So someone asked me recently "Why the whole minimalist attitude thingy?", and since I was just leaving a party with an open bar, I was unable to put together a coherent string of sentences to convey the minimalist philosophy; this entry is going to rectify that.
Minimalism as a concept is a reaction to the "Consumerist" mentality of modern society. There is a consistent belief in the Post Modern School of Thought that the genealogy of the discourse matters -- that is, the historical discourse that we have been told is fact and that we have accepted as fact is, in reality, the subjective point of view of the "powerful". Now this does not mean that there is a conscious conspiratorial effort to pull the wool over the eyes of the masses of society. Rather, this is a byproduct of the winners of any given conflict (whether it's a military conflict or a "conflict" in the market) being able to shape and control the discourse. Over time the discourse is predicated upon the prior premise and before anyone realizes it, society is trapped in a parochial mindset that is unwilling, or unable to question who is promoting the discourse and for what purpose.
To paraphrase Noam Chomsky "The New York Times is writing history". What Chomsky means is that when future scholars look to document and study history they will look to sources such as the New York Times archives to determine what important events occurred at any given time. This means that what is supposed to be a completely objective examination of history may viewed through the lens of an organization and reporters that may have a subjective interpretation. Ultimately this subjective interpretation will be regarded as "truth".
In all societies the manufacturers of truth are the powerful and in American Society the powerful are often those with commercial interests. These commercial interest have been successful in co-opting a mind share of American Consumers with their subjective messages therein forging an attitude of "buy! buy! buy!". In every magazine the reader is bombarded with ads for name brand crap, Television programs inundate with a string of commercials promoting the latest and greatest whatever. None of which can ever bring fulfillment or happiness. Minimalism is an attempt to question, analyze, or at least ignore the message of the day. The ultimate goal is to break free from the consumerist mindset which exhausts the monetary resources of a society. Buying things in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing--Inequality, however, is. Once a society is able to break free from the consumerist mindset excess resources (i.e., savings) can be used to promote development in underprivileged societies.
Now it was posed to me that this theory reeks of communism with the whole "wealth redistribution" thing. In actuality this is way different; Communism relies on a centrally planned economy which dictates how the resources will be distributed. In minimalist theory the consumer is free to earn what the market is willing to pay for their skill set; the consumer then chooses what to spend their income on. The minimalist should only purchase what is needed for survival and some minimal level of comfort and security. Excess resources, which are garnered by not giving in to the commercial demands, can be then redistributed to the underprivileged in the form of micro-credit loans. The difference in this form of redistribution is that the consumer has the choice of how when and where to distribute the resources; participation in microcredit programs is encouraged but the consumer may choose to donate money to NGOs or any number of development programs. So there it is in a nutshell...questions?
