The concept is typically presented as a lifestyle choice – buy fewer things.  Declutter.  Adopt the spirit, “less is more.”  Fight back against the forces of rampant consumerism.  You could limit your wardrobe to 33 items for 3 months and see if anyone notices (this is called taking “the Minimalist Fashion Challenge”).  You could live in a tiny house.  Or out of a pack.

Minimalism is nothing if not pragmatic.  Calculate the benefit of owning any consumer good, net of the costs of acquisition, storage, and disposal.  You will find the net benefit is often negative…

Critics see minimalism as a posture of the privileged class, elitists who would adopt the clean spare lines of the Bauhaus movement for their personal aesthetic.  Whereas ordinary people value their modest possessions, possibly for sentimental reasons (what’s wrong with that?), or don’t have time/energy to sort through the accumulation and dispose of the surplus.

We all agree that hoarding is no good.  In the home of a level 5 hoarder, as defined by the National Study on Compulsive Disorganization, most space is rendered inaccessible, and there may be fire hazards due to accumulated paper and blocked exits.  Due to neglect, the house may suffer structural damage and lack functioning utilities.  Rodent or insect infestations are typically visible.  There could be unpleasant odors, as well as animal and human feces – but you can err in the opposite direction, too.  Consider Felix Unger (played by Tony Randall) in The Odd Couple — he’s an obsessive-compulsive “neat freak” with a phobia for dirt and a stuffy, pretentious personality.  Felix is not the model minimalist.

More Than Decluttering

While the philosophy of minimalism is associated with decluttering, it has much wider application.  For example, I call myself a “minimalist runner.”  I typically run and hike barefoot.  Often go shirtless.  Frequently leave behind food and water and even bug spray.  Sometimes grope through the darkness without lights.  Or find my way through the tangled forest without using maps or GPS.  In other words, I minimize use of technology, and maximize natural experience.

So in other words, minimalism is about making smarter trade-offs — not about asceticism or self-denial.  Minimize X, to maximize Y.  Of course, most decisions entail trade-offs – and one might wonder, why do we need another philosophy telling us this?  But here’s the rub — when it comes to buying less stuff, you to need to have a backbone.  You need to push back.  Against the relentless pressure of corporate advertising.  Against government propaganda.  Against conformist ideology and conventional wisdom.  In practice, minimalism requires a sense of skepticism.  An attitude of self-reliance.  The willingness to do without.  You need to have the intestinal fortitude to say, “No!”

“No” to excessive consumer goods that get used briefly and then flung into closet/basement/garage.  “No” to technology that’s clever but unnecessary.  “No” to hyper-palatable industrial-processed foodstuffs.  “No” to unproven medical procedures and toxic pharmaceuticals (unless there’s no better choice).  No to beeps, pings, flashing lights, and other vectors of distraction.  No to belief systems that divide, frighten, and anger, which we seem to get a lot of from organized religions, government bureaucracies, political parties, mainstream media, and social media as well. No to the Narrative of Perpetual Progress, as coined by Chris Ryan, which is the idea that the future will always be better, which is a way of justifying a present that seems like it’s getting worse.  No to being gaslit.

Or you could be polite and say, “I prefer not to.”

Minimalism in the Distant Past

In some regards, minimalism may come across as a retrograde movement.  Consider people who follow the “paleo diet” – not trusting modern processed foodstuffs, they want to go back to whole foods, prepared simply, the way our ancestors presumably ate.  Or consider people who wear “minimalist footwear.”  They prefer simple shoes or sandals, without cushion or arch supports, fearing that modern shoes encourage poor form and predispose the runner to injury.

If we’re reaching back into the past for simpler answers, don’t take this as an attitude that’s anti-progress.  Let me explain with an example from ten thousand years ago – picture a band of hunter-gatherers moving through the mountains, on the trail of prey.

The leader is physically robust – strong, fast, sharp-eyed – and also shrewd.  But there’s no game to be seen.  And no longer any tracks to follow.

The minimalist says, “let’s go back.”

The leader frowns.  “We can’t return empty-handed.  The children are hungry.”

The minimalist insists, “I’m not convinced we’re going in the right direction.  Let’s go back to where we last saw tracks and start again.”

So, yes, minimalism may entail going backwards – but only inasmuch as we’re questioning the current direction.

Minimalism in the Present

People have always challenged each other and argued about which way to go, but today, in a time of plenty, we need minimalism more than ever before.  That’s because resources are increasingly rapidly, leading to a special class of problems we didn’t use to have.  For example, those hunter-gatherers were used to going without food.  Today we have the opposite problem – for many people too many calories, evident in expanding waistlines.

In stone age cultures, people lived in small bands, and their chiefs had little power to compel obedience, besides their wits and fists.  Today, organizations enjoy expanding power when it comes to bending popular opinion in their favor.  They use PR firms to shape the message, scientists to lend a veneer of credibility, celebrities to put a smile behind the pitch — and now they’ve got artificial intelligence and big data.

Yuval Noah Harari, author of Homo Deus, leaves a question hanging on the last page of his book — what happens when the algorithm knows us better than we do ourselves?  It isn’t hard to answer – we’ll buy everything the algorithm recommends.  Until we’re broke.

So, what we need today is the spirit of minimalism.  The ability to consider the most sophisticated advertising the world has ever seen – and politely say, No thank you.

Say No and Yes

Say No to spending money on unnecessary consumer goods.  Say yes to savings in the bank.

No to overconsumption of unhealthy calories and the side-effects of obesity and metabolic sickness and Yes to a simple, inexpensive, healthy diet (which was, incidentally, what the Greek philosopher Epicurus used to advocate).

No to whatever predatory influence is at work that causes America to have the highest healthcare spending per capita of the developed world, yet the lowest life expectancy.  Yes to health.

No to distractions.  Yes to moments of stillness.

No to greater dependence.  Yes to more self-reliance – not in the absolute sense  (there’s no such thing) but rather in the sense that someone who is more self-reliant could more readily help other people.

No to rushed decisions based on digital distraction, statistical manipulation, and a constant state of irritation from information overload.  Yes to deliberation.  Balance.  Independent thinking.

How Do I get Started?

To go minimalist, just stop what you’re doing.  Put it on pause.

Take a deep breath.  Take a step backwards.  Look.  Listen.  Feel.

Tell me, what did you observe?  What did you discover?

Good luck finding those tracks!

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Running the Long Path is available on Amazon!