It's better not to have anything unnecessary.

"It's better to have it than not to have it."

It's a word I've heard a lot so far.

Work, money, food... In the era when there were no such things, the idea that "it's better to have than nothing" was common.

I think that the trend of the word minimalism in recent years has spread the idea of "it's better not to have unnecessary things" that is different from before.

I think there is aversion to having more things and money than necessary.

In a TV drama a while ago, there was a scene where a company manager consumed more and more food just by eating a bite of high-quality food. It's a good thing because you're contributing to the economy by dropping a lot of money into the store like this. The line was impressive.

In a world where the value that it is a good thing to forcefully consume to turn the economy around has been established for a long time, people who have money and things to the vulgar extent have become a hot topic, and the so-called minimalism is born as the antithesis to it. I think it was.

The original minimalism is a style of expression in the field of art and arts that originated in the United States in the 1960s, but it was influenced by the social situation where old values such as discrimination, prejudice, and inequality, which were taken for granted until then, changed significantly. I think so.

Even in modern society, excessive materialism and money-worshiping have a part reminiscent of American society in the 1960s, and I feel that it is spreading on a global scale.

While a large amount of food continues to be discarded at convenience stores and supermarkets every day, there are still people who are suffering from hunger due to food shortages.

The world's hungry population is up to 811 million, and about 2.6 billion tons of grain are produced each year. If it is distributed equally among the world's 7.7 billion people, more than 340 kg per person per year will be eaten. By the way, the grain that Japanese people actually eat is 154 kg per year.

From the desire to make their lives more convenient, the evolution of technology has made it easier to achieve more than their abilities, and it has become very convenient and rich. However, on the other hand, there are many people who cannot benefit from technology and are being sacrificed.

It is supposed to be minimalism as a counterculture for such a biased modern society, but the current minimalist seems to refer to people who simply prefer a simple style as a fashion term, and itself is also I can't deny that it is consumed as information about species.

If counterculture as a critical idea of high culture has elements that create new values and cultures, then the current minimalism that has lost that critical element is no longer the source of new values and culture. I don't think it's just one of the information and styles.

Humans live in the food chain as long as they are living things, but animals do not ask for more than they need to live, while only people continue to seek more than that.

There is nothing more unfortunate than prioritizing self-realization even if you take away people's rights, but it can be seen from various literatures such as history, religion, philosophy, and psychology that people are pregnant with that danger. It is.

That's why people need self-control, and ethics are the most important thing for nurturing morality.

Unfortunately, I feel that there are very few opportunities to learn about it in current Japanese education, but as a result, I also think that there are many individuals and companies that prioritize profit over ethics in society.

"It's better to have money than not to have it" Many people may take it for granted, but is that really the case?

The "Seven Deadly Sins", which is the basis of human orientation, is a theme of art that has been going on since the Middle Ages, but the way of recognition and interpretation varies from era to era. In capitalist society, the desire for money is not necessarily a bad virtue, and greed, jealousy, or the desire for overeating is also considered a source of the capitalist economy in modern consumer society.

Many mortal sins have the duality of a healthy desire based on human fundamental pleasure at the same time as immorality, and the "seven deadly sins", which were thought to have disappeared in the 19th century, are actually an important example for society to function normally even today. Isn't there?

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