism means not having a lawn which needs mowing, nor walls in need of painting.

jcims• 6 years ago

I’m processing your comment because i think i agree. The problem is that ‘minimalist’ is a little squishy. It would be hard to argue that the Amish aren’t self-reliant. I’m just trying to figure out if they would be considered minimalist. They are low on consumerism, but they have sprawl. Relatively large farms with lots of animals and barns and equipment. Dunno.

In my own little vision for a self reliant future i see room for lots of stuff...buildings, equipment, many tools, small ag, etc. Definitely in line with your comment.

DubiousPusher12• 6 years ago

Amish are definitely not minimalist. The array of tools Amish carpenters have and are skilled with is very impressive.

anotheracct2• 6 years ago

The amish absolutely are not self reliant.

They have people drive them to Costco and the court. They take buses and it is not uncommon in an Amish Community for one of them to have a phone line in a barn for emergencies.I have seen them use farm equipment that they technically shouldn't use and plenty of them just farm out the labor to someone who will use the equipment. They usually have "go to" people outside of the Amish sect that does shit for them that technically goes against their beliefs.

I have lived around Amish people my entire life. I am in a county that is famous for them. They are in no way self reliant. They are a cult that at this point, only half asses their own ideology.

ntsplnkv24• 6 years ago

Self reliance is probably more of an ideal than minimalism.

It didn't take much for man to realize he could do more by trusting another than figuring out how to do everything on his own.

goatinaboat• 6 years ago

It didn't take much for man to realize he could do more by trusting another than figuring out how to do everything on his own.

You cannot help anyone else unless you have some minimal level of self-reliance. That’s why airlines tell you to fit your own oxygen mask before trying to help anyone else.

DubiousPusher12• 6 years ago

Oh I agree. I have saved a lot of money by learning to do many things and handling them myself but I depend on the same supply chains for tool parts that others do for razor cartridges.

The more I've read about the lives of 19th century pioneers the more I've realized that even they depended on something more akin to modern supply chains than on real self sufficiency.

Truly self reliant peoples live in poverty. I know no counter example.

nicbou4• 6 years ago

Any labour you pay is paid with your post-tax income, with sales tax on top. You'd need to work two hours to buy an hour of your own labour. You usually get paid for a fixed number of hours, so the time you save by hiring an expert can't be spent at work paying for it.

There's usually some overhead involved too: finding labour, scheduling appointments, bringing your car to the dealership etc. Doing your own oil change takes less time than driving to the garage.

You don't have to do everything on your own, but I'd save the experts for the important challenges.

HammockTester2• 6 years ago

I would argue self-reliance is mostly playacting these days. More so than minimalism. Sure you can learn to do basic things like cook for yourself or build furniture but the skills required to live a relatively modern lifestyle go way beyond the capabilities of one person. Are you really going to mine your own iron to smelt into steel and drill for your own oil?

jl6• 6 years ago

I wonder if self-reliance is really incompatible with most things, not just minimalism. At some level you rely on others, whether to farm your food or forge your steel or make your antibiotics.

Koshkin2• 6 years ago

Basically, what you are saying is that the idea of minimalism is incompatible with minimalism. Personally I think that there's some sort of conservation law at work here (or even entropy-like growth rather than conservation): the more you try to minimize one thing, the more expense you incur elsewhere - even if only at a psychological level (because, to confuse things even more, it looks like that at a psychological level minimalism is, in fact, a form of maximalism - similarly to, say, perfectionism being, in fact, a sign of feeling insecure and of distrust in one's ability to do a good job).

koonsolo• 6 years ago

I 100% agree with you. My grandparents were farmers, and they could basically fix anything that was broken. My dad is the same. But he is already in the generation where scarcity made way for abundance.

In these times, we are drowning, not starving. It's crazy how much toys my kids have and it keeps coming. They can't even find their fun toys amongst all the junk.

You can buy anything at any given moment, and people keep giving you junk on top of it, because all holidays are now commercialised and you have to give and receive junk from everyone.

For myself, I have both the "maybe I'll need it one day" and "I have too much junk".

nicbou4• 6 years ago

That's a point that keeps coming back in minimalist and travel communities.

People brag about how little they own, and it looks perfect until you ask about the logistics of it. You quickly find out that their minimalist existence is often propped by cheap third-world labour, or by a complete lack of financial planning. They don't own any of the tooks they need to fend for themselves.

In a sense, their lifestyle is only possible as other people are there to support it. Someone else has to provide the tools, and usually the expertise.

Broken_Hippo3• 6 years ago

I often wonder what these folks do with their time. It certainly isn't, say, painting canvases of artwork - these sorts of hobbies require stuff.

HammockTester2• 6 years ago

All of modern society operates this way. It's called division of labor. In order for there to be a software engineer, there have to be people working to feed him, clothe him, build his house, produce his computers, extract energy to power everything, etc.

danlugo92• 6 years ago

You quickly find out that their minimalist existence is often propped by cheap third-world labour, or by a complete lack of financial planning

I don't get it. What are you talking about?

closeparen3• 6 years ago

If your possessions all have practical utility, you are already a hardcore minimalist.

No one should begrudge you a well-stocked and well-used workshop. That’s not what the minimalist message is supposed to be about. It’s the stuff accumulated carelessly, just because you could. Decorative doo-dads, outfits worn once, toys from kids long since grown, furniture retained out of a sense of duty. The suburban middle-class lifestyle I grew up in has a tendency to accumulate a monotonically increasing volume of possessions without much thought. My grandparents have more square footage than my entire apartment dedicated to the storage of useless, meaningless crap. It is, in fact, a necessary and useful message for many people to be more deliberate about what you choose to buy and retain. If the only things you can think to cut are tools, you are not one of those people.

jankotek• 6 years ago

Imagine large old shed with some rusting car wrecks around. I think that is minimalists nightmare, but reality of self reliant utilitarian guy.

You accumulate stuff carelessly because storage cost is zero. Even old junk can be source of aluminium block for machining, steel bar for welding or copper coil for wires.

jdietrich• 6 years ago

If your possessions all have practical utility, you are already a hardcore minimalist.

The problem is that "practical utility" isn't always obvious. I have boxes and boxes of components and other oddments that collectively form a useful library, but I have no way of predicting which specific oddments will be useful in future. Any given item is currently useless, but might become extremely useful at some indeterminable point in the future. There's a very fine line between a prepper and a hoarder.

matthewmcg• 6 years ago

I’ve always thought Guy Clark’s song Stuff that Works captures this ethos perfectly. Here is the first verse and chorus:

I got an old blue shirt and it suits me just fine

I like the way it feels so I wear it all the time

I got an old guitar, won't ever stay in tune

I like the way it sounds in a dark and empty room

I got an old pair of boots and they fit just right

Well I can work all day and I can dance all night

I got an old used car and it runs just like a top

I get the feeling it ain`t ever going to stop

[Chorus]

Stuff that works, stuff that holds up

The kind of stuff you don`t hang on the wall

Stuff that`s real, stuff you feel

The kind of stuff you reach for when you fall

https://genius.com/Guy-clark-stuff-that-works-lyrics#note-85...

monadic23• 6 years ago

If your possessions all have practical utility,

This seems tautological or uselessly subjective. What is a possession without practical value? You seem to have talked yourself out of seeing the value in possessions you own. Perhaps you are simply anxious.

How this attitude began to be associated with the minimalist design movement I have no clue.

hnarn• 6 years ago

I've always taken it for granted that self-reliance and minimalism are contradictions in terms. The reason we have things like factories in society is because it's not practical or efficient for everyone to manufacture everything they need for themselves. By collaborating, be it from borrowing a saw from a neighbor or by building a multi-national logging corporation, this "cooperation" makes things more efficient. It's this "societal" efficiency that makes minimalism possible in the first place.

Every description I have seen of minimalism has not been centered around self-reliance, but around anti-materialism. Since we live in a society where our collective production output and efficiency is higher than it has ever been throughout human history, it's easier than ever to collect property that has limited or no real use, and consume without being mindful of the effect it has on our environment or at the very least on your own economy.

So, in my mind, "minimalism", whatever that means, is not a means to self-reliance, it's a questioning of modern consumerism and whether we are perhaps over-spending on things that do not improve our lives. Whoever is trying to combine minimalism with "prepping", "self-reliance", call it what you will, is at the very least confused in my book.

friendlybus3• 6 years ago

He didn’t make that 2x4 or the scrap iron, they came from hardware shops long ago.

Your dad is capable of repairing anything because he has the mindset, creativity and skills. Were he rich he could take that same self reliance down to the local hardware store and buy what he needs to repair anything.

Though arguably if he were richer he wouldn’t be repairing so much, he’d be doing something else successfully as a self reliant guy.

The higher you go the more abstract what your self brings to the table becomes. It’s obvious that your dad relies on himself and his possessions. A self reliant guy in a company can easily have his natural ability and organized self reliance hidden under metrics and overlooked by class groupings.

kasey_junk• 6 years ago

In OPs story, the trip to the local hardware store was hours away...

burntoutfire• 6 years ago

Yep. For me, the hardcore/conspicuous materialism (i.e. "I only have a 100 things.) is largely for well-off people only, who can afford to outsource all their uncommon needs - the kind of needs which require tools and parts to sit idle for years, until the occasion arises when you need them. It's telling that poorer people tend to hoard things - you never know when you're going to need that piece of cooper wire etc.

username90• 6 years ago

Do you include storage costs? Keeping stuff in your home is the most expensive option most of the time given how expensive homes are.

smoe5• 6 years ago

The reality is, if you wish to combine self reliance and minimalism, you essentially must embrace a life of poverty.

Why?

If you take minimalism to the extreme, and keep stripping away until reaching the bare essentials of living, then the basic tools and materials are what you left with.

It would be "against" minimalism (which is not well defined anyway) to buy say a chain saw because you think you might need it one day or need it for a one off job, instead of borrowing it from a neighbor or yes, paying (monetary or through favors) someone to do it.

Nothing wrong with relying on society to a degree.

If you want to be self reliant without having a lot of money to waste, you'll have to practice minimalism. Not the inner city hipster version of it, but being mindful of what the utility and value of all the things you have is.

lmm5• 6 years ago

If you want to be self reliant without having a lot of money to waste, you'll have to practice minimalism. Not the inner city hipster version of it, but being mindful of what the utility and value of all the things you have is.

No you don't. A big pile of junk is no drain on your self-reliance; if you're living in the kind of place where you can even begin to hope to produce your own food then space is not going to be an issue.

ehnto2• 6 years ago

The missing pieces of the conversation are "How self reliant?" and "Self-reliant from what?"

Are you trying to be a homesteader, entirely off-grid and not reliant on society? Or are you trying to be financially self-reliant, not relying on a paycheck? Or are you trying to be personally less reliant on things and items? These are all different ideas that get wrapped up into this conversation, and like the OP said, they're not all compatible.

If you want to be an off-grid homesteader, you're going to need a lot of tools, materials and skills. If you want to be less reliant on things, then you are going to have to be content with being able to do less.

None of those things are bad, but the conversation is incomplete if we don't make clear what we're really talking about when we talking about self-reliance and minimalism.

grecy• 6 years ago

The reality is, if you wish to combine self reliance and minimalism, you essentially must embrace a life of poverty.

Some of the happiest days of my life have been when I labored to field dress a moose I had just shot and then canoe with it for days down an isolated river near the arctic. Or helping my brother build his house or working in the vegetable garden.

If you call that poverty, you're missing the point entirely.

I believe your disconnect comes from you thinking "The only kind of minimalism is extreme minimalism" which doesn't have to be true. I have a lot less "stuff" than most people, so I consider my self a minimalist, but I still have possessions I value and enjoy that I'm not capable of making or repairing myself (rifle, laptop). That's OK. Minimalism doesn't mean "Have nothing you didn't make with you own bare hands", it means "Have less things, and only the things that bring you happiness". Like so many things in life, it's not black and white like you're trying to make it out to be.

stevedekorte• 6 years ago

From what I've seen, most DIY folks spend far more (and are therefore poorer) all things considered, such as time and expense of storage space for tools and what that capital could be doing otherwise over time.

arsenico• 6 years ago

Wow! This is a super strong and a super solid observation. Come to any small bikeshop, and you will find it packed with all kinds of parts - some of which may be laying there forever. But you will most likely come out of the shop with your very specific make and model of bike fixed. Come to a clean and seemingly well-organised and neat bike shop belonging to a corporation, and expect a turnaround time of two weeks to order your specific parts from the producer and ship them. So, indeed, for an ability to rely on the service - be prepared to stock up on things, which you may never ever need.

erwinh• 6 years ago

In Design minimalism should not be confused with simplicity. Which is actually more about being super functional and direct about what you are trying to achieve. John Maeda’s book 10 laws of simplicity define it well. In striving for simplicity you run the risk of oversimplification. So an important element in such a process is always identifying the complexity that you can’t ignore. Simplicity requires a lot of hard thinking that goes un-noticed in the final product or artistic object because its’s been reduced (in a positive sense!) to the essential elements to perform it’s function.

I guess minimalism tries to catch the cool of the real hard work of simplicity by trying to copy simplicity as if it is simply an aesthetic but in the end it turns up empty.

friendlybus3• 6 years ago

And Maximalism papers over the messy realities of society. There is no conceptual framework that can see all of nature, they highlight aspects of it.

ntsplnkv24• 6 years ago

Agreed, not buying what the article is selling, which is trying to connect a modern fad, its namesake art period, and political discussions on capitalism and socialism and society at large.

clairity• 6 years ago

“The ultimate minimalist is a hermit, a recluse, or a monk,” he says. “And to me, that’s not gonna change the world.”

chinese historical/wuxia dramas often heavily feature taoist/buddhist “grandmasters”, who typically have (near-)superhuman abilities (from years of meditation on enlightenment, presumably). yet they’re reluctant to use those abilities because they also strive for detachment from the world and its base human emotions (for some reason that’s required to reach immortality).

the tension is often between allowing destiny to unfold without interference and staying on the path to enlightenment, or defying fate and risking heaven’s wrath. there are adverse consequences either way and it’s a test of character which way one chooses.

throwaway44532• 6 years ago

That’s neat. It sounds like some kind of “Spiritual Prime Directive.”

mysticmode• 6 years ago

Nicely written! I mean your comment on that point.

In Taoism, they say - accept the flow and about Yin-Yang philosophy.

"And to me that's not gonna change the world"

This is a mystery. I'm from India, and I've read few Vedic texts where it says, all these elements we've accumulated and grown with, by elements I mean Father, Mother, Son, Wife, Mine, Not Mine are just aggregated and don't assign much significance.

This is to our rational minds seems really absurd! Hence it is a mystery that would unfold when you start delve into it deeply.

awat• 6 years ago

In general I can appreciate the general tenets of minimalism.

It may be just my own pessimism but it’s seems to becoming a movement that requires you to get rid of things and buy new “minimalist” items to replace them.

hanniabu3• 6 years ago

True to a degree and dependent on the person. Personally I'm making it a long term goal so I'm only changing things as the time comes. For example both my computer and laptop were super old and finally my laptop gave out so I sold my desktop and just invested in a laptop that could do the job of both. My tv was also old and didn't have an app store or anything a modern smart tv would have seemed I didn't have a proper monitor for my computer only one of those squares ones you'll likely find at your town's library so I invested in a new monitor which I could also use to replace my tv. There's still a lot I want to do such as go through my clothes and kitchen equipment but I anticipate I'll be changing jobs and moving soon so I'll not making any changes there until I know what I'll be doing and where I'll be living.

There's also many degrees to minimalism. My objective is being able to fit everything I own in a studio apartment without clutter. Others have the goal of being able to fully everything in an 80L backpack. Others just want to go into their basement without tripping over storage.

ntsplnkv24• 6 years ago

There are a lot of people chasing the aesthetic, but don't worry about that.

A lot of people can benefit from reducing their debt, lowering their cost of living, eating less food, saving more money, and focusing on things they enjoy more and things they don't less.

You don't have to go from living on 110k to 30k, nor do you have to throw everything out and replace it with white walls and black accents and an odd art piece here and there.

gdubs• 6 years ago

In terms of art, paintings used to be like windows into a world. Then, with modernists, paintings became less about make a picture (something the new technology of photography could do better anyway), and more about the object itself — paint on a canvas, hung on a wall. When art critics were talking about the “flatness” of a painting, that’s what they meant. The “flatter” the painting, the truer it was to itself — just a canvas covered in paint. Eventually becoming so flat that you’ve got a white canvas in a white gallery. Sculpture followed a similar trajectory.

In terms of Marie Kondo and decluttering, or Zen — I’d say there’s a difference between minimal and essential. One is an aesthetic exercise, the other is a goal of finding that point where it’s “just right”, no more, no less.

skylarchunk• 6 years ago

As a political science student, I am compelled to point the allure of minimalism to the Greco-Athenian ideal of being self-sustaining (to a fair degree). The lack of material possession suggests, to others, that one is complete and satisfied in their seemingly ideal state.

elg0nz• 6 years ago

“Are you a minimalist? Do you take pride in a reductive life? Minimalists are actually extreme hoarders: they hoard space, and they’re just as odd as those people with seven rooms filled with newspapers, dead cats and margarine tubs” ― Douglas Coupland, Bit Rot

robbyyy• 6 years ago

Deep, but subtle link between the psychology of minimalism and libertarianism.

gitgud• 6 years ago

Minimalism is good for a work-place, as it helps you focus; for example clearing a room of all things except a desk, will reduce distractions and cognitive load by constantly seeing clutter... everything in moderation though...

kepano• 6 years ago

The author of the book referenced in this article, Kyle Chayka, was on my podcast recently https://www.lumi.com/wellmade/110-kyle-chayka

I like that the book doesn't attach itself to any one definition of minimalism, but instead tries to explore all its definitions, what ties them together, and why we keep coming back to these ideas.

I would consider myself a lifelong minimalist, but this book challenged my notions about minimalism in many ways. It's a good read!

UweSchmidt• 6 years ago

Minimalism is luxury. You know you could replace whatever you just threw out (which in turn is a way to declutter; mentally allocating money for a pair of pants to potentially replace the 3 pairs you're never wearing helps getting rid of those). You know you could go back to your parents after "selling everything and backpacking around the world). Instagram-minimalism additionally requires replacing and color-matching a lot of perfectly fine furniture, electronics and toys.

Another messy reality of society is overproduction, manifesting in that box or drawer with extra HDMI cables and USB thumb drives and USB-to-PS2 connectors, and throwing some of that crap out feels good :)

nsoonhui• 6 years ago

Minimalism is luxury. You know you could replace whatever you just threw out

No it's no, you grossly misunderstand the fundamentals of minimalism.

It's make do with whatever you have, and to be content with less, including less money, less possessions, less prestige and less of everything. It's accepting the degradation of social status.

"Going back to parents after selling everything and travelling around the world" is not a message of minimalism. Selling your mansion, forgoing your salary and title, travelling around the world in a brief suitcase with not a penny to your name even after you come back from travelling and be contented with living from day-to-day in a one bedroom flat, _that's_ minimalism.

balfirevic• 6 years ago

_that's_ minimalism

I must have missed it, who is in charge of the definition of minimalism?

ravenstine4• 6 years ago

Minimalism is only a luxury in the sense that some people really don't have a lot, possibly anything at all, in which case minimalism simply doesn't apply to them. That doesn't mean that minimalism is a luxury to the haves over the have-nots. To the vast majority of people, minimalism would be considered a burden.

Hnrobert42• 6 years ago

This article is an interesting book report on Longing for Less. The majority of the article is “Chayka says...”

Lacking any original insight, the author wedges in an unsupported claim about minimalism requiring privilege. Now, I’m not saying it does or doesn’t. There are several good responses here to support the idea. But the article itself does a really poor job of supporting the thesis.

Indeed, it seems more like neo-liberal buffet. It pokes at everything from the phallic shape of light-bulb (which couldn’t the just as easily be uterine) to the affluent readers of Dwell. I’m surprised a swipe at Goop didn’t get shoe-horned in.

I am as ready to damn the man as anyone, but this article is a cash grab. Bleh.

ohnope2• 6 years ago

Completely agree. A few paragraphs in, I felt dread because it was going to be yet another rehash of minimalist history with with very little original thought. It’s too scared to say things directly. I think if it started with the last 2 or so paragraphs, it could offer something unique or challenging.

pojntfx2• 6 years ago

As someone who identified as a minimalist until a while back, I’d argue that the primary lesson I’ve learned from it is not necessary to thrive for the minimal possible amount of items, but to _keep track_ of the things you own. I do for example have a list of all my personal belongings and update that list _before_ I ever buy something; this way you get the same benefit of “feeling in control” without having any detrimental effects on your quality of life/self-reliance.

ohnope2• 6 years ago

I’ve wanted to create a list of my belongings, with maybe a few other metrics like category, rough value, happiness factor, etc. How detailed did you go, and did you use it as a survey tool to initially figure out what you don’t need?

pojntfx2• 6 years ago

I don't even categorize what I own; my list is a simple .txt with newlines between "categories", but I don't even name the latter anymore. I've done a lot more (cost, categories etc.) but nowadays I just ... keep it minimal ;)

Xcelerate• 6 years ago

Minimalism is tiny houses, floor-to-ceiling glass condos

I always see this criticism and don’t understand it. I’ve been going on ever since I was a 10 year old kid in the 90s (well before “minimalism” was trendy) about how one day I wanted a tiny, well-designed house with giant floor-to-ceiling glass windows. I think it’s natural to enjoy sunlight, so I’m not sure what the article is suggesting—that people should want tiny windows again?

ravenstine4• 6 years ago

I don't even see how those two things are even the same. They're both minimalism in name only. A tiny house and a glass condo are both fueled by completely different motivations and the ends are also totally different. As you noted, one could intentionally incorporate large glass windows into a tiny house for totally valid reasons, but the article is comparing the generality of a tiny house with condos that wealthy people buy for aesthetics, but they just aren't comparable.

zeckalpha• 6 years ago

Minimalism is contentment with what you have. Wanting something you don’t have does not make one minimal.

drobert• 6 years ago

Bad article, clearly written by someone with left wing views.

Minimalism can help you lead a more focused life. Of course it’s relevant for people who have accumulated a lot, but even poor people can hoard things.

I caught one mention of “inequality.” Instead of digging into systemic problems like poverty or exploring ideas of wealth redistribution, the film frames having less as an individual, moral choice with no political strings or implications. Not everything has to do with politics.
In fact, the alleged blankness of Minimalism can serve as a facade that conceals a disturbing reality. An incident that Chayka doesn’t discuss in his book demonstrates this in an extreme way. What? How this one incident is relevant in the minimalist movement?

zrello87• 6 years ago

The author is yet another member of pronoun-twitter who blames everything on capitalism and white men, not leaving their privileged New York late-capitalist bubble to realise all these things still exist in non-white, non-capitalist spaces and always will.

JackPoach2• 6 years ago

As COVID-19 hits, people understand Taleb's idea about critical importance of multiple redundancies. These are clearly incompatible with minimalism. To be alive is more important than to be a minimalist in the end.

ravenstine4• 6 years ago

I don't see how that's the case. If multiple redundancies are a necessity, then having them doesn't go against the minimalist lifestyle. Minimalism doesn't mean that you stick to only have one of everything, although it can mean that to an individual minimalist depending on their goals, perhaps such as traveling light. There's no definition of minimalism that says you should have an insufficient supply of anything.

JackPoach2• 6 years ago

Here's a real life example. Suppose, you are a true minimalist and all you have is a backpack with 35 items. You used to make all your money blogging about travel. Your income is now ZERO. What do you do? Now, compare that to a different person who, let's say, has a garage. With lots an lots of tools that he or she can do to create something useful. Or a boat that he or she can live on, catch fish, etc. Now having those items is quite beneficial. Please understand that I am all for minimalism from the consumer point of view, but having lived in a lot of poor countries and can say that US-based minimalist driving force is DEBT. People simply can't afford to buy housing and they are crushed by student debts or debts of other kinds. So they adapt to a certain life style. Which is fine and dandy, but on the other hand instead of going after the root of the problem, you are totally avoiding it on a country-wide scale.

ikt• 6 years ago

I just want to say I don't like this article at all.

It makes minimalism seem like a rigid ideology specifically for white males who command poor people to build and craft expensive housing and objects for them (and many of those objects are in the shape of penises?)

A whole lot of discussion on random art and murder from one of the people who made that style of art.

I thought this was going to be about minimalism, which to me is:

Q: What is minimalist living?

A: It’s simply getting rid of things you do not use or need, leaving an uncluttered, simple environment and an uncluttered, simple life. It’s living without an obsession with material things or an obsession with doing everything and doing too much. It’s using simple tools, having a simple wardrobe, carrying little and living lightly.

It's basically being more content with less which ties in nicely with financial independence. Instead I got lectured to for not being a woman of colour who renounces my privilege and whitewashing of things in an art history that I don't care for.

justanotherhn• 6 years ago

Thanks for writing this comment it seems many people in this thread completely miss the mark on what it's supposed to be and set up "gotcha" scenarios in their strawman. I suspect it is because they associate the word minimalist with obnoxious Instagram influencers who use the word too much.

kerkeslager2• 6 years ago

My advice is to just stop identifying as a minimalist, and find a better word to describe your identity. The thing is, the article is describing a group of people who self-identify as "minimalist", but you, along with ten other groups that are nothing like you OR the minimalists in the article OR each other, all identify as "minimalist". It's just not a word with any coherent meaning. The result is that every time anyone talks about minimalism, there's some criticism leveled against minimalism, and then everyone's argument is "that's not minimalism, THIS is minimalism". It's an endless circle of semantic arguments.

I at one time described myself as minimalist, but now I would describe myself as an anticonsumerist. It's not a perfect term either, but I haven't gotten in any stupid arguments about it.

toddh• 6 years ago

Joyist is the new minimalist.

samirillian• 6 years ago

There's another way of looking at this, which is minimalism as symptom rather than cause.

Most millenials, even the upper-middle class ones, see a future with less material prospects than their parents had. I do not believe that minimalism is fundamentally a cultural phenomenon driven by the wealthy, but by the impoverished.

You can say that Marie Kondo and Bauhaus have some subterranean aesthetic connection, but I think Marie Kondo and the 40 year old guy living alone in his "tiny home," watching Netflix, have a much deeper cultural connection.

lmm5• 6 years ago

Disagree. The people Kondo et al are popular with are successful urban-dwellers who could easily afford the suburban lifestyle of their parents if they wanted it. But they've seen that that lifestyle does not bring happiness: hours spent sitting in a car so that they can work all day to afford said fancy car and a huge house they barely live in full of stuff they barely use.

scooble2• 6 years ago

In a cynical moment it has struck me that recent lifestyle trends seem almost designed to market poverty to the middle classes.

#vanlife as a lifestyle rather than simply 'living in your car'. A 'tiny house village' for people who don't want to say 'trailer park' etc.

ehnto2• 6 years ago

My ideal brand of minimalism isn't arbitrary removal of items, but pragmatism, organisation and cleanliness.

You will be surprised how similar it feels to have your tools well organised, versus removing them all together.

I think it comes down to our brains attempting to forecast and predict everything we do. So when your workspace is messy, your brain can't look very far ahead, it doesn't know where everything is so it can't accurately forecast the situation. It gets flustered and you work slower. When you're organised, your brain can subconsciously connect all the dots and suddenly everything feels easier and more simple.

kerkeslager2• 6 years ago

The problem with minimalism is that the word doesn't have a comprehensible definition, so any time you get into a discussion about minimalism, the entire discussion ends up being an argument over the definition of the word. The only winning move is not to play.

At one point I might have called myself a minimalist, but these days I'd call myself more of an anticonsumerist or something along those lines.

exergy2• 6 years ago

Anticonsumerist is actually a great word. I might adopt it. Much more succint.

jhoechtl• 6 years ago

Minimalsim is only true when you are substanitaly reducing consumption, essentially where your live is not iterating around money but around lending, helping each other without money by helping back etc. Lets and barter systems might help. Once you arrive at that point you will suddenly feel the society fighting against you.

Society accepted minimalsims is a kind of minimalsim where your net consumption remains where it is now.

ravenstine4• 6 years ago

Everyone here is commenting on minimalism as a lifestyle, but the article seems to be referring to aesthetic minimalism. The two are not necessarily the same.

Also, for people to conclude that minimalism in the lifestyle sense isn't working in some way is pretty bizarre. What exactly is the answer, then? Just giving in to the human impulses of hoarding and consumerism? Whether or not that's the alternative, this conclusion that minimalism as a lifestyle doesn't seem justified in any way. It seems more like a case of "this thing has been trending for the last few years, therefore we have to now point out how bad it is for the sake of it".

KozmoNau7• 6 years ago

When you're brought up in a consumerist lifestyle and taught again and again that consumerism is good and that you should aspire to consume more and produce more so you can consume even more, it can be hard to break the habit.

Buying a bigger TV than your neighbor gives you a dopamine boost, you feel like you've achieved something, you're moving up in life. It's addictive.

And the industry wants us to consume. The plastic industry pumped recycling initiatives to make it seem like plastic could be harmlessly recycled. They want us to think we can use as much plastic as we like, they don't want us to reduce our use of plastic.

veggieburglar• 6 years ago

As a minimalist, if you’re stressing out about whether you own too many things, you’re missing the point entirely. Does that bring you right to the same place as a maximalist- do I have enough?/do I have too much?

kmarc• 6 years ago

Interesting to read these comments here.

I consider myself a (not-so-hardcore) minimalist, even since before this hip KonMari... "thing" that suddenly "made" a lot of people into minimalists. Yeah, for sure it did.

As everything, this is a journey, yada-yada. However, what I think is worth pointing out is that different cultural settings would adapt "minimalism" (whatever that exactly is) differently. Living in an European city, I absolutely don't need to have a car. Having this mindset in Texas would be absolutely impractical.

My journey in this led me to just asses myself and introspect; consider if certain objects would make me happy, my life easier, do I really need it, can I rather borrow it, etc. The thing what I used to call minimalism became to me just "common sense" - although apparently is not common at all (thinking of people renting storage spaces etc...)

But what really, really helped me (also mentally) is the reduced distraction that objects, services, etc caused me; I see other people handling this complex world much better than I, but I made peace with the fact that the current level of complexity of our world is not comprehensible, form an evolutionary perspective, to the human (or maybe just my) brain :-)

Anyhow, this article was painfully boring, however, the HN comments are worth to read!

dgreensp2• 6 years ago

KonMari has nothing to do with visual brand, it’s about living authentically free of things you don’t like.

It’s like the life philosophy of not spending time around friends who don’t spark joy in you. And then someone comes along and says, “I see, it’s about spending less time around people, in order to look cool!” No, that’s just your shallow, ego-based take on it. “Not mine, that’s totally what people are doing. I can tell they think they’re cooler than me, going on about how much they enjoy their ‘me’ time... It’s just another fad, of course.”

ntsplnkv24• 6 years ago

There is merit in the criticism, especially when the "founder" now has a shop to sell items...

https://shop.konmari.com/

grandridge• 6 years ago

An article about minimalism with too many words

cheerlessbog• 6 years ago

Coming to the US from Europe, I find it striking how much more “Stuff” a typical household contains. I am still struggling to understand why and even after a number of years, it is jarring when I return. I think it is a mixture of greater disposable income, lower prices, peer pressure (“look at my new toy”), extra storage space, ease of shopping (easier to drive and park), and a slightly different set of decisions about what is important.

Back home, I would have a keener awareness of the opportunity cost, including “where am I going to put this”. My family back home seems more homey as with fewer possessions their homes feel more harmonious.

Of course I am sampling large distributions...

golemotron• 6 years ago

The article is a very provincial US take. It makes no acknowledgement of Scandinavian or Eastern (see 'ma' in Japanese) conceptions of minimalism in lifestyle and aesthetics. Africa and India are likewise excluded.

That's very convenient if you are going to weave a narrative of privilege in a US-centric context, and I think that was the writer's aim.

deltron3030• 6 years ago

True minimalism is functional systems thinking, e.g. planning a capsule wardrobe to save the time deciding on what to put on, while still being able to look different each day. You could combine it with shopping for different materials, like whool shirts insteaf of cotton to extend the time between washing (whool doesn't absorb bacteria/odors like cotton).

The minimalism then basically goes unoticed to the outside world, it doesn't "punish" you socially while maximizing your own time and reducing the cognitive load.

You could ditch your gym subscription and get into calisthenics/bodyweight training instead, or prepare your meals in advance. There's a lot of stuff you can do that sums up. Making those trade offs is kinda fun..

hindsightbias• 6 years ago

In college, everything I owned could fit into a ridiculously small car.

After school, measured my minimalism by counting the things I owned. As long as over half of them had been given to me, I was doing good.

Living with other people for awhile, find myself sometimes fantasizing about if I could get my life down to two steamer trunks.

exergy2• 6 years ago

Rubbish drivel. It's a trend nowadays for people to write longform articles purporting to lay bare some great truths but really are just an excuse for the author to regurgitate some recent things they read. It really rubs me the wrong way.

First of all, the unnecessary mention of "mostly white male". I'm So. Bloody. Tired of this trope being injected into every article at every opportunity. I get it. Life unfair. Move on. It's like how every NYT comment section will mention Trump within the first two comments. Give it a rest already!

Then, the vague-at-best connections between minimal art and Minimalism as a response to the excesses of Boomers. It's really not that complicated. Grow up in a house of hoarders, and you're well on your way to embracing minimalism.

Lastly, this whole "Your bedroom might be cleaner, but the world stays bad". Yeah! Minimalism doesn't promise world peace! It's just a way to make your own life more manageable and sane!

Just because a piece is longform doesn't mean it's good. Reading this article was a terrible waste of my time.

runjake• 6 years ago

The online minimalism movement seems like a fool's game touted by the affluent who have quick and ready access to any needed resources.

I think that some people, like Colin Wright, have the right idea with their brand of minimalism, but too many others have co-opted it and put their own rules on it.

I like the idea, but I own a house, and a yard, and appliances. And I maintain all of them. So, in the garage, I keep good-sized stashes of scrap lumber, random pieces of plastic and metal, screws, bolts, washers, grommets, and tools. I have fixed or MacGuyvered countless things with these random parts.

And at some point, I jumped off that minimalism train and jumped onto my own train: practicalism (lowercase p, because I have to maintain some pretension).

practicalism (tm): Own only what is practical -- and maybe just a little more.

Minimalism conceals the messy realities of society

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