Firstly, I must say that this text was inspired by a great documentary released in 2016 and directed by Matt D’Avella: Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things. The documentary is just over one hour long and presents its ideas in simple language with a pleasant soundtrack. However, it leads us to reflect on our own consumption; we might even question whether, when buying something, we are consuming or being consumed. Another inspiration for this article was an interview with José Mujica (former president of Uruguay) in the documentary HUMAN, also released in 2016. In it, Pepe Mujica talks about sobriety and consumerism.
In the article “The Pleasure of Detachment: Minimalists Argue That Having Fewer Things Creates More Freedom,” by Laís Modelli, available on the BBC website, the author explains the term.
The word “minimalism” originated from 20th-century artistic movements that followed the precept of using few visual elements and gradually shifted into the social realm.
“As a behavioral expression of society, minimalism is a reflection of previous countercultural movements, such as punk and hippie, which questioned consumer society and its excesses,” explains Marcelo Vinagre Mocarzel, a researcher in culture and communication and a professor at the Federal Fluminense University.
Unlike counterculturalists, minimalists do not seek to build an alternative society. “Minimalists have sought to combat consumerism from within the system. This means they work, dress normally, and even consume.”
“In some ways, minimalists are closer to the classic capitalists described by Max Weber: capitalism itself is not the problem for them, but rather this wild capitalism anchored in ostentation and waste,” he points out.
With the meaning of the word clarified, we can continue. Many parts of our lives are lived automatically; we spend all our time searching and never truly satisfy ourselves. Many people feel empty and try to fill that void with things, either consuming or being consumed.
While we live in the best living standards in history, there is an insatiable quest for more. This desire may be natural, but today, it is no longer as necessary; we no longer live in the wild. We are programmed to live in one environment but exist in a very different one.
American culture also blinds us in a certain way, with an illusion of how our lives should be: perfect and unrealistic. Although we have our own culture, which is quite different from American culture, much of our mass culture in Brazil is imported from the U.S.; movies, series, music, and books consumed in Brazil are, for the most part, American. This can lead to a lot of dissatisfaction: besides not having the same purchasing power as American citizens, trying to live that way can cause serious harm, and most of us do not see an alternative to life other than the one we are constantly and endlessly encouraged to live. People need to know they have a choice, that they do not have to live this way.
Minimalism is an alternative, a way to escape the madness, the excesses, everything that does not add value. Living more deliberately with less is a noble goal. We live in a world where we are treated as commodities. We exist to be consumed.
The large houses many have today, and that those who don’t have dream of owning, are not fully utilized; only a small part of the space is used, something around 40%. The same goes for wardrobes full of clothes that rarely see the light of the day. From a radical standpoint, the mere fact of having bigger houses than we need already generates several problems, besides the private costs of depreciation and the opportunity cost of spending on something unnecessary that does not add value to our lives; there is also the enormous cost that is socialized, the logistical cost of people living further from their workplaces, creating ever-increasing demands for cars, energy inefficiencies, time consumption, all because of the tragedy of the commons: everyone wanting a large house. If we used only the necessary space, for example, and managed to reduce distances by 25%, we would have 25% fewer fuel losses, travel time, energy in transmission lines, and high voltage as well as in sanitation networks. Imagine if this generated a 10% reduction in your bills; besides being sustainable, it would be a tremendous saving, a huge gain in efficiency that would not diminish your quality of life or the profits of energy and sanitation companies. To benefit certain sectors of the economy, we are encouraged to consume much more than necessary, and this makes life worse for the portion of the population that does not own shares or stakes in companies and needs to work to earn income.
Sometimes, it’s good to think before consuming, so we can reduce our own expenses and also the negative externalities we generate. Consuming is also a political act. And consuming with awareness and common sense is always voting for the best candidate. All power emanates from the people, who often exercise it by handing it over to someone who harms society as a whole.
We are not always going to make optimal decisions, but we can make much better decisions than we currently do. It’s not easy to read this, but we are irresponsible. Very irresponsible. Furthermore, according to Forrest Gump, an idiot is someone who does idiotic things, and by that definition, we could consider ourselves idiots. The advantage of seeing ourselves this way is realizing that we can become better with a simple change in behavior, by reducing the number of idiotic things we do.
In economics, monotonicity implies that more is preferable to less. This may not seem very rational, but buying less than more, from a minimalist perspective, makes sense. Having more of any good is not always better, as it may generate unnecessary costs. A cost that does not satisfy a need is a trade-off that doesn’t make sense. If I buy better-quality products with greater durability, I can buy fewer products. And since the value is higher, the price is too, so corporations could continue to profit, employees could keep their jobs, and customers could keep their products (in smaller quantities but of higher quality). Some companies already do this: they sell highly durable, high-performance products and are very successful with this business model.
With an economy increasingly reliant on services, encouraging the repair of goods instead of discarding and replacing them with new products could also maintain a source of revenue for companies. We need to change our demands and thus encourage firms to change their supply.
Economics, in simple terms, is the science of allocating scarce resources. We can make much more efficient allocations and dedicate more resources to research and development; we just need to make better decisions.
With minimalism, we can achieve more progress in less time. Imagine turning 10% of expenditures on superfluous products into research and development in areas like health, energy, education, artificial intelligence, and others. We could build a much better world than the current one; we could eradicate poverty and hunger on Earth or even conquer other celestial bodies, all by simply making smarter decisions and I’m not even getting into millitary expenses, which are a problem of their own.
Gustavo Cerbasi defines salary not as income, but as compensation, following the interpretation that working steals time from the worker, time that could be dedicated to personal investments, consequently hindering the increase of one’s wealth. The fruit of our labor can be much sweeter. A life full of greed is certainly a path to unhappiness and dissatisfaction, but a frugal life is not. A frugal life can be a path to a very satisfying and free life.
Imagine a life with less – less stress, less dissatisfaction, fewer debts, a life with fewer distractions. Now imagine a life with more – more time, more meaningful relationships, more growth, more contribution, and contentment. We are very materialistic, in the colloquial sense of the word, but in the real sense, we are not materialistic enough, as we discard a lot of material, treating the result of much work as garbage. We throw away human labor every day, ours and that of others. This, in itself, is not a problem, not necessarily bad, but throwing away so much human labor without any need seems unethical and very cruel.
We can conclude that perhaps we should be more conscious, less foolish, make better decisions, and not give away our freedom to anyone, because without it, we cannot have anything else.
If you are interested in living a minimalist life and want to start investing with the help of a Securities Consultant registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission, contact me and schedule a consultation.
