In a world of rampant materialism and manifold opportunities, many people these days are apparently learning who they are, by choosing what they can do without. I had just finished Diwali-cleaning of my home, and then I happened to read something on simplicity and its virtues. Being 'cleanliness-minded' myself, I decided to write some of these thoughts here.
We are usually told to try new things and explore the life's possibilities. As Oliver Wendell Holmes put it:"The chief work of civilisation is just that it makes the means of living more complex. Because more complex and intense intellectual efforts mean a fuller and richer life. That means more life. Life is an end to itself and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have enough of it."
This striving for fullness and variety has always sparked a controversy towards simplicity and naturalness. Many great thinkers and conventional groups have always favoured ascetic living and high thinking as a way to clear out those material things that might distract them from humility and grace, compassion and prayer, the soul and the God.
Today's simplicity movements are different from what they were in the past. Today's most obvious simplicity impulse is the movement to declutter the home. Marie Kondo's book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, now ranks No.2 on Amazon among the best-selling books of 2015. Magazines and websites are stuffed with tips on how to declutter our living areas--- everything that can be folded should be folded! Open the mail while standing over the recycling bin, etc. Cleaning out the closets and paring down the wardrobe have become a religious ritual for many--- a search for serenity, and a blow against stress.
The second big tendency in today's simplicity movement involves mental hygiene: techniques to clean out the email folder and reduce the incoming flow. For example, Mailwise is a mobile email product that cleans out repetitive phrases so we can read our email more quickly. So there's a mass movement to combat mental harriedness, the epidemic of attention deficit disorder all around. Of course, there's a struggle to regain control of our own attention, to set priorities about what we will think about, to see fewer things but to see them more deeply.
One of the troublesome things about today's simplicity movements is that they are often just alternative forms of consumption. Some magazines advise us to strip away our stuff so we can buy new, simpler stuff! So simplification is not really spiritual or anti-materialism; just a more refined and morally status-building form of materialism.
Today's simplicity movements are not as philosophically explicit as older ones. Still, there's clearly some process of discovery here. Early in life we choose our identity by getting things. But later in an affluent life we discover or update our identity by throwing away what is no longer useful, true and beautiful. One simplicity expert advised people to take all their books off their shelves and throw them on the floor. Put back only the books that you truly value.
That's an exercise in identity discovery, an exercise in realizing and then prioritizing our current tastes and beliefs. People who do that may instinctively be seeking higher forms of pruning: being impeccable with our words, strong with our commitments, disciplined about our time, selective about our friendships, hence moving from fragmentation towards unity of purpose. There's an enviable emotional tranquility at the end of that road.
We are usually told to try new things and explore the life's possibilities. As Oliver Wendell Holmes put it:"The chief work of civilisation is just that it makes the means of living more complex. Because more complex and intense intellectual efforts mean a fuller and richer life. That means more life. Life is an end to itself and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have enough of it."
This striving for fullness and variety has always sparked a controversy towards simplicity and naturalness. Many great thinkers and conventional groups have always favoured ascetic living and high thinking as a way to clear out those material things that might distract them from humility and grace, compassion and prayer, the soul and the God.
Today's simplicity movements are different from what they were in the past. Today's most obvious simplicity impulse is the movement to declutter the home. Marie Kondo's book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, now ranks No.2 on Amazon among the best-selling books of 2015. Magazines and websites are stuffed with tips on how to declutter our living areas--- everything that can be folded should be folded! Open the mail while standing over the recycling bin, etc. Cleaning out the closets and paring down the wardrobe have become a religious ritual for many--- a search for serenity, and a blow against stress.
The second big tendency in today's simplicity movement involves mental hygiene: techniques to clean out the email folder and reduce the incoming flow. For example, Mailwise is a mobile email product that cleans out repetitive phrases so we can read our email more quickly. So there's a mass movement to combat mental harriedness, the epidemic of attention deficit disorder all around. Of course, there's a struggle to regain control of our own attention, to set priorities about what we will think about, to see fewer things but to see them more deeply.
One of the troublesome things about today's simplicity movements is that they are often just alternative forms of consumption. Some magazines advise us to strip away our stuff so we can buy new, simpler stuff! So simplification is not really spiritual or anti-materialism; just a more refined and morally status-building form of materialism.
Today's simplicity movements are not as philosophically explicit as older ones. Still, there's clearly some process of discovery here. Early in life we choose our identity by getting things. But later in an affluent life we discover or update our identity by throwing away what is no longer useful, true and beautiful. One simplicity expert advised people to take all their books off their shelves and throw them on the floor. Put back only the books that you truly value.
That's an exercise in identity discovery, an exercise in realizing and then prioritizing our current tastes and beliefs. People who do that may instinctively be seeking higher forms of pruning: being impeccable with our words, strong with our commitments, disciplined about our time, selective about our friendships, hence moving from fragmentation towards unity of purpose. There's an enviable emotional tranquility at the end of that road.
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