I’m here at Brazos Bookstore in Houston, where Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, authors of The Minimalists,
are promoting their next book on the art of living better with a lot
less stuff. They didn’t invent the concept of minimalism, but they’re
spreading this mutant meme like a virus.
Millburn and Nicodemus are two early-thirties guys who’ve known each other since fifth grade. They grew up poor and pudgy in Dayton, Ohio, dreaming one day of making mountains of money and escaping their families’ dire straits.
They succeeded. By their late twenties, both were pulling down high salaries in corporate America and pursuing the consumer capitalist dream of living way beyond their means in the driven and exhausting pursuit of happiness. Each, by a different route, found that the consumerist dream was making him sick and miserable. So they quit.
The authors sold or donated nearly everything they had and became a writing team. By paring down their material possessions drastically, they saw the quality of their lives flourish, and they began to write up their personal experiments on the paradoxical pleasures of voluntary asceticism.
A sample of their work is on their website, theminimalists.com.
Cynics may say that Millburn and Nicodemus are just looking to become rich best-selling authors so they can return to a life of material splendor. But then cynics may be projecting their own sad values onto the authors – not to be too cynical about cynicism itself.
But what would these guys buy with all that extra money? The point of their lives, it seems, is to need not much more than they already have. And they say that contributing to the value of other peoples’ lives through their writing enriches their own lives in ways that CPAs can’t measure. Who knows what really drives these GenXers? Is it possible, just possible, that they're sincere when they write about the pleasures of simple living unencumbered by the striven quest for status trophies?
The authors disavow any spiritual or ideological motivation for their work. They’re not trying to guilt the gilded life. They joke about being approached by religious folks who presume that they’re just two nice Christian (or Buddhist) boys on a mission from the divine, and they spoof their own quasi-evangelical fervor. But I detect zero moralism in their performance tonight, which resembles a cross between a well-honed sales pitch and a genuinely funny comedy routine.
Nor is this an ideological campaign against consumer capitalism per se. Their talk about creating “net value added” by downsizing our material lives doesn’t sound anti-capitalist in the least. On the contrary, it sounds more like a kind of psychic capitalism, in which wealth is measured in units of fulfillment rather than in hard currency.
Happiness as wealth. What a concept. (Do I smell a scent of the sixties in the air?)
Although its “net value added” rhetoric is capitalist, the gospel according to minimalism may pose a genuine threat to consumer capitalism if taken seriously by too many potential getters-and-spenders. An intrinsically-rewarding minimalist way of life could conceivably shake consumer capitalism to its already-cracking foundations, reducing aggregate demand for stuff and more stuff, and inviting economic collapse. Then where would we all be? Living with much less and yet happier than we are now?
Interesting if true.
Millburn and Nicodemus are described as leaders of an ascending “minimalist movement,” and they say their website has drawn a couple million readers. But they admit they haven’t read many of the other self-help and social reform books that tout voluntary simplicity and anti-materialism. Their brand of minimalism is apparently home-brewed.
A self-described fashionista in our audience says she “needs” many shades of cosmetics and clothing to be happy (and disdains men who lumpishly think there’s only one shade of black). She wants to know how someone like her can be a minimalist. Millburn replies, “I don’t think you need all that stuff. I think you’re perfect just the way you are.” Applause.
The minimalists are on a 100-city book tour (Houston is #16 on the route), and are leaving a trail of local meetgroups in their wake, hoping to foster the growth and vitality of their own brand of minimalism – if, indeed, a minimalist movement is really ascending. Following the Great Recession, many Americans have become minimalists not by choice but by chopping blade. Their sacrifices have not been voluntary, nor particularly joyous, so far as I'm aware.
In any case, Millburn and Nicodemus’s version of minimalism isn’t about sacrifice. It appeals instead to self-interest. You may benefit from reducing your material wants to a reasonable minimum, saving only those artifacts (and relationships?) that are deeply and personally meaningful to you. Your life, they suggest, may then be richer, freer, healthier, and more conducive to the happiness of you and those around you.
A few minimialist aphorisms give the flavor of their teachings. For instance,
"This isn't a how-to book. It's a why-to book."
“Avoid life’s empty calories.” (from a post on their website called “Life Is an Acquired Taste”)
“You can’t change the people around you, but you can change the people around you.”
“Love people, use things. The opposite doesn’t work.”
I’m home now, and looking around my writing cave. I see that my books are spilling out of their shelves and stacked up on the floor like leaning towers of paper. I wonder if I really need all these. And those clothes in my closet? I haven’t worn some of them in a decade. Maybe my own life could use a little decluttering.
Anyone care to join me in an experiment in minimalism?
-- originally posted in Danagram on opensalon.com
Millburn and Nicodemus are two early-thirties guys who’ve known each other since fifth grade. They grew up poor and pudgy in Dayton, Ohio, dreaming one day of making mountains of money and escaping their families’ dire straits.
They succeeded. By their late twenties, both were pulling down high salaries in corporate America and pursuing the consumer capitalist dream of living way beyond their means in the driven and exhausting pursuit of happiness. Each, by a different route, found that the consumerist dream was making him sick and miserable. So they quit.
The authors sold or donated nearly everything they had and became a writing team. By paring down their material possessions drastically, they saw the quality of their lives flourish, and they began to write up their personal experiments on the paradoxical pleasures of voluntary asceticism.
A sample of their work is on their website, theminimalists.com.
Cynics may say that Millburn and Nicodemus are just looking to become rich best-selling authors so they can return to a life of material splendor. But then cynics may be projecting their own sad values onto the authors – not to be too cynical about cynicism itself.
But what would these guys buy with all that extra money? The point of their lives, it seems, is to need not much more than they already have. And they say that contributing to the value of other peoples’ lives through their writing enriches their own lives in ways that CPAs can’t measure. Who knows what really drives these GenXers? Is it possible, just possible, that they're sincere when they write about the pleasures of simple living unencumbered by the striven quest for status trophies?
The authors disavow any spiritual or ideological motivation for their work. They’re not trying to guilt the gilded life. They joke about being approached by religious folks who presume that they’re just two nice Christian (or Buddhist) boys on a mission from the divine, and they spoof their own quasi-evangelical fervor. But I detect zero moralism in their performance tonight, which resembles a cross between a well-honed sales pitch and a genuinely funny comedy routine.
Nor is this an ideological campaign against consumer capitalism per se. Their talk about creating “net value added” by downsizing our material lives doesn’t sound anti-capitalist in the least. On the contrary, it sounds more like a kind of psychic capitalism, in which wealth is measured in units of fulfillment rather than in hard currency.
Happiness as wealth. What a concept. (Do I smell a scent of the sixties in the air?)
Although its “net value added” rhetoric is capitalist, the gospel according to minimalism may pose a genuine threat to consumer capitalism if taken seriously by too many potential getters-and-spenders. An intrinsically-rewarding minimalist way of life could conceivably shake consumer capitalism to its already-cracking foundations, reducing aggregate demand for stuff and more stuff, and inviting economic collapse. Then where would we all be? Living with much less and yet happier than we are now?
Interesting if true.
Millburn and Nicodemus are described as leaders of an ascending “minimalist movement,” and they say their website has drawn a couple million readers. But they admit they haven’t read many of the other self-help and social reform books that tout voluntary simplicity and anti-materialism. Their brand of minimalism is apparently home-brewed.
A self-described fashionista in our audience says she “needs” many shades of cosmetics and clothing to be happy (and disdains men who lumpishly think there’s only one shade of black). She wants to know how someone like her can be a minimalist. Millburn replies, “I don’t think you need all that stuff. I think you’re perfect just the way you are.” Applause.
The minimalists are on a 100-city book tour (Houston is #16 on the route), and are leaving a trail of local meetgroups in their wake, hoping to foster the growth and vitality of their own brand of minimalism – if, indeed, a minimalist movement is really ascending. Following the Great Recession, many Americans have become minimalists not by choice but by chopping blade. Their sacrifices have not been voluntary, nor particularly joyous, so far as I'm aware.
In any case, Millburn and Nicodemus’s version of minimalism isn’t about sacrifice. It appeals instead to self-interest. You may benefit from reducing your material wants to a reasonable minimum, saving only those artifacts (and relationships?) that are deeply and personally meaningful to you. Your life, they suggest, may then be richer, freer, healthier, and more conducive to the happiness of you and those around you.
A few minimialist aphorisms give the flavor of their teachings. For instance,
"This isn't a how-to book. It's a why-to book."
“Avoid life’s empty calories.” (from a post on their website called “Life Is an Acquired Taste”)
“You can’t change the people around you, but you can change the people around you.”
“Love people, use things. The opposite doesn’t work.”
I’m home now, and looking around my writing cave. I see that my books are spilling out of their shelves and stacked up on the floor like leaning towers of paper. I wonder if I really need all these. And those clothes in my closet? I haven’t worn some of them in a decade. Maybe my own life could use a little decluttering.
Anyone care to join me in an experiment in minimalism?
-- originally posted in Danagram on opensalon.com
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