This isn't minimalism in any sense of the word, it's just a consumerist vanity.
OP's 'minimalism' is sustained by a reliance upon huge amounts of infrastructure, most of it environmentally unsustainable. He doesn't carry stuff with him, but uses money to access what he needs. It's like claiming to be a minimalist because you own a second house where you keep all your stuff. OP outsources the burden of sustaining his lifestyle to people poorer and browner than himself.
He eats without pans and plates because he relies on an army of immigrant workers to cook for him and wash his dishes. He doesn't own bedsheets or a sweeping brush because an immigrant maid cleans his hotel rooms. I don't believe that such an economic relationship is necessarily immoral or exploitative, but it certainly isn't minimalist.
OP flew more miles in the summer of 2010 than most people fly in a lifetime. That's hundreds of kilos of Jet-A fuel, a substantial share of the fleet and fixed infrastructure, plus untold amounts of carbon (magnified manifold by being emitted at altitude). He eats meat, which has a vast footprint in terms of land, water and energy use. How minimal is a lifestyle that leads to irrevocable climate change? How minimal is a lifestyle that wastes good soy protein to raise beef cattle?
Real minimalists take less than their fair share, not more.
I don't see your point but feel all your anger. Not sure if I'm just catching it from another project, but it is odd to me that you default from a guy owning a few shirts to causing major economic injustices.
I don't own much physically. I spend my days volunteering and traveling living a pretty simple life. I write posts and sometimes people like and share them. This post was written in May of last year and reached HN today. I'm not trying to promote this much, I'm just doing something for me and sharing it on a bloggity.
The assumption that I'm just snapping my fingers to have an immigrant army at my beck and call is laughable. I couchsurf most nights. I've slept under overpasses. Not just swiping my credit card.
I flew more miles in 2010 than humanity did ~300 years ago. Times are a changing. I could fly around the world for the equivalent to a mortgage payment. What is excessive there? Do you default to negativity for anything related to what is possible?
I'm living a different life that almost everyone I know. Nothing jaw dropping or amazing here, just different, and treat it as such.
> I don't own much physically. I spend my days volunteering and traveling living a pretty simple life.
That's the nub - you don't live a simple life, you live a very complicated life where the "stuff" in your life has been abstracted out of sight.
To define ownership by physical possession is utterly facile. The economic decisions you make result in great mountains of "stuff" being made and used and consumed. You haven't structured your life to have less "stuff" in it, only that you avoid having to carry it.
Aviation fuel is stuff. It has mass and volume, it smells and tastes of something. Huge facilities have been built to extract and refine it, and vast areas of land and sea have been irrevocably damaged by that process. Very real, physical wars were fought over it. Your plane ticket is a stake in all of that, a fractional ownership of the machinery that puts a plane in the air.
Viewed from inside your head, your life seems minimal. But from a bird's eye, it looks like a bulldozer on the rampage.
This community is one of hackers, people who strive to look more deeply, to understand how things work at the most fundamental level. If we do not understand the deep impact of the things we consume and the lives we lead, who else?
tl;dr -- Parent said, essentially "I could own 15 things too if I were allowed to go shopping once a week (because of a vast, costly infrastructure in place to support that)", and that this is not Minimalism but merely shifting the impact of your demand. You responded to none of that.
The parent comment made some really good points. You papered over them with a straw man argument about the "immigrant army," then you shrugged your shoulders and said "meh", and there's also a hint of New Age silliness in there (Questioning a person's sense of "what is possible" is a silly way to claim the moral high ground. It's the New Age way to say "oh, you must not understand art".)
The original comment was that you are able to maintain a footprint of the same magnitude as you had before by simply living life "on demand" as it were, instead of storing stuff. If you really want to tout this lifestyle as minimalist, post your credit card statement so someone can fairly consider the actual cost of living this way.
In fact, parent alluded to another point that I would enunciate here: from the definition of Minimalism that says you actually have to reduce your impact -- a person who owns all of those things you don't, but doesn't eat meat, is more of a Minimalist than what you've laid out here.
Sorry to be harsh, I often don't take the time to clean up my comments after I've written them, to filter the wrath.
Tom Brown claimed (I'm not sure of it's validity, but let's say it's true) that he walked into a forest one day with nothing but clothes on and a Knife and walked out several years later feeling fine. THAT is minimalism.
Anyway, I don't think that this commenter is 'angry', he just doesn't feel like what your doing is really all that minimalist because you don't kill/grow your own food. Of course I'm not really sure I agree with him. You are minimalist in some ways and not others. I don't really see what's wrong with that.
I think the original post is good feedback for you.
Your angle might be that you can save time and be happier by owning fewer things? That's good advice. As an innovator, you've offered advice that can help other innovators with our first-world problems finding happiness.
There's some anger in the response, yes. But you are being made an example of. There's still a life of privilege in the way you're living, that probably you'd be happy to acknowledge. There's also some things that might not care about that others do - like carbon footprint, modern consumerism, money inequities, vegetarianism, etc. Or maybe you do care about those things too.
What's the point of minimalism if not to reduce one's impact on the world? Am I understanding this "movement" incorrectly?
From one perspective, reducing your greater impact on the world by some amount seems to at least be routed in a desire to improve things - to make a nobel idea a reality as much as possible. Whether or not the overall impact is measurable is countered by the nobel gesture of the person at least.
From another perspective however, simply reducing the number of "possessions" one has to a ridiculously small amount by offloading the benefit provided by having said possessions to other segments - in essence, renting everything - doesn't seem to have much of a purpose at all beyond being slightly inconvenient. While I highly doubt anybody can only "own" 15 things - no, underwear cannot be excluded, even if you don't wear them more than once - whether the low bound is 15, 30, 75 or 200 seems rather irrelevant. As such, I'm not sure of the point.
Personally, I'd read deeply into some of the other very intelligent comments here. Ignore any perceived anger, because I don't think it exists.
I wouldn't stress it too much. Sustainability extremists will make you feel guilty for eating a diet of wild berries -- you're pillaging the bird's food.
It sounds like a pretty cool adventure that you're having. My first reaction was "15 possessions and no pan?", but I can understand that in context of the travelling that you're doing.
I was just telling my son that a Buddhist monk is only allowed to own 4 kinds of items, not necessarily 4 items. Nowadays when people think they need to "own" things to be happy, hopefully it serves as a call to others that it is not only possible, but liberating.
Minimalism, like most words describing styles, is a very flexible word. If I write a composition in which a single person plays a pair of water glasses with one drumstick, that's "minimalism". And if I employ a very expensive sound studio to record a famous pop song consisting of the simplest possible drum track, a sparse guitar riff, a one-note vocal part with occasional distortion, and a toy Casio organ, that's also "minimalism":
None of these forms of minimalism is more "real" than the others.
Meanwhile, I'm afraid I don't understand your point. At least the OP has provided a living example of his style of minimalism. Can you give us a living example of yours? Even poor people "use money to access what they need", eat meat, travel by bus, use shared public infrastructure, and hire immigrant workers. Even subsistence farmers do these things. Even ascetic Buddhist monks do these things. (They don't subsist entirely on oxygen, after all: They're supported by donations. Or, if you insist, they "outsource the burden of sustaining their lifestyle".)
So when you say the words "real minimalist", who am I supposed to see in my mind's eye? Could it be someone I've ever actually met?
I think the cumulative value of all the resources ever paid for by many subsistence farmers or others considered "poor" on a world scale probably wouldn't add up to the cost of the MacBook Pro in Andrew's laptop. I believe his demands on infrastructure may be a little more too. So are mine.
Of course Andrew's claim to minimalism is only relative to most people in the developed world. But there are tens of thousands of twentysomethings from developed countries travelling the world for extended periods of time with a similar amount of luggage (Most of us spend a bit more on clothes and a bit less on laptops; guess it depends on whether you prefer the inconvenience of laundry or Windows!) It seems to be as mandatory as national service for youthful Australians (and a mandatory experience after national service for Israelis). The secret about life on the road being fun got out a while ago.
It's not Andrew's fault, of course, if news coverage tries to turn him into some sort of innovator he's perhaps never claimed to be.
Hidden complexity isn't minimalism. True minimalism demands fundamental simplicity. Minimalism makes the truth of a product, a process or a place more obvious, rather than obfuscating it behind white melamine. The actuality of less.
Minimalist lifestyle choices are those that positively simplify, that meaningfully reduce the total impact of our lives. Eating soy rather than beef, eating local strawberries in June rather than air-freighted strawberries in December. Insulation over of heating, two wheels over four. Measuring the size of your lifestyle in kilowatt-hours and hectares and litres.
I think you're right about words describing styles being flexible but wrong given the amount of flexibility you expect and the examples you've given. Minimalism, in every example I can think of, has a context. What you've described is a minimalist percussion exhibition and a minimalist recording. If you asked some people to describe those two things I expect you would get some similar thoughts. The focus is on the recording and not the location of the recording. The studio would not be a focus on whether the recording was or was not minimalist.
But there are assumptions, context, about lifestyle minimalism that the minimalism supports some goal to minimize consumption with an eye toward "the things we own end up owning us" and to keep their footprint small. The gp notes that the subject of the article has not actually done that, he's just pushed consumption off onto other people and businesses. An example you asked for of someone who lives minimalistically is a myth I heard as a kid about people who could fit everything into their VW Bug and be on their way.
I guess I don't think you're wrong so much as right but the gp's assumptions are common and more accurate to how minimalism is usually thought about.
Did you actually mean to say that traveling the world on an airplane with a backpack is not minimalist, but driving around the country in a classic VW Bug - a fossil-fueled vehicle which is considerably less efficient per passenger-mile than a passenger jet - is minimalist? That driving around on a publicly-funded, continuously-maintained network of asphalt doesn't constitute "pushing consumption off onto others"?
One eventually realizes that minimalism of any kind is a trick of the mind. Nothing is really simple, even things that aren't alive, and nothing really exists in isolation. A thing can be minimal only relative to something else, and only along a limited axis, and only so long as you don't think too deeply.
(Did I just say that Trio's classic "Da Da Da" has only one note? Oops, I lied, I didn't look deeply enough: The chorus has a background singer, and though she - it sounds like a she - is designed to be a minimalist background singer she does sing multiple notes, adding vital depth and texture and helping to make the chorus sound so awesome: It's a joke of a chorus, but it's so much more musically rich than the verse that it sounds like heaven when it arrives.)
By the example I do not mean driving around the country but keeping owned objects down to a manageable amount where moving easily is possible. But that will turn into an uninteresting side topic as -internet- discussion sometimes does. I have a habit of looking for ways for people to agree and what assumptions are causing disagreement. I believe I've accurately described your initial disagreement with detrich as a difference of assumptions about a definition. To me minimalism is keeping the number of chunks one has to consider low enough so up and moving to another city, by car or plane, is easy. (I can't find that Trio's song. But I'm not sure you mentioned it before either.)
>OP's 'minimalism' is sustained by a reliance upon huge amounts of infrastructure, most of it environmentally unsustainable.
That's true. On the other hand it's there. All that infrastructure wasn't installed for his use exclusively. So, yes, I agree he's just moving the ownership from personal to distributed corporate/community. It's somewhat comparable to playing lose with accounting rules and moving money into off-shore banks. But, even homeless people utilize what is out there for them to use -like shopping carts, fast food restaurants, etc. I'ts not as though they become wilderness foragers.
>OP outsources the burden of sustaining his lifestyle to people poorer and browner than himself.
That's a bit of unnecessary inflammatory dressing.
He (or someone else) could have easily done the same thing in China, or Finland or South Korea or Greece. Or, similarly, someone brown could have done similar. Not all browns over the world are destitute, as one might portray.
Yes, OP is not responsible for the existence of the machine. But no, there is no real meaning to "minimalism" if you do not stop pulling on the machine's demand lever. Parent comment is questioning whether OP has actually done that, or if he's not simply made his demand less visible (consumer vanity).
This is off-topic, but, if as a society the goal were to put less stress on resources there are two alternatives: either individually consume less or, have fewer consumers. Neither alternative seems compatible with the prevalent economic model --see Japan's stagnation in a nation which is neither growing its population and where the current population has decreased its 'consumerism'. Still, ZPG or near ZPG seems to be in disfavor as a way to ease pressure on resources.
With regard to the OP. it would seem, at least marginally, relying on the machine rather than on personal ownership is more resource efficient.
And, yes, as others pointed out, minimalism, is a pretty malleable term.
Wait a minute... haven't I been told that the solution to numerous environmental problems is to move more people into cities for the infrastructure sharing? Not necessarily told by you specifically, but certainly by others. Now moving into the city and using its infrastructure is unsustainable and selfish? (Excluding your flying point.)
Help me out here, how am I supposed to be saving the planet today again?
I think his approach to minimalism is kind of unique. He's essentially saying, "Cut all the unnecessary choices out of my life." The last paragraph sums it up nicely:
> Minimalism is equally easy as it is boring to do. What shirt today? The one I didn’t wear yesterday. “How tough is it for you?” You mean, to pick the shirt I didn’t wear yesterday? Once you get used to simplicity, the complex normality others have becomes the audacious thing.
However, don't get upset when someone calls him on his anti-ownership bullshit. He still owns things; he's just shoving the energy of owning things on to someone else.
I think owning less things is a good goal to have, but not the way he's approaching it. It should be spending less money on things, not spending more money on disposable things so you can technically say you don't own a lot.
My brother, currently running a non-profit abroad, utilizes a similar lifestyle. Everything he owns he can fit into his small backpack.
I learned a ton from him about the benefits of mobility--something I would have thought the lean, mobile startup crowd here on HN would've related to more.
Attachments--to belongings or business plans are a source of strength but are also over emphasized. I admire what you've done and think we could use a lot more of it.
He juxtaposes his "minimalism" with being an "overconsumer". His words, not mine.
That makes him a bit of a douchebag who deserves to be called out on his bullshit minimalism claim, not just someone who's just "experimenting and learning". He consumes way more resources than most people on this planet, including most Westerners. By what insane standard is that minimalist?
What's really interesting to me is the _deliberateness_ of the choices that Andrew is making: not whether those choices match some (given the debate over the term here) arbitrary definition of minimalism.
He's experimenting with a different lifestyle and what might come about by imposing artificial constraints upon himself which I think is really admirable.
And intolerant as well. Let the guy live like this, if he wants, and write about it. Why are HNers feeling so attacked by that?
He's not claiming that everyone else is doing it wrong, is he? Even though I like owning stuff and wouldn't give it up easily, I find his idea of minimization intruiging.
Real minimalists take less than their fair share, not more.
Are you defining "fair share" as "median"? or as "takes less than what he produces, as defined by how much value others think he provides in terms of how much money they give him for his work"?
Much as you may dislike capitalism, and whatever flaws it has, it's the best system we have for identifying the value of some product or service: a thing is worth what someone else is willing to give for it. Expanding thereon, note that that thing (product or service) is probably worth _more_ because one can usually turn around and acquire/generate even more wealth with it.
OP writes a blog post. He acquires enough income somehow from it to pay for a seat on a cross-country flight. What he pays for that seat in turn nets not just enough to cover costs, but to turn a profit on that flight. That profit in turn allows employees & shareholders to buy [insert warm fuzzy life-enhancing goods/services here]. During said flight, he writes another post which will net an income enough to cover the next such cycle. Upshot? he buys a red-eye flight instead of paying for a bed (divided by however many nights he would own, but perhaps not use, said bed), "minimalizing" that bit of his life, and the world is better for it.
You may think it's "not fair" somehow, but you're not willing to put up the value-representing money to trump it. What's your "footprint"? and how might that be criticized? (say, by the "strip mining" of forest land for carrot farms.)
wow. way to put that in perspective. when you really think about it, it makes sense. i'm a raw vegan and feel like i am more of a minimalist than the OP and i own 100+ things.
at first when reading this article, i was imagining my life with only 15 items. then after reading jdietrich post, it made me think a little more..
i would say, i'm very eco-friendly and very aware of my actions. i would not say i'm a minimalist. nothing in my apt is unnatural. no toxic chemicals. from the soap, to the tooth-paste, all the way down to the cleaning products. i compost, recycle, etc..i bike everywhere, use a carshare service (citycarshare), etc etc..
How much of that stuff is locally produced? Your post is admirable but reminds me of someone I know who buys disposable bamboo plates instead of paper plates to be eco-friendly, discounting that they're produced and shipped from halfway across the earth.
hahah. good question. i live in san francisco, so i'm very lucky to have access to local organic farmer markets almost everyday. to answer your question: almost all of it...hopefully. besides the superfoods ( spirulina, cacao, maca powder, etc.)
i shop at rainbow grocery for produce, which most of what they have is local. it's more expensive, but worth it. i support local first.
not to rant: but coming from a lebanese culture and giving up food i love (meat, dairy) to be more eco, and of course, have optimum nutrition has been the best decision i've ever made in my life. no joke. i think/hope one day, more people will start to convert to plant based diets, as they will see the the truth in the data.
The linked article says he ate a cheesestake and the author in the comments described how he didn't want to eat the bread so he got the meat on a piece of paper on top on the bread.
What does eating meat and flying in planes have to do with limiting the number of items he carries with him? And how exactly do you infer that he relies on an poor, brown immigrant army to clean and cook for him?
OP's 'minimalism' is sustained by a reliance upon huge amounts of infrastructure, most of it environmentally unsustainable. He doesn't carry stuff with him, but uses money to access what he needs. It's like claiming to be a minimalist because you own a second house where you keep all your stuff. OP outsources the burden of sustaining his lifestyle to people poorer and browner than himself.
He eats without pans and plates because he relies on an army of immigrant workers to cook for him and wash his dishes. He doesn't own bedsheets or a sweeping brush because an immigrant maid cleans his hotel rooms. I don't believe that such an economic relationship is necessarily immoral or exploitative, but it certainly isn't minimalist.
OP flew more miles in the summer of 2010 than most people fly in a lifetime. That's hundreds of kilos of Jet-A fuel, a substantial share of the fleet and fixed infrastructure, plus untold amounts of carbon (magnified manifold by being emitted at altitude). He eats meat, which has a vast footprint in terms of land, water and energy use. How minimal is a lifestyle that leads to irrevocable climate change? How minimal is a lifestyle that wastes good soy protein to raise beef cattle?
Real minimalists take less than their fair share, not more.