Animism, Not Minimalism: Marie Kondo Book Review.
30 August 2017 [link youtube]
The book is titled, "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up", by Marie Kondo.
Youtube Automatic Transcription
this is an informal open-ended book
review video of Mary condos do we even know the title of the book the joy life-changing magic of tidying up I was gonna like it's something like the joy of cleaning your up words I don't even know the joy the joy of getting your together look the thing I want to say kicking off I don't have any real agenda here I mean I could say broadly it was a lot less awful than I thought it was gonna be but the other surprise is this is not a book about minimalism this is a book about animism I think if you're being honest this is a book and toward the end to tell you to greet your house she grew up she spent five years working in a Shinto shrine and she literally believes that when you touch your clothes you're transmitting energy to them she has all this scattered through the book about her beliefs in magical trinkets and magical energy transfer and you know it's it's animism and you know yeah as you say actually literally talking to her the house talking to inanimate objects talking to furniture try touching and transfer energy in the furniture and you know laying on hands healing you know healing magic through touching this is animism you know this is an animist worldview and like Japan is maybe a uniquely tolerant culture or just a uniquely quirky and eccentric culture in terms of integrating animism into modern life like I've lived in Laos even though in Laos we do have a lot of traditional old-school religious beliefs look about ghosts and spirits we really don't have animism in that sense you know like even though people do believe there are ghosts hiding in things we don't have this not like this this Japanese form of animism we're like literally the shirt you own as animist a part know people in Laos or not like that about clothing remember I didn't read this book recently I read it last summer but yeah I do remember how she was discussing donating clothes and the clothes fines there their next spiritual home basic right like how that is good for you to do like to donate clothes because if they're not really serving group serving their purpose with you they can serve their purpose with another person right so I mean the the the overall surprise for me I guess was that okay this book is written with a certain type of reader in mind you know kind of period they assume that you're a certain kind of nebbish compulsive person who stored up a lot of goods Sookie I should give a specific example so she says like she assumes that most of her clients are people who live in Tokyo and who have parents with a larger house in the countryside and they store their goods are their parents now I'm not hating on it it's just an assumption those are the types of people she works with those people you know and they send things to be stored with with their parents like my assumptions which I have to I have to be aware of I have to kind of fight against my own assumptions like you know I have to challenge my own assumptions about people but like in terms of my generation of people have known coming up the degree of kind of casual homelessness that's presumed for my generation university educated people who have never owned a home who have never owned a car in many cases who moved from one place to another even if it's just within Canada who coast-to-coast of in Canada are looking for work I don't know people who've been able to hold on to and amass even baby photos you know what I mean which is something she deals with at length let alone the types of possessions she's talking about here so I'm not heating on it but it was a surprise to me that was like I thought this was gonna be a manifesto for minimalism that's what I thought was gonna counter and it's not on the one hand it's really animus and not minimalism and the other hand this is really not a message for everybody it's a message for a certain type of personality from a certain type of socio-economic background which I'm not from and the people I went to high school with and I went to college with are not from like I don't know those be they're out there they're out there in the suburbs you know amassing huge piles of sentimental objects and photographs and old video games or whatever it is you know what I mean I'm sure there are people this book speaks to and obviously it's over a million copies and so on but to me if anything it made sharper that kind of tragedy that the world as I see it I'm not talking about poor people we're talking about middle class and even rich people have known the the people I've known they they have nothing you know I mean they go on from a BA to a life of this kind of you know semi homeless wandering and never find permanent or durable employment they go from one gig including people with PhDs we know so many people with PhDs like this shuffling around from one short-term geek to another never really amass anything one Airbnb after another you know what I mean like and in some ways that's a beautiful life with a lot of it's very mentally stimulating of you know your horizons are always changing you're definitely not stuck in the same cubicle at the same company for twenty years but to me if anything this brought home like wow this is this is talking to a whole demographic that I I only know if you like sitcoms I don't know people like this I see them represented in sitcoms I don't know them in real life yeah I don't have the same experience as you well I know from you know we were just talking about potentially moving to Victoria and you were just saying like I don't want to move to an apartment in furnish an apartment again and then move out it less than a year later and have to throw out the stuff and go to another apartment furnish another apartment yeah like you really have lived like a nomadic lifestyle in that way more than more than I have because I grew up you know in the same house and you know my parents still have all you know baby clothes and not all papers but like baby pictures and a lot of toys and games and stuff like that so I do think this could help potentially a quite a few people that I know one of my good friends she has kept all her Diaries from when she was a kid yeah and even though they have they have moved house a couple times like she does have a lot of the same stuff like she mentioned a pen that her grandfather gave her like when she was seven years old and she was like this is going to be the pen that you use to sign your first novel first thing to turn your first novel she was a writer at the time um so yeah and yeah quite a few people that I know they still generally keep stuff at their parents house or even live at their parent but you know we come from different different backgrounds and we know different types of people I think I think it's also okay I mean in some ways it reflects globalization neoliberalism the 21st century economy the digital economy and everything else and it reflects also the kind of glory of being able to send your resume by email to apply for jobs all over the world there was one guy I met in England and then like five years later he got a job right next to me in Western Canada I was just a coincidence you know things like that happen to like oh hey yeah last time I saw you we were both living in England now we're both living on the west coast of Canada you know things like that happen to and in some ways that's buzzing here oh yeah oh yeah hey I've bumped into someone who ten years ago at the airport so unsure but like I think specialization itself kind of leads to this nomadic life where you can own very little whether or not it's a matter of choice so you should come back I mean me as a particular example I don't plan to represent my generation or anything but you know he said before I was really involved input of studies I was a scholar but as myself I knew a lot about the scholars of Buddhism so if somebody like that finds a gig in Hong Kong and then a couple years later they found a gig in California I mean in the whole world globally there are only a few opportunities for Buddhist scholars to pursue or they can create their own opportunities so to some extent but yeah those guys are always on the move and that's just one specialized field I've known whether it's anthropologists or people in politics or people in the arts you know I've known a lot of and there they never stopped moving you know so the other thing is now look I mean there's also prefigures my engagement Buddhism so I was so I've never had a period in my life like that this book would would pertain to have never had appeared in life or I'd amassed enough that I need to give stuff away or throw stuff away or what-have-you but I mean for me starting as a teenager you know some of this and not others but you know I had no furniture in my bedroom I slept on the floor and I talked about why that was so I didn't consider myself a minimalist you know sudden the floor on very very few possessions for many years so in university I would only ever own three pairs of pants three shirts three jackets through like I had a maximum of three for each own of clothing so at all I just wore lack black suits with black business suit with a white shirt and a black tie and a gray topcoat yeah like a certain amount of each way less right wait I think I think way more spare right and that was before I got involved with but his philosophy you know what I mean just being involved with philosophy period that was the way I chose to live my life now there were a lot of things I mean it also really reflects so we got a question from the audience only three socks no no I had more than one one three percent part of the thing about that was like you know if one of the pairs of pants is dirty or ripped or something I got a soda then you know you got to have enough enough of something to cope with with with some stuff but no I had more than three socks yeah and I don't think I'll it ever limited myself on on socks oh good good point Touche Touche Curtis well spotted anyway you know so I own Burley I've never owned right now I do not own a single photograph of any of my own grandparents neither on paper nor digitally you know I don't own a single photograph of myself as a baby neither on paper nor digitally so you know starting at a pretty early age but the real difference between me and Mary condo and again between me and the real minimalist because I don't regard Mary condos and minimalist the people were on YouTube talking about minimalism I really think their condo is a significantly different ideology but I actually do not think my life in making those decisions I don't think it's something other people shouldn't emulate I see a lot more tragedy than triumph in that decision in that path I walked now okay to mention I won't go into much depth here but you know I was horrified when I met other young people my age both male and female [Music] got questions coming in life you how many socks exactly did I didn't count I didn't get so therefore therefore countless you know I was I was really shocked when I met young and aqui at least one young woman mage and they could not sleep within a long list of bizarre things so there was one girl she couldn't sleep without her comfort her and her duvet this whole complex set up you know and I met a couple boys would they couldn't sleep without music playing continuously while they were asleep and a list of you know bizarre requirements and stuff and I was really and you know I really trained myself I wanted to be able to lie down and sleep on a floor with nothing with no pillow without blanket so that when the time comes and I needed to I could you know now this really reflects it does it does partly reflect philosophical interests of mine reading ancient Greek and Latin philosophy o Devi but it also reflects the political view of the world I grew up with that World War three was coming that extreme political strife and struggle was coming and like you know you and I just unrelatable you know when we look at the assassination and these major figures like Martin Luther King jr. or something you know part of me in terms of the childhood upbringing at is is is kind of screaming and so I'd like didn't they know it's how to you know shave their head adopt a false identity sleep in the ghetto disappeared when we watch casablanca we watch casablanca and sorry so the the the propagandist character not the main character story so the woman's husband in casablanca i'm forgetting his name yeah i also forget anyone but there's this character who's who's running away from Nazi persecution but he's living the high life he's at the baccarat table you know he's gambling he's staying in fancy hotels he's keeping a high profile and looking and thinking don't you know to go sleep on the floor sleep with a ghetto disappear you know to be so it's kind of this this sense of that you know your life if you take yourself seriously as a political person you kind of always had to be prepared to join the French Resistance I mean how to keep it with it because of like reason you had to be prepared for unforeseeable extreme circumstances and someone see I was partly to that that I really wanted to train myself to sleep on the floor with no blanket with no pillow I did go through a period of time I should sleep naked on the floor with no without liking the hill so I didn't even have pajamas or anything on yeah it's hard but you get used to it you know they thought of that so yeah really my reasons it concerns are very different from memo's or meri condo but with all that having been said whether you come at it from a Buddhist angle or a totally European philosophical angle or a political angle or a preparedness angle or a substrate ago you know fundamentally if you don't have a ton of stuff to throw away this advice is just kind of meaningless to you and the core of the advice is if you own few enough items you don't have to organize them that's really yeah she says you don't have to tidy each day if you're a twice a year yeah right do this huge right right but look I mean no you don't have to organize your closet when you only own three pairs of pants is what comes into you right right well or if it's you know look oh yeah those are the pants I wore yesterday therefore these are the pants I'm wearing tomorrow yeah you know your your life is your life is simple but IIIi don't think other people should live the way I live you want me I really I don't believe in it the fact that I did it and the fact that I live by it doesn't mean I believe in it you know I'm a nihilist I don't even believe in my own lifestyle choices I'm really critical of him I really see the disadvantages you see what if some said what is it ya know I think it could help my parents but my mom would actually she wouldn't buy into like the Animus stuff but I think she doesn't need help getting rid of things is what she needs to find something you know Marie Kondo does mention this in the book like when you need to find a pair of scissors you have to shuffle through your drawers and try to figure out where things are so I do think it can be helpful for some people just not not really taking her advice like as gospel but I'm using some of some of the yeah some of her work as inspiration to get rid of you some some stuff you know like they're they're planning on moving eventually but they've lived in this house for 24 years and they've amassed a ton of things I mean and I think that's a problem with people who have kids and you know are just in in one house throughout the kids years it's easy to amass a lot of your your home can become a museum for left behind items for your children yeah yeah you know this came up in my earlier videos against minimalism but Mary Kondo she has this unique idea you should only keep things if they spark joy and I do think indirectly that's part of her animus thing you know you touch the item you talk to the item it speaks to you you know it's first or whatever so you know this is this is her her philosophical approach to life but you know for me there are real questions about productivity you know Kay you want to be an artist if you want to paint canvases you have a studio full of all kinds of crap yeah like stuff you know yes paint yes paintbrushes but when you have visit some artists studios there's some words they like you many more why do you have a bunch of spheres of different sizes and there's gonna be an answer oh well sometimes to check the perspective of something you know what they're just you know weird objects around that have all kinds of other uses you know foreseen and unforeseen Anytus but you have to amass you know I can't even call it equipment but you know stuff if you do a lot of odd jobs around their house right Mary Kondo obviously doesn't you know repair car engines yes something you know but I mean likewise I think when you look at it that in that sense of kind of productivity rather than joy I think you very rapidly expand the scope for how much was shown and that's one of the reasons why I'm critical of myself like even I you know I wish I owned things I don't own and sometimes things I did own in the past and I'd to part ways with because I could use them productively she's very schedule with that she's very skeptical you're ever gonna read a book do you have on a shelf for ten years I go we'll just throw away these books because you can buy them again any one part of the book that you just mentioned recently because of all of what you've studied you've had a lot of notes that you've had to throw away that write probably would be useful to read or at least you would like to look back on that right and she's very skeptical that she really says no notes you've taken from University lectures well maybe I maybe I'm the one person of a million just but the same way an artist really may make productive use of objects that seem completely unproductive maybe someone who's really a scholar or really cares about whatever the topic is really would make productive use so to those notes or those books or whatever even place it in the Shelf I got an email from Nicholas Osler an author whose work I've contributed to in the past Nicholas Hustler just moved house in moved 14,000 books his personal library is 14,000 volumes including ancient Greek Latin Persian pally Sanskrit Chinese a lot of language that in you know endangered languages to different different people make make different lifestyle choices yeah yeah but I think I don't know maybe maybe I don't want to be like overselling like you like but you do have a very good memory I really don't think you go back and read many of the books that you've read because like you can really give me an accurate summary of things that you've read right budget last night we were talking about wealth of nations and you were like yeah really giving me like exactly what Adam Smith it ii i read 20 years ago where's my but ya know that is true but if i want to write an essay i got to be able to cite page numbers so there's nothing but look and the only thing was gonna save a productivity i mean it really is a tokyo centered book and philosophy she says oh well if you ever need one of these things look at you know throw it all this stuff even in the future you ever actually this thing you can just go out and buy it yeah well that's true if you live in downtown tokyo that's not true if you live in saskatchewan canada that's not true if you live in a lot of places a lot of stuff was like well you know she's talking about throwing out like tools well you slept and it's true maybe you only use it once every five years or something but no a lot of stuff depending on where you live you can't just go in and buy you know or maybe downtown tokyo is the only place because you were mentioning that it sees that what the book is drug directed towards are these people who are able to store things at their parents house well that's right now I'm living in China with a quarter of what I only and seventy other seventy five percent is at my parents so I guess she is kind of speaking to me a bit yeah nutshell for me I was expecting this book to be a minimalist attack on the sentimentality of owning objects and it's not if anything it's an animist right and to like have each item get more praise or more just attention from you then it's really like an animist transcendentalist approach to sentimentalizing objects to be even more sentimental about your relationships with the inanimate objects you own and with the environment you live in yeah so is that the future is the future revival of animism and the decadent West I doubt it no but you know I think I think her tendency to say that you can just throw things out is that a lot of things that people do own are disposable or just you know not as good of quality as they used to be or and I'm just like with with technology like you know you like I do have a laptop that is eight years old and I'm like why am I even holding onto it because like what is the point and you know that's not gonna be useful and 20 years from now yeah where is like you know I - all yeah well it's another peculiar irony though the people I see praising Marie Kondo including Maude vegan my great enemy you're on you know my fellow vegan YouTube or I sometimes cross swords with and debates you're on YouTube but you know Maude vegan represents zero waste minimalism that's really not what this book is this book if anything is its maximizing your waste and it's openly admitting if you live this way you will more often have to go out and buy things that you did own in the past but you got rid of so you could live you know in this aesthetic and magical those users yeah living the life that you envisioned yeah yeah but this is not an ecological paradigm this is not a zero waste proton and this is not really a minimalist paradigm as Mary Kondo herself says this is an argument that's centrally based on joy and her peculiar distinctly Shinto Tokyo Japanese bourgeois philosophy of where joy comes from and apparently it comes from empty shelves yeah yeah I guess I can I can't be critical of it because you know not a lot of people will not find that their life has more magic in it you know she talks about the magic of tidying up or that they let your life will improve so much you'll know one quote was that she left her husband Oh satisfied customers include the woman who left her husband because when she was done hiding her house she decided to get rid of yeah it won't work for everybody yeah I don't think it's the case that everybody will benefit from tossing stuff that they don't want anymore but anyway yeah so and in related news a ballast Yale Broadcasting Corporation is bringing out a t-shirt and a children's storybook so buy all our stuff and alright that's a wrap
review video of Mary condos do we even know the title of the book the joy life-changing magic of tidying up I was gonna like it's something like the joy of cleaning your up words I don't even know the joy the joy of getting your together look the thing I want to say kicking off I don't have any real agenda here I mean I could say broadly it was a lot less awful than I thought it was gonna be but the other surprise is this is not a book about minimalism this is a book about animism I think if you're being honest this is a book and toward the end to tell you to greet your house she grew up she spent five years working in a Shinto shrine and she literally believes that when you touch your clothes you're transmitting energy to them she has all this scattered through the book about her beliefs in magical trinkets and magical energy transfer and you know it's it's animism and you know yeah as you say actually literally talking to her the house talking to inanimate objects talking to furniture try touching and transfer energy in the furniture and you know laying on hands healing you know healing magic through touching this is animism you know this is an animist worldview and like Japan is maybe a uniquely tolerant culture or just a uniquely quirky and eccentric culture in terms of integrating animism into modern life like I've lived in Laos even though in Laos we do have a lot of traditional old-school religious beliefs look about ghosts and spirits we really don't have animism in that sense you know like even though people do believe there are ghosts hiding in things we don't have this not like this this Japanese form of animism we're like literally the shirt you own as animist a part know people in Laos or not like that about clothing remember I didn't read this book recently I read it last summer but yeah I do remember how she was discussing donating clothes and the clothes fines there their next spiritual home basic right like how that is good for you to do like to donate clothes because if they're not really serving group serving their purpose with you they can serve their purpose with another person right so I mean the the the overall surprise for me I guess was that okay this book is written with a certain type of reader in mind you know kind of period they assume that you're a certain kind of nebbish compulsive person who stored up a lot of goods Sookie I should give a specific example so she says like she assumes that most of her clients are people who live in Tokyo and who have parents with a larger house in the countryside and they store their goods are their parents now I'm not hating on it it's just an assumption those are the types of people she works with those people you know and they send things to be stored with with their parents like my assumptions which I have to I have to be aware of I have to kind of fight against my own assumptions like you know I have to challenge my own assumptions about people but like in terms of my generation of people have known coming up the degree of kind of casual homelessness that's presumed for my generation university educated people who have never owned a home who have never owned a car in many cases who moved from one place to another even if it's just within Canada who coast-to-coast of in Canada are looking for work I don't know people who've been able to hold on to and amass even baby photos you know what I mean which is something she deals with at length let alone the types of possessions she's talking about here so I'm not heating on it but it was a surprise to me that was like I thought this was gonna be a manifesto for minimalism that's what I thought was gonna counter and it's not on the one hand it's really animus and not minimalism and the other hand this is really not a message for everybody it's a message for a certain type of personality from a certain type of socio-economic background which I'm not from and the people I went to high school with and I went to college with are not from like I don't know those be they're out there they're out there in the suburbs you know amassing huge piles of sentimental objects and photographs and old video games or whatever it is you know what I mean I'm sure there are people this book speaks to and obviously it's over a million copies and so on but to me if anything it made sharper that kind of tragedy that the world as I see it I'm not talking about poor people we're talking about middle class and even rich people have known the the people I've known they they have nothing you know I mean they go on from a BA to a life of this kind of you know semi homeless wandering and never find permanent or durable employment they go from one gig including people with PhDs we know so many people with PhDs like this shuffling around from one short-term geek to another never really amass anything one Airbnb after another you know what I mean like and in some ways that's a beautiful life with a lot of it's very mentally stimulating of you know your horizons are always changing you're definitely not stuck in the same cubicle at the same company for twenty years but to me if anything this brought home like wow this is this is talking to a whole demographic that I I only know if you like sitcoms I don't know people like this I see them represented in sitcoms I don't know them in real life yeah I don't have the same experience as you well I know from you know we were just talking about potentially moving to Victoria and you were just saying like I don't want to move to an apartment in furnish an apartment again and then move out it less than a year later and have to throw out the stuff and go to another apartment furnish another apartment yeah like you really have lived like a nomadic lifestyle in that way more than more than I have because I grew up you know in the same house and you know my parents still have all you know baby clothes and not all papers but like baby pictures and a lot of toys and games and stuff like that so I do think this could help potentially a quite a few people that I know one of my good friends she has kept all her Diaries from when she was a kid yeah and even though they have they have moved house a couple times like she does have a lot of the same stuff like she mentioned a pen that her grandfather gave her like when she was seven years old and she was like this is going to be the pen that you use to sign your first novel first thing to turn your first novel she was a writer at the time um so yeah and yeah quite a few people that I know they still generally keep stuff at their parents house or even live at their parent but you know we come from different different backgrounds and we know different types of people I think I think it's also okay I mean in some ways it reflects globalization neoliberalism the 21st century economy the digital economy and everything else and it reflects also the kind of glory of being able to send your resume by email to apply for jobs all over the world there was one guy I met in England and then like five years later he got a job right next to me in Western Canada I was just a coincidence you know things like that happen to like oh hey yeah last time I saw you we were both living in England now we're both living on the west coast of Canada you know things like that happen to and in some ways that's buzzing here oh yeah oh yeah hey I've bumped into someone who ten years ago at the airport so unsure but like I think specialization itself kind of leads to this nomadic life where you can own very little whether or not it's a matter of choice so you should come back I mean me as a particular example I don't plan to represent my generation or anything but you know he said before I was really involved input of studies I was a scholar but as myself I knew a lot about the scholars of Buddhism so if somebody like that finds a gig in Hong Kong and then a couple years later they found a gig in California I mean in the whole world globally there are only a few opportunities for Buddhist scholars to pursue or they can create their own opportunities so to some extent but yeah those guys are always on the move and that's just one specialized field I've known whether it's anthropologists or people in politics or people in the arts you know I've known a lot of and there they never stopped moving you know so the other thing is now look I mean there's also prefigures my engagement Buddhism so I was so I've never had a period in my life like that this book would would pertain to have never had appeared in life or I'd amassed enough that I need to give stuff away or throw stuff away or what-have-you but I mean for me starting as a teenager you know some of this and not others but you know I had no furniture in my bedroom I slept on the floor and I talked about why that was so I didn't consider myself a minimalist you know sudden the floor on very very few possessions for many years so in university I would only ever own three pairs of pants three shirts three jackets through like I had a maximum of three for each own of clothing so at all I just wore lack black suits with black business suit with a white shirt and a black tie and a gray topcoat yeah like a certain amount of each way less right wait I think I think way more spare right and that was before I got involved with but his philosophy you know what I mean just being involved with philosophy period that was the way I chose to live my life now there were a lot of things I mean it also really reflects so we got a question from the audience only three socks no no I had more than one one three percent part of the thing about that was like you know if one of the pairs of pants is dirty or ripped or something I got a soda then you know you got to have enough enough of something to cope with with with some stuff but no I had more than three socks yeah and I don't think I'll it ever limited myself on on socks oh good good point Touche Touche Curtis well spotted anyway you know so I own Burley I've never owned right now I do not own a single photograph of any of my own grandparents neither on paper nor digitally you know I don't own a single photograph of myself as a baby neither on paper nor digitally so you know starting at a pretty early age but the real difference between me and Mary condo and again between me and the real minimalist because I don't regard Mary condos and minimalist the people were on YouTube talking about minimalism I really think their condo is a significantly different ideology but I actually do not think my life in making those decisions I don't think it's something other people shouldn't emulate I see a lot more tragedy than triumph in that decision in that path I walked now okay to mention I won't go into much depth here but you know I was horrified when I met other young people my age both male and female [Music] got questions coming in life you how many socks exactly did I didn't count I didn't get so therefore therefore countless you know I was I was really shocked when I met young and aqui at least one young woman mage and they could not sleep within a long list of bizarre things so there was one girl she couldn't sleep without her comfort her and her duvet this whole complex set up you know and I met a couple boys would they couldn't sleep without music playing continuously while they were asleep and a list of you know bizarre requirements and stuff and I was really and you know I really trained myself I wanted to be able to lie down and sleep on a floor with nothing with no pillow without blanket so that when the time comes and I needed to I could you know now this really reflects it does it does partly reflect philosophical interests of mine reading ancient Greek and Latin philosophy o Devi but it also reflects the political view of the world I grew up with that World War three was coming that extreme political strife and struggle was coming and like you know you and I just unrelatable you know when we look at the assassination and these major figures like Martin Luther King jr. or something you know part of me in terms of the childhood upbringing at is is is kind of screaming and so I'd like didn't they know it's how to you know shave their head adopt a false identity sleep in the ghetto disappeared when we watch casablanca we watch casablanca and sorry so the the the propagandist character not the main character story so the woman's husband in casablanca i'm forgetting his name yeah i also forget anyone but there's this character who's who's running away from Nazi persecution but he's living the high life he's at the baccarat table you know he's gambling he's staying in fancy hotels he's keeping a high profile and looking and thinking don't you know to go sleep on the floor sleep with a ghetto disappear you know to be so it's kind of this this sense of that you know your life if you take yourself seriously as a political person you kind of always had to be prepared to join the French Resistance I mean how to keep it with it because of like reason you had to be prepared for unforeseeable extreme circumstances and someone see I was partly to that that I really wanted to train myself to sleep on the floor with no blanket with no pillow I did go through a period of time I should sleep naked on the floor with no without liking the hill so I didn't even have pajamas or anything on yeah it's hard but you get used to it you know they thought of that so yeah really my reasons it concerns are very different from memo's or meri condo but with all that having been said whether you come at it from a Buddhist angle or a totally European philosophical angle or a political angle or a preparedness angle or a substrate ago you know fundamentally if you don't have a ton of stuff to throw away this advice is just kind of meaningless to you and the core of the advice is if you own few enough items you don't have to organize them that's really yeah she says you don't have to tidy each day if you're a twice a year yeah right do this huge right right but look I mean no you don't have to organize your closet when you only own three pairs of pants is what comes into you right right well or if it's you know look oh yeah those are the pants I wore yesterday therefore these are the pants I'm wearing tomorrow yeah you know your your life is your life is simple but IIIi don't think other people should live the way I live you want me I really I don't believe in it the fact that I did it and the fact that I live by it doesn't mean I believe in it you know I'm a nihilist I don't even believe in my own lifestyle choices I'm really critical of him I really see the disadvantages you see what if some said what is it ya know I think it could help my parents but my mom would actually she wouldn't buy into like the Animus stuff but I think she doesn't need help getting rid of things is what she needs to find something you know Marie Kondo does mention this in the book like when you need to find a pair of scissors you have to shuffle through your drawers and try to figure out where things are so I do think it can be helpful for some people just not not really taking her advice like as gospel but I'm using some of some of the yeah some of her work as inspiration to get rid of you some some stuff you know like they're they're planning on moving eventually but they've lived in this house for 24 years and they've amassed a ton of things I mean and I think that's a problem with people who have kids and you know are just in in one house throughout the kids years it's easy to amass a lot of your your home can become a museum for left behind items for your children yeah yeah you know this came up in my earlier videos against minimalism but Mary Kondo she has this unique idea you should only keep things if they spark joy and I do think indirectly that's part of her animus thing you know you touch the item you talk to the item it speaks to you you know it's first or whatever so you know this is this is her her philosophical approach to life but you know for me there are real questions about productivity you know Kay you want to be an artist if you want to paint canvases you have a studio full of all kinds of crap yeah like stuff you know yes paint yes paintbrushes but when you have visit some artists studios there's some words they like you many more why do you have a bunch of spheres of different sizes and there's gonna be an answer oh well sometimes to check the perspective of something you know what they're just you know weird objects around that have all kinds of other uses you know foreseen and unforeseen Anytus but you have to amass you know I can't even call it equipment but you know stuff if you do a lot of odd jobs around their house right Mary Kondo obviously doesn't you know repair car engines yes something you know but I mean likewise I think when you look at it that in that sense of kind of productivity rather than joy I think you very rapidly expand the scope for how much was shown and that's one of the reasons why I'm critical of myself like even I you know I wish I owned things I don't own and sometimes things I did own in the past and I'd to part ways with because I could use them productively she's very schedule with that she's very skeptical you're ever gonna read a book do you have on a shelf for ten years I go we'll just throw away these books because you can buy them again any one part of the book that you just mentioned recently because of all of what you've studied you've had a lot of notes that you've had to throw away that write probably would be useful to read or at least you would like to look back on that right and she's very skeptical that she really says no notes you've taken from University lectures well maybe I maybe I'm the one person of a million just but the same way an artist really may make productive use of objects that seem completely unproductive maybe someone who's really a scholar or really cares about whatever the topic is really would make productive use so to those notes or those books or whatever even place it in the Shelf I got an email from Nicholas Osler an author whose work I've contributed to in the past Nicholas Hustler just moved house in moved 14,000 books his personal library is 14,000 volumes including ancient Greek Latin Persian pally Sanskrit Chinese a lot of language that in you know endangered languages to different different people make make different lifestyle choices yeah yeah but I think I don't know maybe maybe I don't want to be like overselling like you like but you do have a very good memory I really don't think you go back and read many of the books that you've read because like you can really give me an accurate summary of things that you've read right budget last night we were talking about wealth of nations and you were like yeah really giving me like exactly what Adam Smith it ii i read 20 years ago where's my but ya know that is true but if i want to write an essay i got to be able to cite page numbers so there's nothing but look and the only thing was gonna save a productivity i mean it really is a tokyo centered book and philosophy she says oh well if you ever need one of these things look at you know throw it all this stuff even in the future you ever actually this thing you can just go out and buy it yeah well that's true if you live in downtown tokyo that's not true if you live in saskatchewan canada that's not true if you live in a lot of places a lot of stuff was like well you know she's talking about throwing out like tools well you slept and it's true maybe you only use it once every five years or something but no a lot of stuff depending on where you live you can't just go in and buy you know or maybe downtown tokyo is the only place because you were mentioning that it sees that what the book is drug directed towards are these people who are able to store things at their parents house well that's right now I'm living in China with a quarter of what I only and seventy other seventy five percent is at my parents so I guess she is kind of speaking to me a bit yeah nutshell for me I was expecting this book to be a minimalist attack on the sentimentality of owning objects and it's not if anything it's an animist right and to like have each item get more praise or more just attention from you then it's really like an animist transcendentalist approach to sentimentalizing objects to be even more sentimental about your relationships with the inanimate objects you own and with the environment you live in yeah so is that the future is the future revival of animism and the decadent West I doubt it no but you know I think I think her tendency to say that you can just throw things out is that a lot of things that people do own are disposable or just you know not as good of quality as they used to be or and I'm just like with with technology like you know you like I do have a laptop that is eight years old and I'm like why am I even holding onto it because like what is the point and you know that's not gonna be useful and 20 years from now yeah where is like you know I - all yeah well it's another peculiar irony though the people I see praising Marie Kondo including Maude vegan my great enemy you're on you know my fellow vegan YouTube or I sometimes cross swords with and debates you're on YouTube but you know Maude vegan represents zero waste minimalism that's really not what this book is this book if anything is its maximizing your waste and it's openly admitting if you live this way you will more often have to go out and buy things that you did own in the past but you got rid of so you could live you know in this aesthetic and magical those users yeah living the life that you envisioned yeah yeah but this is not an ecological paradigm this is not a zero waste proton and this is not really a minimalist paradigm as Mary Kondo herself says this is an argument that's centrally based on joy and her peculiar distinctly Shinto Tokyo Japanese bourgeois philosophy of where joy comes from and apparently it comes from empty shelves yeah yeah I guess I can I can't be critical of it because you know not a lot of people will not find that their life has more magic in it you know she talks about the magic of tidying up or that they let your life will improve so much you'll know one quote was that she left her husband Oh satisfied customers include the woman who left her husband because when she was done hiding her house she decided to get rid of yeah it won't work for everybody yeah I don't think it's the case that everybody will benefit from tossing stuff that they don't want anymore but anyway yeah so and in related news a ballast Yale Broadcasting Corporation is bringing out a t-shirt and a children's storybook so buy all our stuff and alright that's a wrap