Minimalism: The real way forward
An art movement that started after the second World War has found its way to a variety of far removed fields such as design, technology, & most importantly lifestyle.
So, what is minimalism? In short, it is the idea that less is more! It encourages ownership of just a few essential things and takes a contrarian approach to the wave of consumerism that is taking over India & the world at large. This idea, like all others of prominence, has potential to bring about radical positive changes in all our lives. And these changes much as they may sound to be limited to that of a spiritual nature do have implications for economic well-being.
Leading a minimalistic life is truly empowering. It challenges you to question widely held beliefs such as ‘Success is measured by the number of things you own’ or that ‘the pursuit of happiness in life is nothing but the mind-numbing race for garnering material possessions’. But ask those who have walked down this path and you would find that they feel a sense of something being amiss in life. This is because they have bought in on flawed concepts about leading their lives. One other reason why such a chase is bad is the fact that you are not working towards some end goal here. Suppose you put in the hours & more at work and you save up enough to be able to buy your dream car. Now, obviously this is a matter of vanity & you allow yourself the small indulgence of posting pictures on social media. But what is it that you find as soon as you log in to Facebook to post them? Your friend from college has recently bought a new villa & to add salt to the injury it is sea facing. You are now obviously less satisfied with your achievement even though objectively nothing has changed. You would now set your eyes on even greater goals to outrank your friend. What has gone wrong here? Wasn’t buying the new car supposed to make you happy? In this game of comparison, everybody’s a loser.
Next time, before you go after that new model of car, phone, or maybe even an oven that the market throws at you, maybe you should ask yourself whether there is a real need for it. Haven’t you been doing just fine with the car you drive to work daily, the phone that you carry around with you all day, & the oven that heats up your weekday dinners? Then what has changed? If you are like the majority of the populace, you most likely have been struck unawares by a freshly rolled out marketing campaign. These have a tendency of being all over the place, be it with ads on tv selling a disconnected lifestyle or a flashy poster on the highway & recently even the games on your mobile. Now you may think that ‘struck’ is too strong a word but it is consistent with popular marketing parlance such as customer segmentation & targeting. Now this is not to demean whatever we have achieved on account of scale in production & through the work of corporations. Capitalism has successfully raised millions out of poverty but a fundamental argument in its favor is the fact that it gives the choice of consumption in the hands of the consumer. But does this argument hold in the real world? Marketing communication is required to inform the consumer of benefits of a firm’s offering so that he may ultimately choose based on as extensive information as can be made available to him. But we may have misjudged the ability of the human mind to make perfectly rational choices under what can be arguably called an overload of choices. It tends to simplify such decision making and rely heavily on availability. For competing companies, this makes it a game of who gets to the consumer faster and in a more noticeable way. The companies deal with this issue by making ad campaigns that appeal more to the consumer’s subconscious rather than his rational, thinking mind. This ultimately feeds the frenzy of hoarding material possessions.
This is why it is important for us to at least take stock of where we are headed and how we can avoid the trap of unnecessary & avoidable consumption. This is not to say that we should all live out our lives like the stingy Ebenezer Scrooge from the Charles Dickens’ classic but rather to reinforce the idea that too much of anything is good for nothing. This would truly free you up in a lot of good ways. You would suddenly find yourself to be having a lot of free time that was wasted away at the work desk toiling away for an extra bump in paycheck that would have served to make you more miserable. Take the time to get closer to your family, relax with friends that you had lost touch with, and most importantly work on your personal health. You may think that this is a very dispassionate way of leading life but it is not so. True passion and excitement emerge only when you engage in an activity for its own sake. It is only to be found when you look at work as something more than just a means to an end i.e. the next paycheck.
ECONOMY AND MINIMALISM
Coming to the economic ramifications of widespread adoption of such a way of life. There are many positive things to be derived. To begin with let’s look at the polar opposite of what is recommended here, the US economy. It is to a large extent driven by the domestic consumer market. Saying that the people there are not shy of borrowing is a huge understatement. A direct consequence of this attitude is the buildup of household debt which is now running close to $14 trillion. Such high levels of debt erodes away any real chance of wealth accumulation for the common masses. That figure is also dangerously close to the annual GDP of the county which in layman’s term is the country’s total income. Let us now look at another country whose ideals fall in line with minimalism. China has one of the highest household savings in the world. This has allowed its banks to fund the country’s infrastructure which has subsequently proved critical to the growth of its manufacturing industry. The huge coffers that the Chinese command has enabled them to even fund key development projects in other nations. Further, they have been able to successfully leverage this power dynamics to negotiate favorable trade deals with other countries. They are also one of the largest investors by volume in the US bond markets giving them a significant amount of control over the currency of international trade, the USD. All this has facilitated China in becoming the frontrunner to become the next superpower. There are many different things that helped them along the way but one can’t deny that minimalism is at the heart of it all.
The idea of Minimalism as seen from above has a huge potential for a positive disruption in all our lives. Brad Pitt in the movie fight club made the perfect argument in favor of minimalism when he said,
- “We buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like.”
