Modern Romanticism

“Do more with less” is how the saying goes to define minimalism. Although, how was this initially observed? It had to be in knowing that the average person doesn’t know what to do with more. Then, in encouraging a person with less not to strive for more, a divide gets carried about between those with less and those with more. Through societal terminology, this is called the divide between the poor and the rich.

Who is going to be really advocating for minimalism? Or perhaps the better question is who would benefit the most from such advocation? The rich, of course. Those with power want more power. The competition gets shooed away when they can tell those who are poor to be content with less. The latter is minimalism. Maybe the best alternative is to be educated on what to do with more, not to slap aside more as a distraction. An individual leaves them in greater susceptibility to be controlled if their determination is to keep themselves below where they could be. Why treat ambition or passion as a fault? Why treat a dream as only a fantasy? On the collective level, it gets worse in seeing people encouraging the same idea of doing more with less while perhaps unknowingly protecting where power will belong. Power is always there. To despise its place in the world will most likely be about common folk treating it isn’t for them. Their responsibilities can be less, and the turnaround for that is to make them a responsibility for those in power. This mindset engrains the divide.

In this divide, those who know what to do with more, those who have power because a society will always have wealthy people, are those who dislike being thrown off the ladder of ascension. They don’t embrace minimalism because their lifestyles situate around controlling through “more”. Who a CEO employs are those who are beneath them. Who a dictator enslaves are out of what principals of control they can present. They’re not confused about what to do with more because they’re preserving themselves. Are those who embrace minimalism preserving themselves? It’s questionable because they’re satisfied not only with less, but with being less.

There’s nothing terrifying about having more as long as one knows what to do with it. Educating oneself on what to do with more, rather than submitting oneself to have less because this is better than the confusion that follows from having more is an act of self-reduction. Striving for less because the motivation is fear of more is only to preserve oneself through perpetual containment.