/0/ - Minimalism General

[Thricegreat]

Discuss about minimalism, simple living, problems of consumerism, &c.

[Thricegreat]

This is the famous washbasin of the Ryouan-ji, a famous Rinzai Zen temple.



It says 吾唯足知. Which means

吾: I
唯: Only
足: Enoughness
知: Know

And the 口 at the center means a mouth. Imagine the water flows into the mouth.

Also the washbasin itself looks similar to the Chinese coins.

[BobDeus]

People live with an excess today that they truly believe is a normal part of their lives. I believe one of the big problems of today is information and media, it is something I focus on in my own writing. To learn more about this, I've ran 'experiments' with my media habits, one of the most rewarding experiments has been periods of intentional abstinence from media. Progressing from minor changes or short stints, I've come to a point where I don't listen to music, nor watch television and film, nor play video games. I'm guilty of watching YouTube sometimes when I eat, which is a habit I'm working on. Of course, I don't use social media either, for five years now.
In counterpoint to this, I've also indulged excess of media, but after abstinence I find myself less able to do this now.
I don't believe anything is wrong with these activities, in fact I actually love music, but hate the relationship I developed with it and the way the world thinks of it. It is better anyway to see that these things aren't really a part of your life, and if you think they are you have misplaced your priority. Even those who love art should not wallow in representations and fail to see the world around them, an excess of this creates a generation of artists who make uninspired sludge, like the indie game scene for the last decade . Everyone should create time to spent with only their thoughts.

[Deoster]

In counterpoint to this, I've also indulged excess of media, but after abstinence I find myself less able to do this now.
I don't believe anything is wrong with these activities, in fact I actually love music, but hate the relationship I developed with it and the way the world thinks of it. It is better anyway to see that these things aren't really a part of your life, and if you think they are you have misplaced your priority. Even those who love art should not wallow in representations and fail to see the world around them, an excess of this creates a generation of artists who make uninspired sludge, like the indie game scene for the last decade . Everyone should create time to spent with only their thoughts.

I find your opinions on music interesting. Could you elaborate on what you disliked about your relationship with it? I understand your point about artists becoming insular leading to slop, and I agree to some extent, but I personally think this argument is a bit more difficult to apply to music. So much great music has come out of productive conversation with other music, and much of music is inherently "lived" through aspects of playing with other people, performing live, and so on. And music has been such an omnipresent and important part of the human experience historically that it feels like a bit of a waste not to consider it a part of my life.

[BobDeus]

Could you elaborate on what you disliked about your relationship with it? I understand your point about artists becoming insular leading to slop, and I agree to some extent, but I personally think this argument is a bit more difficult to apply to music. So much great music has come out of productive conversation with other music, and much of music is inherently "lived" through aspects of playing with other people, performing live, and so on. And music has been such an omnipresent and important part of the human experience historically that it feels like a bit of a waste not to consider it a part of my life.

Music lost social and communal aspects with the creation of the record. From here on, a song did not have to exist as it's own thing apart from the performance, but could be a single unit expressed by a single source of truth, that being the recording. Today, this is overwhelmingly true. Music performance is a rare and gated event, or there is no interest in it. Performance of existing songs in the post-record era are 'covers', and there is a feeling that they are in fact always an inferior item to the 'original', a new distinction. Work songs ringing through the field, replaced by corporate drones, with headphones piping some tailored tune to suit their arbitrary tastes.
The common feeling about music today is passive and utilitarian. It serves as aural decorum in our lives. If you spend a lot of time in the big city, you may see so many people walk around with headphones; they are withdrawing from reality and using music for a soothing effect. People select music so to change their mood or enhance it: music to increase energy, music to dispell loneliness when feeling sad, music that just drowns out noise or keeps you in a slightly distracted state (the reason why shopping malls are full of music, though it all mixes into reverberant sludge of noise, it keeps you distracted and perhaps more apt to spend money unnecessarily). All of it feels very odious to me. This is especially true when people are doing other things while listening to music.
I believe that the contemporary attitude towards music is disrespectful to the art form, and frames it as a tool for manipulation, by others or by your self. I have an aversion to anything that can manipulate the mind towards more emotive states, and I believe music does this on a deeper level than other arts. Must be a neurological thing.
Now I will be the first to admit that I'm susceptible to fall to the contemporary attitude, and susceptible to manipulations as well. It would be silly to puff my chest and claim I have any capacity to resist these, as people foolishly believe awareness of the negative aspects of life is sufficient to ward them, are often egotistic or fail to grasp how exactly the thing acts. I cannot resist, so instead I abstain.
Also, I'm surprised people don't say this more often, but the constant presence of music (especially that which plays from a recording and can be precisely repeated) is highly unnatural, and probably not good for us.

I hope my slightly disorganized collection of my thoughts about music help to illustrate my position, which is essentially that music as a commodity or utility is not only itself soulless, but makes us so too. Music is a fundamentally different experience today from what it used to be, and so feels disconnect from purpose. Despite what I say, I have a special place for music in my heart, as a former musicmaker and a poet who loves the musicality of poetry.
Also, there are for sure parts of life that may be very grand and wonderful! But we should not see it as a loss to just miss out on them. Life is not a completionist endeavour to see and feel it all. If I were to be blinded and deafened tomorrow, I hope I'd find it within myself to carry on and embrace life, and not be diminished just because a few channels of sensory input are down.

[Deoster]

Music lost social and communal aspects with the creation of the record. From here on, a song did not have to exist as it's own thing apart from the performance, but could be a single unit expressed by a single source of truth, that being the recording. Today, this is overwhelmingly true. Music performance is a rare and gated event, or there is no interest in it. Performance of existing songs in the post-record era are 'covers', and there is a feeling that they are in fact always an inferior item to the 'original', a new distinction. Work songs ringing through the field, replaced by corporate drones, with headphones piping some tailored tune to suit their arbitrary tastes.
The common feeling about music today is passive and utilitarian. It serves as aural decorum in our lives. If you spend a lot of time in the big city, you may see so many people walk around with headphones; they are withdrawing from reality and using music for a soothing effect. People select music so to change their mood or enhance it: music to increase energy, music to dispell loneliness when feeling sad, music that just drowns out noise or keeps you in a slightly distracted state (the reason why shopping malls are full of music, though it all mixes into reverberant sludge of noise, it keeps you distracted and perhaps more apt to spend money unnecessarily). All of it feels very odious to me. This is especially true when people are doing other things while listening to music.

I can see your point, and I 100% agree that music is played far too much in public areas and that a lot of people who constantly have headphones on outside would probably be better off without them (though I definitely have been and to some extent am this person--my only slight defense for this is that often in modern public places you'd be more artificially distracted and manipulated without the headphones than with them). It does feel like it's radicalizing the problem a bit. Just because music *can* be soulless now and maybe even is often soulless doesn't mean it has to be. I think you can still pretty readily engage with music in a way that's decidedly not passive or utilitarian.

I'm not sure if I agree that music performance is rare and that there is no interest for it; a lot of shows of all kinds are happening very often with a lot of people attending. And this applies especially for genres like jazz where the "single source of truth" is a much less pervasive issue and the "cover" language is basically non-existent because of the tradition of standards.

Also, there are for sure parts of life that may be very grand and wonderful! But we should not see it as a loss to just miss out on them. Life is not a completionist endeavour to see and feel it all. If I were to be blinded and deafened tomorrow, I hope I'd find it within myself to carry on and embrace life, and not be diminished just because a few channels of sensory input are down.

I suppose, but why not smell the roses while you have them? If I were blinded and deafened, I wouldn't kill myself or anything but I would certainly grieve. And such a possibility makes me even more inclined to enjoy the sensory pleasures I can enjoy fully and (relatively...) healthily while I have them.

[satoridepon]

I dont think consumption of music is good for you. With my experience you'll milk a good piece of music so much you're gonna get tired to listening to it, and eventually you will just get tired of everything. Music should be classified as opioids.

[Amlux]

That's a weird perspective to me, I'll be honest. I can't see music as anything but a good. Though it's not bad to take some breaks once in a while, so you appreciate it more with some breaks between. I had years where I listened to 3-5 albums a day, then years where I didn't listen to anything but random OSTs to anime and games during commutes, as more of an extension of the anime/game hobby than anything. Now I feel like I have a better balance. The same goes for everything I guess, but I'm glad I've experienced both extremes.

[Thricegreat]

Could you elaborate on what you disliked about your relationship with it? I understand your point about artists becoming insular leading to slop, and I agree to some extent, but I personally think this argument is a bit more difficult to apply to music. So much great music has come out of productive conversation with other music, and much of music is inherently "lived" through aspects of playing with other people, performing live, and so on. And music has been such an omnipresent and important part of the human experience historically that it feels like a bit of a waste not to consider it a part of my life.

The common feeling about music today is passive and utilitarian. It serves as aural decorum in our lives. If you spend a lot of time in the big city, you may see so many people walk around with headphones; they are withdrawing from reality and using music for a soothing effect. People select music so to change their mood or enhance it: music to increase energy, music to dispell loneliness when feeling sad, music that just drowns out noise or keeps you in a slightly distracted state (the reason why shopping malls are full of music, though it all mixes into reverberant sludge of noise, it keeps you distracted and perhaps more apt to spend money unnecessarily). All of it feels very odious to me. This is especially true when people are doing other things while listening to music.
I believe that the contemporary attitude towards music is disrespectful to the art form, and frames it as a tool for manipulation, by others or by your self. I have an aversion to anything that can manipulate the mind towards more emotive states, and I believe music does this on a deeper level than other arts. Must be a neurological thing.
Now I will be the first to admit that I'm susceptible to fall to the contemporary attitude, and susceptible to manipulations as well. It would be silly to puff my chest and claim I have any capacity to resist these, as people foolishly believe awareness of the negative aspects of life is sufficient to ward them, are often egotistic or fail to grasp how exactly the thing acts. I cannot resist, so instead I abstain.
Also, I'm surprised people don't say this more often, but the constant presence of music (especially that which plays from a recording and can be precisely repeated) is highly unnatural, and probably not good for us.

I hope my slightly disorganized collection of my thoughts about music help to illustrate my position, which is essentially that music as a commodity or utility is not only itself soulless, but makes us so too. Music is a fundamentally different experience today from what it used to be, and so feels disconnect from purpose. Despite what I say, I have a special place for music in my heart, as a former musicmaker and a poet who loves the musicality of poetry.
Also, there are for sure parts of life that may be very grand and wonderful! But we should not see it as a loss to just miss out on them. Life is not a completionist endeavour to see and feel it all. If I were to be blinded and deafened tomorrow, I hope I'd find it within myself to carry on and embrace life, and not be diminished just because a few channels of sensory input are down.

As Pythagoreans said, music is medicine for soul and medicine is music for body. So I see that the things you described are in parallel with modern overmedication, nootropics, &c.

Is drinking coffee for the energising effect bad? Is it blasphemy for coffee? Maybe yes, maybe not.

But I agree with that in a minimalist perspective, this would be bad. Though I'm not strictly a minimalist so that I don't necessarily agree with it. But here is a minimalism thread anyway. So I think your position would be correct for a thread like this.

[BobDeus]

I know it is a strange position, I don't talk much about it IRL. If people ask me "Who is your favourite music artist" I'll pluck something from my memory for the sake of not putting a thorn in the conversation. My position is mine alone which I've been driven towards by my own intuition, and have no wish to impose it on others. When I first went a month without music, I have to admit it disrupted me emotionally, which was disturbing. Shouldn't I be able to handle life without music? Later, I tried again and again, until now I truly feel no need to listen to music, and feel more balanced this way. But this is just me, and I respect anyone who has a genuine love for music. That said, the common person treats music like a wallpaper, an inconsequential ornamentation, which is not true appreciation. This undiscerning attitude coupled with the potential for music to be a tool of manipulation makes me feel most people would be better off not listening to music as much as they do.
Basically, if you're the kind of person who sits down with a new or old album and actively listens to it through, that is quite fine, but if your music habits are just putting on Spotify playlists when walking, at the gym, or in the shower because you can't handle being with your thoughts for a moment, you disservice yourself.
Maybe there is a bias to my perspective too: I spent years working on making music, and feel like I never became good at it. This shift roughly coincides with the time I officially gave up making music, so that may have something to do with it.

Putting that subject to rest, I'm curious how other people here practise minimalism in their lives, and to what degree? I would say I have some tendency to it because I believe the fundamentals of good living include having less, though if you look at my office area, 'minimalist' would be the last thing you would think of.