Minimalism as a strategy

The easiest way to control a person is by the presence or absence of something he can’t live without... or simply believes that he can’t. Most of our needs aren’t consciously created by us - they are learned from others and conditioned by the socio-cultural environment we live in.

Examine it closely and you’ll see that we are just fine without at least half of the pointless trash which fills up our lives. However, the manipulative trick of consumerism is designed to make us assign value to things; a variety of methods is used to impose various needs and wants and attribute them great importance. Once this is achieved, a person turns into a puppet attached to a thousand of strings, each one being one particular habit, desire, need, dependency, ingrained concept, deeply valued tradition.

Who are we without them? Without them, do we even exist? Take away something we think is vital to our well-being, and we collapse... quite literally, like helpless babies who get their comfort objects taken away. I’m not even talking about big things. I’ve known people who felt lost and succumbed into depression after breaking a favorite coffee mug that was their “comfort thing”. I’ve known those who felt inadequate for not dating anyone for more than a month because having someone was making them wanted, loved, normal. You see, they didn’t even love a person; they just needed that person to be there to give them the “dating” status, a highly valued sense of social normalcy.

I could bring up hundreds of real-life examples of how we are controlled by needs, cravings, and attachments that aren’t truly ours. There is plenty of them in my life as well. For the sake of this article I’ll name just a few general fixations common in our society: all sorts of material possessions (not regularly used/useful ones); entertainment (show business products, TV, most films, computer games, music); food and substances; most forms of sexual relations; principles, ideas, and beliefs that we have stopped to question and aren’t willing to change or abandon even when it’s obvious that they have outlived themselves.

Knowing all this, every human being who wants personal freedom (the true freedom, not the fake surrogate they’ve been pushing onto us since forever) should ask a straightforward question:

What is it that I truly need? What is truly essential to me?

Most of our very limited time on earth we are completely submerged into what we perceive as important and essential without ever questioning the origins of our perceptions. But what if I tell you this: most of them have been imposed on us since day one. What if you dig a little deeper and slowly realize that most of your needs, wants, desires, and ideas aren’t really yours? Presence of the endless number of things, attributes, and aspects of social and material life has been made a “norm” and a necessity that we take for granted simply because it is regularly advertised and pushed onto us as something we just can’t live without.

What do we have as a result? No, not a free and powerful Human Being. We have a highly dependent, controllable, predictable creature whose existence is tied up by a million of artificially created wants and needs. It’s so easy to guide and control someone who is heavily attached to his deeply cherished habits, traditions, desires, and life necessities.

The trick of this perfectly designed System is that there is no need for brute force. No one needs to be forced to obey; we already exist under the extremely harsh control of instilled needs, wants, priorities, and demands. And most of us won’t ever cause any trouble to what exists as the Norm since we genuinely believe we are Free.

Whatever holds us under total physical, mental, and emotional control succeeds over and over again simply because WE LOVE IT. We are the millions of agents Smiths who don’t want to challenge the Matrix because we are deeply attached to its very real reality supported endlessly by our own mental dependency on it.

I want to emphasize that this is not just about things. It's not about having a high social status, a prestigious job, or a deeply sentimental attachment to valued material possessions. It is about everything, including tons of informational garbage, imposed ideas and life principles, overvalued social statuses and achievements, useless socialization, pointless relationships, most of “entertainment”, and most of our automatic emotional reactions and uncontrollably flowing thought processes.

What is it that I truly need? Where do my needs and desires come from? Do I understand their origin and their nature? Are they truly mine? Do they belong to me or do I belong to them? Who/what is in control? What do I truly need for a free, happy, powerful life?

I think an honest, open attempt to answer these questions can make every human being a bit more true to oneself, more flexible, uncatchable, harder to predict and control. And I think that attempt must be made over and over again as personal freedom isn’t something that is acquired easily.

It’s not a “lifestyle”. It’s not a mental exercise. Getting rid of unnecessary things in one’s physical space, social relations, habits and addictions, food and information isn’t just minimalism per se... It’s a practical life strategy, a cunning skill, a part of the warrior‘s way of life.

One saying from the Sufi tradition can summarize my lengthy post in one line, so here’s to the art and weapon of minimalism: You truly own only that which you can’t lose in a shipwreck.