Interesting Article on Living Minimally

[Joyrex]

http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2016/04/minimalism-brought-freedom-joy/

 

I found this to be very interesting how this man can live like this and seemingly be happy - I don't know if I would go to the lengths he did, but it does cause me to reflect on all the material things and really, how useless they are at the end of the day (or life).

 

I find as I get older, my attachment to material things is not as strong as when I was in my teens, or even my 20's and 30's.

 

Anyway, I found it interesting, so I thought I'd share it here.

 

 

[Klopjob]

I've tried to own as few things as possible for the past year.. feels good. Much easier if you have to move.

[rixxx]

You need some Marie Kondo in your life

http://goop.com/the-illustrated-guide-to-the-kondo-mari-method/




I lived out of a bag for five years as a teen so dont really feel material possessions have any hold over me. Its annoying if I dont have access to a laptop/mobile but I'll live.

[beerwolf]

edit for reasons of diplomacy

[olo]

I wonder what this guy does when he gets one of those gut wrenching explosive shits? Like driving to work. Your 20 minutes away. You got a turd damn-near playing peek-a-boo out your asshole. A turtle head as they say. I don't know if this guy got a car or just walks the earth like Kane, but man...finding a bathroom where ever he's at on any given day could be a pain in the ass if you come down with a case of the exploders...

[Guest]

I reckon he may be a bit more liberal towards places/situations where/when it is appropriate to release the turtle

[Entorwellian]

"Living minimally" is the new euphemism for "homeless"

[Echolalia]

WH Davies is a name you need to remember. A welsh hobo that wandered all over the USA at the turn of the 20th century. He was minimal before minimalism meant talking about yourself. His book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Autobiography_of_a_Super-Tramp was the reason Chris McCandless called himself Alexander Supertramp.

 

Into the Wild was a terrible film, with it's depiction of the american wilderness as some sort of wandering crusade and descent into madness. A Plain Life by Davies is a poem worth reading and expands on what that minimal fella is trying to say.

[chenGOD]

Do note that dude who wrote the original article is quite wealthy.

[Trilobot]

"A material good might not fit in my bag. But a joyful experience is lighter than an atom."

 

I love this quote. All of the wonderful experiences I've had with my friends and family mean more to me than all the neat stuff I have (although neat stuff is still cool).

[Redruth]

minimal is the new maximal

[luke viia]

"Living minimally" is the new euphemism for "homeless"

 

he says in the article that he doesn't really like the term minimalist and at one point calls himself homeless, so no euphemism needed :P

 

i'm 100% down with not accumulating useless crap or getting attached to things like DVD collections or whatever. i have enough possessions to fill a small apartment, but i usually just give stuff away when i'm done with it and try not to buy crap that'll just go in the garbage in a year (cuz why bother?)

[Salvatorin]

minimal is the new maximal

"maximalist"

[Braintree]

I'm generally down with the incorporeal.

[koolkeyZ865]

Very inspiring. While material possessions are nice and are a tool to expand the mind, they are misused by many people. Life shouldn't be the exploration of all the man made material objects. That leads a man or a woman down the road of sadness. Life should be explored through the natural essence. There's nothing better than walking into a forest for hours untouched by man, all alone in your mind and soul.

[hello spiral]

Do note that dude who wrote the original article is quite wealthy.

 

Funny how the dudes/dudettes espousing this philosophy/aesthetic are always minted

[koolkeyZ865]

It's a bit easier to build up wealth if you basically don't live anywhere and don't have to pay rent or anything. I assume he has a phone bill though? I don't know who the guy even is so i'm just basing this off of Chen's comment

[zkom]

Last year I didn't have a home for about 7.5 months and basically just traveled with a backpack and a shoulder bag. I still had all the rest of my stuff stored in various places. It felt like a very care free lifestyle, but of course having money coming in and not having to work helped that too... I counted that I slept in 63 different places. Then I settled down again, got a new job and an apartment and I could feel the usual stress coming back instantly. There's lots of little things you need to do when your living in your own home.

 

Anyway, I want to do it again sometime if the opportunity arises.

[cwmbrancity]

 

WH Davies is a name you need to remember. A welsh hobo that wandered all over the USA at the turn of the 20th century. He was minimal before minimalism meant talking about yourself. His book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Autobiography_of_a_Super-Tramp was the reason Chris McCandless called himself Alexander Supertramp.

 

 

 

 

a local legend, revered as much as Arthur Machen, John Cale & the recently deceased Mr Nice

[KovalainenFanBoy]

 

Do note that dude who wrote the original article is quite wealthy.

 

Funny how the dudes/dudettes espousing this philosophy/aesthetic are always minted

 

 

I guess this is because people who write stuff like this are people who used to accumulate stuff (ie: are wealthy and could afford to live a 'maximalist' life) and then turned into "minimalists" and make a big deal about the change, while the people who have always lived like that don't write articles about it cause that's just how they've always been. That's my experience with places such as the minimalism subreddit, not talking about this particular article

[Braintree]

I'm actually at a point in my life where I can afford more synths and gear, so I'm buying it. It's not a fascination with owning things or trying to fill some void or whatever. It's merely a symptom of self expression and having reached my limit with former instruments.

 

There's an interesting aspect to being a musician or artist and having to own particular things in order to achieve the results you want.

[Audioblysk]

sorta TL:DR, skipped around and probably missed the point - PREPARE FOR OPINIONS

 

Opinion: I was homeless in my mid-teens. I bounced from couch to couch, slept in my car, lacked basic necessities and had to literally hustle to get a roof over my head. While I do feel like I was a lot less stressed out about bills and shit -I was also pretty stressed out about life being young, pretty broke, and with no support... This dude has lots of $ and has made his decision to scale down his life. That's cool... but not for everyone.

 

Now that I'm older, not homeless and the like, I appreciate minimalism in a sense. My dream is to get a good chunk of land in the Nor-Cal/South Oregon area and utilize my agricultural knowledge and years of experience to grow my own food, grow grains, tap a water well and do some viticulture stuff. That may sound minimalistic, but it's a fuckin' job and human existence always requires stress, happiness, disappointment, entitlement and all that jazz.

 

I think that people always see the grass as greener and minimalistic lifestyles are purely relative and every shade of the human experiences carries its relative struggles, desires, needs and successes. It's just easy to forget now-a-days. I did not enjoy being homeless and not being able to buy basic things... but I bet I'd be able to live if I had a pile o' coins stashed and had the ability to walk away from responsibilities or technology without becoming homeless again. This dude should go farm rice in Cambodia and then be all 'cool look at me for being so deep and stuff with my no possessions'...

 

I'm actually at a point in my life where I can afford more synths and gear, so I'm buying it. It's not a fascination with owning things or trying to fill some void or whatever. It's merely a symptom of self expression and having reached my limit with former instruments.

 

There's an interesting aspect to being a musician or artist and having to own particular things in order to achieve the results you want.

 

^^^ yes. It's hard to play guitar with no guitar and I view every bit of kit I buy as an investment in my own personal wellbeing as making music is what I like to spend free time doing.

[Candiru]

I'm all up in some maximalist mischief, flexing on the squad and stunting on the haters. Y'all can keep your cardboard box houses n shit.

[Guest WNS000]

 

Do note that dude who wrote the original article is quite wealthy.

 

Funny how the dudes/dudettes espousing this philosophy/aesthetic are always minted

 

 

It is because they have time and opportunities to think about such stuff. They also don't have that drive towards possessions because they already enjoyed them to a big extent and therefore are more keen to try a different way of living than poor people that dream about being rich whole their lives because they have never experienced it. The rich have the opportunity to find out if money and possessions are enough to make you happy and often find the opposite and therefore choose a different way of living.

[auxien]

This quote irked me: "I hope to talk to them every day for the rest of my life. If they lived with me I probably wouldn’t be able to live the way I do and I probably wouldn’t want to. But life has delivered me to this shore. So I pick myself up and explore the jungle on this new island." They seem to be children, not grown, self-sustaining adults. And he's saying he'd prefer to live with them, but can't? So he lost full/partial custody rights, and so chose to go this route? I'm not saying a parent can't be a good parent from far away or while 'wandering America' but I have to imagine willingly exiling yourself from them and most of society that they are likely part of (school, sports, arts, whatever) has to make being a good parent more difficult. Maybe I'm wrong and he's a great dad who shows up every couple months stinky and says 'let's go stay at the Ramada Inn this weekend younguns! I'll introduce you to my new girlfriend Moonbeam and she can show you how to knit daisies into your dredlocks!'

 

I'm exaggerating and being highly judgmental but isn't that what WATMM is for?

 

For the record I'm all for living more minimally. I think he's a bit preachy/enjoying the attention, but whatever floats his boat I'm cool with.