If you ask the wrong question, you’ll get the wrong answer to your problem.
the minimaxer
The minimalist fad asks the wrong question – “How can I remove the stuff from my life that is stopping me from being happy?”
Sure, there are many people with too much stuff in their lives… I get that. It can be as obvious as the poor soul who hoards everything they touch and never throws anything away – reality shows focused on these confused and troubled individuals should be ashamed of themselves for torturing them and their families in the public eye.
But for most of us in the western world of industrialized nations, how much stuff is enough? In general, we have bought into the materialist mindset that equates happiness and success with the accumulation of things. However, we are finding this life strategy unfulfilling – we reach the point of diminishing returns once we have more stuff than we can use or enjoy. In this sense, Materialism has spawned Minimalism.
Minimalism is on the right track, but it makes a false assumption about us humans and our motivations.
getting the wrong answers
If you’re into the minimalist fad, you may be convinced that happiness is misdirected by materialism. You are right. Blind accumulation of things is a fool’s errand to fill a hole in our lives that is a bottomless pit. But why did we think the stuff was going to make us happy in the first place?
Maybe it’s because we are asking the wrong question. Maybe we were told that to be happy we needed to buy something. Maybe we were brainwashed into thinking this was the question we are trying to answer – what do I need to have or buy to be happy?
Trying to answer this question leads to a never ending string of desires that human beings have been troubled by forever. All religions of the world have basic tenants that speak to this basic human motivation in one way or another… thou shalt not covet…
It’s almost comical how the minimalist fad has turned this around to capitalize on the human motivation and made a profit from selling people the opposite. Now, instead of following the desire to have more stuff than someone else to be happy, we are competing to have the least amount of stuff in our lives. The status symbols are still there – but they flipped so we show our virtue and build status by rejecting the materialism of the western world.
Once we buy into the minimalist assumption and lifestyle, we internalize the value that it’s better to have less and that having stuff gets in the way of happiness… fewer things are better than more things. Taken to its logical conclusion, the minimalist eventually spends more to regain things they got rid of (to be happy) when they need that stuff again (to live).
Does buying this stuff again reduce their happiness, or does it make them happier because their life is better with the stuff they need? It gets so complicated and confusing…
To avoid this mental dysfunction many people choose to do without and live a life of lowered expectations and potential, and consequently lower happiness and fulfillment.
Does having nothing make us happier than having everything? It’s a rhetorical question since the only honest answer is “no.”
the right questions to ask
Let’s confine our thinking to our stuff… we are not going to solve world hunger… yet.
So if we agree the minimalist answer is focused on the wrong question, can we ask a better question?
A good start is to acknowledge our basic human nature and desire. At the most basic we all want to live (Maslow’s law/hierarchy), but once the basic needs are satisfied we continue to search for meaning and purpose. This is where the materialist steps in and profits from our confusion as we seek. Many of us fall prey to the siren song of marketing experts who use psychological tricks to leverage our insecurities – the best of these can sell sand in the desert!
The better question becomes how can I use my stuff to find meaning and purpose? How can I be creative and productive with my stuff? How can I make my life, my loved one’s life, and my community a better experience with my skills, talents, and stuff?
getting the right answer
When we ask this question it leads us to the answer the minimaxer found. Minimize the stuff in our life as much as possible to enable and maximize our creative and productive nature to flourish. Minimize to maximize… minimax… pretty simple and intuitive, right?
That’s what we are here for. To learn how to minimax. We are learning how to build our own personalized system to minimizer our stuff so we can maximize our life. That’s my purpose with this blog and it’s a lot of fun too to see others catching the minimax bug.