There are trains running, skyscrapers going up, neon signs everywhere. He’s writing a little essay-in a kind of a casual newspaper column format-memorialising the world of traditional Japan in the moment that Tokyo is becoming super-modernised. I like books that try to preserve a sensibility, a moment in history, and Tanizaki definitely does here. Let’s move to your first book recommendation on minimalism: this is the 1933 essay In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki. Decluttering to create an illusion of control. To me, it often seems like an excuse to focus on the individual lifestyle, the individual perspective without while making the excuse that, oh, you know, building a communal politics is just too far beyond what I can accomplish. Minimalism becomes a way of narrowing your reference frame down to what you can control and what’s immediately around you. But the more important facet is psychological: the feeling of being overwhelmed, like there’s just too much to think about and too much to deal with. I think the accumulation of household items is maybe the longest-running problem people have always owned a lot of stuff. Minimalism is this instinctual response to being overwhelmed. I’ve seen climate change described as a ‘hyper-object’-that is, something too complex to truly comprehend or focus on at once. Whether it’s electoral politics, or climate change, or coronavirus, so many things feel beyond our perception. So much feels beyond the control of the individual. I do think we’re in a chaotic moment, right now. Is that why there is this hunger for minimalist self-help, for books like Marie Kondo’s? And, of course, we are currently experiencing in a period of particular epidemiological, political and climatological anxiety. You give a very striking statement in the opening section of your book: there are 300,000 household possessions in the average American home. It never provides the solution that it pretends to provide. Minimalism does not fail, per se, but falls out of favor. Because I don’t know that it connects I don’t know that each person has been influenced by the previous person in the way that you might think of with liberalism, or political humanism.īut I do think there’s this path you can trace through history with people who have participated in this idea, moved it in different directions, try it again over and over again. So I have trouble calling it a movement, except maybe right now, the heavily branded minimalist lifestyle. Then it becomes appealing to think that if only we threw out everything extraneous and lived more simply, then we would be happier. Minimalism becomes appealing to many people at certain moments-when there’s a lot of societal upheaval or a chaotic political moment, any kind of chaos. I’m sure this occurred far before Marcus Aurelius’ time as well. We should just throw out all the extraneous stuff, and we will find the perfect thing.’ I don’t think that’s ever been a new thought. Something that’s perfect, that doesn’t need anything else. Much like Marcus Aurelius, 2000 years ago: ‘Oh, what a great idea. Minimalism does have this tendency to erase its own background it always presents itself as if it’s this new idea, to throw everything out and start over. You quote Marcus Aurelius: That which is really beautiful has no need of anything.” Is minimalism, or Minimalism, a continuous movement? Or is it a notion that just keeps coming back? Yes, you trace the origins-or early examples-of minimalist thought back to the Stoics. Through my book, I wanted to get more toward the philosophy than toward the products that are called minimalist. So I think people what connect with the most right now is minimalism as a way of living, unfortunately: a commodified philosophy, or a commodified principle for life. What’s most present for people now is the lifestyle of minimalism: the commercialism of minimalism, and the ways in which it’s branded and sold back to people as minimalist self-help books and the minimalist table lamps and minimalist skincare routines, all that stuff. Philosophy involves ideas and it involves aesthetics. I do like thinking about it as a philosophy, because I think ‘philosophy’ can encompass all those things. How should we think of minimalism: is it a movement, a philosophy, an aesthetic, a way of life? You’ve put together a fantastic list of books on minimalism. Foreign Policy & International Relations.
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