The Oppressive Gospel of ‘Minimalism’
hmm<p>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.<p>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&#x27;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.<p>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.<p>There will be people who aspire, just like they aspire to every &quot;trend&quot; to emulate this hoping to fit in with an image as a result, but it&#x27;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.<p>2. It&#x27;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 &quot;dissavowed the advantages that helped them obtain wealth&quot;. 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?<p>3. Personally, I&#x27;ve gone minimalist as a result of being a tech graduate with student loans so constrained money, and also not knowing if I&#x27;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&#x27;s something I&#x27;m willing to ship across the country in the next few years or something I am fine to give away when it&#x27;s time to move 3,000 miles, and in general most of the time I decide not to buy it at all.<p>I am not doing this so I can take minimalist photos on instagram of my blank living room apartment, I&#x27;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&#x27;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.<p>This article is not even journalism, it&#x27;s opinion with barely any facts excepts the numerical results for clicking the &quot;minimalism&quot; hashtag on instagram.<p>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&#x27;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 &quot;maybe its this&quot; in one sentence (referring to the summarized version of everything I&#x27;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 &quot;elite few&quot; to blame for this instead of the usual mass of people who are always going to jump on anything trendy.