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Task 1

Working on the text

Do the following tasks, writing coherent texts. Use your own words as far as appropriate.
(28 BE)
1.
Summarise the article.
2.
Analyse how the author presents the topic. Refer to structure and language.

Writing

Choose one of the following tasks:
(32 BE)
3.1
Evaluate how the philosophy of minimalism could be put into practice. Write about 350 words.
or
3.2
“In every crisis, doubt or confusion, take the higher path – the path of compassion, courage, understanding and love.” Amit Ray (*1960), Indian author
Comment on the quotation. Write about 350 words.

“The Pitfalls and the Potential of the New Minimalism”

The mantra of “less is more” still obeys a logic of accumulation – but it hints at genuinely different ways of thinking.
1
The new literature of minimalism is full of stressful advice. Pack up all your possessions,
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unpack things only as needed, give away everything that’s still packed after a month.
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Or wake up early, pick up every item you own, and consider whether or not it sparks joy.
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See if you can wear just thirty-three items of clothing for three months. Know that it’s possible
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to live abundantly with only a hundred possessions. Don’t organize – purge.
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Digitize your photos. Get rid of the things you bought to impress people. Downsize your apartment.
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Think constantly about what will enable you to live the best life possible.
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Never buy anything on sale.
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Recently, I spent a few months absorbing the new minimalist gospel, beginning with Marie Kondo,
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the celebrity decluttering guru, whose book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up
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has sold more than ten million copies, and whose stance can seem twee but is rooted in
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Shinto tradition: having fewer possessions allows us to care for those possessions as if they
13
had souls. I also turned to Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, who call themselves
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the Minimalists and, under that name, run a blog, publish books, and host a podcast
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that is downloaded as many as three million times a month. I read the blog Be More with Less,
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which is written by Courtney Carver, who came to minimalism after being given
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a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis and views the practice as a pathway to love
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and self-care. [...]
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As I waded through this I felt like a dirty sponge being irradiated in the microwave: I was
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trapped, unpleasantly, but a cleansing fire was beginning to rage within. I Kondoed my
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sock drawer, tenderly unravelling lumpy balls of wool and cotton and laying each pair flat.
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I made daily pilgrimages to Goodwill. When I went home to Texas for the holidays,
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I entered my parents’ apartment as a whirling dervish of minimalist self-satisfaction,
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hectorig them to toss out their kitchen doodads and excess Tupperware. Within hours of arrival,
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I had filled six large trash bags with clothes to donate. “See?!” I howled, irritating myself
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and everyone around me. “You get rid of the things you don’t need so that you can focus
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on the things you do! ”
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I sounded, I imagine, like many of the converts to what might be considered the latest wave
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in an intermittent American impulse. In 1977, the social scientists Duane Elgin and Arnold
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Mitchell observed that, for several years, “the popular press has paid occasional attention
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to stories of people returning to the simple life.” Elgin and Mitchell believed that this
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smattering of articles reflected a social movement that could bring about a “major transformation
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of traditional American values.” They called the movement “voluntary simplicity” (VS),
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and saw it as a potential solution not only to “growing social malaise” but also to ecological
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destruction and the “unmanageable scale and complexity of institutions.” They believed
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that a few million people were practicing full voluntary simplicity, and that as much as half
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the U.S. population was sympathetic to it. Estimating the “maximum plausible growth of
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VS,” they wrote that as many as a third of all Americans might be converted to the simple
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life by the year 2000.
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That didn’t happen. But, in 2008, the housing crisis and the banking collapse exposed the
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fantasy of easy acquisition as humiliating and destructive; for many people, it became
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newly necessary and desirable to learn to rely on less. It is tempting to interpret the new
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minimalism as a kind of cultural aftershock of that financial disruption, and perhaps it is, in
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part. But, at the same time that Kondo and her cohort have popularized a form of material
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humility, minimalism has become an increasingly aspirational and deluxe way of life. The
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hashtag #minimalism pulls up more than seventeen million photos on Instagram; many of
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the top posts depict high-end interior spaces. Last April, Kim Kardashian West appeared in
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a Vogue video walking through her sixty-million-dollar California mansion, a stark, blank,
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monochromatic palace that she described as a “minimal monastery.” Less is more attractive
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when you’ve got a lot of money, and minimalism is easily transformed from a philosophy
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of intentional restraint into an aesthetic language through which to assert a form of walledoff
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luxury – a self-centered and competitive impulse that is not so different from the
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acquisitive attitude that minimalism purports to reject. It is rarely acknowledged, by either
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the life-hack-minded authors or the proponents of minimalist design, that many people
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have minimalism forced upon them by circumstances that render impossible a serene,
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jewel-box life style. Nor do they mention that poverty and trauma can make frivolous pos-
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sessions seem like a lifeline rather than a burden. Many of today’s gurus maintain that
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minimalism can be useful no matter one’s income, but the audience they target is implicitly
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affluent – the pitch is never about making do with less because you have no choice. Millburn
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and Nicodemus frequently describe their past lives as spiritually empty twentysomethings
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with six-figure incomes. McKeown pitches his insights at people who have a surplus of
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options as a consequence of success. Kondo recently launched an online store, suggesting
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that the left hand might declutter while the right hand buys a seventy-five-dollar rose-quartz
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tuning fork. Today’s minimalism, with its focus on self-improvement, feels oddly dominated
65
by a logic of accumulation. Less is always more, or “more, more, more,” as Millburn
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and Nicodemus write: “more time, more passion, more experiences, more growth, more
67
contribution, more contentment – and more freedom.” [...]
Source: Tolentino, Jia, The pitfalls and the potential of the new minimalism , The New Yorker 03.02.2020,
https://www.newyorker.com

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