For those of you who are unaware, Everett Bogue recently registered an offensive domain name for the purpose of posting that the minimalist movement was dead.
Since then, every man and his dog (and cat – can’t forget the cats) have weighed in on this issue.
I want to go on record as stating that I believe most everything that needs to be said about this situation has been said somewhere, in some way. The following is my brief take so that my readers don’t have to trek around the Internet to find all my comments on the matter.
Minimalism is not dead. Anybody familiar with marketing and movements know that there are 4 phases – early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. Minimalism as a movement hasn’t even scratched the surface of “early adopters”, let alone moved into the early majority.
Everett did not start minimalism. Leo at Zen Habits was one of the first, long before Everett – and there were others before Leo.
Everett did not define minimalism. Everett, as far as minimalist go, was one guy screaming at everybody to get rid of their stuff, throw away their car, and junk their TV. That’s it.
Everett wasn’t even a particularly fantastic example. Many of his rants lacked logic and structure, and got repetitive quickly. Even though he was one of the louder voices he was always way out on the fringe. He also routinely distorted facts and denigrated his readers for sheer sensationalist appeal. I would personally consider him the Jerry Springer of minimalism.
It’s true that much information is already out there. There are tips for organizing, getting rid of stuff, decluttering in general, and a myriad of other minimalism-related topics out there. This doesn’t mean, however, that everything that can be said has been said.
There’s so much more to discuss. The issue with minimalism is that we know the “what” – but we’re still fuzzy on the “how” and the “why”. There are still huge sections of the mental, physical, and emotional underpinnings of this movement that need to be developed and explored.
There’s so much more work to be done. Even if we already knew exactly what, how, and why, and had a definitive text on the subject (we don’t), tens of thousands of people practicing minimalism only accounts for one or two thousandths of one percent. Put differently, that’s only one out of every 100,000 people. That’s just not enough to accomplish the change minimalism is capable of!
Minimalism is, fundamentally, a movement that’s counter to the entire core way our society functions. We need to contextualize the movement, and show people how it can work in their lives.
There’s still so much further to go. Minimalism is not dead, it’s just really starting to come to life.
I may explore some of these topics in greater detail in future posts – but for now, please, let’s all get back to doing the work that matters.
Comments are open, as always!