It's not about having less, it's about needing less... and the difference is everything.
A reflection on Minimalism and human susceptibility to derailing vices in general.
In a journey to clean up my online presence this week, I went over this old video I made about minimalism (below). As a result, I thought it would be interesting to explore the subtle but seismic difference between having less and needing less.
Minimalism usually = ‘having less’
When you think of minimalism, you probably think of an empty apartment and having few possessions. Sell everything, own as little as possible, and ride a bike everywhere.
That image describes a facade, a lifestyle that commonly results from a minimalistic approach—but does not, for me, embody this timeless philosophy.
I think ‘Minimalism’ is actually a terrible name. It refers more to the wrapping paper, when the core idea is the gift inside.
What, then, is the gift?
The image below is from 2009 film The Joneses—a film with underrated cleverness. In it, a group of good-looking actors are hired to move into a rich neighborhood and pretend to be a family, all so they can promote and sell luxury goods to their neighbours (feels like life, right?).
I’ll warn you, the image is a proper spoiler, so I’ll leave you a buffer if you want to scroll past it…
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
The disservice of possessions and other vices is when they enslave or weigh us down.
If they drown us.
Clothes, houses, cars, watches, they can all become addictions.
But so can…
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Approval. Likes. Attention. Job titles. Career progression.
Health and fitness. Self-help. Self-improvement.
Property. Shares. Success. Fame. Power. Influence.
.
.
.
Now, one way to avoid addiction is to go cold turkey, or follow what I call ‘the Mr Miyagi approach.’
If you don’t go to the pub or bottle-shop, you can’t be tempted to drink.
If you delete the Instagram app, you can’t get sucked into that doom scroll.
Simple, right? (We’ll come back to that).
On some level at least, the best defence = Don’t be there.
There’s a few words for this…
Abstinence, Avoidance, Renunciation…
Abstinence is reflected in many different forms throughout religion, spirituality and philosophy. Take the Bible for example—‘If your left hand causes you to sin, cut it off’.
Applied to the context of having less, this is where minimalism gets a lot of its branding—from physically having less, amputating or avoiding the trappings of materialism, or lifestyle excess, that weigh us down.
Sever the contact, sever the problem.
Simple, right?
Hmm….
Firstly, abstinence or renunciation is hard to keep up.
— Whatever we’re hiding from can almost always reach us again.
Then, there’s the question of general effectiveness.
— Physical abstinence is one thing, psychological another.
— The designer rugs have been tossed out, the Instagram app taken off our phone… but is the craving gone?
Even then, there’s no point being without possessions if we’re still…
anxious
depressed
unhappy
enslaved to something else
The Real Goal
And so the real goal is probably this thing called freedom.
Freedom, and not merely giving up possessions.
Freedom
Consider the previous two articles I published on this newsletter. Both are really interesting gradients to this conversation of freedom:
The Greatest Philosopher No One’s Ever Heard Of (Anthony de Mello)
A Psychological Deconstruction of Walter White (From Breaking Bad)
In the show Breaking Bad, Walter White seeks a business empire at any cost—riches and glory. But, hang on—he isn’t caught up in the trappings of materialism.
He’s not rushing to live in a mansion or buy Gucci slippers.
His frenzy is sign of a much more psychological, existentially rooted addiction—an attempt to nourish a lack of self-worth and power, most likely. You could say he’s after a freedom of sorts, but his pursuit of it is clearly self-enslaving, bordering him in.
It’s funny how often our pursuit of freedom results in self-imprisonment.
Anthony de Mello, the well-regarded spiritual guide, used language like ‘attachments’ and ‘illusions’ to describe our experience of resistance in life. His idea was that happiness is our natural state, and we deny ourselves this happiness mostly through identifying with all sorts of labels and conditioned ideas around what will make us ‘more.’
There’s that idea of being weighed down again! Only it’s broader than materialism. We’ve reach the same message, only the starting place was different.
I think Minimalism is medicine designed specifically in response to the diseases of materialism, workaholism and burnout.
To be effective, it must achieve something other than the mere removal of items.
It must ease the compulsion.
It must help us develop discipline and self-awareness.
It must restore clarity and peace.
Don’t blame fast cars
The Ferrari is just a Ferrari. What’s wrong with the Ferrari?
Oh…
The Ferrari isn’t the problem. It’s our compulsion for the Ferrari, that’s the problem.
‘If your left hand causes you to sin, cut it off’ is too final for me.
And it’s a little besides the point. It’s not my starting place, either. I would start with…
Why am I so desperate to have these things?
Rehabilitation
Really, what we want to do is recover, rehabilitate.
This brings me to going without for a time.
Going without for a time helps us ween ourselves off dependency, to recover from compulsion, addiction, or whatever we want to call it.
This seems to be a big part of many religions and spiritual belief systems. Picture a monk, a nun, your typical priest, Rabbi or pastor… the image called to mind is one of ‘minimalism’—such types are typically disinterested in life’s flashy stuff.
Then, the emphasis on sacrifice and going without—pilgrimage, retreats, fasting, Ramadan, Lent.
I remember when my atheist friend shared what he was giving up for Lent. ‘But why are you giving something up, in you don’t believe in this?’
‘… I just think it’s a generally good thing to do, regardless.’
—Atheist Friend (Not his real name).
Cultivating discipline, and freedom. Freedom, I think, from bad types of dependency.
Bad types of need.
Once we have that freedom, that non-attachment, the abstinence feels a little pointless, because what we really want is the space to cultivate strength.
So, I would say, ‘If your left hand causes you to sin, cut if off…
… until you learn to stop sinning—then you should grow it back again, and learn to live with it.’
Only hands don’t grow back.
Perhaps a better metaphor is needed.
Needing Less > Having Less
And a fundamental concept in Buddhist tradition as well.
I think a helpful distinction between desires that detract, vs those that help us grow, is whether or not the desire is genuinely rooted in making someone other than you happier, and better off.