Being Minimalist

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “There is enough in this world for everyone’s need, but not enough for one man’s greed”.

With the modernization of society, our production and consumption rate has increased significantly. It is more than ever per capita in the history of mankind. That multiplied with the growth in population, we are sitting on tremendous exploitation of resources.?

People, societies, and governments are advocating for development. By development they mean, an increase in income. An increase in income means an increase in production and consumption. Which in turn means an increase in more exploitation of the limited resources available on the planet.

The world is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the people, society, and governments do not change their mindset about development, the world will reach a state where it will collapse.

If we change our mindset, it can definitely help nature to recycle and maintain equilibrium.

This approach is to become minimalist. What exactly is this approach? We should not get biased by our greed to accumulate a product if we can afford it. We should think if we really need this product in our house or life or not. Technologists and innovators should innovate to have minimalist products. A smartphone is one such product. Can we have products that can be reused and processed again and again? Increasing the quality of products that last longer would also be helpful to create less waste.

The older village system in India was one such example where the majority of the production, consumption, and reprocessing was within the boundaries of a village.

If we change our mindset, we will definitely be able to overcome this materialistic approach being followed mindlessly. A bit of effort is needed from each one of us to change the old mindset of being materialistic and create a new mindset of being minimalist.