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Minimalism conceals the messy realities of society

• DubiousPusher 7y 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 7y ago
    What is poverty in this respect?
    • DubiousPusher 7y 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.
      • cyberbanjo 7y ago
        Why does millet pass but bread doesn't? You dont mean the intersection includes growing millet, do you?
        • DubiousPusher 7y ago
          As far as I know millet can be eaten as a whole grain cooked with water or milk over an open flame. This would be akin to eating kernels of wheat without grinding them to flour and baking them with other ingredients. So you could just eat wheat but IDK how digestible that is. Perhaps someone here does?Cream of Wheat and Malt'O'Meal are the closest I've had.
          • cyberbanjo 7y ago
            But isn't buying millet just as un-minimalist as buying bread or wheat?
            • DubiousPusher 7y ago
              In this example eating unbaked grains would be the compromise to remain comparatively minimal and yet become more self reliant. Another example would be simple car maintenance. A minimalist would pay for an oil change. One may want to become more self reliant and begin changing one's own oil. In this case you will need a catch basin, a funnel, new oil and filter. You may need a jack, jack stands and a specialty wrench. You could become both more self reliant and more minimalist by getting rid of your car. If you live in an area with good transportation you will become slightly inconvenienced. If you live in a place with bad transportation you will become significantly impoverished.
              • angrais 7y ago
                What on earth are y'all talking about?! Buying unbaked grains to eat is to become self reliant? That's just unrealistic and makes no sense. Why not buy bread (as GP said), cut it, and freeze it? Surely that would be a minimalist approach. Minimalism is not reinventing how to do everything, but just having what's needed now. If bread is your breakfast, then it's what's needed daily. FYI: it's possible to be a mechanic and a minimalist. Owning equipment in a garage is not anti-minimalism, it's just common sense. Especially if you have multiple cars (e.g. a family).
  • laurentdc 7y 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
    • DubiousPusher 7y 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.
    • hanniabu 7y 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.
      • DubiousPusher 7y ago
        I'd say there a lot you can get by with using a basic variety of tools. The minute you delve into really fixing modern equipment back to factory standards the need absolutely explodes.
    • smoe 7y 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.
  • pfranz 7y 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 7y 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.
      • DubiousPusher 7y ago
        Absolutely. Self reliance is also a kind of luxury, that I wouldn't necessarily call better than minimalism only that the two are in contention. Those 2x4s saved the literal day for us as the time away would've cost us a day's work ;)
    • 7y ago
  • jcims 7y 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.
    • DubiousPusher 7y ago
      Amish are definitely not minimalist. The array of tools Amish carpenters have and are skilled with is very impressive.
      • scooble 7y ago
        I wonder if minimalism is better understood as 'enough' rather than 'less'. A carpenter can have no more tools than the they need, even though that may be hundreds of tools.
        • nicbou 7y ago
          It's a contentious debate. Minimalism is a large umbrella. Some people are aiming to fit everything in a backpack, and others are just trying to watch their consumption.
      • bambataa 7y ago
        They might have many tools but they probably make them themselves or know by name the person who makes them. Out of close to raw material. (I’m assuming the Amish don’t mine and smelt their own metals). One modern power tool could replace many of those Amish tools but it brings with it so many more dependencies.
        • anotheracct 7y ago
          That's not true at all. In another comment of mine I discussed this. They generally get their equipment outside of the community. They are no longer self sufficient in the sense that you think they are. They might make some shit but for sure go to Costco and stuff like that. The costco close to where I live even has a place for their horse and buggies(which should be outlawed IMO. The cruelty to horses is undeniable and the Amish don't even pay road taxes). You have a big misconception about Amish. They are not minimalists in any sense of the word. Don't let the button thing fool you. They're just a shitty cult at this point.
  • ntsplnkv2 7y 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.
    • HammockTester 7y 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?
    • goatinaboat 7y 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.
    • DubiousPusher 7y 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.
    • nicbou 7y 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.
  • jl6 7y 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.
    • Koshkin 7y 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 7y 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".
  • nicbou 7y 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_Hippo 7y 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.
      • lmm 7y ago
        You can paint canvases if you find that fulfilling, you'd just be deliberate about what painting stuff you treated as a possession. Either you'd rent access to a stocked studio, or you'd buy paints and brushes but treat them as ephemeral, or you'd cherish them enough to count them towards your number, and use them frequently. What you wouldn't do is have a pile of painting stuff in your closet that you used five years ago, because that's how you end up lying to yourself - if you were ever going to use it again you'd be using it now, so either you keep using it, or you dispose of it without regret.
        • Broken_Hippo 7y ago
          I think you might be missing something. Making art -some sorts more than others - simply requires equipment and stuff. I know this. I make art. I probably have more than some people because I work with different media: Watercolors, acrylics, ink, and so on. I'm prolific, and it all gets used. Just not all at once, you see. This doesn't jive with the folks that brag about minimizing possessions - because it requires such. They might do digital art... maybe. And rent a stocked studio? Most folks on earth aren't near such a thing nor is it something most folks can do. The few times I've seen any of this, you can't simply rent (and none have been near me). You have to apply to make sure you are good enough and do the right sort of art. At that point, you are representing the studio. This goes for a lot of hobbies that requires a number of tools, supplies, and space, though. Simpy doing active work requires space and stuff - and some of it might go for months without use because you use different tools in different stages of work. (A woodworker might use a planer, but not every day and rarely if a piece takes a few months). Actual, truthful minimalism accounts for this, but that wasn't what the topic in this thread was: It was the unobtainable minimalism that creates those that brag about having few possessions... and wind up having to rely on the labors of others to do sometimes basic things.
  • closeparen 7y 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 7y 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.
      • eeZah7Ux 7y ago
        > I think that is minimalists nightmare Not at all.
        • the_bowme 7y ago
          Yes, it is. Unless you have an explanation of why not without getting into no true Scotsman territory.
          • ooobit2 7y ago
            Minimalism is about maintaining useful purpose behind the things you own and not retaining unnecessary objects. If you're a DIY person, and you have a good reason for a backyard of junk cars, that's explainable. If you buy a new iPhone every year but you don't actually use the majority of the new features (if ever at all), that's frivolity. Minimalism isn't the ideology that (less is more)==(less things). That comes from people appropriating philosophies to compete for attention on social media, where everything is at best one-dimensional because the point is to entertain not educate. No, minimalism as a philosophy means (less is more)==(object-essentialism). You initialize solutions among what you have, and factor the time, resource, and opportunity cost into the cost-benefit of acquiring a new object. So, as I mentioned, if acquiring a backyard of junk cars is more cost-benefit savvy than having to acquire a new junk car every time you need a resource from one, it's minimalist. However, if you acquire a junk car that adds what you already have a sufficient amount of, it's frivolity.
  • hnarn 7y 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.
  • friendlybus 7y 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 7y ago
      In OPs story, the trip to the local hardware store was hours away...
      • friendlybus 7y ago
        Then in what sense does self reliance and minimalism demand poverty? That’s self imposed exile.
  • burntoutfire 7y 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 7y 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.
      • wink 7y ago
        I think that's overly simplistic. At least where I live people usually buy one house (if they buy one) and keep it for the rest of their lives, so the size is already determined by the amount of things they own, or how much space they need. Just that I've never seen this as a factor, you usually buy what you can afford, not as large as needed to fit your stuff. Stuff just happens to amass and even a small house can be unimaginably full of things without looking like it's full. When my parents sold their house we filled up 2 vans just with tools from the shed. yes, it was a big shed, but it wasn't cramped.
  • smoe 7y 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.
    • lmm 7y 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.
      • smoe 7y ago
        Its not about whether to have a pile of junk or not, but its utility. My fathers side of the family is all farmers for generations. They piled up a lot of junk and reused continously around the properties. But those weren't just random piles, but sorted and to a degree inventoried and cleaned so it can be used efficiently. They could e.g. plan ahead for new projects how much can be build from scrap vs new materials. Sure just throwing stuff on a pile doesnt cost you anything, but i dont see how you are going to reuse that stuff somewhat efficiently later without upfront assigning some value to different types of junk
    • ehnto 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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.
• friendlybus 7y 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.
  • ntsplnkv2 7y 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.
• grawprog 7y 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.
  • nixpulvis 7y 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.
    • nmyk 7y 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 https://youtu.be/daSid6Lh9Vs
      • nixpulvis 7y ago
        I'm personally more of a fan of things like OG DJ Distance for minimalism. this track hits me where it feels: https://youtu.be/3AT8szyLD0k https://youtu.be/3AT8szyLD0k Turns out, two "movements" (repeated?), and little bit of variation is enough to dance to, and generally make for a pretty good song.
        • 7y ago
• clairity 7y 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 7y ago
    That’s neat. It sounds like some kind of “Spiritual Prime Directive.”
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • mysticmode 7y 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.
• deleted 7y ago
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• awat 7y 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.
  • hanniabu 7y 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.
  • ntsplnkv2 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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.
• mraudiobook_com 7y ago
  Minimalism is for the top 1% (most of us on HN) for the rest we just call it poverty.
• deleted 7y ago
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• elg0nz 7y 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 7y ago
  Deep, but subtle link between the psychology of minimalism and libertarianism.
• gitgud 7y 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 7y 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 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y ago
      > _that's_ minimalism I must have missed it, who is in charge of the definition of minimalism?
      • deleted 7y ago
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  • ravenstine 7y 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 7y 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.
  • ohnope 7y 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.
• pojntfx 7y 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.
  • ohnope 7y 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?
    • pojntfx 7y 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 7y 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?
  • ravenstine 7y 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 7y ago
    Minimalism is contentment with what you have. Wanting something you don’t have does not make one minimal.
• drobert 7y 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?
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  • zrello87 7y 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.
• JackPoach 7y 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.
  • ravenstine 7y 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.
    • JackPoach 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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.
  • kerkeslager 7y 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.
    • 7y ago
• samirillian 7y 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.
  • lmm 7y 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.
  • scooble 7y 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.
• ehnto 7y 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.
• kerkeslager 7y 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.
  • exergy 7y ago
    Anticonsumerist is actually a great word. I might adopt it. Much more succint.
• jhoechtl 7y 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.
• ravenstine 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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!
• dgreensp 7y 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.”
  • ntsplnkv2 7y ago
    There is merit in the criticism, especially when the "founder" now has a shop to sell items... https://shop.konmari.com/ https://shop.konmari.com/
• grandridge 7y ago
  An article about minimalism with too many words
• cheerlessbog 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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.
• exergy 7y 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 7y 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.