Why Minimalist Lifestyle Isnt a Trend Its Our Truest Nature

really happy to be here today

i wanted to start this conversation

about why minimalism is

not just a trend it is truly our human

nature

but in order to talk about this topic we

have to start by addressing privilege

billions of villagers in india do not

need to hear this talk

in fact none of my neighbors in my

village need to hear this talk

they’re already living minimally by

necessity by very real

economic constraints so if you’re

listening today have all of your basic

needs met

and in fact beyond to the point where

you actually feel burdened

by the excesses in life then what i’m

gonna tell you is not something that you

should do or can do it’s something you

must do

because we do not live in a planet of

finite resources

and there is no magical world of a way

when

our junk that is clogging our homes goes

away

we have to talk about the privilege of

of education the education that allows

us for decent paying jobs that can

afford

a certain lifestyle and maybe even forms

of passive income

in the stock market or with

technologically savvy folks

many of whom will speak today they can

actually have passive income that is not

tied to our labor

so then if we’re hearing this and all of

those things are true for us

you must listen up and this change is a

necessity

now it’s not our fault though that we

are consuming the way we do

modern consumption habits are

constructed and contrived with

enormous and conscious effort by

industry and by media

this has been happening since our

infancy we’ve been marketed to

and been going on for many generations

so it’s no surprise

that advertising makes it their focus

explicitly

to direct us towards the superficial and

thus the insignificant

parts of life these are called created

wants where it’s not truly something we

need

if we’re applying ourselves our own

self-regulation but it’s something that

the media has

fed us subliminally and also

intentionally so that that is a created

want of ours

what this does is it skews our own

conception of self and our own

self-worth

to not be around how we’re connecting to

our community or how helpful we’re being

but instead how many of those created

wants

we can satisfy with the money that we’re

earning

when our self-worth is skewed towards

these insignificant

superficialities our ability to satisfy

our creature comforts

then it’s no wonder we start to feel

isolated from each other and in fact

separate from nature the great catch-22

of modern life

in a in a world of so much comfort

and excess is that we really do live to

work

and then we work to earn and then we

earn so we can spend

and we’re caught in a cycle of earning

and spending

without even really zooming out and

coming to understand what we’re spending

it on or

why we’re doing that we must

fundamentally

question this system this system that

encourages

limitless growth in a planet of finite

resources

that convinces us that our human nature

is the

constant drive to fill our own bodily

pleasures

when that is not our true human nature

our human nature

is that we are independent creative

generous

free-willed beings and we have dignity

and self-worth

we desire work of importance and we’re

connected to the whole

as vandanashiva so aptly reminds us

the way we design the world in our minds

is the way that we relate to it

in the real world so for a capitalist

and consumer system to thrive that

design must be

one where the world is dead and inert

where it is just a lifeless base

of materials that can be transformed

into goods to feed our own

bodily pleasures and creature comforts

in that kind of a design

we truly are separate from nature and

when we’re living separate from nature

and that design in our mind

then we feel vindicated in taking and

for consuming

just for the sake of our own pleasure

with that vindication

it’s no question that we will exploit

the resource base

if instead we shift completely

and we remember and we enter a design

of deep interconnectedness a deep

interconnectedness to nature

between all living things then we will

make the choices that nurture those

relationships

above the choices that satisfy our own

creative

created wants so let’s explore that a

little bit with some everyday items

let’s take the example of a packet of

masala crisps some masala

musty that we can get at our local

kirana store

in the former design that’s the dead

inert separated from nature one

then that masala chips packet it’s quick

it’s easy it’s delicious it’s incredibly

inexpensive

and it gives our body pleasure in india

so much of when we eat fried food we

even just call it time pass

so why wouldn’t we buy that i mean yum

in the latter design actually i look at

that product

of one that is chemical laden

disease-inducing

food-like substance produced by

a behemoth wasteful and extractive

multinational

upon whose purchase my dollar leaves my

local community

off to some far away ceo

it trashes my neighborhood with its

plastic packaging and later it’s likely

to

disease or kill one of my animal

brethren who will eat it in the streets

later

so in the former if i switched those

mindsets around then

wouldn’t it be so easy just to take my

reusable container to my local

hot chips guy where he’s frying fresh

bananas or fresh potatoes that

causes no waste and also keeps my money

in my local economy

let’s take another quick example maybe a

300 rupee top from h

m so in the former design that’s the

dead and inert disconnected design

then that top makes me feel attractive

makes me feel stylish and on trend i fit

in with my peers

it gives me confidence i feel good in

the workplace and you know that added

lycra is really good for the extra

stretch and comfort

but in the latter design the one of

interconnectedness

and relation then that piece of fast

fashion

which is churned out on six week cycles

of new product

actually represents thousands of liters

of toxic

wastewater that goes unfiltered and

untreated into my rivers

and that kills all of my aquatic

brothers and sisters

that added extra lycra is a

petrochemical

which then when i wash it releases

microplastics into my water stream

it comes back down in the rain we drink

it it’s in women’s breast milk

it’s everywhere so again

looking at the design that item doesn’t

become so innocent anymore

and couldn’t i very simply go by one and

a half meters of hand spun

cody fabric for about 100 rupees i could

go get that stitch from my local tailor

for about 200

and then with just a little bit of

creativity i now have a garment that

suits my personality

much better than anything i’m gonna find

on the shelves at h m

so we have to change our design

we have to change the way we are

designing the world in our mind

we have to remember our inherent

interconnectedness

we have to remember the earth as our

mother and her creatures as our brothers

as our sisters as our ancestors which is

just what our indigenous

indigenous populations have always and

still do

a very good place to start my friends is

to turn off the television

there is nothing that you need there

and we have to remember the capabilities

of our ancestors who all made things

that memory still lives in our hands

it’s not very far

off that memory lives inside of our

hands

it just needs a waking up so let’s get

to some

tangible changes some behavioral changes

to take on a minimalist lifestyle

very first off we spend less money

this is maybe even the most simple

change

again i want to point out the privilege

of this conversation

if we have the option to buy so much

that it’s burdening us then this

information must be heeded

so if we have income coming in and we

are not spending it out

we have more money in our pockets when

we understand this equation about money

more money in our pockets means less

pressure

to work in a wage economy to earn that

money back

to fulfill this certain lifestyle that

us and our friends have set

about how much we need to spend in time

with more money saving up because you

are not spending it

it means that one you can go on great

adventures like myself and the other

the other speakers in today’s uh today’s

ted are talking about

it’s because we have not spent money on

items we have saved it

and bought flights with it and you can

employ this this rule of a one week rule

so if you know you’re about to make a

purchase right and you feel this excited

burning butterfly rising desire inside

of your body

i encourage you to take a deep breath

take a couple

deep breaths and then wait one whole

week

if one week later you still have that

burning desire to buy that item

then you are justified to do so most of

the time

that excitement will fizzle out you’ll

go about your life

and you’ll realize that you really

actually don’t need that item

because the less we spend the more we

have in our pockets

which takes the pressure off of wage

economy it might even allow us

to do other jobs that are more creative

that fill our spirit more but that might

pay less

and we all do that because we spend less

so one of the

best ways to spend less money is to up

skill yourself

we are many generations into jobs where

we sit in front of computers and we’ve

forgotten how to use our hands

so we need to up skill ourselves in

learning how to cook

cooking saves you a lot of money as you

get better at cooking it also allows you

to host

way more fun dinner parties than you

could ever have at a restaurant out

we also need to learn to ferment things

to jam things and to brew things

these give us lots of options they give

us one option to take

produce that is going to go into the

waste stream maybe that’s getting old

and soft carrots in our refrigerator

instead of throwing those away and thus

throwing our money into the bin

we can ferment those into a delicious

crispy probiotic snack for our family

and that harvest can be extended it also

means that you can take harvest from

either third you know middlemen selling

the selling at the mundy

or straight from farmers all that

produce that might go off and you can

make it into something that can last

for months and months to come you can

avoid the liquor store altogether when

you learn that all you need is some

simple yeast in order to brew

delicious beers and delicious ginger

beers

and we need to upskill ourselves so we

can make our own products again

we can make all that we need in order to

bathe ourselves

clean our home uh make ourselves clean

our clothing make ourselves look

beautiful we can do that all ourselves

just as i’m sitting in front of you

today i have washed my hair with

chickpea flour

i conditioned it with yogurt my eyeliner

is made out of and mascara

is made out of an egg yolk and charcoal

and

my bronzer is cinnamon and cocoa powder

all of these things were already in my

house i didn’t have to go spend gobs of

money for them

and we need to grow our own food now

growing our own food is not complicated

it is again

an ancestral memory of being a human

being on the earth

and we don’t need anything special to

grow it

as we eat food that produce that

produces food waste the chilka

the leaves fall outside of our

apartments and those are falling

everywhere we live

so if we take the food waste from our

home plus the leaves from our

neighborhood

and put those together add some thyme

and some air

we have compost from compost we can grow

food

what do we grow it in well that takes me

to the next point of learning to upcycle

things

before i get there one last thing we

need to do when we upskill

is that we have to start getting

creative artsy musical

thinking about all these lush activities

that we can do that are outside of the

rat race system

now that we have all this extra time on

our hands

so it takes us to upcycling we must

develop an

allergy to waste once we have developed

this allergy to waste

then instead we will see these things

around us as resources

and you realize how much resource is

actually out there we can up cycle

any old plastic container to grow food i

mean anything

you just need to put in some drainage

holes we can upcycle old curtains into

shopping bags

we can upcycle milk bags the little milk

dailies into rugs

you guys seen this on youtube we can

take old saris and uncles old doties and

we can make those into fresh threads

the bonus about the upcycle life as well

is that it gives you a moral freedom

on the items that you’re going to use

there’s so much junk that we can craft

into something creative and useful

and if normally in your life you

wouldn’t go buying plastic or lycra

because of their petrochemical bases

well when you’re taking it out of the

way stream you get a moral get out of

jail free card

to do that and this minimalist life

is best done in community we need to

find community

that means we can buy things in bulk we

can share tools

you want to get a tool that is quality

and is going to last and a tool allows

you to make a great many things

so if your community invests in tools

then you can share those amongst

yourselves

it also means that you have a network to

exchange goods and expertise in a barter

economy that is not cash based

and many hands of course they make light

work so when we’re creating and making

and not just consuming

it’s not only more fun but much more

efficient done in

community so to close

we need to redesign our minds we need to

remember the inherent

interconnectedness of all of us it’s

something that

sure we can forget it but we cannot

escape it or avoid it

this is nature this is the rule of

nature

so you are not just a consumer your

nature

is not one of selfishness of greed or a

blind or like focus on fulfilling your

own bodily comforts

you are a free thinking generous

creative and interconnected being

your choices do matter and the path of

minimalism

ends up being a path of richer lusher

much more vibrant living

thank you