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I honestly have a pretty negative attitude towards minimalism for two reasons that the article points to as well. One is that it's like a sort of lifestyle vega

I honestly have a pretty negative attitude towards minimalism for two reasons that the article points to as well. One is that it's like a sort of lifestyle veganism, a social signifier for whatever the local upper caste is, the mentioned 'digital minimalism' I see a lot in that context, pretending to be Steve Jobs, adopting some watered down version of meditation often comes with the package etc.. Second function I think is also pretty bad is as a sort of neurotic attempt to impose order or self-optimize, Marie Kondo tells you where every towel goes and then all your stress goes away. In some cultures you'd have a feng shui consultant come and rearrange your furniture and the western secular version is hiring the minimalism assistant. In that sense I think people are mostly consumers of minimalism as a replacement for whatever else they were consuming, it's not actually about cutting useless stuff out which doesn't need an *-ism because it's a banal wisdom you find in every religious book on page 2. Other example of this phenomenon btw is note-taking apps. There appears to be a non-trivial amount of people who are so obsessed with the process of note-taking they spend more time optimizing note-taking than they take actual notes, or do something to write about.

nexuist 5y ago
> Other example of this phenomenon btw is note-taking apps. There appears to be a non-trivial amount of people who are so obsessed with the process of note-taking they spend more time optimizing note-taking than they take actual notes, or do something to write about. Yes! This and the "life management systems" that seem to be a popular trend on HN, seem to ignore the fact that people with messy lives are often just doing more than people who spend all their time cleaning up loose ends. At a certain point there is no value to cleanliness if there isn't any increased productivity to show for it.
- catach 5y ago
  > At a certain point there is no value to cleanliness if there isn't any increased productivity to show for it. "Productivity" isn't the only value that matters.
gonehome 5y ago
My take on Marie Kondo was people were more willing to listen to an outsider that told them to get rid of old things and clean up their house than someone they knew. If your local friend came over and said “clean up your shit” you’d just ignore them. But when Marie Kondo asks what items spark joy (with some subtext of eastern wisdom) - suddenly it’s statusy to listen. Western people have been joining dumb cults and gurus for decades for similar reasons, at least this variation is less harmful than average.
- me_me_me 5y ago
  My parents moved a house after 15years, the amount of useless shit they end-up accumulating was staggering, but worse they didn't want to throw it away! There is a balance of minimalism and buying/keeping everything.
sjtindell 5y ago
I feel significantly better when my spaces are clean and empty. It’s like my mind feels less cluttered. It goes the same for note taking - it is like offloading my thoughts. I write it down, and it frees up space. Does it result in more productivity? Unknown so far. But it relieves me.
naravara 5y ago
> Marie Kondo tells you where every towel goes and then all your stress goes away. That’s very much not what she does. Her entire method is based on teaching people to let go of things they know they don’t need but are holding on to for reasons that basically amount to either self-delusion or inability to let go of the past. All the stuff about how to fold your clothes is just organizing tips that are tangential to the central thrust of her advice. She spends the vast majority of her time coaching people into various ways of disentangling their stuff from the emotional or sentimental feelings they have attached to that stuff. That’s what alleviates the stress, not being bogged down by the collected cruft of older versions of yourself. Almost all criticisms I’ve read of her method seem to be levied by people who never bothered to read her book and are working off some generic assumptions about what “minimalism” means.
- Jansen312 5y ago
  I find that her book is a bit hard sell or difficult to practice vs what I saw her how she did it on the TV series. Critics need to watch that to understand. Reading and thinking is hard for those critics these days (maybe that is why good journalistic content seems rare these days vs reality TV scriptings).
  - cafard 5y ago
    If I have to watch the TV show, that seems to me to call the book into question, not the critics.
beebmam 5y ago
"Veganism, a social signifier for whatever the local upper caste is" You lost me here, as most vegans are not wealthy, and in the US have approximately the same income as non-vegans on average. (A simple google search will point to many studies which refute your statement)
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Stats say different. https://www.statista.com/statistics/738868/vegan-vegetarian-consumers-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/738868/vegan-vegetarian-...
- cercatrova 5y ago
  You are correct but I understood their analogy, I know exactly the kind of person they're talking about.
- xhevahir 5y ago
  "Asceticism" is probably a better term, I would guess.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  I lost you there because you missed the word I qualified veganism with. Yes, plenty of people are probably vegan for practical reasons, but within upper social class voluntarily forfeiting certain goods conveys status because it's a sign of purity and frugality and religious cleanliness. In the US in the form of literal Puritanist traditions. Don't smoke, sleep on a hard mattress even if you're a billionaire, it's why Zuckerberg loves talking about living in a crappy house for ages, and why Musk loves talking about how he sold his material possessions and lives in a container. Caste discrimination and trying to snuff out lower caste members by seeing who observes a vegan diet is prevalent in Hindu communities because it happens to be the case that Brahmins observe vegetarianism much more strictly. Also important, class and income aren't the same thing. Your bohemian artist who lives only off ethically sourced food and earns half as much as the meat-eating, smoking blue collar union guy is broke, but not poor.
  - xtiansimon 5y ago
jhbadger 5y ago
>Other example of this phenomenon btw is note-taking apps. There appears to be a non-trivial amount of people who are so obsessed with the process of note-taking they spend more time optimizing note-taking than they take actual notes, or do something to write about. This obsession predates apps. Even decades ago when I was in school, you'd find a subset of students who were obsessed by the note taking process itself -- they would have incredibly organized notebooks with ink in different colors, beautiful renditions of diagrams from the chalkboard or textbook, etc. Often they were far from the most successful students on exams though.
- nicbou 5y ago
  I think that it's less about studying, and more about passing time and creating pretty things.

nexuist 5y ago

> Other example of this phenomenon btw is note-taking apps. There appears to be a non-trivial amount of people who are so obsessed with the process of note-taking they spend more time optimizing note-taking than they take actual notes, or do something to write about. Yes! This and the "life management systems" that seem to be a popular trend on HN, seem to ignore the fact that people with messy lives are often just doing more than people who spend all their time cleaning up loose ends. At a certain point there is no value to cleanliness if there isn't any increased productivity to show for it.

catach 5y ago
> At a certain point there is no value to cleanliness if there isn't any increased productivity to show for it. "Productivity" isn't the only value that matters.

gonehome 5y ago

My take on Marie Kondo was people were more willing to listen to an outsider that told them to get rid of old things and clean up their house than someone they knew. If your local friend came over and said “clean up your shit” you’d just ignore them. But when Marie Kondo asks what items spark joy (with some subtext of eastern wisdom) - suddenly it’s statusy to listen. Western people have been joining dumb cults and gurus for decades for similar reasons, at least this variation is less harmful than average.

me_me_me 5y ago
My parents moved a house after 15years, the amount of useless shit they end-up accumulating was staggering, but worse they didn't want to throw it away! There is a balance of minimalism and buying/keeping everything.

sjtindell 5y ago

I feel significantly better when my spaces are clean and empty. It’s like my mind feels less cluttered. It goes the same for note taking - it is like offloading my thoughts. I write it down, and it frees up space. Does it result in more productivity? Unknown so far. But it relieves me.

naravara 5y ago

> Marie Kondo tells you where every towel goes and then all your stress goes away. That’s very much not what she does. Her entire method is based on teaching people to let go of things they know they don’t need but are holding on to for reasons that basically amount to either self-delusion or inability to let go of the past. All the stuff about how to fold your clothes is just organizing tips that are tangential to the central thrust of her advice. She spends the vast majority of her time coaching people into various ways of disentangling their stuff from the emotional or sentimental feelings they have attached to that stuff. That’s what alleviates the stress, not being bogged down by the collected cruft of older versions of yourself. Almost all criticisms I’ve read of her method seem to be levied by people who never bothered to read her book and are working off some generic assumptions about what “minimalism” means.

Jansen312 5y ago
I find that her book is a bit hard sell or difficult to practice vs what I saw her how she did it on the TV series. Critics need to watch that to understand. Reading and thinking is hard for those critics these days (maybe that is why good journalistic content seems rare these days vs reality TV scriptings).
- cafard 5y ago
  If I have to watch the TV show, that seems to me to call the book into question, not the critics.

beebmam 5y ago

"Veganism, a social signifier for whatever the local upper caste is" You lost me here, as most vegans are not wealthy, and in the US have approximately the same income as non-vegans on average. (A simple google search will point to many studies which refute your statement)

ipaddr 5y ago
Stats say different. https://www.statista.com/statistics/738868/vegan-vegetarian-consumers-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/738868/vegan-vegetarian-...
cercatrova 5y ago
You are correct but I understood their analogy, I know exactly the kind of person they're talking about.
xhevahir 5y ago
"Asceticism" is probably a better term, I would guess.
Barrin92 5y ago
I lost you there because you missed the word I qualified veganism with. Yes, plenty of people are probably vegan for practical reasons, but within upper social class voluntarily forfeiting certain goods conveys status because it's a sign of purity and frugality and religious cleanliness. In the US in the form of literal Puritanist traditions. Don't smoke, sleep on a hard mattress even if you're a billionaire, it's why Zuckerberg loves talking about living in a crappy house for ages, and why Musk loves talking about how he sold his material possessions and lives in a container. Caste discrimination and trying to snuff out lower caste members by seeing who observes a vegan diet is prevalent in Hindu communities because it happens to be the case that Brahmins observe vegetarianism much more strictly. Also important, class and income aren't the same thing. Your bohemian artist who lives only off ethically sourced food and earns half as much as the meat-eating, smoking blue collar union guy is broke, but not poor.
- xtiansimon 5y ago

jhbadger 5y ago

>Other example of this phenomenon btw is note-taking apps. There appears to be a non-trivial amount of people who are so obsessed with the process of note-taking they spend more time optimizing note-taking than they take actual notes, or do something to write about. This obsession predates apps. Even decades ago when I was in school, you'd find a subset of students who were obsessed by the note taking process itself -- they would have incredibly organized notebooks with ink in different colors, beautiful renditions of diagrams from the chalkboard or textbook, etc. Often they were far from the most successful students on exams though.

nicbou 5y ago
I think that it's less about studying, and more about passing time and creating pretty things.