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Why is minimality desirable?

By moving towards minimality, we lose comfort, and we gain freedom and peace of mind.

For people who do not have particularly favorable material conditions, reconciling satisfying their minimum needs and maintaining a satisfactory life ethic is not easy. Reducing your needs to only what is really important is therefore a very good way to increase your chances of achieving this.

For people who live in material wealth, the danger is getting used to it. In doing so, what was an accessory gradually becomes necessary, so that on the one hand it no longer really brings pleasure, and on the other, it increases anxiety regarding the impermanence. This diffuse anxiety will then encourage the adoption of dangerous conspiracy myths such as the fear of the great replacement, or quite simply of social downgrading.

Tame minimality

A good way to practice minimalism is to practice an activity such as hiking over several days. Not only does this produce a very appreciable physical effect, but above all, it makes you aware of the importance of the simplest pleasures such as eating, or admiring a beautiful landscape. And on the way back, this allows you to fully appreciate the extraordinary comfort that, for example, access to a hot shower represents.

The limits of minimality

The goal is not to go ever further in terms of minimality, but to find your personal comfort point, that is to say the point below which, despite training, you do not get used to it. This point varies from one individual to another, and over time for the same individual.

Let’s take the example of hiking again. Those who practice it over the long term will gradually lighten their backpack, getting rid of objects which, with experience, do not prove to be so necessary. It is a liberating process.
On the other hand, once you get rid of what wasn't that useful, and reach the point where the weight of the backpack is no longer a problem, there is little reason to go further, in particular by adopting objects that are a bit lighter, but very expensive and not very durable. Indeed, we would then fall back into a quest which has more to do with social ambition.

Importance of an approach towards minimality

Let us take the example of celibacy of priests in the Catholic Church. This is a question that the church cannot resolve, quite simply because it is poorly posed.
By specifying that priests take a vow of celibacy, instead of specifying an approach towards minimal private relationships in order to be able to better devote themselves to their community, the church rigidly sets the level to be achieved, and therefore fails to achieve properly manage those who fail. Hyprocrisy of hierarchy and community or exclusion; there is no longer a satisfactory solution.
Conversely, if the church simply authorized priests to marry, as in the Reformed church, it would not completely resolve the problem by no longer emphasizing the objective of minimality. However, it is the fact of having a personal approach towards minimality that makes the priest a living example for his community.

Quotes

Concerning the limits of the search for minimality, in reaction to the Epicurean and Stoic philosophies which suggested that we can manage to master our physical and passionate self, so as to never be dominated by it, Montaigne retorts that this is a noble advice, which flatters our highest aspirations. This is also impossible, and therefore counterproductive:
“What are we to do with these lofty points of philosophy on which no human being can rest, and these rules which exceed our use and our strength? There is hardly any end to tailoring one's obligation to the reason of a being other than one's own. »

Go deeper

View question 'What is impermanence?'.
Refer to question 'How to succeed in life', and more particularly the paragraph 'The feelings dimension - Epicurus - domesticating pleasure'.
More generally, become familiar with Epicureanism, taking care not to confuse the ataraxic approach of the Greek philosopher Epicurus, with the aesthetic hedonism too often wrongly associated with the word Epicureanism.