Nothing superfluous: what is good and bad about minimalism

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Is minimalism evil or good? Decide by reading this article.

We invite you to get acquainted with the reasoning of Brett McKay, who has his own special view of minimalism.

Minimalism is a lifestyle / trend and, like any phenomenon, it sometimes gains in popularity and sometimes declines. In the past few years, minimalism has become popular. There are many articles on the Internet titled “100 Things You Need to Get Rid of” that are in high demand.

Even I wrote on my blog a couple of times about minimalism and in general I have nothing against it. There is something inspiring about the no-nonsense idea, and it certainly has its advantages.

This will help you not to become a weak-willed consumer, there will be no really unnecessary things in your life, your brain will not be overloaded with useless information, you will be able to be mobile and travel light, save money and focus on what is really valuable.

But, despite all the advantages, not everything is so cloudless.

Excessive minimalism is the prerogative of wealthy people

The first thing that made me look more critically at minimalism was an article I read in The New York Times a couple of years ago. It began like this:

Next, the author of this note, Graham Hill, talks about how his life today is radically different from the one he led before. Having become rich in the 90s, Hill began to buy himself not at all cheap things and at some point discovered that his life was literally littered with all kinds of expensive junk.

Everything changed when he fell in love with a woman from Andorra: he simply packed his things in a backpack to follow her around the world. Traveling light, he reconsidered his attitude to things and now consciously lives light.

After Hill's story, I came across a small sketch of Charlie Lloyd.

The same applies to the life of the rich in general: they have few things at all.

Being rich is a good way to rid your life of a lot of junk."

In general, minimalism is the prerogative of wealthy people due to the fact that their wealth is a kind of safety cushion. If they get rid of something they may need in the future, they will just go to the store and buy it.

They don't have to have a lot of things with them, just a wallet is enough: if they need something, they just buy it on the go. No problem. However, if you are not that rich, you will have to lug around a bunch of things.

Minimalism still puts things at the center of your life

What an irony: on the one hand, the goal of minimalism is for you to stop paying much attention to things, and on the other hand, minimalism continues to put things at the center of your life.

The materialist is focused on how to get more things, while the minimalist is constantly thinking about how to get rid of these things. Ultimately they are both focused on things.

The following example illustrates this well. There are two people: the first suffers from gluttony, and the second - bulimia. The first loves food and constantly eats something. The second person hates food and himself for what he eats, as a result of which the ritual of "purification" follows - a person induces vomiting in himself in order to get rid of food. The first loves food, the second hates it, but they are both obsessed with food.

First, you are happy when you buy a thing, and then you are happy when you get rid of it. Funny, isn't it?

Moderate minimalism

As I mentioned at the beginning, I believe that minimalism is a great thing when not pushed to extremes. A person should have a healthy attitude to his property: he should think about it, but there is no need to make it the goal of life.

Most of the great people I admire knew what they needed. They acquired things because of their practical use or simply because they enjoyed them. They bought quality items that do not require constant repair and will certainly serve their owner for a long time. They did not accumulate unnecessary trash and did not surround themselves with various garbage.

They didn’t make things the center of their lives - they could find much more worthy goals to focus on.

They didn’t have time to worry that there were too many books in their library, that their workshop was cluttered with art supplies, or that there were so many hunting trophies in one of the rooms that they were negatively affecting the psyche.

But they were minimalists where necessary: they did not waste time on useless things that could prevent them from creating the great that they left us as a legacy.