The Oppressive Gospel of ‘Minimalism’

I've seen this "minimalism == privileged posing" line of argument a few times now. It may be fair in many cases, but I think there's another angle that never seems to get mentioned: I'd guess that a disproportionate number of these "posers" live in tech hubs like SF, NY or London. In places like that, owning stuff may simply be unaffordable, not because the stuff itself is unaffordable but because space to put it is unaffordable. That is, they may be cash-rich but space-poor, whereas the stereotypical rural redneck with 3 old cars up on bricks in the front yard for spares may be cash-poor but space-rich.

You can call this "sour grapes" or "making a virtue of necessity", depending on how generous you're feeling, but I think there's more to it than just posing.

Don't these people have any hobbies or interests? Hobbies and interests, a personality, dare I might say, require "stuff". You develop a sense of style, and you get things around you that help to describe and tell your story in life.

I don't understand the people that are content with this kind of self-imposed "I can do with just the bare essentials" lifestyle. Unless you're traveling, or doing something of that nature, I am generally distrustful of people who can be gone in an hour. There's something about this kind of lifestyle (I've known several minimalist people well) that is synonymous with fear of commitment and general instability in their life.

A lot of people I met have adopted the lifestyle because it's a learned behavoir from either years of instability, an off-beat childhood, or some kind of abusive relationship. Human beings need stuff around them, and it's perfectly normal to accumulate stuff if you've lived somewhere any length of time.

On the other end of the spectrum of minimalism would of course be hoarding. Not saying that either lifestyle is "bad", but you wouldn't call hoarding exactly normal, would you?

I am a millenial that makes decent money and lives in manhattan. The following are true of me:

1) I sold my car when I moved here, and I usually walk or take Uber.

2) I sold many of my clothes when I got here (because my closet is small) and now use Rent the Runway Unlimited to have a revolving supply of designer clothes.

3) I do not have a washer or dryer so I use an app called Cleanly to pick up my clothes, wash, and return them.

4) I do not have a dishwasher or a microwave, so I never bought many dishes/utensils, and I order most meals I eat at home from seamless or PostMates.

5) I don't have a vaccum, a broom, a mop, a dustpan, cleaning supplies, etc so I use an app called Handy that sends a cleaner that has these things to my apartment every two weeks.

So, technically I own less things. But only because I can afford to pay to rent them (uber, rent the runway) or pay someone else to make up for not owning them (postmates/cleanly/handy). I imagine that the same is true for many of the people who live the lifestyle the author is describing. So in a way, I can see her point: we're not really minimalist, we're just rich enough to not have to own stuff.

But on the other hand, isn't it cool that technology has created a world where I don't have to own all this stuff to have a convenient, clean, fashionable life? I am not even a minimalist but I do think that the aesthetic idea of minimalism has influenced some of the technological advances that have led to some of the most innovative "shared economy" and peer to peer service companies. And if the people who came up with the ideas for these apps want to live in a white apartment with succulents, who cares?

Minimalism is not having no knives in your kitchen drawer.

Minimalism is having one very good knife that works extremely well instead of 10 that work so terribly they never get used "just in case".

The poser proudly boasts that they freed their lives from the tyranny of owning knives, but doesn't mention that they substituted eating out all the time for cooking.

>The fetishized austerity and performative asceticism of minimalism is a kind of ongoing cultural sickness.

It's hardly more than a design trend. Similar to naturalism in the 1970's, when the walls of your home and your television set had a wooden finish.

>We misinterpret material renunciation, austere aesthetics and blank, emptied spaces as symbols of capitalist absolution, when these trends really just provide us with further ways to serve our impulse to consume more, not less.

Not really. It's more the fact that a guy called Steve Jobs reanimated a dying computer business into a global mega-cult, wholeheartedly embracing and thereby popularizing ideas of people like Dieter Rams.

While some alternatives to minimalism would be nice, I think what the author is (rightly) dissatisfied with is our economic system and the exchange of goods, not the actual way in which those goods are selected and consumed.

I am not a minimalist. I have many hobbies that require things - cameras, woodworking, metalworking, automotive work, mountain bikes, drones, art, guitar. I have the equipment for all these things, and in many cases, much more specialized equipment for working with or on these things. Need to put a new crankset on your bike? I have the tools for that. Need to do an oil change in a land rover? I have those too. Need to laser engrave some wood, or cut it with a CNC router? yep. Better yet, I do it in San Francisco (I rented a house with a 2 car garage 4 years ago).

Minimalism is great, but it makes you either completely dependent on others and services for your everyday needs - cooking, cleaning, repairing, making, hobbies - or means you can't do or have those things. IN cities like SF and NY, I have many friends that just rely on apps and services to get stuff done, and would rather pay the bike shop $100 for a tune up than buy $100 worth of tools and never need to pay for a tune up again. They are often the same friends that are very specialized in their fields or in single hobbies and don't tend to look outside of those things they do well.

I reject that philosophy completely. In general, I find minimalism fights with experimentation, creativity, and serendipity. The more you try, and the more you learn, the better off you are, I think.

Take this example: I recently bought a drone. I didn't know anything much about drones except for a few reviews before buying one. If I had been a minimalist, I would have considered that a drone would further clutter my office (very cluttered already), and potentially would be hard to resell given how fast the technology advances. My risk then is having a drone I don't like and taking some financial loss on something I didn't enjoy. As someone who is not a minimalist, my worries were that it would be hard to fly, or that I would regret not getting a different drone. As it happens, the latter is true, and I likely will take some financial loss in selling the one I bought, but by happy accident, I am now writing and researching commercial drone use for work and using the drone I have to prepare for getting licensed as a commercial drone pilot. I didn't anticipate there being any connection to my work when I got into it, but because I did I ended up gaining some benefits I wouldn't have otherwise had. (it also turns out that I have most of the equipment from woodworking and metalworking to make my own drones, so I'm looking into that angle as well now).

One problem I have with this article is that it treats minimalism as something new. Minimalism has recurred throughout history, from Buddhist philosophy, to the Roman stoics, to medieval Christian monks, to Japanese culture, to Islamic art, to modernist art. Taste seems to oscillate between baroque and minimalist. It's not surprising that minimalism is in vogue during the current age of internet driven over-stimulation.

I didn't get into minimalism as a fad or even something I read on the web. I simply moved to another country and could only bring what would fit in my suitcase. As a result I got rid of a lot of the stuff I had accumulated during my life, I got rid of almost everything I owned. As soon as I did it, I was overwhelmed with a sensation of freedom and peace of mind that I can't compare to anything else.

Another major simplification I've done was to dress almost the same everyday. I own multiple items of the same clothes. All my tshirts are the same, all my socks/underwear are the same. I also buy the same shoes and jeans again and again. I look better and I feel much better!

I also quit all social media except LinkedIn and HN and stopped reading the news.

The thing I'll try next is to eat the same meals everyday. Maybe it won't work but I'll try it.

I would also like to live in a bedroom with not much more than a futon and a desk. But it's going to be hard because my girlfriend doesn't share my enthusiasm.

This is anecdotal, take it with skepticism if you want, but I regard this changes as some of the best decisions I made in my life.

Minimalists who spend significant time thinking about minimalism and discussing it on online forums are just as obsessed about their possessions as the people they criticize. The only difference is that minimalists obsess about having fewer possessions, and the people they criticize obsess about having more.

People who are truly unburdened by their possessions do not need to spend much time thinking about them.

I get very easily distracted with things in my life. Both online and offline. So I tried minimalistic lifestyle a shot, which to me basically means to get rid of anything that I don't really need but just taking a space in my life and simply get rid of it. It took a long time over 4 months and I am still working on chucking things out of my life. I can honestly say that it made life so much better, I feel less cluttered in my mind. I have better concentration and I feel more productive instead of doing busy-work throughout the day.

It might not work for everyone, but it works for me.

There's aesthetic minimalism and lifestyle minimalism. These two can overlap but often they clash, and are largely different movements.

I'm trying to figure out why minimalism gets such a negative reaction from people. Is it because aesthetic minimalism is too popular on instagram/tumblr, and now it's cool to hate on the popular thing? No one's forcing you to get rid of your stuff, no one's forcing you to read minimalism blogs.

How is bird watching like minimalism or paleo? I love bird watching but completely miss the connection. What is the "material purge" of bird watching?

'I don't like something other people like. Now I must find every way possible to rationalize my dislike, and use lots of adjectives doing so!'

I have gradually evolved into a minimalist after years of frequent moving and having realized that many of the things I used to own came with a psychological "weight" that's only fully apparent in the thing's absence. Aside from the practical aspect of anchoring me to a single physical location, having unnecessary things around distracts me and tends to elevate my anxiety.

Anyway, this piece strikes me as a critique looking for a cultural phenomenon. Of course most First World minimalists, including myself, realize there is a vast infrastructure supporting the few things we have in our possession. To say otherwise is just a straw man. This isn't the privilege of being a minimalist; it's the privilege of living in a rich and well-connected society.

Despite the author elaborating the history of minimalist aesthetics in modern Western culture (which is only superficially related to minimalism as a lifestyle), it has a far richer history than merely "pop philosophy". Minimalism is an important component of philosophies as culturally distant as Cynicism and Buddhism, but none of these even get a nod.

To the author's credit, I'm sure it's much harder to write an article about real people than Silicon Valley caricatures upending their lives for a fashion statement or a productivity panacea.

What this fancy article calls "minimalism", I think anyone who has ever been through basic training is very familiar with. Except it wasn't trendy, fashionable, and certainly not "elite" - it was how you kept your personal area and your belongings unless you wanted a good smoking from your platoon sergeant. Additionally, the more uses you could find for a single item, meant less items for you to hump in your pack on a N-mile road march.

This is the standard status quo objection to anything counter cultural these days.

You can always find a group of people on the internet into the idea in question and stuck in a filter bubble and completely out of touch. For any trend you want to discuss.

Yes, our culture is able to apply more social pressure on the poor and disadvantaged to buy status symbols. Encouraging them to ignore the system built to keep them poor by selling them overpriced garbage with lifestyle marketing is the act of an ally. Of course having purchasing habits considered weird in a culture of conspicuous consumption is easier for the privileged. That's what being privileged means, doing anything different is easier.

And I'll argue that the minimalism hipsters are a good thing. They are carving out a space where saving money and not engaging in conspicuous consumption carries social status. It would be great news for the disadvantaged and poor if that caught on more.

You could apply this argument to getting exercise, eating a healthy diet, having social activities other than watching garbage TV. All done by privileged people, many of whom turn it into performative virtue signaling to get attention and annoy everyone.

Remove the "ism" here. It's not a damn philosophy or religious movement.

What people basically want is simplification in an ever increasing world of sensory overload. That's it folks.

The problem with minimalism is that you can slowly become extreme without realizing. This is partly because society won't stop you from going too far. Saving money, self-sacrifice, and reducing your carbon footprint are societal virtues.

However, like most extremes it comes with a price. Primarily isolation and anxiety in this case. Gone are the days where buddies come over to work on motorcycles and cars in your garage. You can also forget about hosting a fun party in your boring minimalist studio. You probably won't have guests at all. And while most people don't think about the impact taking a long flight, as a minimalist that flight may double your carbon footprint leading to anxiety.

If you take this path it's up to you to ensure you stay balanced and not pass a tipping point.

I think there's a bit of a problem on both sides of this discussion in a way that is missing the forest for the trees. Then again, I'm only talking about the "finding happiness" angle of the discussion and not so much the question of aesthetics or design.

If your goal is to improve your quality of life, then there are two guidelines that I think are generally applicable. There are other ideas like "earn more money," but that's an external process and I wanted to focus on the internal processes:

1. Practice mindfulness, especially appreciation for both the big things and small things.

2. Learn not to depend on unimportant things for happiness (aka fear of missing out). These things are often possessions, activities, or even relationships.

Generally as you do both of those things more, you feel less of a desire for non-essential physical possessions. It shouldn't be about trying to see how minimal you can go. It should be about finding happiness internally, and as a consequence not depending on a cultural performance (gadgets and fashion are common examples) for validation or identity.

In that sense I think the decluttering movement (I'm aware the article isn't just about decluttering) has things kind of backwards. Removing distractions is good, but if you don't learn the underlying lesson about mindfulness, then you'll just end up emotionally dependent on something else, like seeing just how much you can throw away.

The broader point is that minimalism (in the lifestyle sense, not the product design sense) isn't an end. It should be a result of learning to appreciate what is essential, not a result of removing everything until you think you've found what is essential. Some people might learn the first from doing the second, but not everyone does. I've seen friends get lost in the act of trying to simplify their lives, only to not end up any happier because they forgot to learn to appreciate what was left.

The article says minimalism is in reality about consuming more, but I don't see it explaining why. Did I miss something?

Also, minimalist lifestyle and minimalist aesthetics are certainly different things.

I have been into minimalism (the lifestyle) for about a year or so, reading a lot about it, so here is my summary of it: it is an optimization tool among others, kind of like code refactoring.

In my case it helped me focus on what's important (family, passions), have more energy and more time. And believe me, when you have a young child, you need as much time and energy as possible.

Less stuff is less useless stuff, all fun, meaningful or useful stuff is still there, I just spend less time and energy making decisions about what to wear, cleaning and tidying stuff, etc.

Less distractions is less meaningless distractions, by all means I have more fun spending time with my family than playing video games.

Knowing from experience that my family and me don't need much to be happy is extremely important and gives me confidence to face the future. Our financial situation is not so good, but I know that we can still do great whatever happens.

On the same topic, if you know you can do well with not so much, you are less afraid to take risks, for example starting a business.

I once talked to a guy who thought of himself as Zen / minimalist -- and thought I was too.

Minimalism isn't a thing for me. It's not a sense of aesthetics, though I do like the ascetic and pared-down aesthetic ... but also the decadent and baroque of Victorian and steampunk.

What I do and what I am got confused with minimalism because I actually practice meditation, and I actually know what kind of effect things, objects, emotions, thoughts, and narratives have on the psyche. Minimalism, when it becomes a a thing one identifies with, as a form of social signaling, and as a form of narrative about yourself tells me that that person is no longer practicing impeccably.

"Do you own the object or does the object own you?" still applies even if you become obsessed with minimalism. You might have purged a number of consumer goods out of your life, and yet the very _idea_ of minimalism continues to possess and obsess you.

It has never been about getting every little thing out of your life. It's sufficient for it to reveal enough of your truer self. It's about shedding your social identities, not heaping ostentation upon more ostentation.

I'm a hoarder by nature, I have a hard time getting rid of old magazines and broken VCRs. But I'm not a minimalist, either, I need tools (for example) to work on my car and other projects that I enjoy.

Look for me on a future episode of "Hoarding: Buried Alive".

Wow. I was expecting to see some logical arguments made against minimalist lifestyles, and what I got instead is a bunch of strawmans and ad hominem. It requires "privilege" to be a minimalist? Seriously? "Internet access" is now worthy of privilege shaming?

Is it possible to overdo minimalism? Sure. It's also possible to overdo exercise. It's also possible to overdo generosity and community service. But materialism is a far worse problem than minimalism.

If you have an argument to make against minimalism, as practiced by mainstream minimalists, then make it. But attacking it just because it's not a cure-all and because you don't like its advocates, just makes you sound like a petulant child.

Hmm, minimalism as signaling. Makes me think of how it always seemed that those most in favor of the EU was those that could up and relocate their work to anywhere with a net connection and a credit card terminal.

I think some of you have missed the point on minimalism....

Buy, own, keep things that you love and need.

If you enjoy having a cozy rug in your bedroom under your desk while you work because it brings you joy and happiness then you should own one!

If you have guests over often and having them sit on your bed bothers you, makes you embarrassed; buy a small functional couch.

Don't buy excess amounts of things; buy what you need and love.

If you do art often, it's a passion, etc then it's OK to own a closet or cupboard with supplies.

Take care of what you own, invest in quality items that will last, and make sure it's something you love, use and need.

As another comment, I think the author of this article is confusing the decorative products the resulting fashion trend that minimalism has created with the actual lifestyle and the improvements it provides for people where time, efficiency and reduced mental clutter and life clutter is of the essence.

Not everyone buying minimalist wallart from urbanoutfitters and posting it on instagram is necessarily representative of people who have organized their thoughts time, schedule, social life, work life and have a resulting apartment decor that represents that.

hmm

1. Addressing the claim that minimalism is for the elite, I think its a result for people who have the luxury of time and money to take a thorough look at their life needs, have the time and structure in their life to have long term goals and then organize their life to fit those goals and optimize their things around their life which is centered around a busy work schedule.

Absolutely, if you are a poor refugee you are making ends meet from day to day. you are not organizing kitchen ware, you are at Salvation Army buying clothing for your children and just as you have a spare $60 in your paycheck your sons discount coat's zipper is broken in the middle of winter so you need to buy a new one, but you only have $60, ha probably a fraction of that to figure out a solution. You are not on Amazon finding a long term investment triple wool down Northface jacket that is light yet warm and will last your son until college.

It is true that it takes time, organization and a higher initial capital to invest in long term sustainable products that are planned in advance to meet a lifestyle you have planned, but that does not mean its arrogant.

There will be people who aspire, just like they aspire to every "trend" to emulate this hoping to fit in with an image as a result, but it's not fair rational or logical to assign the whole group of people to that when the pioneers of this in technology ended up living this life as a RESULT of trying to optimize their life, not deciding in advance this is what they wanted. It ended up that optimizing your life helps you work more, live more organized and have less hiccups in life when time and efficiency is of the essence.

2. It's also not fair to assume the same people who had wealth 50 years ago living in mansions and lavish wealth are the same genre of people who have "dissavowed the advantages that helped them obtain wealth". The people using this lifestyle mostly in technology are new people creating new wealth and were never associated nor did they grow up with the lavish lifestyle they are supposedly disavowing. Steve jobs started his company in a garage and basically always lived out of his backpack, and the saying goes he didnt even leave the office long enough to unpack into his new place for months after going back to Apple. Is that arrogance of just living efficiently and not putting trinkets and pictures on your wall to stare at while youre on the couch because youre never on the couch?

3. Personally, I've gone minimalist as a result of being a tech graduate with student loans so constrained money, and also not knowing if I'm going to be living on the east coast or west coast in two years. I have a very minimalist apartment and everything I buy I base the quality of whether it's something I'm willing to ship across the country in the next few years or something I am fine to give away when it's time to move 3,000 miles, and in general most of the time I decide not to buy it at all.

I am not doing this so I can take minimalist photos on instagram of my blank living room apartment, I'm doing it because for my lfie style, clutter is a result of downtime not scraping by on day to day needs like refugees which I totally sympathize with but my minimalism is not arrogant or looking down on them, it's how I choose to live life for me, not to put my nose up to poor people, and not to tag it on instagram.

This article is not even journalism, it's opinion with barely any facts excepts the numerical results for clicking the "minimalism" hashtag on instagram.

This is also entirely leaving out that given the housing crisis and the economy, people in their 20s like me, my generation has way less trust in stocks, the economy and the promise of the American Dream aka owning a house with a wife a 2 kids (given college is outrageously expensive and the divorce rate and broken families of this country is outrageous as well and the finances associated with it that atleast half of us in this country grew up wtinessing first hand), and companies do massive layoffs and on average people in my generation switch jobs every 7 years as opposed to more than double that 20 years ago. We are economically incentivized to be mobile and adept learners so electronics aid us in that, not houses and long term relationships that lock us into a lifetime of financial debt if they don't work out. I think this is the most valid reason why it catches on regardless of the elite few who initiated the lifestyle out of in my opinion efficiency not arrogance, yet the composer of this article is like "maybe its this" in one sentence (referring to the summarized version of everything I've said in Part 3) or maybe its arrogance and pomposity and spends the majority of the article on that, and then refers to the "elite few" to blame for this instead of the usual mass of people who are always going to jump on anything trendy.

In my personal exploration of minimalism, I find being too minimal cuts into resilience (see "Team of Teams"). I've since changed to pursuing "minimal but resilient," which accepts that things wear out or get lost, so you need more than one of some things, and that sometimes not having something used once or twice per year creates a crisis. Finally, in line with the commenter who said deep minimalism depressed them, I also hold onto things that make me happy, even if I don't use them much.

I don't think lifestyle minimalism is new. Read Walden where Henry David Thoreau tries to live a life as simple as possible. A far better critique and analysis than this essay.

I feel compelled to point out the irony of the New York Times calling something an "Oppressive Gospel".

Minimalism via choice vs via circumstance :)

'The dose makes the poison.'

I would point for a middle ground between minimalism and suburban hoarding: essencialism.

My grandfather was born on a farm, but started a lumber yard and was eventually very wealthy.

He grew all his own vegetables and probably did not know what 'organic' meant.

He made solar panels to heat the water in his store, but 'green' was just a colour to him.

He made preserves every year, but wouldn't know what the word 'hipster' meant.

He was pretty 'minimalist' and probably had never even heard the word in his life.

I think he would have called himself 'frugal' if you really pushed him to, that said, he was just the same as everyone else around him ...

This is an impressive rant but it is pretty rambling and incoherent for the most part.

Minimalism advocates can be dogmatic and that tends to be bad, but taking cues from minimalism isn't a bad thing when it makes something better.

Will it be better for all time? Probably not, but that's ok.