503 | I'd Rather Be Alone

The Minimalists speak with philosopher Peter Rollins about how increasing fragmentation and fear of others produces unnecessary enemies, the ways in which social anxiety makes it difficult to build a community, how products promise fulfillment yet give us dissatisfaction, and much more. Discussed in this episode: What do introverts understand that extroverts don't? (1:53) What's missing from your community? (22:05) Right Here, Right Now: Sunday Symposium and Zoom calls with The Minimalists. (44:57) Listener Tip: Two tips for managing book clutter. (49:00) Listen to the full Maximal episode on Patreon: patreon.com/theminimalists http://patreon.com/theminimalists Detailed show notes: minimalists.com/podcast http://minimalists.com/podcast Recorded at Earthing Studios http://earthing.com/simple.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Speaker 00

  This podcast has bad words.

• 0:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Minimalist Podcast, where we discuss what it means to live a meaningful life with less. My name is Joshua Fields Milburn, and joining me here at Earthing Studios in beautiful West Hollywood, California, is my good friend TK Coleman.

• 0:55Speaker 02

  It's a beautiful day.

• 0:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Today, we're joined by everyone's favorite philosopher. Welcome back to the show, Peter Rollins. Coming up on this free, public, minimal episode, a caller has a question about how social anxiety makes her feel isolated. And we've got a question about what's missing from your community. That's followed by our Right Here, Right Now segment and a listener tip. As always, you can check out the full two-hour maximal edition of this episode, where we answer three times as many questions on Patreon. The link is in the description. By the way, big thanks to our patrons. Your support keeps our podcast 100% advertisement-free, because sing along at home, y'all. Advertisements suck. Let's start with our callers. If you have a question or a comment for our show,

• 1:41Joshua Fields Millburn?

  we would love to hear from you. Our phone number is 406-219-7839, or you can email a voice recording right from your phone to [email protected]. Our first question today is from Rebecca.

• 1:56Speaker 03

  Hello guys, it's Rebecca here from England and I'm a Patreon subscriber. I would like to know your thoughts around social anxiety, introversion and isolation. According to the Myers-Briggs personality test, I'm a 99% introvert, which surprised me at first, until I realised, well, it was true. I need and enjoy alone time, but the amount of alone time I need to feel whole is quite frankly embarrassing. I feel a connection to Josh, who spends so much of his time alone. Listening to your podcast, I'm learning to love myself for who I am, so thank you. Recently, my therapist has kindly made me question if my extreme introversion and

• 2:37Speaker 03

  social anxiety, which makes enemies out of people, is a response to my childhood trauma. My question is this: do you believe extreme introversion is born or made?

• 2:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Wow, so I'm interested in your thoughts on introversion, because if I gave TK the test, I think he'd be 199% introvert. And I think I'm right up there, although if this was a competition, I might lose that one. My wife's the same way too, she's extremely introverted. I will say though, I am quite introverted, my slogan is "I'd rather be alone". In just about any situation, I would rather be alone. However, I also recognise that I don't want to be the guy who moves to a cabin in the middle of Alaska by himself and doesn't see people for the rest of his life. I think we sort of trick ourselves into thinking that we need to isolate because we're introverts. And I don't think about it that way anymore, but Peter, I'm interested. How do you think about introversion?

• 3:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  How do you think about social anxiety? Are those things you even think about at all?

• 3:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, and there was so much in that question. I love to hear the English accent, by the way, it's very close to where I am in Northern Ireland.

• 3:47Speaker 04

  There's a philosopher, a friend, called Julie Reshie, and she actually recently talked about extroversion and introversion. And she's very introverted herself, as am I, so I think we all share the same issue. But one of her reflections was on how extroverts seem like they're very social and they go out and talk to lots of people, or always enjoying seeing lots of people and chatting and small talk. But sometimes that can actually be a defense against the other. Because every person is like a universe, like you can never fully get to know one person, even if you spend your entire life with them. There's something about the introvert sometimes that they understand this.

• 4:30Speaker 04

  Like, deep down, they know that, that to even know one person is too much. And sometimes it's not that the introvert is less social than the extrovert. Sometimes they, they so appreciate depth and connection and they experience also the, the difficulty of that, the difficulty of knowing someone, almost the fear of knowing somebody. And so in some respects, Julie Resche, you know, questions that idea that the extrovert is really social and the introvert isn't. And she says sometimes at the party, it's the introvert who gets to know one person. Because even getting to know one person, as I say, is, is almost too much. You can't even do it. So there's something beautiful about that.

• 5:13Speaker 04

  I would say in relation to the very last question, you know, is this born or is this made? The one thing, that's a huge question, but in psychoanalysis, often our symptoms are monuments to the past. They remember something that we don't and they replay something that was from our past. And so a symptom is really, they, they talk about this thing called jouissance. And jouissance is pleasurable suffering. It's something that causes us suffering, but also enjoyment, like maybe doom screwing is a type of suffering that we enjoy, you know? There's things that we, that we suffer from, but we get something out of. That's kind of a symptom.

• 5:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Well, didn't Nietzsche also say, love everything that happens to you? Or to love your suffering in a way? And I think that's great as an aspiration, like, and so you suffer so much that you're like, I just want to get, I want to get out of this. I need to, I need to shed this. And, and maybe I think as, as an introvert, it does feel like suffering sometimes when we're bombarded. When I worked in the corporate world and I had to be around people all the time, I did, I didn't have the same, maybe I trained myself out of the social anxiety, but I Still have that desire to be alone. And to me, be around someone is being around one other person quite often, right? I think about Nicodemus, my best friend. His idea of being alone is being alone with one other person.

• 6:36Speaker 04

  Yes, yes.

• 6:36Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Because he's extremely extrovert. He's 90 plus percent extrovert on the Myers-Briggs scale. And so I think understanding, I think back to my corporate days. TK, I'd love to get your thoughts on this too. When we did inventory, there was this accidental profundity that happened to me. When I was fulfilling orders and this pop-up screen would happen on the computer. And it would say, what are your conditions for fulfillment?

• 7:04Speaker 04

  That's so good.

• 7:05Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And it was about fulfilling a retail sales order. But I think I've carried that with me in my life. What are my conditions for fulfillment? And it's not being around a lot of other people. In fact, I will feel unfulfilled or unsatisfied when I'm around too many people. And yet, if I'm around no one in perpetuity, I'm also going to feel unfulfilled. And maybe another analogy that's useful for me is when you think about like baseball. There's a strike zone. You have to, you have to throw the ball right down the plate. Maybe it's cricket for you. I'm not sure what the sport is over there. And, and if you don't hit the strike zone, then it's not a strike, right? And, and for me, that strike zone is really small.

• 7:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  For Nicodemus, it's the side of a barn. He, anyone is sufficient for his condition of fulfillment. For me, it's, it has to be in that really narrow window. And for TK, that window might even be smaller. And for my wife, it might even be smaller than that. It's not that we don't want to be around other people. Introversion does not require isolation. In fact, isolation can make us feel a different kind of social anxiety.

• 8:18Speaker 04

  Yes, I mean, you can go deep and you can go wide. It's hard to go deep and wide. So if a person's an introvert and they have one brilliant conversation a month, like a beautiful conversation with one person that goes really deep, that can be. The same as an extrovert who has had fifty conversations or a hundred conversations in that month. And so, yeah, in a sense, you go like the introvert can go to a place that the extrovert can't go. And the extrovert can go somewhere that the introvert can't go. And I love what you said about Nietzsche's. And in some respects, it's about learning to countersign your own desires. To not say that I'm not strange, but to go, you are strange and so is everybody. We're all a bit strange in how we interact with each other and how we do life.

• 9:04Speaker 04

  And that's okay. You're not okay. I'm not okay. And that's okay. Enjoy it.

• 9:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It's perfectly normal to be abnormal.

• 9:10Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  That's right. And you know, to this aspect of the question that involves, hey, am I the way I am because of trauma? There's a sort of prescriptive approach you can take to that. And then there's a descriptive approach. The prescriptive approach would be to say, hey, I am this way because of this trauma. Therefore, I should make myself be another way because it's just my trauma that's causing me to artificially suppress who I really am. That just gets you into war with yourself and makes things even more complicated. And it also really raises the stakes because you have to be right about this theory. But the descriptive approach is a little bit more modest, a little bit more healthy, a little bit more playful. Where you say, here is a possibility that I can reasonably expect to emerge.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  Should I make progress on the path of healing my wounds? So if it is true that you are really an extrovert and you're only behaving in this introverted manner because you have trauma. Then that means as you work on that trauma, as you heal and heal and heal. You might find yourself opening up in some ways that surprise you, but you don't have to force that, right? So if the two are disconnected, your trauma is still worth healing. If the two are connected, your introverted tendencies are still worth wondering, still worth honoring. Because that's where you are right now. And you don't want to push yourself to socialize beyond what you can handle. Just because it may be possible that you are this way because of trauma.

• 10:36Speaker 04

  Can I jump in there as well? I think it's beautifully said. In some forms of therapy, it's almost like a religious thing, you know, in religion, some religions, they say there's an original blessing. An original state of perfection, then there's a fall, and then there's a return to blessing. And then in some forms of therapy, it's similar. There's a pre-traumatic subject. We are traumatized and then we can hope to get beyond the trauma. Now, within the psychoanalytic tradition and within kind of radical theology, the idea is actually the fall is first. We, there's a, there's an original trauma that is being human. Like, we're all traumatized. In fact, there's a trauma that happened to us and then there's just the trauma that is us, the trauma of being born.

• 11:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We are trauma.

• 11:17Speaker 04

  We are trauma. Ontic shock. It's, I have a friend who's just had a child and she's saying, I can see the child almost starting to look around and going, what the hell is this? You know, that's Ontic shock, the shock of being. And, and in this, in this idea, because we're all, in a sense, traumatized in some way, we are all caught in the world of loss. Extroversion is just as much a trauma. You know, people can be traumatized. They can't be alone at all. They have to be surrounded by people because they're terrified of being alone. And so sometimes it's not about trying to postulate a post-traumatic subject, like, oh, I can get beyond this. You can understand what formed you, like you were saying, come to countersign it, like you were saying. And in kind of learning your history and, and

• 12:02Speaker 04

  being able to embrace what made you you, somehow that robs the trauma of a sting. And you'll probably still be introverted, but it won't cause as much suffering.

• 12:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And yet, introversion doesn't mean necessarily that you're socially incompetent. I know some extroverts who are super incompetent socially.

• 12:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  They barrel into the room, they need to be around people and they become the life of the party, but in the way that's like a, they're a tornado, the Tasmanian devil. And it's not, it's not competent in a social way. And the opposite is true. Like, for me, I got a sales job when I was 18 and I was hyper introverted and I was also socially awkward. But eventually, it's like dribbling a basketball. You learn how, even if you can't dribble it at first, if you do it every single day for eight hours, 10 hours, 12 hours a day, you get pretty good at it. Even if it's not your natural inborn talent, you can still be socially competent. It may still be your default to isolate or to seek solitude. And I'd like to make a distinction between those two. When we had Cal Newport

• 13:05Joshua Fields Millburn?

  on the show the most recent time, he convinced us to get off social media for a year, which we did. But he also talked about the, the distinction between

• 13:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Isolation and solitude, like solitude means free from input of other minds as the way he described it. So it's possible to be by yourself, but still be bombarded by other inputs, whether that is entertainment, or you're scrolling TikTok, or whatever. You're not really experiencing solitude in those moments, but you're still having maybe a, an approximated introverted moment.

• 13:40Speaker 04

  That's a beautiful distinction, absolutely.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  So that gives rise to a question. Does that mean there's the possibility of the age of the pseudo-introvert, someone who is experiencing themselves as an introvert relative to social interaction, but they're really seeking that same stimulation, but they're just getting it in a way that wasn't previously available?

• 13:59Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Or is that media creating more people who behave in these silos, and it's isolating us in ways where even if we're extroverts, it approximates the other people, and it approximates interaction. And of course, we neroosed over this when it was television, because now all of a sudden, you could be a voyeur in the 1960s and turn on the TV, and now you're watching these other families that can't interact with you, but you in a way are interacting with, with their world. Although I'd be interested in this distinction too. Chris Kelly, a previous podcast guest, he doesn't believe that introversion exists. He's studied a lot of anthropology, and what he says, we're all extroverts. And the detente that I was able to form there is, yes, maybe we are all extroverts, except for that one

• 14:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  guy who lives in a cabin in Alaska by himself. He's the anomaly. But everyone else, we aren't truly independent. I drove here in a car that other people made. I drove here on a road that other people paved. We're in a studio right now that other people built, and someone manufactured this microphone. So I'm not truly independent. I could say, I'm an independent person, but that's a bit of an illusion as well. And so maybe I'm not truly introverted. No one is 100% introverted, but maybe we're all extroverts, and it's just a scale. And so someone like Rebecca is 1% extrovert, and someone like Ryan Nicodemus is 98% extrovert, and it could just be a different way to look at it.

• 15:23Speaker 04

  That's a beautiful way of seeing it, because yeah, in psychoanalysis, even by having language, we are connected. So even the person in the woods, they have a shared language. There's something about being human where we're woven into each other as an infant. We are- We share a same language, we, as you say, share a same structure. And so in some ways, we're always interconnected with each other. One issue potentially that we really experienced today, we may have talked about this before, but Lacan, psychoanalyst, he talks about how one of the issues is we have this super egoic injunction to enjoy. There's a message that's always saying, you should be having more fun. You should be hanging out with more people.

• 16:05Speaker 04

  Everyone else is having more sex and relationships and fun than you. And so it's not that you're suffering from being an introvert. You're suffering from this voice that is continually condemning you with fear of missing out. And it's that voice that in some ways, if we can exorcise that voice from us, we can enjoy who we are. So perhaps, you know, this guest or this listener is in some ways being tyrannized by a voice that's saying, you should be having more fun. And the truth is, everybody seemingly in modern society is being tyrannized by that voice. Even people I know who are out all the time, in fact, even more so, are tyrannized by, I must have more fun, I must do more things.

• 16:47Speaker 04

  And that voice of FOMO is almost, how do we exorcise that voice from ourselves?

• 16:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think that gets us back to the condition of fulfillment. What are your conditions for fulfillment? And for Rebecca, it might not be someone else's condition. For Ryan Nicodemus, his condition for fulfillment is constantly being around other people. And recognizing that, then you can be around those people and feel fulfilled. But if I were to take on that memetic desire, you know, I should behave like Ryan Nicodemus because he's having so much fun. And of course, in order to have fun or to enjoy my life or to feel satisfied or fulfilled, then I too need to be around all these people all the time, even though it's kind of making me miserable. I guess I'd rather be alone because my condition for fulfillment isn't nobody, but it also isn't everybody all the time.

• 17:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Any last words on this, TK?

• 17:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just want to say it's so important to remember that the labels are a means to an end. When we discover something like the label introvert and we Say, ah, that's who I am. It can be quite validating because then you can make sense out of so many tendencies that maybe you felt embarrassed about, or that maybe you condemned yourself for. And that's a very valuable thing. But the labels are not rules. They're not impositions upon your personality. And you can always remain open to the possibility that you will show up differently in your future than how you've shown up in the past, that you may be attracted to something later that you're not attracted to now. And so, don't look at the labels as a kind of constraint that you have to conform to. Oh, I don't do that. I'm an introvert. Oh, I can only be here for 10 minutes. I'm an introvert. It's no,

• 18:26Speaker 02

  this helps me make sense of myself. And at the same time, I don't have to box myself in. If as I make progress with healing my traumas, I find that I want more socialization, that's cool, too. And I don't have to know whether or not this is my permanent condition, or this is an inherited condition, or an acquired condition in response to my trauma. I can be an agnostic with the labels and just engage the experience.

• 18:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's super helpful for me because I recognize that it's not my who I am as a person.

• 18:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It's not my identity to be an introvert. It's a useful label until it isn't useful. If I start battering myself with that label, because this is who I am, or I should be someone different from this, well, that becomes a problem, too.

• 19:10Speaker 04

  Could I have one final thought as well?

• 19:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Absolutely.

• 19:13Speaker 04

  We could talk all day about this. It's a great question. What it sounds like this woman's therapist is doing is, which is very, very important, is getting this person to reflect on what's going on in the social anxiety. So I just literally two days ago, talked to a friend who has a lot of social anxiety. And it turns out, she has this sense of that others are dangerous. It's an unconscious thing, but it's like almost the world is dangerous and people are dangerous. And as we talked, it became obvious that that was her experience as a child. There was a certain instability in her family, and that instability caused her this kind of embedded itself. And so, interestingly, the last bit of advice I

• 19:56Speaker 04

  would say is almost like, try to think about what What's going on in this kind of introversion? And if it is a fear of the other, and it might not be, but if there's something about fearful of the danger of the other, it's interesting to then go, does that reflect on some element of my past, some element of my relationship with my siblings or my parents? And as you symbolize that, you might find that that fear begins to dissipate.

• 20:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's so good. Rebecca, I know you have a therapist, but if you'd like a clutter counseling session to help unpack some of the emotional clutter, that anxiety that you're dealing with, I'd love to give you a session with TK Coleman. Anyone else who's interested in a clutter counseling session for their physical clutter, mental clutter, emotional clutter, calendar clutter, career clutter, relationship clutter, head on over to theminimalists.com and you can click counseling at the top and you can book a session. We just opened up next month's calendar with TK Coleman, my favorite clutter counselor. Before we get back to our callers, Peter, it is time for the lightning round. Since you are our most popular guest ever, popular in the sense that he's been on the show more times than anyone.

• 21:04Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 21:05Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You know what happened, right? TK was on the show 11 times and eventually-

• 21:09Speaker 04

  That's right, you were beating me.

• 21:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. It became a common law marriage and we were forced to, I don't want him here. He's just here. I'd rather be alone.

• 21:17Speaker 04

  He just doesn't leave. Yeah. I do know, you sleep in the cupboard, don't you?

• 21:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah. I actually have seen him sleep on that couch before.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  I sleep in the closet they used to film in.

• 21:27Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right. So before we get back to our callers, let's do the lightning round. This is where we answer the Patreon community chat's question of the week. We attempt to answer these questions with a short, shareable, minimal maxim. You can find this episode's maxims in the show notes at theminimalists.com/podcast and every minimal maxim ever over at minimalmaxims.com. We'll also deliver our weekly show notes directly to your inbox, including seven new maxims every Monday for free if you sign up for our email newsletter at theminimalists.com. We'll never send you spam or junk or advertisements, but we will start your week off with a dose of simplicity. All right. So the question of the week this week. Peter, he was talking to me about some topics. What are we going to talk about? I was like, do you want to talk about Machiavelli?

• 22:14Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We've already talked about like Schopenhauer and we've talked about Lacan. And what are we going to talk about? And he's like, well, I want to talk about community, but in a completely different way from how anyone has ever talked about it. And so the question of the week this week is, what is missing from your community? What is missing from your community? Now, before we get to our pithy answers, I want to see what some of our listeners had to say. Susan said, attention is missing from my community. Everyone is staring at a device much of the day. Peter, how is tech getting in the way of our communities?

• 22:52Speaker 04

  Okay, well, can I start by saying that I want to critique the word community?

• 22:57Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes.

• 22:58Speaker 04

  Okay, brilliant. Because I've always, I've always been funny about that word, community. And I've been theorizing it more of late. What I would argue, without showing the work in light, so please attack me if you want, anybody, is that communities are a social bond that is forged around shared beliefs, practices, values, obstacles and enemies.

• 23:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's generally how we think of community.

• 23:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But you're thinking about community differently.

• 23:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I even want to use a completely different word. Because I would argue that community, and there's a great book by Todd McGowan, by the way, on this subject, Embracing Alienation, I'd recommend. He would argue that all communities, there is something shared, some identity, some belief, and that's, and there's nothing wrong with that. We all like snooker, we all like cricket, whatever, we form community. But then there's always an outsider. So there's an inside, there's always an outside. You can't have a community that says, we welcome everybody. As soon as you see that, you ask yourself, well, who would they not welcome? Right, there's always an outsider.

• 24:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Now, there's almost like this implicit message. We welcome everyone as long as you think the way we do.

• 24:07Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 24:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  As long as you have the same opinions or similar opinions.

• 24:10Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 24:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  As long as you vote like we do, as long as you believe what we believe. We welcome everyone within these bounds.

• 24:16Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 24:16Speaker 02

  And another add-on too is we welcome everyone and we need to explicitly state that because clearly we behave in a way that isn't effectively producing those results.

• 24:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, yes.

• 24:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, yes. So that's, I would argue, right, community, and even the best communities then have outsiders and insiders. We're all parts of communities. The opposite of community is what's called the commons. The commons is a space where you meet people who are genuinely different. So like a park is a commons, allotments, the Greyhound bus. And what a commons is in terms of in theory is it's a space where you don't just encounter people who are different from you, who disagree with you. Those people might even disagree with you about what the disagreements are about. Right. And that's what the problem is in society. It's not that we simply disagree about something, like you're on one side, I'm on the other side. Depending on which side you're on, you disagree about the very way that you frame the disagreement

• 25:11Speaker 04

  itself, right? And that makes something intractable. The commons is where you literally rub shoulders with potentially someone who you think is anathema, awful, terrible, right? So that's the opposite. Then the third position, and this is what I'm excited about. I call it a communion, but I don't mean that in a religious sense. I do borrow the word from theology for a reason, which we can get into or not. But a communion is a social bond forged not on what we share in common, but on the fact that we are all, we all have a lack, we all desire, we all have loss. Now, an example of a communion for me is AA. AA is not a group that's forged on shared beliefs, shared class structure, because

• 25:55Speaker 04

  you get people who are so different in that AA group. They're surrounded by what joins them together is a trauma and a lack that they've tried to cover over with alcohol. So alcohol is not the problem, it's the solution to a problem. And that's what they're... So a communion for me is like-

• 26:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Clip that and put it on TikTok. Just take them out of context.

• 26:15Speaker 04

  Oh, yes. Yes, that's right. Alcohol is the solution. That's a very Irish thing to say. But a communion then is almost like a universal AA where we gather together and we share, say that we've all experienced loss, we all mourn, we all desire. And so in ways, we have nothing in common. I saw a meme once that said, a dating app for nihilists. And the tagline was for those who have nothing in common, right? And that's, that's almost it is that no matter what we, you know, you have things in common with me and vice versa. But communion is not that we're all insiders, but we're all outsiders. That's the existential

• 26:57Speaker 04

  idea. Albert Camus talked about this, that in a certain way, we're all in the world, but not of it. None of us fit in completely. We try and we pretend. And often the cool people in the school, they seem like they fit in the most. But you talk to them and they feel that they don't fit in. So there's a certain sense in which we're all outsiders. And I don't think a community can do justice to that, but a communion can. That's a social bond that I want to see.

• 27:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. Yeah. And so what's fascinating here is what is missing from your community, from your peer group, whatever we're calling it in this context, often defines the what we're gathered around, which is actually different from the community that you were talking about earlier. I would use the word tribe when you say it's with enemies. If we're uniting against something, that is a tribe. It doesn't really say what we stand for anyway, but it's like, we have a common enemy. We have someone we can beat up or pick on. And that creates a rather toxic community quite often.

• 27:56Speaker 04

  And also the most strong community, I mean, shared beliefs and practices create community. But what really binds people together is a shared enemy. Whenever some are a shared obstacle, whenever we can point- To those people and say they're the problem. And in someone like René Girard, he talks about how interestingly, a community thinks that the problem is some group. But they're actually, again, the solutions to the problem. It's they are what hold the community together.

• 28:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And without that shared enemy, they'd have to find a new enemy or disband.

• 28:28Speaker 04

  Or disband, they would, they'd deconstruct. So weirdly, you need the very thing that you think you don't need. The very thing you think you want to get rid of is what you need to solidify the group.

• 28:38Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 28:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And TK, that brings us back to what Susan was saying a moment ago about technology getting in the way, like attention is missing from my community. And technology often gets in the way because it amplifies those enemies in a way. Makes, gives us more access, creates new enemies for us.

• 28:57Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. And we, we see this play out so much in politics, right? What would people do without the person they are running against? So much of each party's campaign is about, I'm not like that other person. Because that just invigorates people a lot more. When it comes to the technology, I think it amplifies the distractions. But I, I think it also exposes more of who we are. It's kind of like the, the question about money. Does money really change people? Or does it just give you the opportunity to act on who you've always been? Sometimes we confuse changing or becoming someone different with having the opportunity. But there are lots of things that people would do that they simply can't do

• 29:39Speaker 02

  because they don't have the power to do it, or they don't have the power to say it and get away with it. You give them a lot of money, you might see what they're made of. In a similar way, technology functions as a kind of mirror to help us begin to see what we're made of.

• 29:52Speaker 04

  And two things on that as well. Money and technology provide us an ability to inoculate ourselves from the other. So I used to live in a place in Connecticut for a few years. We had a lot of people who had money. And literally geographically, you had more space between you and your neighbor. Like money provided more ability not to encounter the toxic other, the other who is. Who can destabilize you because true others destabilize us. People who are different from us cause us to see ourselves in new ways. So money can do that and technology as well. Where when you enter into a social space, you can surround yourself with people who think like you, who have the same interests as you.

• 30:36Speaker 04

  And what we saw over COVID, when we were not in the commons anymore, we weren't rubbing shoulders with people who were literally different. People's communities became more tightly rigid, which then causes more aggression and fighting from between communities. So interestingly, money and technology inoculate us. They provide us a ways of protecting ourselves from the other. And yet, love, the definition of love, again, I'd have to argue why I think it's, but love is precisely providing a harbor for the otherness of the other. So in dating apps, for example, you, we often are all looking for people here like us. We list who we want and whether their political views are the same as ours or whatever. But in something like Romeo and Juliet,

• 31:22Speaker 04

  you have two people who are completely other, from two different tribes, from two different groups, encountering otherness, and that's where love erupts. So in some ways, dating apps, what they foreclose is the ability to find love. The more we, I almost would like to create a dating app that purposefully throws you against somebody who is so different from you that you, you know, that at first you hate them and you despise them and you're going, why? And then, because in that, in that place of pure otherness, love can spark.

• 31:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Wow, wow. Let's listen to some more listeners here. Anne said, what's missing from my community? Respect. For example, cars drive around my neighborhood at 3:00 AM, blasting music through the stereo. It happens at least once every night. The sound systems shake the ground and you can hear every word. EK, what role does respect play in building a, a community?

• 32:21Speaker 02

  Well, you could say in many ways that respect is the baseline that makes community possible. If I can't interact with you in a way that preserves your dignity and you cannot reciprocate, then what kind of interaction is possible other than one of antagonism? Perhaps that's the difference between being at war and being in community, is that one proceeds with the sincere effort to preserve your dignity in this interaction, and the other is to see you as a threat. What would you say about that?

• 32:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, that's beautifully said. And the interesting thing about that example of, say, the car, is sometimes when you kind of, why is a person doing that? And you sometimes think, well, maybe they feel that they're nothing. And so in some respects, by blasting the music really loudly, they're saying, I am something. They're kind of saying, I'm here, I exist. Like, it's often our symptoms, because that's a symptom in a way. If you're rolling down your windows, playing your music really loud, there's something going on there. And sometimes, kind of understanding that can help cause, create a possibility where you might actually take an interest in that other. And as you take an interest in them, they could, if you communicate, maybe go, yeah, maybe I'm being a bit of

• 33:35Speaker 04

  an asshole by playing my music really loud. It opens up a possibility. I do remember a story of somebody calling into a radio show, it was a gardening show, and they said, I've got these weeds, I've tried everything. I've like tried plucking them, they come back. I've tried weed killer, they keep coming back. There's nothing I can do. What do you suggest? And the guy said, I suggest you learn to love them. You know, so there's something about that the other is kind of dangerous and other. But what love is, I think, and it's very hard to do, so I wouldn't say that the person should do this. I can't do it. I should take this advice. But whenever I encounter, I had this actually with a neighbor who played music really loudly when I was young, and when I was younger, is going like,

• 34:19Speaker 04

  how do I remain open to that other? And, you know, for me, I was able to go around to the house and knock and go like, listen, it's three o'clock in the morning, your music is blasting. We had a little moment of interaction. But it's how do we remain open to the other? By being sensitive to the idea that there's something going on in that behavior that maybe testifies to is a monument to a suffering.

• 34:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That person feels insignificant in some way and this will make me significant. Look at me, look at me. And we all have different ways to do that. And unfortunately, what would happen is if you could get this person to stop playing their music, there's going to be something else to frustrate you, or to upset you, or to complain about. It's never going to be perfect. And yeah, of course, I don't want someone driving around my neighborhood at 3 a.m. blasting music. In my neighborhood, I live in Ojai, California, and the commons there are amazing. I think it's, I love how you use that term. That's why I moved there. There's something about the commons. There's only 8,000 people who live there. And last night, I'm going for a walk with my wife, and we do this right now where we go look at the bees. They land on these cacti that have these little flowers,

• 35:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  and they buzz. And it only happens for about a month every year. And it's magical. And then we've got these little shared libraries. But then, of course, what happens? Someone rides by on a motorcycle, and it's so free, like no muffler, it's so loud, right? But that's all part of it. Like, that's a little bit of the flavor I don't like in this stew. But I really like the stew otherwise. And even if I remove that flavor, now something else might come to the forefront where I'm like, I wish I could get rid of that. And then I wish I'd get rid of this. And before I know it, I just have a bowl of hot water because I've removed all the elements that made the commons, the commons in the first place.

• 36:07Speaker 04

  That's it. Like, I, that's beautifully said. I experienced this in my own life when I moved from Ireland to where I lived in Connecticut for a while, where I got rid of all of the nasty things. And the result was worse. Because, in a way, whenever I was surrounded, I was able to protect myself from others. And, you know, you didn't have noisy neighbors, and everything was smooth, and everything was good. There was, it's, in some ways, it's lovely. It's homeostasis. It's peace. But it's also boring. Boring, boring, boring. And as you say, then, you know, you have to find something else to kind of like ruffle things. But there's something about life that's dirty, that's messy. People are toxic and awful, except for myself. And so, there's something about having, like,

• 36:52Speaker 04

  there's no way to protect yourself from it. Like, it's, it's, it's, it's whether we- Can remain open to that dimension of life somehow to remain open because that's where apocalypse happens. Apocalypse means something that you don't expect. So progress is, oh, I know A to B to C. I know what's going to happen in my week. An apocalyptic event is an event that you can't put in your calendar. It's the thing that no matter how obsessive we are and the obsessive, you know, wants to kind of plan. It's that thing that that throws you off, that decenters you and destabilizes you. And in a way, you do want that to happen every day or even every week. But but being in a world where you're rubbing shoulders with people and different people, apocalyptic events can

• 37:34Speaker 04

  happen and love can arise, you know?

• 37:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, you're forced to interact in a way. And TK, you've told me about this. Like, one of the reasons that you go to church is you're around people where you have one particular shared belief. And even that one's in question, you know, like, I don't know what you mean by this. Do I mean the same thing as you mean when you say the same thing that I say? We recite the same prayer or whatever. But then beyond that, you may lack in all other shared communion, you know, you may have this one communion, but you may, there may be this this lack everywhere else.

• 38:09Speaker 04

  And actually, the reason why you would like that we should talk off even more about this. But the reason why I use the word communion, which you might be interested in, is precisely because I borrowed a theological term, because I don't think there's another term like it. Communion is a meal around a shared loss, which is the death of God. So the death of God is the ultimate loss, the death of all meaning, the death of all certainty. And so in in the religious setting, they have this meal around a shared loss. And I was like, oh, that's beautiful. It's not around a shared set of beliefs or a shared set of values. It's like, it's almost like we're all marked by loss. And so there's something in that theological tradition that I think is deeply rich.

• 38:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's powerful. And that gives rise to that charity that you talked about. And just one quick comment on that, I would say, the spirit of charity can coexist with the willingness to be honest about what you don't like. When that person is playing their music too loud, I find that the number one inhibitor for conflict resolution is is the

• 39:07Speaker 02

  Distance that you must agree with me about the idiot I think you're being in order for us to arrive at a solution. But you being an idiot is in theory that I've come up with to explain why I'm having this unpleasant experience. I can keep that separate from the fact that I don't like this experience. And so if I can say, I don't know why you're doing this thing that displeases me. I'm not an expert. I'm not going to come up with a theory. I'll just leave that to the side. But I can say, I don't like this. And now I can speak with you without presupposing that you're an idiot and requiring you to agree with me. And that becomes the space for charity. That becomes the space for learning to love it.

• 39:45Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You're gonna love the talk aboutable we have, one of the talk battles we have on page three. Cause we're gonna talk about precisely what you're talking about there. What about you listeners? What's missing from your community? Let us know your thoughts in the Patreon community chat, which by the way, you can join for free, even if you don't subscribe to our private podcast. Okay, give me something pithy TK. What's missing from your community?

• 40:07Speaker 02

  Community is the willingness to be imperfect together. There's the old saying that if you ever find the perfect community, it will cease to be so the moment you arrive. I love the Groucho Marx story that his son tells. There are many different variations, but he purportedly resigned from a club. And the leader wrote him asking why, and he says, I refuse to be a part of any organization that would have me as its member. What is community missing? The recognition that letting other people connect with you is an act of grace that you must give them. It is grace that makes it possible for someone to connect with you.

• 40:45Speaker 02

  Because as Peter said here, we're all a world unto ourselves, an impenetrable world, a world that cannot be exhaustively understood. And every effort we make to commune is inherently imperfect. And so if I'm sad because someone dies and you come to me and you say, man, Yeah, I know what you're going through. You know, I lost an important job last year and I didn't know what I would do about it. I always have the right to say, you don't get me. What I'm going through is different from that. I always have that right because no one gets me. But you getting me is an act of grace I extend to you by recognizing that you are just trying to connect with me in a way that's imperfect. And I respond to that with charity with charity by saying, hey,

• 41:27Speaker 02

  thanks, Josh. I appreciate that because I know what you're trying to do. That's what always happens when we connect. Nobody really gets us, but we give them that grace to say, hey, I embrace this imperfection of what we're trying to do. That's community.

• 41:40Speaker 04

  Can I tell a quick story? But that's great. It's a wee story from home, but this guy's Seamus, right? He's on a plane and he crashes on this desert island, right? He's completely on his own and he's there for 10 years. And eventually he gets picked up. This boat comes by and they pick him up. And before they take him away, they say, oh, like, show us where you lived. You're on this island on your own. So he brings him to this clearing. And in the clearing, there are three buildings. And the person points to the first building, says, what's that building? He says, that's where I lived, built that when I first arrived, you know, running water, the whole shebang. Says, what's that second building? He said, oh, well, he says, that's my church. He said, I built a church, a very religious man, you know, that's where I go to worship once a week, you know. And then he go, what's the third building? And Seamus is like, I don't want to talk about that. Oh, come on. What's the third building? No, no, no, I don't want to talk about it. Let's

• 42:23Speaker 04

  just go. He said, come on, what's the, what's the third building? He says, okay, he says, he says, that's a church I used to go to. Terrible place, right? That's, I think, once you understand that logic, that the community always has to have an enemy, always has to have something that's against. Once you begin to acknowledge that, I think you begin to enter into a healthier community. And I would almost say you move from community to communion, you know.

• 42:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. Yeah. My pithy answer, I'm going to do something different here. I'm just going to give you my minimal maxim, and I'd love for Peter Rollins to riff on it because I think it sums up kind of what we're talking about here today. Yes, we want to be part of a community. Yes, we want to also introverts like us, we'd rather be alone a lot of the time until we want to be around other people, obviously. Yes, we want this sense of communion bonding around a lack. And that brings me to my pithy answer, which is, missing out is a hallmark of peace.

• 43:22Joshua Fields Millburn?

  What are your thoughts on that?

• 43:23Speaker 04

  Oh, I love that. There's a beautiful book called, I think it's called, it's called On Missing Night. And it's by Adam Phillips and it's, I think, a beautiful whole book length expression of what you just said there. Because you're the minimalist and I think boss level minimalism is not just that you enjoy the little you have. That's great, but you start to enjoy what you don't have. And so not only do we accumulate products, we accumulate beliefs and identities. This is a big thing today and I completely understand why we do it. If you can name your anxieties, you can like read the DSM or whatever and you can name this is who I am. It can help with your anxiety, but only for a short time.

• 44:06Speaker 04

  Ultimately, no identity will fully define you. As I said earlier, Albert Camus says, no matter how many identity markers you have, there's something about you that never completely fits. You're, you're, you're a bit of an outsider. And in this idea of a social bond where we acknowledge that we're all outsiders. And we weirdly go, what unifies us is the most minimalist thing of all, that we're all missing out. That there's lack at the heart of everything. You can't get more minimalist than embracing nothing.

• 44:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, yes. Oh, it's so good. That's almost the end of page one. We have so much more to talk about. I do want to talk to you coming up on page two about how products give us dissatisfaction. The things that promise us fulfillment actually dissatisfy us. We'll talk about that and so much more coming up. But first, real quick for right here, right now, here's one thing that's going on in the life of the minimalist. Actually, I've got two things for you right now. Speaking of community, or maybe speaking of communion. Every month we do something called Sunday Symposium. And we have a group of people, just 200 people who meet in LA or Orange County, or sometimes other places here in Southern California. And we just fill up a small black box theater and we have an event together.

• 45:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  These are my favorite things. TK, you just put out a post up on Instagram. Welcome back to social media. And what you said about that was so beautiful. I don't want to steal your thunder. What did you say about these events?

• 45:35Speaker 02

  There's a magic of spontaneity at these events that is unlike anything else. I recounted an experience where we did a live show and a person stands up during the Q and A and says, I'm ready to have sex. But I can't find anyone who's ready with me. And Ryan goes, TK, you got this one.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, Ryan's like, I'm right here.

• 46:00Speaker 02

  And it's those kinds of moments where there's the tension that people feel like, what's this person doing asking this at a minimalist event? What does it have to do with minimalism? And I love the way Josh is able to go with the flow on that and release any expectations around what questions need to conform to. It's whatever is on people's heart. And like a live theater experience versus a movie, there is no redo. Like, it's a unique, self-contained event that you never know what you're getting into, but it's always so beautiful.

• 46:30Speaker 04

  I would prefer you hadn't said what I said at that event. That was private. I feel like I'm being called out.

• 46:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  One of the things we do at the events is we go to minimalmaxims.com. We have over a thousand of our pithy maxims up there from, you know, 10 years of podcasts and books and films and all the stuff that we've done. And I will just refresh Minimal Maxims. It gives you a new maxim every time you refresh the browser. And I'll print out 10 or 12 of them. And I'll say, all right, TK, pick a number between 1 and 12 or 1 and 40. And he'll pick it and we'll just have a discussion about that. And we might disagree with what we said previously. And it opens up to much broader discussion. Like, that's not what I meant when I wrote that, but maybe it means something different to me now. And maybe it means something different in this context with this community here with us as well. So if you'd like to be a part of that community, the tickets are free.

• 47:22Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We're releasing 200 tickets today for our next event. It's in Los Angeles on September 28th. And if you can't attend because maybe you're not in America, we have people come all over. They come from, we had the last people, last one, people came from China, like flew here from China to come to the event. We have had people come from Iowa and Texas and Canada.

• 47:44Speaker 04

  Germany?

• 47:44Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, Germany. People come from Mexico.

• 47:46Speaker 04

  I love the way China, Iowa.

• 47:52Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Beijing, Iowa. No, two different places, I swear. But I really enjoy these because you're walking the tightrope and it's this community experience. It's different from the podcast and we are doing this in person. So if you want to join us, you can. Sunday Symposium.com. Get your tickets before they sell out. If they do sell out, because they're free, you can put yourself on the waitlist. We'll let you know if anyone gives up their tickets. But if you can't listen to the event or you can't be there for the event, you can listen to it online if you're a true fan supporter over on Patreon. One more thing, speaking of Patreon, we also do a live event online every month. We call it the Friday Afternoon Minimalist Zoom. It's just a Zoom call with the minimalists. So we grab a few hundred people, we hop on a Zoom call together,

• 48:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  and we just have a discussion here on Zoom for folks who can't make it to our live events. If you are one of our Patreon supporters, Audio Plus or above, so if you subscribe to the video version of the podcast, you will also subscribe to the Friday Afternoon Minimalist Zoom. Our next one is this Friday. It's the first Friday of every month. September 5th is our next Friday Afternoon Minimalist Zoom. You can find the details at theminimalists.com/zoom. All right, so much more coming up. But first, here is a quick insight from one of our listeners.

• 49:04Speaker 05

  Hi, my name is Miri. I'm a Patreon subscriber from Berlin, Germany, and I have a listener's tip for people who are trying to overcome their bibliomania. I love books and I'm trying to buy less books and find more time to actually read the books I bought. I've made it the rule only to buy a book when I'm sure that I'm going to start reading it the same day. What I'm not doing is trying to avoid bookstores. Bookstores are wonderful places. Most of them have areas where you can just sit down and browse through books without being pressured to buy them. That way, you can actually relax and spend some quality time in a wonderful environment. By the way, the same goes for libraries. I used to check out loads of books from libraries.

• 49:47Speaker 05

  Now, I'm spending more time in the library, having a closer look at what I might take home with me later. I hope this is useful for everyone who loves books but wants to stop hoarding them in their home. Thank you, guys, for everything that you do. Bye.

• 50:02Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I just built a new library in my neighborhood, like two blocks from my house. And it's amazing. You just go there and my daughter's always getting the Harry Potter audiobooks. And she's checked out all of them. And she just keeps cycling through all of them. And she, she gets them on CD. So she has this like boom box she carries around with headphones. I've got her all the way back in the nineties at this point.

• 50:24Speaker 04

  And that's a kind of commons, library as a commons, because you have, nobody, like in community, there's insiders. In a, in a library, there's no one controls it. There's no insiders. Everybody is an outsider. So yeah, that's a, that's great image or example of a commons.

• 50:39Speaker 02

  Video rental stores used to be there.

• 50:41Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 50:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. And where I live now, it's like, there's a bunch of nature trails. That's a type of commons as well. And a lot of people are out there hiking. And so you're running into people you recognize regularly when you just go out for a walk. Anyway, Mary, thank you so much for that comment. I think TK would probably put a bed in a Barnes and Noble if they'd let him get away with it. For anyone else has a listener tip or insight about this episode or any other episode, you can just email a voice memo to [email protected] and we'll feature your voice on the show. Up next, page two and page three. But first, let's take a quick panticulation break. We'll be right back.

• 51:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, y'all, that is the first 39% of episode 503. We'll see you on Patreon for the full maximal edition with Peter Rollins, which includes answers to a bunch more questions, questions like, how do I get rid of my clutter more quickly? Is nostalgia a type of psychological clutter? Will letting go of sentimental items help me grieve the loss of someone who is still alive? Plus a million more questions and simple living segments over on the minimalist private podcast on Patreon. When you subscribe, you can listen to our private podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or your favorite podcast app. Plus you'll gain access to all of our podcast archives, all the way back to episode 001. That's a full decade of archives.

• 52:08Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Big thanks to Peter Rollins for joining us today. We'll put a link to his website and his YouTube channel in the show notes. And that is our minimal episode for today. Big thanks to Earthing Studios for the recording space. On behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, TK Coleman, post-production Peter, Spire Jeff, Inspire Dave, Jordan No More, Professor Sean, Savvy D. on the board, and the rest of our team. I'm Joshua Fields-Milburn. If you leave here today with just one message, let it be this: Love people and use things, because the opposite never works. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll see you next time. Peace.

• 52:44Speaker 06

  Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing that's just feeding your greed. Oh, I bet that you'd be fine without it.