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The most confusing and annoying thing about anything to do with “minimalism” is the distinct lack of a well-considered definition. Everyone has some idea of what minimalism looks like, but that’s not because of any discreet thought about its meaning; most things in daily parlance are taught and learned socially. 

Since infancy, our primary mode of learning language is from hearing other people talk. Grammatical and semantic nuance comes from a need and desire to understand one another and reinforce our belonging in society, which is more granularly based on the words you use and how you use them. I wouldn’t fit in if I lived in Britain, but the desire to do so would drive me to use language more British-ly. It’s because of this mechanism that most people have no concrete idea of what minimalism is supposed to be. 

There are two major definitions to me: minimalism as a school of philosophy, and minimalism as a school of aesthetics. The word is self-descriptive for the most part, so interpretation usually comes down to context, but these two blend far too often. The most ironic example is when people buy things that are “minimalist” because they want to live a minimalist lifestyle. 

A while ago, I watched a video on YouTube by Mrwhosetheboss, a tech reviewer, where he purchased an array of expensive minimalist products to poke at them for being excessive. Most confusingly, there was a blend of random products that fit the minimalist aesthetic and others that were intentional minimalist lifestyle products; for example, he purchases a minimalist tea kettle and a minimalist phone, one of which is literally just a designer kettle, and the other a cellphone with an e-ink display and only a handful of necessities. 

Nothing in the video is divided between aesthetic and lifestyle, and he has a persistent confusion borne of this plastic definition. He buys a machine that makes your food for you by stirring and cooking the ingredients you give it, and that’s a good minimalist product because it’s 35 food types in 1 machine, but the kettle is also a good minimalist product, because it heats water and pours good. The kettle got a 7/10 because it heated the water and pours with a laminar flow, and the cellphone got a 4/10 because it doesn’t have WhatsApp or Spotify.

It’s a specific example, but I chose this video because it put a finger on the most annoying aspects of the discourse around minimalism in general. The underlying concept flows between the aesthetic school and the philosophical school so often and with such liberty that at best it serves to confuse well-intentioned outsiders. The comments on that video were in line with its thesis: the recurring critique is that the items are beautiful, but not useful and too expensive. What this signifies to me is a blending of the two definitions into one, where the expensive aesthetic pieces are unjustified because the lifestyle tools are not very useful. More clearly, this is an incarnation of the usual argument against minimalism as a performative aesthetic.

This is perhaps the most common critique of minimalism as a lifestyle, and it’s simultaneously correct and irreparably mistaken. Yes, it’s very true that minimalism as a lifestyle has been co-opted by consumerism and is being pandered to by capitalists trying to market to a new niche who is usually more educated and usually financially savvy (as a result of being in a niche that shies away from conspicuous status and toward a self-imposed poverty of sorts) with products that aim to either further that lifestyle goal or express it to others, essentially perverting the entire idea inside-out by encouraging a sort of maximalist minimalism. This is most obvious on social media, where the expression of the lifestyle is obviously performative (because, you know, it’s social media; people who are seriously living minimally are not going to flex on TikTok). This is a legitimate problem to consider. 

However, the critique is still fundamentally broken. It’s tackling a straw-man of the true philosophy. It is for this reason that the true philosophical minimalists out there have abandoned the title in favor of a more descriptive and not yet corrupted alternative, “simple living.”

Simple living is entirely divorced from any aesthetic cohesion, allowing it to represent the true underpinning of a minimalist philosophy, which is obviously simplicity. It may be “minimal” to have a $900 35-in-1 cooking robot, but there’s certainly nothing simple about that. A cast-iron pan is simple, and so is a microwaveable mug, and yes, so is a phone which only does calling, texting, and local music. 

When Thoreau kicked off the minimalist rebellion in Walden saying, “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!” he wasn’t advocating for anything like a slab of glass that organizes your life down to the last second of boredom, he was advocating for a life so simple that such a thing becomes ridiculous. Believe it or not, it’s not minimalist to add a minimalist burden to your life. “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.”

My point here isn’t to try and salvage the good name of minimalism. Truthfully, I don’t think that’s even useful. The rebranding to “simple living” has circumvented the entire issue at hand and provided a real space for the people who are ideologically opposed to fighting a war on the internet. My point is to try and inspire a second thought about minimalism that gives it three dimensions instead of this reinforced compression of those dimensions into something one-dimensional. For folks like Mrwhosetheboss, minimalism is ridiculous and DOA because of its internal contradiction regarding consumerism. He recognizes the real paradox of an impossible spending into minimalism, and that for him makes it unviable as a lifestyle. The consideration ends there. 

The reality is that simple living is the most accessible ethic in the world, built upon a foundation of living well, but it is by its very nature a silent niche far away from its target, the captured consumer. 

Thoreau recognized this when he wrote Walden, and it’s my opinion that he utilized this inevitable confusion to further the lifestyle to consumers. Walden is known for being romantic and very aesthetically oriented, akin to freeform poetry, invoking this very conundrum of definition. Where it diverges is within the reader: most captured consumers will interpret the book as a call to spend a year in the woods alone and experience how beautiful and pleasurable nature is, but for the target reader, the one to whom Thoreau speaks directly, the veil of aesthetic consumerism is lifted to show a gritty underbelly of true individualism. The calls to action are a take-it-or-leave-it blunt encouragement to find joy and individuality in simplicity wherever you are, even in his mid-19th century industrial America.

“Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house.… The town’s poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any. May be they are simply great enough to receive without misgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which should be more disreputable. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.”

Just cook your eggs in a fuckin’ pan, man.