Minimalism gets a bad rap these days. It has become almost cliche… passé.

However when you break it down to the essence of what it is and means for individuals it couldn’t be more important as an ideal; with offshoots.

Looking at, for example, what could be considered the canonical text for us Westerners, Fumio Sasaki’s ‘Goodbye Things’; minimalism becomes a microcosm and the crux of the human dilemma with regards to the modern world and the phycological issues it presents to us humans. From the historical dualistic mind-body Christian misconception that formed through the idea of dominion and the industrial revolution, the modern world as we inhabit it was formed; and minimalism is an attempt at an antidote.

Hyper capitalism, and what Varoufakis’ Technofeudalism attempts to nutshell, for example, hold within the kernel, where we are. Eloquently and concisely illustrated by The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff.

Consumers and cogs in the consumption machine with a data exhaust that can be recycled to facilitate the snake eating its tail.

Sherry Turkle, in Alone Together, rounds out some of the social corners and I intend to try to give my own holistic take through philosophical enquiry and logic.

========

TBC and subject to change through minor edits.