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About Not Owning Sh*t

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Re: About Not Owning Sh*t

#41

Post by spodek »

I applaud his lifestyle, but the post reminded me of an insightful joke.

Q: How do you know when someone doesn't own a TV?

A: They tell you.

Again, I like his decisions. I hope I don't sound like other posters putting him down or defensive things like he must be rich to live poor, which miss the point. He just seems to be bragging about it. Why not just not have a lot of stuff and leave it at that? If you want to inspire others, a post of a few sentences would probably suffice:

"I avoid having things I find useless and I'm aggressive about considering things useless. Some people might think I'm cheap, but I'm not. I do this on principle. When you cut out crap, you find yourself."

Did I miss anything important? Whatever those four sentences left out in content I feel they made up in brevity and punch.

Re: About Not Owning Sh*t

#42

Post by harshaw »

Don't you people have any hobbies?

For me it is cycling. My bike is my most important possession along with the various tools, wheels, spare bikes, etc. I mean, I get the whole zen thing but life is too short to not have anything. If you do anything outdoors you need equipment (you can rent some equipment but that gets old fast).

Re: About Not Owning Sh*t

#43

Post by sheri »

I own a lot of stuff (TV, couch, wardrobe, carpets, lamps etc), but most of which I don't care about or am OK to lose. If I move out, or move countries I can sell/give away all this stuff and just re-buy it if I need to in the other location. I don't think owning a lot of stuff necessarily correlates to caring about a lot of stuff (or buying stuff to show off). I buy stuff to make my life easy or more comfortable, not necessarily to raise my status among others.

Re: About Not Owning Sh*t

#45

Post by richo »

newbie12 wrote: post #35
richo wrote: post #7

I'm perpetually amused by all the people acutely aware of their privilege, and how they rarely mention any of the things they're doing to try to right the injustice. It strikes me as the same making racist remarks and then insisting you have black friends, (the corollary being that my unchecked privilege probably makes me an unapologetic racist in this analogy but at least that's honest, I guess)

It isn't "injustice" that he's born into privilege. That affluence is the result of sacrifice and decisions made by his family and his larger community/nation. The injustice is that other families and nations are various degrees of corrupt and ignorant. That's not necessarily his burden. In fact, the main reason that life is getting better around the globe is because advanced, "priviledged" societies invented agricul…

I'm not sure if you were meant to be agreeing with me or not, or if I'm just misinterpreting your tone.

I agree with you. While I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to have some perspective and context for the way you experience the world, this privilege apologism that's taken hold is absurd in my view.

Re: About Not Owning Sh*t

#46

Post by scotty79 »

That's perfectly fine if you are interested only in software, but if you wan't to play with robots or some hardware, there's sh*t to bought and kept and not easily moved.

Re: About Not Owning Sh*t

#47

Post by DocG »

I do have similar goal after I traveled around Europe with only clothes and laptop. I traveled with Interail for 15 days straight. It was pretty life changing. Before I wanted too much.

I want to travel all around the world. I have goal to work on the go, through internet and own things only that fit into hand luggage. Probably laptop, some clothes, sketchbook.

Although, I am going to miss my books, I think I have to store them at my parents house probably.

What I have found is that people who have traveled without knowing or caring where they end up and without too much things, only they understand why it is so freeing.

For normal 8 to 5 person, it is usually very hard to get him to travel(not meaning vacation) and even harder to get him leave all the "shit" at home.

bad english is bad.

Re: About Not Owning Sh*t

#48

Post by Nursie »

thoughtcriminal wrote: post #17
Nursie wrote: post #2

That seems extreme. I certainly cut down to two suitcases before emigrating a few years ago, and found it very liberating. In doing so I freed myself from just keeping stuff 'just in case' as I did before. I now live a much more minimal life, and feel much less surrounded by clutter. But as a permanent way of life? Nah, no thanks. I like my bed. I like my sofa. I like my tv. I like my microserver.

Weird. I read the post and asked myself "where's the news?" I thought the majority of HN readers lived like this. I do, but without the custom tailoring or whatever he was talking about. I can't afford that right now. Owning lots of stuff is a burden. Really is.

Can I ask how old you are?

I don't want to be surrounded by clutter, but 'having a nice household environment', which involves the ownership of a fair amount of stuff, is high up on my list of things that make my life comfortable.

Re: About Not Owning Sh*t

#49

Post by DanBC »

So what about all that other stuff - a home? A chair, a table, a bed? Kitchen stuff? Stuff to wash the clothes? Ho about books and periodicals and media (movies, tv, music?)

Maybe it's all rented. Or maybe he goes to a laundrette.

These "look how minimally I live" posts are all frustrating because they all ignore the huge amounts of support the poster gets from support workers. I'd have a lot more respect for someone who claimed to live minimally if they owned 5 acres and a mule and grew their own food. I still wouldn't care much, but at least the posts wouldn't be annoying.

EDIT: And I agree with the general principle of "buy less".

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