The Year Ahead at More Minimal

The decorations are down; the champagne corks have been popped; and it’s time to get down to the business of crafting another year. Here’s wishing you a healthy and happy 2010.

As I’ve mentioned previously, More Minimal will soon evolve into something new. Its replacement will be a continuation of what you’ve seen here, and a considerable expansion in scope. Minimalism — as I’ve written about it, at least — has always been about personal satisfaction. But we live in challenging times, and I’ve become convinced that the principles which undergird minimalism represent a toolkit for dealing with the coming decades. Minimalism must move beyond being a cozy method for organizing our living space and reducing life clutter. Minimalism must become a worldview.

The Minimalist Century

A few weeks ago, I posted a short article, Welcome to the Minimalist Century. It quotes Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Pachauri points out the elephant in the room: At our current rate of consumption, society is unsustainable. We simply can’t operate in the 21st century as we did in the 19th, assured that the planet’s resources and capacity for abuse will always exceed our needs.

While the messianic technology necessary to divide the dwindling loaves and fishes of energy and raw material is still in its infancy, we’re a resourceful species. There’s no end to the promise of solar energy, wind power, electric vehicles, and the blessings of a society based on Renewables. But these things take time to mature, and we have only to think back 18 months to get a hint of how expensive things can become when energy prices aren’t dampened by economic recession.

So the name of the game is efficiency, stretching yesterday’s resources until we can bring affordable and reliable alternatives to market. This is the role of minimalism in the new century: eliminating the non-essential. More fully enjoying what we have. Finding our humanity in who we are, not what we buy. In short, upsizing our happiness — as individuals, and as a society — while downsizing our consumption.

What will happen to More Minimal

Minimalism begins with each of us. But if we’re going to change things, we’ll need to start looking outward. We must apply the minimalist ethic to how we live and work with others, and the sort of world we’d like our kids to enjoy.

This requires a big picture view. I’ve always considered More Minimal to be something of a personal journal, both in terms of its reflection of my own life, and its editorial emphasis. So I will retire the site in favor of a new one, which is well under construction.

To be clear: this is not More Minimal’s final entry. I’m still a few weeks from being ready to debut the new site, and plan to keep you in touch with what is going on. At some point, though, More Minimal will fold into its next incarnation. I’ve already transferred most of More Minimal’s articles, and the links here will eventually redirect to the new address. The site’s RSS feed will be redirected, our Facebook group renamed, and I’ll try to make things as seamless as possible.

The name of the new site will be The Minimalist Century.