4 ms·

All those "Oh, I have read sooooo many books this year!"-thing is just another elitist posture. It's pretty much like the minimalists who run around and tell p

All those "Oh, I have read sooooo many books this year!"-thing is just another elitist posture. It's pretty much like the minimalists who run around and tell people that they only own a MBP and an iPhone XPro+ (or whatever the maxed out version is) and two potted plants. Most people will not have enough disposable income to buy a full-fletched MBP and that iPhone. You need to be rich (kind of) to be able to have a minimalist lifestyle. The same goes with reading. Most people will just try to make ends meet, juggle with bringing job, familiy, friends, sports/staying healthy under one hat and in the evening they don't want to process any more information from a book. Their everyday life is SO packed with everything, there's no time to sit back, relax and read 25 books a year. So, yeah, read two books a year and call it a day.

voxl 6y ago
>You need to be rich (kind of) to be able to have a minimalist lifestyle. The same goes with reading. This is the second time I've seen someone make this claim and the second time I'll refute it: Minimalism is not a rich-specific ideology. Being minimal as benefits if you're poor, including making it much easier to move. Moreover, you might be "minimalist" without choice, merely because you can't afford to buy things. You could be angry at your lack of material possessions or you could temporarily embrace the ideology to help you get to a position where you can start collecting items that make you happy. Imagine you are poor and have a broken microwave, but you've been holding on to it. Why? Are you going to fix it? Likely not (at least not well, and its a dangerous thing to get wrong). Just throw it out or sell it for parts. Just because you are poor does not mean you should hold on to things that merely take up space.
- lmm 6y ago
  When you're poor you have to hold on to things that you might need, or that sort-of work. You keep your old phone with a broken screen because your current one might get stolen (or you might have to sell it). You keep a broken microwave because you can use it in a pinch (maybe it works if you hold the door shut, or if you angle the cord just so), or you might scavenge some parts from it, or you might have have to fix it as best you can even though that's dangerous. You can't afford the transaction costs of just selling everything.
- CaptArmchair 6y ago
  I think you're ignoring the complex dynamics that cause and compound poverty and to which a minimalist lifestyle is anything but an answer. Consider low education levels, unemployment, physical and mental health disabilities, having to to take care of live-in dependent family members, being a divorced parent with children straining your financial capabilities and so on and so on. A minimalist lifestyle is a conscious choice one makes, pursuing the idea that living with less "stuff" will help attain happiness. It is assumed that other important basic conditions - health, financial situation, education, access to employment,... - are already fulfilled as well in order to create the freedom to attain that goal. Minimalism as a golden hammer to dig yourself out of poverty is a proposition that doesn't even remotely begin to address the underlying causes of poverty. That broken microwave, for instance, might just work well enough to heat up frozen meals. If your household budget mostly goes to e.g. medical bills, rent, paying off student debt, childcare,... you'll hold on to that microwave for dear life.
082349872349872 6y ago
A high end MBP, iPhone, and two plants should be under 10'000 EUR, so if that's elitist I'm not sure what people who buy https://www.immobilienscout24.de/Suche/de/schleswig-holstein/nordfriesland-kreis/sylt/wohnung-kaufen?sorting=4 https://www.immobilienscout24.de/Suche/de/schleswig-holstein... should be called.
- martin_a 6y ago
  I hope nobody buys that. Sylt should go down, nothing more to say on that. Being a minimalist is an expensive lifestyle, you'll need to have some money to make the switch to that. Also, you'll need to buy the best of the class as those are often the devices which fulfill most tasks at once, so you can be a real minimalist.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    I agree that minimalism is frequently relatively expensive. It's just that, well, the people who buy apartments on Sylt[1] probably think they're not elite, because they think the people who buy villas on Malle are the elite. Eyeballing the graph on p.22 of https://www.bundesbank.de/resource/blob/796280/5eaebf3d73e4fdde961bd1dacab852f3/mL/2019-04-vermoegensbefragung-data.pdf https://www.bundesbank.de/resource/blob/796280/5eaebf3d73e4f... it appears that the scenario we're considering for elitism above is affordable by at least 60% of german households. [1] listings sorted by ascending price, so those first condos are well below the 2017 cutoff for "wealthiest 10%."
    - martin_a 6y ago
      I think that as long as there are people "above you", be it in net wealth, income, cost for their houses or what, you'll always be tempted to think you are "normal" or rather on the low-end. At least I notice that I sometimes think that way when I wonder why people do not buy something they like or sth. like that.
bonoboTP 6y ago
The kind of elite that likes and actually reads books is still a better kind. Also the existence of lots of poor people struggling does not mean you should live like them and imitate them. Some Christian sects and other historic cults do have this poverty worship in them, but it's fringe. You talking about your latest programming project is just elitist posturing that you have a computer and stable electricity, which are not available to many around the globe. Therefore you should feel bad and get rid of your computer, sell your belongings an live in rags on the streets.
- martin_a 6y ago
  Well, some people would like to sell us on the point that you can only form your character, be a good leader, a successful person, if you read $amount books, or at least "the right ones". Not everybody got the money or the time to do that. And it's not about poor people or imitating their lifestyle, to suffer willingly or whatnot, but it's the "I'm better than you, because I read lot of books"-expression that more and more people communicate. And in that case they are pretty similar to the over the top minimalists: "If you own more things than me, you are not enlightened enough." The same goes for some readers "If you haven't read this and that... better stop talking to me." Maybe it's just my LinkedIn filter bubble, but the German tech/entrepreneur scene is filled with that. Everybody's writing a book and if you haven't read it, you're out of the game.
  - bonoboTP 6y ago
    There are communities and subcultures for everything. I guess there are circles where having traveled to n countries is the brownie points or knowing the lyrics to all the XYZ artist's songs or knowing all about anime or whatever. People come up with all kinds of subcultures. Obsessing over business/self help/entrepreneur books is just one such subculture. I guess they are not bragging about reading Anna Karenina but the latest best selling get-rich-by-this-mental-trick book endorsed by Elon Musk. The solution is not to read linkedin. Telling people to read fewer books is too general of an advice. Books span a huge range of different topics. Reading Kim Kardashian biography is not the same as reading a book on game theory or medieval history or a classic novel or a good sci-fi or an exciting psychothriller or whatever. The same way, someone could saw "Do less sports!" because there are bodybuilding addicts and crossfit evangelists on Instagram who think you're subhuman if you don't work out 4 hours every day. Sure, there is such a subculture, but the general population does way too little sports. Similarly with reading.
justforyou 6y ago
Incoming pedantry... Full-fledged, unless the Macbook Pro is adorned with feathers for better flight.
- martin_a 6y ago
  Hah, thanks! Non-native speaker here, learned something today. :-)

voxl 6y ago

>You need to be rich (kind of) to be able to have a minimalist lifestyle. The same goes with reading. This is the second time I've seen someone make this claim and the second time I'll refute it: Minimalism is not a rich-specific ideology. Being minimal as benefits if you're poor, including making it much easier to move. Moreover, you might be "minimalist" without choice, merely because you can't afford to buy things. You could be angry at your lack of material possessions or you could temporarily embrace the ideology to help you get to a position where you can start collecting items that make you happy. Imagine you are poor and have a broken microwave, but you've been holding on to it. Why? Are you going to fix it? Likely not (at least not well, and its a dangerous thing to get wrong). Just throw it out or sell it for parts. Just because you are poor does not mean you should hold on to things that merely take up space.

lmm 6y ago
When you're poor you have to hold on to things that you might need, or that sort-of work. You keep your old phone with a broken screen because your current one might get stolen (or you might have to sell it). You keep a broken microwave because you can use it in a pinch (maybe it works if you hold the door shut, or if you angle the cord just so), or you might scavenge some parts from it, or you might have have to fix it as best you can even though that's dangerous. You can't afford the transaction costs of just selling everything.
CaptArmchair 6y ago
I think you're ignoring the complex dynamics that cause and compound poverty and to which a minimalist lifestyle is anything but an answer. Consider low education levels, unemployment, physical and mental health disabilities, having to to take care of live-in dependent family members, being a divorced parent with children straining your financial capabilities and so on and so on. A minimalist lifestyle is a conscious choice one makes, pursuing the idea that living with less "stuff" will help attain happiness. It is assumed that other important basic conditions - health, financial situation, education, access to employment,... - are already fulfilled as well in order to create the freedom to attain that goal. Minimalism as a golden hammer to dig yourself out of poverty is a proposition that doesn't even remotely begin to address the underlying causes of poverty. That broken microwave, for instance, might just work well enough to heat up frozen meals. If your household budget mostly goes to e.g. medical bills, rent, paying off student debt, childcare,... you'll hold on to that microwave for dear life.

082349872349872 6y ago

A high end MBP, iPhone, and two plants should be under 10'000 EUR, so if that's elitist I'm not sure what people who buy https://www.immobilienscout24.de/Suche/de/schleswig-holstein/nordfriesland-kreis/sylt/wohnung-kaufen?sorting=4 https://www.immobilienscout24.de/Suche/de/schleswig-holstein... should be called.

martin_a 6y ago
I hope nobody buys that. Sylt should go down, nothing more to say on that. Being a minimalist is an expensive lifestyle, you'll need to have some money to make the switch to that. Also, you'll need to buy the best of the class as those are often the devices which fulfill most tasks at once, so you can be a real minimalist.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  I agree that minimalism is frequently relatively expensive. It's just that, well, the people who buy apartments on Sylt[1] probably think they're not elite, because they think the people who buy villas on Malle are the elite. Eyeballing the graph on p.22 of https://www.bundesbank.de/resource/blob/796280/5eaebf3d73e4fdde961bd1dacab852f3/mL/2019-04-vermoegensbefragung-data.pdf https://www.bundesbank.de/resource/blob/796280/5eaebf3d73e4f... it appears that the scenario we're considering for elitism above is affordable by at least 60% of german households. [1] listings sorted by ascending price, so those first condos are well below the 2017 cutoff for "wealthiest 10%."
  - martin_a 6y ago
    I think that as long as there are people "above you", be it in net wealth, income, cost for their houses or what, you'll always be tempted to think you are "normal" or rather on the low-end. At least I notice that I sometimes think that way when I wonder why people do not buy something they like or sth. like that.

bonoboTP 6y ago

The kind of elite that likes and actually reads books is still a better kind. Also the existence of lots of poor people struggling does not mean you should live like them and imitate them. Some Christian sects and other historic cults do have this poverty worship in them, but it's fringe. You talking about your latest programming project is just elitist posturing that you have a computer and stable electricity, which are not available to many around the globe. Therefore you should feel bad and get rid of your computer, sell your belongings an live in rags on the streets.

martin_a 6y ago
Well, some people would like to sell us on the point that you can only form your character, be a good leader, a successful person, if you read $amount books, or at least "the right ones". Not everybody got the money or the time to do that. And it's not about poor people or imitating their lifestyle, to suffer willingly or whatnot, but it's the "I'm better than you, because I read lot of books"-expression that more and more people communicate. And in that case they are pretty similar to the over the top minimalists: "If you own more things than me, you are not enlightened enough." The same goes for some readers "If you haven't read this and that... better stop talking to me." Maybe it's just my LinkedIn filter bubble, but the German tech/entrepreneur scene is filled with that. Everybody's writing a book and if you haven't read it, you're out of the game.
- bonoboTP 6y ago
  There are communities and subcultures for everything. I guess there are circles where having traveled to n countries is the brownie points or knowing the lyrics to all the XYZ artist's songs or knowing all about anime or whatever. People come up with all kinds of subcultures. Obsessing over business/self help/entrepreneur books is just one such subculture. I guess they are not bragging about reading Anna Karenina but the latest best selling get-rich-by-this-mental-trick book endorsed by Elon Musk. The solution is not to read linkedin. Telling people to read fewer books is too general of an advice. Books span a huge range of different topics. Reading Kim Kardashian biography is not the same as reading a book on game theory or medieval history or a classic novel or a good sci-fi or an exciting psychothriller or whatever. The same way, someone could saw "Do less sports!" because there are bodybuilding addicts and crossfit evangelists on Instagram who think you're subhuman if you don't work out 4 hours every day. Sure, there is such a subculture, but the general population does way too little sports. Similarly with reading.

justforyou 6y ago

Incoming pedantry... Full-fledged, unless the Macbook Pro is adorned with feathers for better flight.

martin_a 6y ago
Hah, thanks! Non-native speaker here, learned something today. :-)