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Less is More: Is Minimalism Rational?

Writer's picture: Virin MukherjeeVirin Mukherjee

Updated: 24 hours ago

By: Virin Mukherjee; Edited by: Shagun Khetan



Sustainability is one of the primary goals for most economies in today’s time. To make an economy more sustainable, we can either satiate society’s demands through a more efficient way of utilizing resources, or we can use less resources by demanding less commodities. This article will focus on a way of potentially achieving the latter - Minimalism.

There are studies that have empirically established the detrimental effect of consumption on the environment, such as 72% of global carbon emissions coming from household consumption. If we think about reducing consumption, there are some obvious facets of demand that we can’t reduce–like energy consumption in economies with growing populations. We also can’t reduce the consumption of some necessary commodities. So what can we reduce?

 

We can reduce the consumption of commodities that we don’t really need, commodities that don’t add a lot of value to our lives. There are a myriad of psychological reasons behind how we may come to own such commodities in the real world. We can be subjected to the Diderot effect, whereby we buy something to harmonize it with another new thing we bought. For example, a rug to go with a new table. Secondly, we may consume to seek impulsive joy, or to seek relief from stress and anxiety- retail therapy. Marketing can convince us how a commodity can provide happiness or relief through persuasive analytical tools that nudge us to consume. “Advertising has polluted and infiltrated culture”, says Dr. Juliet Schorr in a Netlix documentary Minimalism. Lastly, we may consume by conforming to cultural norms that posit material possessions as a measure of success. Societal pressure to own certain things like branded clothes and watches can be quite manipulative.

 

Thus, drawing a line between our needs and wants - wants that could be shaped and manipulated by deeply analytical marketing and advertising - is in essence what minimalism advocates. It compels us to identify certain primary possessions that we need in our lives and discard most other commodities as excess.

 

We’d need to be more like Baloo in Jungle Book, and stick to our ‘bear necessities’.

 

 

Through this article I'll try to answer: 1) How do we become more like Baloo? 2) Can we understand Baloo (a minimalist) as a rational consumer?

 

To be like Baloo, critiquing our consumption patterns is key. The first step would be identifying possessions that each of us has which we can do without. If you’re reading this in your room, look around and try to identify stuff that isn’t really adding value to your life. It could be a Miniso toy or the fourth lip balm you own. In the short term, an infant minimalist would try to declutter his/her living and working space. A cluttered environment has been proven to cause anxiety and distress, suggesting that a decluttered space would result in higher productivity.

 

Once we’ve looked over the commodities we already own with a minimalist lens, we can apply it for future purchases. We sometimes derive value out of a commodity just by the virtue of owning it, or from commodities that affirm identities that we attribute to ourselves in terms of standard of living and extrinsic goal attainment. In this study, the personality trait of narcissism is seen to accentuate perceived standards of living. In another study, we can observe self-protective behaviour by consuming ‘status goods’. The negative association between well-being and materialism, among researchers, is unchallengeable. In the long term, a minimalist would change his consumption patterns to a more conscious form: one that realizes how material consumption, seen as a measure of success and happiness, perpetuates the exploitation of natural resources.

 

Buying less stuff and being happier puts us in a win-win situation, or as econ kids would like to call it - a Pareto improvement. 

 

The concept of minimalism also has drawbacks. Firstly, the practice of minimalism lacks a concretized and comprehensive definition, leaving it open to be understood as an abstract concept without specific behavioural indicators. What if we declutter something that we need in the future? Was the manipulative advertising industry not lying to us after all? The rationality of minimalism is unclear when we can't objectively differentiate between what we actually need and what we’re being manipulated to get.

 

That differentiation may be impossible because needs aren’t objectively defined but instead are subjective and situational. For example, a man with an injured leg needs a crutch whereas his friend whose legs are fine doesn’t, assuming the goal is crossing a field within a reasonable time. Needs emerge out of goals, and I’m making the bold assumption that we all have different goals in life.

 

So, how does the minimalist know his/her organic goals clearly?

 

If he can’t reach a state of absolute introspective and meditative clarity, a simpler way would be to be more patient. Thinking longer about what brings us utility can bring rationality back to minimalism. It's all about knowing your ‘bear necessities’.

 

In the context of the last example, the patient man would take time to consider if he really needs to cross the field within a certain time, if it’s his friend who’s convincing him to cross the field, or if he will still need to cross it the next day? Let’s say there’s also a free-entry Coldplay concert on the other side of the field. If the man, due to being patient, realized that it’s his friend convincing him to go and he actually hates Coldplay, he’d contradict the almost obvious consumption decision for the injured man to buy a crutch by being less impulsive and more ‘minimalist’. The man would still be rational, but just more sceptical and conscious about what brings him utility. However, the drawback still exists to the extent that we don’t objectively know if the man needs to cross the field.

 

If I can hypothetically argue that patience as a tool to differentiate between the organic and constructed needs can contradict the most obvious decision (an injured man buying a crutch when a Coldplay concert is across the field), then patience must be even stronger in regulating less obvious consumption decisions.

 

Essentially, being more conscious about what brings us utility is one practice that can integrate minimalism and economic rationality. A minimalist can also be rational. Joshua Becker, author of ‘The More of Less’ defined minimalism as the “Intentional promotion of the things we most value and the removal of anything that distracts us from it”.

 

As a student becoming familiar with economic rationality, it is not intuitive to think less is better. An economic decision to pursue minimalism would entail the disutility of owning an item and organizing it in your living space to override the utility derived from owning it - which calls for a much more sceptical notion of what brings us utility. A minimalist wouldn’t maximise utility with a given income if he/she derived utility from a broad range of commodities. If you’re someone who thinks the amount of things you own distracts or derails your work or any higher purpose, or if you can identify patterns of buying stuff more due to marketing and advertising than genuine requirements, then minimalism can be for you. I’ll reiterate that there isn’t any objective yardstick to demarcate genuine requirements, so we must have subjective but thought-over notions of it.

 

Sustainable consumption as a practice can also integrate minimalism and rationality. As a human being, considerations of how the production process and end-of-life for a commodity affects the Earth must be part of the decision to consume it. Many products that we consume, and consequently perpetuate the production of, have unsustainable end-of-life treatment. Of course, the responsibility to secure a sustainable end-of-life for products through recycling, etc. lies with the corporation making that product, but unsustainable treatment should also be taken into account as the disutility of owning it from the consumer’s side.

 

It is an undeniable fact that our insatiable desire for materialistic things and their high consumption have threatened the very existence of our ecosystem, and thus we are bound to fail to continue our present quality of life if we do not adopt radical changes in consumption patterns. The philosophy of minimalism in this context stands out as a guide in our path to sustainability.


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