Newminimalists are human in thoughts, habits, and beliefs.
"What does it mean to be human?" is one of the great questions of the C21st.
It is a question that a five year old might ask you as he or she plays on the jungle gym equipment in a local park. The question is an innocent attempt by him or her to find out more about life. This question is simple for the child yet complex for the adult. Indeed it soon becomes absurd as you watch your child swing like a monkey, contort like a boa constrictor, and bounce like a big red Kangaroo as he or she navigates, with ease, all the obstacles "out there" on the playground. You are probably struck by a rather quaint notion that this little imp is part rapscallion, part serpent, and part joey.
The answer you give your child is a placeholder not a real attempt to offer any insight into the meaning of his or her life. Indeed your best effort probably goes something like this. "It means to be happy, playful, and full of nonsense and that describes you right now.....go have lots of fun on those things over there."
In the end the answers adult concoct for most complex questions is a merely a placeholder; adults come up with a simple explanation that places the complexity "over there" out of harms way. However. In this year 2020 the competition to find practical answers to complex questions [about humanity] and then to impose them on all the thoughts and actions of innocent children has reached an intense level. Technologist Elon Musk wants to implant a Neuralink between the natural blood-cell fed brain [see photo] and his artificial computer-fed machine brain. Inside such a human there will be two version of self: the organic self and the machine-assisted self. At the same time many C21st philosophers have taken up a core idea from the works of Michel Foucault that power is everywhere. And it is the access, use, and abuse of power that makes one human. Foucault is commonly known as a post-modernist [despite the fact that he died on 25th June, 1984] because he posited the notion that power is diffused rather than concentrated. I vaguely interpret this to mean that power is a flow not a stock concept. Indeed to be human in Foucault's world is the result of the use of power in language, strictures, and within sentience boundaries that are opaque to the participant observer. Being human is therefore both an inside and an outside experience that is based on power.
There seem to be great similarities between what Musk wants to do to humans and what Foucault warned about in his analysis of the essence of being human. But. What is a five year old to make of all this?
Being five-year-old like in spirit, and capability, I demand a more simple and straight forward answer to the question "what does it mean to be human?"
Around five years ago I decided that being human has three core elements: thoughts, habits, and beliefs. Having sorted that out for myself; I then curated the concept of Newminimalism to explain the interrelatedness of those core functions of being human. Unlike Elon Musk I was far more interested in the organic nature of self than any version of the "transformer human" with its computer-chip enhanced brain. Equally, I careful to avoid being drawn to the notion of a human as purely a social actor. Michel Foucault would have us believe that being human is the by-product of being moulded to fit the wants of those who abuse their access to power through social networks and structures [look at the news today and you can see that this C20th philosopher was prescient].
In the end, I decided that Newminimalism should focus on the individual needs of a five year old child rather than serve the collective wants of those adults who seek to exercise power through social manipulation, control, and governance.
Richard.
You can become a Newminimalist in just ten days if you follow the process I outline on the homepage of my website at minimal-you.com
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