Simplicity By Another Name

Minimalism is sometimes perceived harshly because the underlying simplicity it fosters is clouded by radical versions of minimalism that are typically unrealistic for the average person to follow.

What I read: “What Can Minimalism Do For Us?” in Current Affairs. Published July 20, 2023.

The art of simplicity is something I’ve always found interesting. Keep it simple is an axiom I’ve followed for decades. It applies to every aspect of work and private life. In my opinion, essentially everything can be made better with a bit of simplification.

When it comes to living spaces and lifestyle, the word that’s been attached to the art of simplicity lately is minimalism.

In the opening subtitle of the article, the author of my favorite book, Walden, Henry David Thoreau, is referenced as one of many figures who have championed movements encouraging us to make do with less. I tend to eschew the trendy minimalism term in favor of simplicity. People will often roll their eyes when you mention minimalism, but not so when you encourage simplicity. Which I find quite interesting because to me that are essentially the same thing.

In Walden, Thoreau says this.

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.

Walden influenced me as a young child and his message continues to influence me to this day. Despite at times devolving into more complexity, I still aspire to simplifying as much of my life as possible. Whenever I simplify, to use a Marie Kondo phrase, it brings me joy.

So, when I ran across this Current Affairs article on minimalism from their Architecture and Design team, it piqued my interest.

Interviewed in the article is Kyle Chayka, a cultural critic and staff writer at the New Yorker and author of the book The Longing for Less: Living With Minimalism. Chayka’s book isn’t yet one more self-help genre book advocating for us all to embrace minimalism. Rather, it’s a tour of world history and cultures to discover the origins and aspects of the idea of minimalism.

Chayka is more welcoming of minimalist leanings while the person interviewing them, Nathan Robinson, has previously proclaimed their love of minimalism’s opposite, maximalism.

The interview seeks to answer these questions.

But the important questions are: what leads us to want to reject the very things that supposedly make our consumer society so “abundant” and fulfilling? What’s behind the Thoreau-like instinct to chuck it all away and do without luxury or adornment? Is the minimalist instinct the right response to a civilization of wasteful excess? If it is, however, how do we determine what is “enough”?

Superb questions. The interviewer does a great job of posing those questions and eliciting thoughtful answers.

Chayka refers to the “commodified husk” of minimalism and I’m glad the interview kicks off with this qualification. What Chayka is referring to is what all of us witnessed in various forms of media when Marie Kondo and her particular brand of radical minimalism was a fad. I think fad is an apt word. It was the extreme presentation and process of a concept that need not be so extreme. As with so many of life’s pop trends, extreme minimalism isn’t necessarily desirable, attainable, or maintainable for most people.

Interestingly, the interview starts with discussing Kondo’s drastic minimalist perspective on books. In short, Kondo was an advocate for streamlining one’s personal library to the bare minimum, a task ardent book lovers fear. Long before Kondo’s views on book collections were a thing, I had already purged my personal library to perhaps 5% of its original size. With rare exception, I now purchase mostly e-books because I like being able to have the portability and searchability of hundreds of books on my Kindle and other electronic library repositories.

As for Kondo’s popularity, Chayka points out that her books would not have sold so well if there wasn’t an element of truth to what Kondo was saying. I think that’s true of most of the pop self-help genre. The underlying premises are often sound even if the rest of the content surrounding those premises end up being more fluff than substance, or simply one person’s viewpoint delivered as truth versus opinion.

Now would be a good place for me to insert a video I’ve referenced before, “The Story of Stuff.”

It’s valuable that as rampant capitalism and environmental destruction have created a perfect storm of cultural excess to reflect on whether we need so much stuff in our lives. But, I digress.

Kondo does not have the market cornered on minimalism. There are authors, bloggers, consultants, coaches, speakers, and others who espouse the wonders and benefits of minimalism. I believe it’s a slowing trend that will succumb to a more pragmatic and realistic approach, a more doable version of desiring and living with less.

Most such minimalists are anti-consumerism, or at least against the rabid consumerism that drives the bulk of our American economy and many economies elsewhere. I’m in the camp of anti-consumerism although perhaps not as stark a version of it as some. I’m also a pragmatist. We can’t collectively suddenly stop consuming because that’s just not reality. But we can slow down the rate at which we consume. We can be more thoughtful about what we consume. We can think twice about frivolous purchases and acquisitions.

There is the social conscience aspect of minimalism, the practicality of ease of living with less stuff, and there’s the aesthetic of minimalism. These three aspects have been blended together under the minimalism umbrella. But they are quite different perspectives and it’s important to refine one’s definition of minimalism when talking about it or the conversation may get muddled.

There is a paradox between having a maximalist mindset yet understanding its impact on culture and the planet and the minimalist mindset that less is indeed more. Chayka points out the irony that the marketplace often touts minimalist stuff you can buy and it makes you feel like you’re embracing minimalism when you’re really just accumulating more stuff and doing the opposite.

Chayka offers a balanced perspective to the maximalist view of having lots of stuff versus minimalism.

So, when I think about tchotchkes, kitsch, antiques, and stuff like that, it’s all stuff that already exists—it’s material and physical objects that have been circulating through humanity for years or decades and building up a kind of patina that’s not really minimalist, but has a history and a presence. It’s not adding to the environmental damage that manufacturing a new t-shirt or ephemeral furniture will cause, so I do feel it’s ironic that minimalism gives the aesthetic of consuming less, but you’re actually consuming more new stuff.

Verbose individual that I am, I’m trying to keep my posts shorter these days. So, I’m going to wrap up here suggesting you read the entire interview. It’s excellent. It offers a beautifully balanced understanding of minimalism from someone who’s delved deeply into the topic with a journalistic approach versus being the cheerleader of a trend.

The interview discusses concepts such as form following function, the illusion of minimalism the underlies some things that appear to be simple in presentation, minimalism in design and architecture, minimalism in art, that minimalist design can homogenize to a dull sameness, minimalist trends in product and automobile designs, and more. The interview concludes with Robinson asking Chayka if they think there has been a general shift in the zeitgeist since Chayka began writing their book.

Yes, I think so. There are a bunch of articles already about Gen Z maximalism and how the next generation prefers much more decor, filigree, chaos, and visual engagement. But, is that because of TikTok? Is our Instagram minimalism just becoming their TikTok maximalism, and everything needs to move, ooze, and stretch, and be blobby and weird? My theory has been that digital platforms caused homogenization; everyone being on the same Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter homogenizes so many things. And so, I think the homogeneity might stay the same even if the style is changing. We moved from generic Instagram minimalism to generic TikTok boozy bright color maximalism.

I recommend reading the interview. The kneejerk reaction of so many against minimalism is typically a reaction to the most extreme versions presented. But the truth is simplification (my own preferred word) has many benefits and when seen from a wholistic viewpoint can inform all of us to lead less cluttered and more socially conscious lives.

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