ENGLISH 23
(A.K.A. CLIMATE CRISIS 101)
Deep Dive
Minimalism
The thing that bothered me first was when Joshua Milburn was talking about how his life looked a lot like “everybody else’s,” listing off a lot of items and things, “closets full of expensive clothes,” and how now he has a lot less – he has his chair, his table his bed, etc… It just came across to me as grossly privileged for him to say that what he had was very average and now he has way less than average, when his apartment is honestly nicer than anything I’ve ever lived in. Growing up in a home where our house was pretty bare but not at all by choice, that just didn’t sit right with me. Also when the man later on who said he was “homeless” – there’s a big difference between traveling and renting homes wherever you go and not being able to afford a place to live, so again, it just felt grossly privileged.
I remember I watched this film in my economics class my senior year of high school and I was left inspired. I wanted to desperately change my ways of living. But in the end, I was not successful. Mostly because at the time I was still living with my parents and they shut my idea down immediately because to them minimalism does not exist. I come from a Latinx immigrant family. For my parents, the more things you own, the more it is seen as a form of success. Being able to own a car and buy clothes and materialistic things means they have succeeded in life. To them it means all their hard work has paid off after years of struggling in this country to prove their worth. While I do understand where they are coming from and their reasoning for not wanting to live a minimalist life, there is no way to change their thinking.
The documentary “Minimalism” really came at a good time and created a positive message for me. As of recently I started working full time at my job and I am definitely feeling unmotivated because even though I want the money I know that for the rest of my life I do not want to work a 9-5 everyday because it doesn’t make me happy. I also don’t know for certain what I want to major in and it is a lot of pressure. But after watching this film and how easy it is in reality to be happy with less it made me feel better. I realized that the minimalist life sounds appealing to me and I want to start getting into some of the practices that were seen throughout the documentary.
I also realized that my very own grandma has a very similar mindset of a minimalist. She lives in Mexico and sometimes she comes to visit us but when she does she always comments that she wouldn’t like to live in America because she says she’s noticed that it seems like everyone here just focuses on materialistic things and is money oriented. She also appreciates the simple things in life and has always made whatever she buys last a long time. I used to not get why she said what she said about the U.S. but after the documentary it highlighted all of the things my Grandma was saying and I agree with her.
“Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things” was my favorite movie of the quarter so far. What made me like it so much was the fact that it gave me a breath of fresh air, allowed me to step back and rethink some of my own practices with new ideas of minimalism. I started to also ask questions like “Is this useful to me?” for various items in my life and it even prompted me to start to get rid of some of the excesses. Another thing that really inspired me was Ryan Nicodemus’s story, going from being lost and unsure of what he wanted in life to adapting some lifestyle changes to find true happiness.
I particularly liked the point you made about us always wanting the next big thing and that being a huge factor of why more people don’t switch to minimalism in their lives despite there being so many benefits of doing so. It made me think back on a conversation I had with my dad recently in which we were discussing last week’s lecture where we learned four steps we can take within our own lives to reduce our carbon footprints. I explained that I was excited to hear how much more sustainable it is to live in cities, as I am planning to move to New York City this year. I was (jokingly) boasting to my dad about how much more sustainably I will be living in just a few months. He replied by asking why don’t I just start now by stopping my use and purchasing of electronics, when after all, the industry accounts for massive amounts of pollution. I thought, ‘well I can’t give up technology because then I will fall so far behind in life’. It is sad to think about how much technology is wedged into ever aspect of our lives. Even if I wanted to give up my iPhone or laptop, how will I ever find a job in the city that doesn’t require my use of either of them?
Watching this film gave me the feeling of deja vu. I have a strange feeling my dad made me watch this film before in attempt to show me that less is always more. My dad is a minimalist, not in the strongest sense like Milburn or Nicodemus but he definitely lives a life with significantly less than the average American. Watching this film brought me back to many conversations my dad and I have had in the past and it also inspired me to revaluate my relationship with things. Some of statistics shared during the film, such as: there are roughly 52 fashion seasons a year now when there used to be 2 and we are taking up 3x the amount of space as we did in the 50s, really put things into perspective for me. I am someone that loves clothes and shoes, I have way too many pieces – I know. However, I have taken it upon myself in recent years to shop second hand and be more cautious about what I am allowing to take up my space (mentally and physically). As Ken mentioned in his lecture, the idea and this film particularly aren’t solely environmental movements although this movement does do some good for the environmental crisis. But I loved that this film’s baseline was that less does and can make us more happy. The American Dream is a tarnished, outdated, consumeristic goal that is not only ruining the planet but deteriorating our well-beings. It was inspiring to hear how the people in the film have readjusted their lives, perspectives, and happiness by deconstructing their attachment to material items. I got chills when the film faded out with the saying, “love people and use things because the opposite never works”. It’s TRUE. It’s devastating that our culture has been built around and conditioned to think that stuff gives us happiness, purpose, or fulfillment. The most important aspect in our lives is our relationships, with ourselves and others. True happiness cannot be found from a Black Friday sale or the Instagram Ad.
Since I already saw Minimalism last quarter in English 22, this week I instead watched the alternate videos, “Visualizing a Plenitude Economy” and “The High Price of Materialism”. These videos build off of the minimalism argument, but on a more societal scale. “Visualizing a Plenitude Economy” talks about how, following the 2008 financial crisis, wall street was thriving while poverty and joblessness were rampant in our society. Their solution was a Plenitude economy: changing how we spend our time is the key to reducing environmental impact, creating more jobs, and making our everyday lives better. They suggest changes such as reducing individual workloads (instead of hiring 4 full time employees, hire 5 and have them each work 80%). This is very in line with the nordic model, with people working less and having more time for socializing and seeking personal fulfillment. Instead of juicing as many work hours out of their employees as they possibly can, these companies instead want their employees to work less, in order to be more productive. Japan has a notoriously toxic working culture, and despite spending more hours behind the desk, they have some of the worst worker productivity in the world. By giving the employee more time to seek personal fulfillment outside of their job, they can be more happy and feel more ready to tackle the day when they show up to the office on Monday. This plenitude economic model suggests working less and focusing more on social change, relying more on each other. They said that this is all about “building social capital, as opposed to borrow-and-spend consumer culture”. In America, the idea of sharing our private spaces with those people around us are not a part of adult culture. As we age, we become less and less social in the places where this large scale change would happen. We go from being in schools or childcare facilities, spending so much time around our peers, to driving our own private cars home to our McMansions, owning the same individual products as every other neighbor on our street. How often do you use each individual tool in your toolbox? How many of that specific wrench or allen key do you think exist on your street alone? These solutions proposed by this model suggest things like just borrowing from each other more and relying on our communal resources, instead of trying to provide every little thing for ourselves. Realistically, there are some things that Americans aren’t going to want to share, but I think we can all understand the point.
“The High Price of Materialism” instead focuses more on societal and personal change regarding consumerism and commercialism. They mention how in America today, we’re told that “the good life is the goods life”. As we become more materialistic, we suffer more from depression, anxiety, substance abuse, we act less empathetically, generously, and cooperatively, and we stop appreciating ecologically conscious activities. At its core, the video focuses on the points that: 1. We need to understand what causes people to prioritize materialistic lives, and 2. We need to promote intrinsic values (growing as a person, being close to your family/friends, and improving the world). We need to spend more time working on ourselves and making sure our personal values are being reflected in the lives we live. We need to live a life that shows how much we care about the people around us and the world we live in. This really goes hand in hand with the minimalist lifestyle, and reminds me of the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh that we talked about. Hanh, a Buddhist monk, said that we have everything we need to be happy right now. Happiness does not come from our possessions, it comes from within ourselves, from the people around us, and from being fully present and interconnected with the world, living completely in the moment. This really put the puzzle pieces together for me personally, and helped me understand what this is all about. I think we tend to get so caught up in living our lives that we find it hard to see the downsides of everything. We understand the drawbacks of a problem, but we can’t just rip the band-aid off and get it over with. We know that our obsession with our possessions is toxic, but we can’t bring ourselves to throw them away because we know the work we put in to buy them. We know the harm that our behaviors are having on the planet, but we can’t give them up. It is so easy to feel discouraged with the direction the world is headed in and subsequently disillusioned with the suggested changes in our lifestyles that we want to live. Ultimately, though, if we could just be brave enough and strong enough to give new things a try, we could solve our problems so easily. But, things aren’t that simple. It’s not easy to just compromise on everything, it’s not easy to give up the things that we feel that we deserve, and it’s particularly hard to change our conventions on how we should live our lives every day. But, all we can do is take baby steps and begin to build a life that we feel satisfied living. We need to be the pioneers so that the people that come after us can see the benefits of a new world and a new way to live our lives.
What I found most interesting about the film “Minimalism” was how this movement was linked with money for so many people. Many of us, myself included, believe the “dream” is to make six figures and have all the luxuries that you could ever want right at your fingertips. However, as the film points out, getting to that point (assuming you could even get to that point) and maintaining that “success” is a terribly stressful and dreadful task for many people. While money can definitely happiness, it is also finite and fleeting. I put the words “dream” and “success” in quotation marks because it may be the fact that what we consider a “dream” and “success” is simply wrong for many of us. To be completely honest, I also believe the dream is to become rich and I know that being in college puts me at least somewhat closer to that. However, after watching this film, I began to reconsider what I really wanted for my future. While a giant mansion definitely sounds attractive, what does that actually get me besides a lot of rooms and nice shiny floors? And it makes me really wonder if the mansion is worth it when I consider the fact that like many of the people who were in the film, they got rich by a terrible corporate job that they hated. To me, it seems like minimalism is less decluttering physical objects and more decluttering the stress around life. When many of the objects around us were “rewards” of the jobs that we have worked, it makes sense that buying more and more is stressful because you constantly need the money to buy said “rewards”. I do think that by only buying items that can give us happiness and enjoyment, we can most likely enjoy life a little bit more than our current life styles. And I think that really begins with changing how we view our goals in life. Many of my personal goals need money to achieve, but I can definitely make goals that do not involve money and that are more fulfilling than the goals that require money. By shifting our views on what is important, it may ultimately give others a happier life.
I completely agree that I have been force-fed advertisement my entire life. I remember watching Disney Channel and feeling like I absolutely NEEDED the kinetic sand kits. It was disturbing to watch that corporations spend $17 billion on advertisements towards children. It made me appreciate the information I am learning now, as an adult, because I can teach my children the realness about consumerism and its targeting towards shape-able minds in order to train them to believe that they need more and more.
I found it particularly interesting when the film mentioned that even kitchen appliances and toasters can be apart of the consumerism scheme of trends and fads. I think it’s so interesting how we have developed into people that care so much about what others think and our desire to fit in. And in reality, it is not our fault. It starts from the very top of the capitalism pyramid. Fashion trends only exist because rich designers want you to buy their things and influence others to do the same, and then cheaper dupes of those products come out and even more people are influenced to buy these products because they are accessible. On top of that, the “American Dream” wants to inspire more people to be rich designers and the more the rich designers, the more products are idealized and forced onto populations to consume them. Ultimately, it makes me feel small. It makes me question my real impact of reusing and not purchasing new clothes because so many others have been taught to buy more and throw away more.
This movie was very eye-opening. I sent it to my mom because she is always extremely overwhelmed by work and cleaning and clutter. She was so excited by it and has already started cleaning out her house. I’m so happy for her, I feel like it will give her a second to breathe. I agree with the creators of the film on pretty much everything, especially how working to get more money is not what people should be living their lives for. One of my brothers has the mindset that he needs to have a high paying job, a big house, a super expensive car, etc. I think this is mostly due to my family going bankrupt during the housing crisis (which was the fault of people who were after money and ignored consequences). I am sometimes worried that he has this mindset because I feel like it won’t bring him the happiness he thinks it will. I felt this way especially right after watching this documentary. Since I was little, I have wanted to live on a sailboat. While this isn’t technically a tiny home, it is still tiny. The lifestyle of not having much and being able to move from place to place on a whim has always appealed to me. As I got older I realized the environmental and ethical benefits of this lifestyle and this new information only made my idea that much better. It is striking to see the lengths to which manufacturers and companies will go to sell cheap products to consumers. They are using people in prison to make their products and paying them slave wages, they are using sweatshops, they are destroying the environment, and they are convincing people that there is no other way. None of this is the consumer’s fault, but it is the consumer’s responsibility to put a stop to it (if they have the means and money to do so). It is our responsibility to hold companies accountable (through government action and fiscal action). Minimalism is one way to hold them accountable and at the same time live a happier and less overwhelming life.
I have never thought more about what I want to do with the rest of my life than I have this quarter. Taking this class, along with an ethics class that feels very interconnected to this one, I have been forced to think a lot about my place in the world and what I have the power and potential to make of my life. Watching this film, Minimalism, I was thrown into a mess of thoughts about all of the things that I have and all of the things that I truly need. My generation was born into this consumer culture, having things sold to us constantly and quickly. Even as toddlers, when we didn’t fully understand what we wanted, we were told that we should want all of these things: new toys, clothes, snacks, etc. Now, watching this film, it makes me question why I have always wanted so much and if I would be as happy or even happier if I did away with some of my possessions.
This film really opened my eyes to how superficial and materialistic I was being. I could do with a smaller house and less things, why not? Hell, even a tiny house doesn’t seem so bad after watching this. I guess I always believed that you had to have money to be happy, but hearing these people talk about how much free time they have and how much easier it is not having to worry about all of these things, I’ve realized how wrong I’ve been. By living this way, not only could I potentially be happier, but I’ll also be helping the environment which is only a plus for me. Not gonna lie, I still died a little inside when that one guy said he gave up his six figure salary in order to live minimalistically, but that just goes to show how ingrained this consumer culture is in our head. I still have a long ways to go in terms of getting rid of it; I mean I’m not going to pack up most of my stuff and throw it in a bin right now and stop buying things I don’t need, but I’ll definitely try and slow myself down a bit. While I’ve enjoyed every single film that has been shown so far, I believe this one has had the greatest impact on me and actually caused me to change something about myself. I will definitely be applying this sometime in the future to both help the environment and myself.
We live in California, so we have experienced plenty of evacuations. Every time we evacuate our house, we leave so much behind. So. Much. Meaningless. Junk. My mom and I, after every evacuation, talk about how little we actually appreciate. We make plans to get rid of the clutter in our lives, but we never actually follow through with it. I wonder how easy it would be to evacuate if all of our things could fit into a duffle bag each.
Is minimalism a viable and meaningful option? Well I certainly think so. It has been mentioned several times throughout the course that the American lifestyle has serious environmental consequences. Minimalism is a completely valid way to counteract this lifestyle. I particularly enjoy the minimalist lifestyle because it is not explicitly meant to counteract climate change. I think this aspect of minimalism might be enticing to those who may not believe in climate change. It is also appealing because its main goal is to increase happiness. The people in the movie talk about how their lives felt meaningless because of their excessive lifestyles. I love that this lifestyle led to them finally feeling truly happy. I think so much of the American lifestyle is toxic, for lack of a better word. Minimalism might just kill two birds with one stone: climate change and American unhappiness.
I have always been attracted to minimalism. My father is an Amazon addict, as I like to call him. The convenience of Amazon has caused so much clutter to end up in our lives. I love the less is more perspective of minimalism. It feels like nothing we order from Amazon is a necessity. It is all meaningless junk meant to give us fleeting feelings of happiness before we grow bored and order another thing. This cycle is a terrible way to experience joy. Minimalism might be the perfect way to combat this cycle.
This week I watched the two youtube videos “Visualizing a Plenitude Economy” and “The High Price of Materialism.” I thought these two videos were quite insightful in a very short amount of time as they showcase the problems that we face with consumerism and the economy while offering some solutions. In “Visualizing a Plenitude Economy” I thought that this video had some great solutions from a top down perspective even though the platform seems to be geared more towards individual efforts so I think that some mentions of possible legislature solutions would have been helpful as well. But I do think that informing the audience about this kind of economic strategy would be a great idea and it is important that we are informed about how we need to change our economics to different systems to ensure safety of people and the environment.
Having already watched the documentary Minimalism, I watched the two short films by the New Dream and found them to be really thought-provoking, especially in regards to the concept of a plenitude economy. It seems impossibly simple that simply decreasing the average time a person spends working could solve so many problems, but why does it feel impossible to me? Capitalism and productivity are so engrained in American society that many people, and I sometimes, forget that they are not the innate nature of humanity. Who said that human beings need to work 40 hours per week to make the world go round? The reality is that a plenitude economy in which individuals work shorter hours is entirely possible, and theoretically would be a profound improvement from the way we currently live. Not only could more individuals be employed, people would have the leisure time to be creative, become involved in their communities, and seek emotional fulfillment and self-actualization rather than simply living to meet their basic needs. That is already a step towards bettering our environmental situation, as people who have their basic needs met are afforded the time and mental energy required to care about loftier ideas like living sustainably and cultivating a symbiotic relationship with the earth in their everyday life. In my mind, this seems like an absolutely perfect solution, though I know the major obstacle that would keep a plenitude economy from being a widespread societal ideal is that it requires an end to endless economic growth. Again, so many Americans see no other way of life than a capitalist one, and according to a capitalist mindset an end to growth means failure and doom. But infinite economic growth is not an inherent part of humanity (despite what capitalism tells us), and we would do well to reframe our greater goal for society to revolve around wellbeing of people and the planet instead of “wellbeing” of the economy.