Update

minimalism.md

@@ -8,11 +8,11 @@ Antoine de Saint-Exupery sums it up with a quote: *we achieve perfection not whe
 
 **[Forth](forth.md)** is perhaps the best example of software minimalism and demonstrates that clever, strictly minimalist design can be absolutely superior to the best efforts of maximalists. Languages such as Scheme [Lisp](lisp.md) show that minimalism can also be applied on high level of [abstraction](abstraction.md).
 
-The concept of minimalism is also immensely important in [art](art.md), religion and other aspects of culture and whole society, for example in architecture and design we see a lot of minimalism, and basically every major religion values frugality and letting go material desired, be it [Christianity](christianity.md), [Islan](islam.md) or [Buddhism](buddhism.md). Therefore there also exists the generalized concept of **life minimalism** which applies said wisdom and philosophy to all areas of [life](life.md) and which numerous technological minimalists quite naturally start to follow along the way -- life minimalism is about letting go of objects, thoughts and desires that aren't necessarily needed because such things enslave us and mostly just make us more miserable; from time to time you should meditate a little bit about what it is that you really want and need and only keep that. Indeed this is nothing new under the Sun, this wisdom has been present for as long as humans have existed, most religions and philosophers saw a great value in [asceticism](asceticism.md), frugality and even poverty, as owning little leads to [freedom](freedom.md). For instance owning a [car](car.md) is kind of a slavery, you have to clean it, protect it, repair it, [maintain](maintenance.md) it, pay for parking space, pay for gas, pay for insurance -- this is not a small commitment and you sacrifice a significant part of your life and [head space](head_space.md) to it (especially considering additional commitments of similar magnitude towards your house, garden, clothes, electronics, furniture, pets, bank accounts, social networks and so forth), a minimalist will rather choose to get a simple [suckless](suckless.md) bicycle, travel by public transport or simply walk. Life minimalism is also much healthier both for the individual and for whole society. A man who learns to live with very little starts to find much more enjoyment in mundane things thereafter, a simple pleasure such as an extra meal once a week suddenly feels like it's Christmas, unlike to someone who overeats daily and can hardly take any extra pleasure in food at all. It is also proven (despite you disagreeing with it) that people living in scarcity are friendlier to each other, i.e. a community of people living with little are more [socialist](socialism.md), sharing, loving and caring, without crime and hostility, unlike communities of overstimulated fat depressed consumers addicted to endless increase of pleasure, demanding more and more from the day, eventually ending up only with [competition](competition.md) and hostility on their mind.
+Minimalism as a general concept is also immensely important in [art](art.md), [religion](religion.md) and other parts of [culture](culture.md) and whole society, for example in fine art, architecture and design we find great use of it, and basically every major religion values frugality and letting go of material desire in order to distill the truly important part of one's existence, be it [Christianity](christianity.md), [Islan](islam.md) or [Buddhism](buddhism.md). Therefore there also exists the generalized concept of **life minimalism** which applies said wisdom and philosophy to all areas of [life](life.md) and which numerous technological minimalists quite naturally start to follow along the way -- life minimalism is about letting go of objects, thoughts and desires that aren't necessarily needed because such things enslave us and mostly just make us more miserable; from time to time you should meditate a little bit about what it is that you really want and need and only keep that. Indeed this is nothing new under the Sun, this wisdom has been present for as long as humans have existed, most religions and philosophers saw a great value in [asceticism](asceticism.md), frugality and even poverty, as owning little leads to [freedom](freedom.md). For instance owning a [car](car.md) is kind of a slavery, you have to clean it, protect it, repair it, [maintain](maintenance.md) it, pay for parking space, pay for gas, pay for insurance -- this is not a small commitment and you sacrifice a significant part of your life and [head space](head_space.md) to it (especially considering additional commitments of similar magnitude towards your house, garden, clothes, electronics, furniture, pets, bank accounts, social networks and so forth), a minimalist will rather choose to get a simple [suckless](suckless.md) bicycle, travel by public transport or simply walk. Life minimalism is also much healthier both for the individual and for whole society. A man who learns to live with very little starts to find much more enjoyment in mundane things thereafter, a simple pleasure such as an extra meal once a week suddenly feels like it's Christmas, unlike to someone who overeats daily and can hardly take any extra pleasure in food at all. It is also proven (despite you disagreeing with it) that people living in scarcity are friendlier to each other, i.e. a community of people living with little are more [socialist](socialism.md), sharing, loving and caring, without crime and hostility, unlike communities of overstimulated fat depressed consumers addicted to endless increase of pleasure, demanding more and more from the day, eventually ending up only with [competition](competition.md) and hostility on their mind.
 
-Minimalism is a sign of high [IQ](iq.md) and better developed mind, it is something that requires an intellect strong enough to overcome the human instinct for hoarding to which the unintelligent is a slave -- an instinct that was important in times of scarce resources but one that's become harmful in times when certain resources are abundant and can be consumed without limits. It is like with overeating: the intelligent man is able to restrain from unhealthy overeating to which he is pushed by his instinct.
+Minimalism is a sign of high [IQ](iq.md) and better developed, [more cultivated](unretard.md) mind, it is something that requires an intellect strong enough to overcome the human instinct for hoarding to which the unintelligent is a slave -- an instinct that was important in times of scarce resources but one that's become a harmful curse in times when certain resources became so abundant that they can be consumed without end. It is like with overeating: the intelligent man is able to restrain from unhealthy overeating to which he is pushed by his instinct.
 
-**Minimalism is necessary for [freedom](freedom.md)** as free technology can only be that over which no one holds a [monopoly](bloat_monopoly.md), i.e. which many people and small parties can fully control and make use of, study and modify with affordable effort, without needing armies of technicians just for carrying out [maintenance](maintenance.md). Minimalism stands opposed to creeping overcomplexity of technology that always brings about huge costs and dangers, e.g. the cost of [maintenance](maintenance.md) and further development, costs of required expertise, creeping [obscurity](obscurity.md), inefficiency ("[bloat](bloat.md)", wasting resources) brought by the need for high [abstraction](abstraction.md), increased risk of bugs, errors and failures, [money](money.md) and business leading to [consumerism](consumerism.md) and so on.
+**Minimalism is a prerequisite for technological [freedom](freedom.md)** as free [technology](technology.md) can only be that over which no one holds a [monopoly](bloat_monopoly.md), i.e. which many people and small parties can fully control and make use of, study and modify with affordable effort, without needing armies of technicians just for carrying out [maintenance](maintenance.md). Minimalism stands opposed to creeping overcomplexity of technology that always brings about huge costs and dangers, e.g. the cost of [maintenance](maintenance.md) and further development, costs of required expertise, creeping [obscurity](obscurity.md), inefficiency ("[bloat](bloat.md)", wasting resources) brought by the need for high [abstraction](abstraction.md), increased risk of bugs, errors and failures, [money](money.md) and business leading to [consumerism](consumerism.md) and so on.
 
 { Apparently some people "disagree" with the above and say that "complexity is OK" in free software. I don't think it is possible to disagree on this, it is only possible to not see the issue because of lack of experience. Someone "disagreeing" here means one of two things: he only pretends to care about freedom while actually pursuing other interests (for example creating a "community" around some highly bloated project), OR he has fewer than one brain cell. ~drummyfish }
 
@@ -44,11 +44,11 @@ Up until recently in [history](history.md) every engineer would tell you that *t
 - for potential weaker links to minimalism also check out [retro](retro.md)/[old](old.md)/[boomer](boomer.md) tech, [salvage computing](salvage_computing.md), [degrowth](degrowth.md), [Amish](amish.md), [technophobia](technophobia.md), [demoscene](demoscene.md), [code golf](golf.md), [lightweight](lightweight.md) software, [fantasy consoles](fantasy_console.md) (sadly mostly pseudominimalism), communities around [plain text](plain_text.md), [pubnixes](pubnix.md), some GNU/Linux distros (e.g. [Arch](arch.md), [Gentoo](gentoo.md), KISS Linux, ...), [IRC](irc.md) communities and so on.
 - ...
 
-Under [capitalism](capitalism.md) technological minimalism is suppressed in the mainstream as it goes against [corporate](corporation.md) interests, i.e. those of having monopoly control over technology, even if such technology is "[FOSS](foss.md)" (which then becomes just a cool brand, see [openwashing](openwashing.md)). We may, at best, encounter a "shallow" kind of minimalism, so called [pseudominimalism](pseudominimalism.md) which only tries to make things appear minimal, e.g. aesthetically, and hides ugly overcomplicated internals under the facade. [Apple](apple.md) is infamous for this [shit](shit.md).
+Under [capitalism](capitalism.md) technological minimalism is suppressed in the [mainstream](mainstream.md) as it goes against [corporate](corporation.md) interests, i.e. those of having [monopoly](bloat_monopoly.md) control over technology, even if it was to be called "[FOSS](foss.md)" (which then becomes just a cool brand, see [openwashing](openwashing.md)). We may, at best, encounter a "shallow" kind of minimalism, so called [pseudominimalism](pseudominimalism.md), which only strives to make things appear minimal, e.g. aesthetically, and hides ugly overcomplicated internals under the facade. [Apple](apple.md) is infamous for this [shit](shit.md).
 
 **Does minimalism mean we have to give up the nice things?** Well, not really, it is more about giving up the [bullshit](bullshit.md), getting rid of addiction and changing an attitude. People addicted to [modern](modern.md) consumerist technology often worry that with minimalism they will lose their drug, typically [games](game.md) or something similar. Remember that with minimalism **we can still have technology for entertainment**, just a non-consumerist one -- instead of consuming a new game each month we may rather focus on creating deeper games that may last longer, e.g. those of a [easy to learn, hard to master](easy_to_learn_hard_to_master.md) kind and building communities around them, or on modifying existing games rather than creating new ones from scratch over and over. Sure, technology would LOOK different, our computer interfaces may become less of a thing of fashion, our games may rely more on aesthetics than realism, but ultimately minimalism can be seen just as trying to achieve the same effect while minimizing waste. If you've been made addicted to bullshit such as buying a new GPU each month so that you can run games at 1000 FPS at progressively higher resolution then of course yes, you will have to suffer a bit of a withdrawal just as a heroin addict suffers when quitting the drug, but just as him in the end you'll be glad you did it.
 
-Remember, you can't lose if you don't play.
+Remember, you can't lose if you don't play. Sometimes choosing to play certain games is a loss in itself.
 
 A possible **real life analogy** of the mainstream bloated software vs minimalist software is for example this: the bloated, mainstream computing environment (Windows, Mac, "Linux" distros, mainstream web browsers, virtual machines etc.) is like a skyscraper in a city whereas minimalist software is a small, self-sufficient caravan somewhere in the woods. The skyscraper offers luxury but for an enormous price: it's extremely expensive to just build, just its realization requires tons and tons of bullshit like getting permissions, reviewing environmental and economic impacts, paying architects, planning the building process, ensuring safety, keeping to all regulations, getting enough capital, finding companies to contract and so on -- erecting the building will be an enormously stressful and risky task for many dozens of companies which it will be extremely difficult to just coordinate and once the building stands, it will continue to be extremely expensive to just maintain in habitable state, the rent will be enormous as you're paying for maintenance of the whole building, cleaning the stairs, for energies, clean water pumped to high altitudes, security systems, high speed internet and so on, plus you as someone who even "owns" an apartment in the skyscraper will have practically no control over it besides arranging furniture in the room you "own" while also in the end, for getting this kind of "luxury" of maybe getting a nice view of the city, it will even be inferior in many ways: you'll live in constant noise of the city, in polluted air, bombarded by ads and neons from the streets, you'll have to take the lift to your apartment (good luck if electricity goes out), you can't make much noise to not bother the neighbors, you'll have to work your ass off to just pay the bills, you'll have to be constantly cleaning all the marble and glass, becoming slave to the apartment, while risking conflicts with neighbors and so on. Your "apartment" (or a computer program) isn't even really a thing you own, it's just basically a tiny bit of something trivial (four walls) on top of some gigantic platform (the skyscraper inside the big city, the enormous operating system inside a virtual sandbox running in a [cloud](cloud.md) etc.), expensive just by being at this "privileged" location -- in this case we may substitute the word *platform* for *prison*. On the other hand your off-the-grid caravan will be cheap to get and maintain, you'll have complete control over it, be able to make absolutely any modifications to it, you can repair most things yourself (unlike e.g. with a "smart" apartment), it won't bother you with bullshit, there are no loud or annoying neighbors, [ads](marketing.md), no lifts, no safety regulations (in case of fire it's even much safer than living in skyscraper), you won't even have to pay extra taxes you'd pay for a "real" building, you'll be living in a nice, quiet and relaxing environment, have cleaner air, be more self sufficient, making your own solar electricity (and generally not needing so much electricity), flexible, able to move anywhere at any time. All this for basically giving up having a bathtub made of marble. Anyone with half a brain must see the stupidity of choosing to live in the skyscraper.