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