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Minimalism Is a Luxury Good
How the urge to simplify becomes more things to buy
Maybe it started with the iconoclastic act of throwing tea off the boat in Boston Harbor, or perhaps with the misperception that North America was simply a blank space before the pilgrims came from England and the pioneers headed West. In any case, the United States is particularly vulnerable to the charms of minimalism.
Something about our belief in the power of self-definition and starting over suggests to us that if we only sweep our floors, we will magically become new people, unburdened by the past. We like to think that we can do without, rough it to prove that we’re not so soft or bound to the past. Our collective impulse to KonMari our closets is merely the most recent in a long history of nationwide cleaning fugues, from Henry David Thoreau’s cabin to the present.
In 1933, the American philosopher Richard Gregg published an essay called “The Value of Voluntary Simplicity” that foretold today’s preoccupations with decluttering, unplugging, and slowing down. “We think that our machinery and technology will save us time and give us more leisure,” he wrote, “but really they make life more crowded and hurried. It is time to call a halt on endless gadgeteering.” Gregg was critiquing telephones and Henry Ford’s motorcars, but also the greed of traders in the…
