You find yourself on a shimmering, green speck surrounded by darkness. A path stretches out before you, and as you look out into the distance, you see an outline of what lies ahead, but no detail, and little information on what this journey entails. As you choose your path and make your way along, the blurry future of what’s ahead fades into the crisp present, and soon blends into the growing, hazy hills of what you’ve left behind.
Jason Rohrer should be a hero among the simple living lot. He lives on a shoestring budget in upstate New York with his wife and kids, owns very little, and even manages the local farmer’s market. He works from home making video games on his laptop.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that his games are launching pads for the future of interactive storytelling. They are like proof-of-concepts for the gaming industry, showing that games can tell stories just as genuine and heartfelt as older mediums. Some might describe his games as retro, and with characters a few pixels tall in a 2D world accompanied by plain, bleepy music, it’s hard to disagree. But although it’s technically true, the description misses the point. The purpose isn’t to make the games retro, but to make them simple.
In real life the detail and complexity of our world beckons us to explore, to discover and to see. We are deep inside layer upon layer of the texture of reality, and this is what makes us forget important things about life. Like death. In describing his game «Passage», Rohrer uses the latin phrase «memento mori», meaning «remember you are mortal». Rohrer’s games forgo all the detail that real life includes, the very detail that other game creators go to such lengths to emulate. Their simplicity make the point of his games not only apparent, but blunt and powerful.
I think it takes a very simple message to make us see the big picture.
(via minimalmac)
This topic has been on my mind lately. I love reductivism, but there are many bloggers on the topic, including people with actual skill and success. While it’s possible to follow a known recipe and do it well, finding a readership and having fun, it’s not what I want to do. It would be fun to have many readers, but I won’t write if I feel that my writings aren’t useful. And the solution to too much stuff clearly isn’t to create more stuff about having less stuff. So I won’t. Unless I can do something different.
So, flooding the interwebs with writings preaching minimalism is a paradox for sure, but also, while minimalism in art, aesthetics, and design are topics that stimulate continuous coverage, minimalism as a way of life doesn’t. You reduce your possessions and reduce your consumption. What more is there to say?
In this tweet Merlin Mann poked fun at the paradox of reading about productivity. Productivity blogs make the topic seem complicated and evolving. It’s not. It’s hard, for sure. But it is not complicated. Sit down, shut up, and do your work. The same thing happens with reductivism and simple living. The topic is inherently static and simple, but too much of these blogs will make you feel otherwise.
Now, reading tips on minimalism isn’t as pointless as reading tips on productivity, but the content that is being produced on blogs now are for beginners or people who like to think about it, but never do anything about it. You either grow out of them, or you remain in your bubble of wishful thinking. I was eager in reading Zen Habits and Unclutterer when I still felt I wasn’t on top of my stuff, but a time came when I stopped reading them because I knew all they had to tell me. (They, as well as others of their kind, occasionally glimmer with a thoughful piece, but the noise of things I don’t need them to tell me make them not worth reading for me anymore.) I don’t need any more tips.
What I miss is thoughtful and thorough writing about people and places and things that embody simplicity and minimalism. And I want to create some of it myself.
I am very ambivalent about blogging. A small fraction of blogs have stellar content, but blogging is in general a sad affair in regards to the quality of the ideas and writing that they present. The Midimalist resides in a lame neighborhood of the blogging world, one that is mostly populated by inane magazine style numbered list entries («Ten ways to cut down on clutter now!»), uninteresting personal anecdotes, and howtos.
Being harsh in judging others, I am also harsh in judging myself. I want to create good, thoughful content on the topic of reductivism, but my thoughts on the topic are hazy, and I am unsure of my abilities to create this content. And I do not want to contribute to the ocean of bland blogging.
It’s tempting to give up blogging altogether, both reading and writing. I need to shift where I focus my attention, and read stuff that will help me improve my writing and raise my thinking to the next level. My focus going forward is to read and write offline. I might sporadically update this blog, or I might not.
If I can’t help raise the bar, I don’t want to take part.
