560 | The Responsibility

Joshua and T. K. talk about responsibilities that aren't ours to carry, the problem with ethical purity tests, 50 things one writer has stopped buying since becoming a minimalist, and much more. Discussed in this episode: When does helping someone you love become taking responsibility for something that isn't yours to carry? (1:45) Right Here, Right Now: Can you separate the product from the person? (26:47) 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

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

• 0:20Speaker 00

  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'll be fine without it.

• 0:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, the Minimalists, I'm Joshua Fields Millburn. TK Coleman is over there. Look, we got Tom Cat in the studio today. Professor Sean is here. Savvy D is here. Audio Ben is somewhere in the ether. He's always listening, ladies and gentlemen. Here's something to chew on TK. What do you call a wandering nun?

• 1:00Speaker 02

  Wandering as in W O or W A?

• 1:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  W A.

• 1:04Speaker 02

  A wandering nun.

• 1:05Joshua Fields Millburn?

  A roaming Catholic. Come on.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  Boom, boom, boom, boom.

• 1:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Coming up on this episode, we got a lot to talk about TK. We're going to talk about responsibilities that aren't ours to carry. We'll talk about the problem with ethical purity tests and the most minimalist cleaning products and so much more. Plus, on page three, I want to review 50 things I've stopped buying since becoming a minimalist. Let's start with our calls, 406-219-7839. If you'd like to join the show, or you can head on over to our website, theminimalists.com/podcast or record a quick voice memo over there. Let us know if you're a Patreon subscriber so we can prioritize your message when you call. Our first question today is from Xena.

• 1:48Speaker 03

  Hi, my name is Xena. I currently live in Canada. I had the amazing chance to see the House Let Go Tour in Vancouver recently. And I've been listening since 2017, so it was amazing to see. I had a question about Josh and his past relationship with his mother. When she was being evicted, how did Josh let go of the responsibility of rescuing her from her suffering? I have a similar situation with my mom, and I have felt the burden of trying to help

• 2:32Speaker 03

  her out, which I do less of now. But if it came to something serious, like an eviction, which is not technically my responsibility, however, I can imagine wanting to step in to rescue her at that point. How did Josh deal with that type of letting go? I appreciate it's a loaded question, but I would love some insight on this type of situation. Thank you so much, and thanks for everything you do on the show.

• 3:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Xena, much love to you. First off, thank you for attending that beautiful tour stop. I really enjoyed the first run. And by the time this comes out, I would have already done New York City. But there was something special about going up to Canada from Seattle. And one of the things we were talking about, and I think this is what she's referencing there, I was talking about the difference between community and communion. And I used to think that community was something you could build. In fact, we use that language about building community, and I understand why we use it. But I think the more useful language for me has been tapping into community or stepping into the stream of community. Community is already there. It already exists. Instead of trying to build something from scratch, like I don't build my car, right?

• 3:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You can build a car, for sure. But I can get into my car that someone else built. Or communities often comes pre-built that we have access to. But the other thing we were talking about, and shout out to Peter Rollins for this insight, we were talking about communion, about gathering around a shared lack. And I think that's one of the things we do really well with the Minimalists and our live events. A lot of different people from different demographics are showing up to these events. And they may not share a whole lot of things in common, like a community unites around something. The communion unites around the shared lack. And for us, the shared lack is often, we're trying to fill this void that we fill inside.

• 4:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And that can be a bunch of different ways that we try to fill the void. For consumers, it's consumerism. And so buying things with money we don't have, often things we don't need to impress people we'll never, ever meet. And so that's a lack that we experience. And so you may not share the characteristics of the person next to you at one of these events. But also, if you see it in, say, Alcoholics Anonymous, there can be a really wealthy businessperson, multimillionaire, who drove there in a really expensive luxury car, and they're sitting right next to a single mother that was my mom and was on her second eviction

• 5:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  notice and is sitting there in that AA meeting. She may not share anything in common with the guy next to her in terms of the community. But in one respect, they share this shared lack, this deficiency that they recognize. It helps to tap in with other people who share that void as well, that perceived void. And so in the context of what I was talking about during that tour stop, I was talking about how my mom was going AA and had several eviction notices. And I was a kid at the time, and so there was nothing I could do to really save her, although I tried.

• 6:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  My very first job, I was, this sounds made up, but I wrote about it and love people use things. It was the summer I turned four. Technically, I was still three years old for a couple of weeks. So I got my first job when I was four, basically. We lived in this apartment complex called American Village. And one day, I knew we had some financial problems. I walked down to the office and I said, I need a job. And this guy laughed and patted me on the head. And I said, I'll tell you what, I will pick up the trash here and I will, and she goes, okay, you can pick up the trash, we'll pay you a dollar a week. And I said, well, two. And she said, okay, we'll pay you $2. I said, why do you want $2?

• 6:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I said, well, $1 is to help my mom buy milk, and the other $1 is so I can buy toys. And so this is my first ever job, and I did it all summer, that summer of 85, I guess it was. And

• 7:05Speaker 02

  Did your mother know you were doing this?

• 7:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  No, she didn't know I went down there at the time, but then I brought back the first pay. And she was like, she was so confused, because, and I mean, I think it warmed her heart, but also broke her heart in a way, because she also saw the, what was, what was going on there. And what I recognized is that I saw this lack that we had, right? Fast forward until I was, say, I was age 19, when I was in the corporate world, I was fine, I was making more money than my mom ever had. It was like $55,000 a year. It wasn't, I wasn't bawling out of control, right? But I was making more money than I'd ever thought about. And I started paying her rent when I was 19, whenever she needed it.

• 7:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I didn't pay it every month, but I paid it a good chunk of the time. And in some ways, I felt like it was the thing that I, I felt so compelled to do it that I didn't even question doing it. And so I think where Xena is now, though, is somewhere different. And I'd like to give you a perspective. I would give anything to bring my mom back right now. If it took just paying her rent, I would totally do that. But I also recognize the spirit of her question isn't about that. It's about always being there to save someone and maybe inadvertently enabling whatever behavior is going on that is causing the thing that needs to be saved.

• 8:33Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So my question for you TK, and really this is from Xena, is when does helping someone, someone you love, become taking responsibility for something that isn't yours to carry?

• 8:49Speaker 02

  When the work you are doing to help them is uncoupled from critical thought about what is sustainable and most empowering,

• 9:01Speaker 02

  there's nothing wrong with helping people that you love if you have the ability. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. When we question it, and when we should question it, is when two conditions happen. They can happen together or separately. One is, we help them, and in our help, we realize, uh-oh, this is only a drop in the bucket for a much deeper problem, and my help might alleviate some temporary pain now, but the need for my help is going to arise again predictably, and my help is not sustainable. Don't mind doing it now, but I don't have the ability to do this forever. The second condition is when we help them, and we realize that by helping them, we have de-incentivized them from doing something that they need to do

• 9:46Speaker 02

  in order to help themselves. And that would be enabling or establishing a codependent relationship. And we should question during those times. Now, that doesn't mean that we run to the opposite extreme and say, I will never help them again. But we want to think about what it might look like to help them in ways that are empowering. So if you've got a friend that never has any money, you can give that friend some money, nothing wrong with that. But then it's like, okay, but I know my friend's gonna need the same amount, like next week or next month, whatever it may be. You might be able to say, hey, look, I have a connection over here. You're really good at such and such. They're looking for somebody to hire to do that kind of thing. That might be something that could help you out. Hey, I got a couple of ideas here.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  You know, this could be something. And it shows your friend, hey, I'm thinking about you and your money. And I heard you talk to me about that, and I've got your back, and I want to help you out. But you're helping out in ways that enable them to help themselves while giving them the option to say, it's on me to say, I don't want to do that. And I think we have to start looking for ways that we can do that with people. So if it seems to be the case that it's inevitable that your mother's gonna be at a point where she gets evicted, then we might want to consider something like what you did when you used your influence to raise money for family. But then you said, I've gotta put some stipulations in place so that these resources are not vulnerable

• 11:14Speaker 02

  to all of the people and opportunities that might swoop in and take that money away from them before they have the ability to do something with it. Is there a way we could enlist other people to help? Is there a way we could create some kind of fund that isn't really known about or that isn't accessible until a certain kind of emergency is reached? Is there a way that we can make constraints and limitations for how many times we access that known ahead of time? Is there a way we can find an income generating opportunity? There are a lot of different things. I don't know enough about the particulars of the situation to say what's right for your mother. But I would enroll other family members, other friends, in a brainstorming process to ask, how can we help in a way that is sustainable so that we're not just running from urgency to an urgency

• 11:58Speaker 02

  that's creating a codependent relationship where she relies on me to save her?

• 12:02Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And people often aren't happy when you institute certain boundaries because they just have a different expectation. And that's okay. It's not my job to force them to try to be happy or see why you should be happy or else. And if I go into it expecting, and I don't think Xena's doing this, obviously, but for anyone else, if I'm expecting the praise or if I'm expecting, look, I'm the good guy who saved everything. Please promote me in the good guy club. I should be an elder in the good guy club now with how good I am, right? And so I think about, yes, I paid my mom's rent for a while. I didn't see it as codependency at the time, but I certainly recognize that it very well could have been.

• 12:46Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It's different from, because what I was doing, I was creating an expectation. That, oh yeah, this is sort of paid now, right? And now I don't have to worry about that. And I wish I had unlimited resources where I could do something for that, like that. But I will say also that sometimes that causes more problems than it solves. Often, the solution is the problem. If you're getting very Kapil Gupta-esque on us, you might look at the solution and realize, oh yeah, it's a solution, but it's also a trade-off. What other problems does this lead to? And so when you take a particular medication, if it has horrendous side effects for you, it may have been a solution for the initial problem, but it also might create other problems.

• 13:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And that's why they have to list the different side effects on medication. But what are the side effects of being responsible? And I kind of want to use this moment to talk about the pros and cons of being responsible. First off, when you think about being responsible, we often treat it as a virtue. And that's fine. I tend to be responsible for the things that I need to be responsible for. But to be responsible, just to break it down, it just means you're able to respond. And if you think about responsibility that way, then you recognize, I can't be able, I can't possibly be able to respond to everything. Every request, every need. And even if I become hyper competent and hyper capable,

• 14:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  not everything that people want a response to, do I need to respond to? And nor does it make sense to do that. Because at some point, if I'm being responsible for everyone else's responsibility, well, then maybe I'm being irresponsible to my own needs, my own desires. And I think that's probably where Xena is here. And so I wrote down a few minimal maxims. We'll put them in the show notes, but I'll talk about them. Maybe TK, you and I can volley back and forth on them. The first one is, you can care without carrying. That's a difficult one for me because I want to spring into action. You can care without carrying. Often, if someone has a problem,

• 15:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I want to show up and be Mr. Problem Solver. You got a problem, call me up because I will take care of it. I will help out. I'll do whatever I can to fix this problem for you. But sometimes the other person doesn't want you to carry it for them. They want to be seen. They want you to care.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think the last thing on earth you should do is to try to purify yourself of that inclination. We don't have enough people in the world who feel that way when they see a suffering person. Man, when I see you suffer, I feel pity. I feel charity. I feel empathy, and I wish I could do something about it. If everyone on this planet felt that way, I think this world would be 10 times better than it is if we all saw another suffering person and said, I wish I could do something about it. That's a, that's a good heart to have. The key is to broaden your vocabulary of how you can be helpful so that being helpful and being in control are not tantamount. And you can offer yourself to people and say, hey, I see you suffering. I'd be happy to help in any way you can,

• 16:03Speaker 02

  but I also want to respect your situation. I don't know where you're at with it, what you're processing, and what else you're doing about it. So I'm just gonna let you know. If you ever need anything, my door is open. Even if you have the most embarrassing, ridiculous request, I'm willing to hear it out. And if I can't help at all, I'll be honest with you. You do that a lot, right? You do that with me. If you see me struggling with something or you suspect that I might need something, you say, hey, whatever you need, just let me know. But I want to respect you. And I think that's a powerful way to do it. Another way is to help people and set boundaries ahead of time. How a boundary lands when you articulate it before you get to the point where it needs to be established is so different. So for instance, my wife and I, we receive frequent invites or requests,

• 16:48Speaker 02

  usually on weekends, to either help out with some church event or to attend something related to that or to hang out with another couple or something. And I often make my decisions spontaneously, as does she, when the invite comes, depending how we feel in the moment. But there are some times where in the middle of the week, I anticipate, you know what? This weekend, I don't want to do anything. I just want to rest up. Or this weekend, I've got some projects that I might need to work on. And so I'll tell my wife on the Tuesday or Wednesday, hey, just as a heads up, this Saturday, I want to spend it this way. So if anything comes up, you know, I don't want to do it. Now, when that invitation comes on Saturday, it lands differently than if I were to say, no, I don't want to do it. I got stuff I need to do.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  And in that instance, it sounds like I'm being dismissive. I haven't really considered it. I'm not weighing it properly. But when I say that ahead of time, it's like you did say that you had some stuff that's really important to you. In a similar way, when you're helping out a friend, you're helping out a family member, there's nothing wrong if you have the means and the tolerance to say, you can come live with me. You can stay at my place. Or I'm gonna help you out with your rent. But ahead of time, say something like, hey, look, fortunately, I'm kind of in a decent place where I can help. I don't have my limited resources, but I'm in a decent place where I can help. If I helped you pay your rent for three months, would that help you out? I can do that. I wouldn't be able to do more than that. And I just want to be honest ahead of time. But I figure if you have three months to kind of maybe find a job

• 18:14Speaker 02

  or figure something else out that might help you, I'm willing to do that.

• 18:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Can we do a quick role play on that?

• 18:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Okay, so I'm going to be the person who needs the help and you're going to be the helper.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 18:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  By the way, here's a quick, another minimal maxim. Helping isn't always helpful. That's what we're going to display right here. So, which I know is a bit of a tautology, but like helping isn't always helpful. My desire to help you may actually harm you and vice versa. So.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  Or the way in which I act on that desire. My desire to help you can't be harmful, but the way that I react or respond to that desire can be.

• 18:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think I disagree with that.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  Let's go.

• 18:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Okay, well, we'll set aside the role play for a second. I think my desire to help you can also harm me in the sense that if I become so neurotic around needing to be the savior, I think that's harmful to build up the savior complex. Would you agree with that at least?

• 19:06Speaker 02

  Totally. I would just still say that that is a reaction or response to your desire. The desire itself is just a feeling.

• 19:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  And you can look at that feeling by saying, wow, I like that I have a desire to help people. That connects me with other people, but I need to have some boundaries around that for when I should and when I should not. But if you say my desire to help people equals a moral obligation to help them in any way that anyone suggests, oh yeah, that's gonna, that's gonna kill you.

• 19:36Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But that's often what we think, right? My desire to help means now I am responsible to help them. I am obligated. It is my duty to help. And then you find out that you can't rescue someone from themselves. You can't rescue everyone from themselves.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 19:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Okay, so a quick role play here. So you're the person offering me help. So go ahead.

• 19:59Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 19:59Joshua Fields Millburn?

  With the rent.

• 20:00Speaker 02

  Okay. Okay. Okay. And I'm assuming I can help out a little bit.

• 20:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, for three months, you said.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Okay. Hey, man. I know you mentioned to me that you're struggling with the rent.

• 20:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 20:09Speaker 02

  I don't know what you've got going on in terms of solving this problem long term. But I'm in a pretty decent place right now where I could help. I, you know, based on our conversation, I looked at some numbers. If I move some things around, I can help you pay rent for the next three months. I won't be able to do any more than that, but I figure that three months might give you some space to maybe find a job, figure your situation out, and at least give you the best chance to succeed. Would that be helpful to you?

• 20:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, thank you first off, but you can't go more than three months?

• 20:45Speaker 02

  I wish I could, but I won't be able to.

• 20:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Come on, man. You got it.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. So let me give you some feedback now that I think will be as helpful to you as the money that I'm offering you. Okay? And I'm going to be free with you in the way that you're free with me. I respect you for the fact that you're pushing back on how long I'm willing to help. But that also gives me the permission to push back on you. Okay? All right. Right now, you are tempting me to withdraw the help that I offered because the way you sound is ungrateful and entitled. Because I know you, I know that deep down inside, that's not how you really feel. And if I become convinced in this conversation that that is how you really feel, if you argue me into that perception of you, then I will respond accordingly. But I think you're better than that.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  I think you would be really grateful if I helped you pay your rent for three months. But you sound ungrateful. You sound unentitled. I made you an offer and instead of showing any appreciation or even affirming that offer, you immediately went to arguing with me about how I could have made the offer better. That is going to hurt you when you're out there looking for other people to help you or when you're out there looking for jobs. So my advice to you is this, take the offer, say thank you, not because I need it, but because that is the very attitude and practice that's going to save you and allow you to get out of this situation. When you go to apply for jobs and somebody makes you an offer and they say, but the job is for five days a week, you don't want to be like, come on, man. I only want to work three days a week.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  Hey, man, you better do what you gotta do to get out of this situation. Okay? Be honest about your needs. I appreciate the pushback. I'm not offended. But you've gotta accept what I tell you when I say what my constraint is. Try to negotiate it, but after you try to negotiate it one time and I said no, let it go. Does that make sense?

• 22:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think what Xena just heard is a masterclass because I have no rebuttal to that. Unless I wanted to blow up on you and then you get your answer right away. This person doesn't actually want help.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:44Joshua Fields Millburn?

  They want to be right. They want righteousness. They need to feel like you're not looking down, even though clearly you're not. You've put yourself on the same plane as that person. You're not looking down at them. The only thing I would add to that is sometimes there are additional stipulations. Like when my brother died and we raised some money with this GoFundMe and shout out to all of our listeners that helped out with that. I would give anything to bring him back now. I'd give my own life to bring him back. No question about that. But if I, if my only obligation was if I could just pay his rent for a while, I'd feel great about that. But even then, if somehow that brought him back, there would still even be stipulations around that. And we raised all this money to help support his family and his wife and three kids.

• 23:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  One kid's an adult, but then two tiny kids. And with that money became, as you alluded to earlier, there were some responsibilities with that. I made, I made his adult daughter, I asked his adult daughter and his wife to sign an agreement. I'm gonna help you out with this money. But I also need, need to recognize it would be doing you a disservice to just hand you the money and say, here you go. Good luck with that. Let's put together a budget, which we did. We put together a budget and here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna stipend and out based on these, these terms. And what that did is it gave them the dignity of figuring out what their budget was. I didn't hand them the budget and tell them what to do. But also, sometimes the kindest thing we can give someone is

• 24:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  the dignity of their own consequences.

• 24:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Recognizing that I'm gonna help you with these boundaries. But ultimately, if you don't make the responsible decision for you, then there are consequences to, to that. And I can't save you from every consequence. And I think helping the other person understand as you're helping them, the real way to help them isn't to just do it for them. The real way to help them is to maybe give any additional resources you have, but also show them how to get out of the crater that they have dug or maybe they just fell into because of, not their own volition, but they just fell into a crater and it's hard times and I'm gonna help out. But let me also help you get out of this crater as opposed to

• 25:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  just throwing food scraps to you while you're in that crater. Xena, I would love for you to, if you would like to travel internationally, we're doing one more tour stop this year in Los Angeles.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  Oh, you're offering a free sweep, like a sweepstakes for a free trip to Switzerland or something? Like if you'd like to do it, oh, I better sign up for this.

• 25:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Better than Switzerland. It's Los Angeles, California. And it's a smaller theater. I think it's only 120 seats or something like that. And so it's the Greenway Court Theater. Tickets are available now at theminimalists.com for anyone listening to this. So it will sell out. It's a small venue and Seattle sold out. And so I hope to see you here. I'd be happy to give you a ticket if you want to come down. We've got a bunch of people traveling to New York, which just happened, and now to Los Angeles as well. Would love to see you there if you'd like to come. These shows are the same, but totally different. And what do I mean by that? Well, there's the same sort of structure, but I noticed that every single show that I do, I read new material. I have different discussions with the audience. There's a lot of audience involvement. There's questions.

• 26:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But also I try different material, different jokes, different slides. The whole thing ends up being different from show to show. So love to see you there. It's the How to Let Go Tour. The last stop of the year is in Los Angeles on December 11th. And make sure you're on our simple newsletter over at theminimalists.com. We're gonna announce, I think, 10 or 11 cities next year. Coming up next month or in a couple of months, we're gonna announce, no, next month, we're gonna announce 10 or 11 more cities. So make sure you're on the simple newsletter so we can keep you abreast of any of those upcoming tour stops. All right, we still have an entire switchboard of callers to talk to TK. But first, a different kind of right here, right now segment.

• 26:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  If you look closely, you'll notice that I'm wearing a brand new black t-shirt today.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  Brand new, huh?

• 26:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, a new brand, I should say. A brand new, new brand. Ooh.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  You know the brand new happy's? You ever listen to that?

• 27:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, yeah.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  You are the universe. And there ain't nothing you can't do.

• 27:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So a couple of episodes ago, during our What Would Joshua Own segment, someone asked about my favorite black t-shirts. I mentioned the brand that I use the most, a company called Los Angeles Apparel, whom I, as I mentioned on that episode, I don't have any affiliation with. It's just the, the brand that I use the most. And since then, someone brought to my attention some controversies surrounding its founder, Dove Charney. I did a little digging this past weekend. And because I mentioned the company here, I wanted to revisit it, at least address it with you. And I've got a question for you, TK, because I think it's relatively nuanced. I find the allegations, although I find them troubling. I don't really know what's what. I don't know what's true and what isn't.

• 27:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I want to recognize that there are certain allegations of harassment from him at previous companies. And so I take it with a grain of salt, but I also recognize that if that's true, I'm super troubled by it.

• 28:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But at the same time, it's weird because I still value the, the quality and the simplicity of the clothing that they manufacture and much of the company's business practices as well. I mean, they manufacture things locally, which is important to me. But it's also the way that they manufacture is in non-sweatshop-like conditions. And they pay their workers relatively well and have different benefits. And I really like that. And so I'm at this weird sort of quandary. And the question I have for you, TK, is what do we do when we value something that someone created? But then there are some sort of troubling allegations

• 28:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  about its creator or founder or executive that complicate our relationship with that thing.

• 29:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Especially when we don't know exactly what happened.

• 29:06Speaker 02

  We embrace the invitation to pause and think. And I'm glad you're having this conversation and you're thinking out loud. Because I believe that moral philosophy is one of the most important topics for us to read about, for us to reflect on. And if I can get on a soapbox for about 10 seconds, I would say that I think our generation is at an all time low when it comes to the application of critical thought to questions concerning ethics. And there are a lot of different reasons for that. But so many conversations about ethics are kind of like at two polarizing extremes. One is the extreme of the witch hunt, which has been rebranded as cancel culture.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  You know, where I'm gonna find something on you, or if I do find something on you, no questions asked. I don't want you to ever be able to work again or show your face in public again because you did something wrong. And I don't care about the background. I don't care about the details. I don't care about the nuances. That's one extreme. Reminds me of a recent situation where there was a video of a woman with her baby and her husband at a football game. And she's coming back to the seats and she's got like a stack of food, clearly for everybody in the family. She's carrying the baby and the announcers are like, look at this, woman of the year. And she sits down and she's carrying the food. And she gives her husband the food and he like, you know, starts eating and they're like, oh, woman of the year. And it went viral.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  And everybody started to criticize this husband and the woman for enabling her husband and all of that. To the point where the woman had to write a response. And she wrote an article and the essence of it was, y'all don't know nothing. Y'all talking all that smack and y'all don't know nothing. She can say it like that, that's TK, get Chicago with it. But the situation was she had to get up to go use the bathroom, not to go get food. The husband said to her, let me hold the baby. And she's, and she calls the baby her little warmer. And it was cold. She was like, no, I wanna keep the baby because I'm so cold. The baby will keep me warm. And husband's like, alright, do your thing.

• 31:16Speaker 02

  The reason they were at the game, by the way, anyway, because he had a friend who recently died and he was mourning and the friend was connected to football and some things like that. And so she brought him to that game to try to cheer him up and give him something nice because he had been really struggling. She goes to the bathroom. When she gets to the bathroom and comes back, she walks past a place that's got some food and she texts her husband like, hey, can I get you any food? And he's basically like, whatever the easiest thing to get is, you know, whatever they got the shortest line, whatever. And she gets some food for all of them. And then she comes back and as she sits down, nobody sees because her head is turned towards the husband. He asked her if she wants to eat first, whatever. She's like, no, she's like, I wanna save this for later. So you go ahead and enjoy yourself. I'm cool, like we're here for you.

• 32:00Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  And so the determination to find something wrong, to see evidence of discrepancy without trying to get the whole story, that's the witch hunt extreme that governs so many conversations around ethics. But then there's another extreme. And that extreme is the stubborn, the stubborn refusal to ever question oneself based on the need to prove that no one's ever gonna tell you what to do and control you. TK, you know that place you got the coffee from? They do some really bad things that I've heard you speak out against. You know what? I get to drink what I want, you're not gonna control me. And that's another extreme. And you know, sometimes when someone talks to you in the wrong tone

• 32:46Speaker 02

  or they, they talk to you in an accusatory or judgmental manner, even if they're right, it can cause you or tempt you to react to them as if they are wrong. When the truth of the matter is, this might just be a good opportunity to question yourself, to take a look at what you're doing and ask yourself, does this align with my values? That doesn't mean you're committed to the witch hunt, but you also don't wanna make sure your resistance to a witch hunt keeps you from understanding that the abuse of a principle is not tantamount to a case to be made against the right use of the principle. And so I think that's kind of like a good framework for thinking about it. I've got so much to say, but I'll pause here. What do you think of that?

• 33:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think that's really useful. I think the other side of it has something to do with the ethical purity test that always taken to their terminus can never, will end up never buying anything or leaving our houses. And even then, we're probably supporting something that is unethical. And so it's, it's difficult, right? Because I don't want to be dismissive. I also don't wanna be reactive. Being dismissive is a type of reaction, by the way. I want to be responsible. I want to respond responsibly, right? And so when I think about something like this, I wanna listen, I wanna hear it out. And there's especially like this gray area here. Because this man was never convicted of anything necessarily.

• 34:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  He didn't go to prison or anything like that. But it doesn't mean that he behaved morally or ethically. I don't, I honestly, I don't know. I treat allegations as though they are allegations, but I can also be troubled by those allegations. It's not like R. Kelly. R. Kelly is actually an interesting case, right? Because he's convicted and in prison, right? And yet, we all enjoyed his music in the 90s, there's no question about that. But there's an extra layer of complexity here, which I don't even know what to do with. So I remove it from the T-shirt company for a minute and say, look at R. Kelly. Do you know, because he lost the civil lawsuit, all of his streaming revenue goes to his victims.

• 34:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so in a way, if you want to support his victims, the best way to support them might be to stream R. Kelly's music. And what a quandary, right? I'm not suggesting that anyone do that, but I'm, it's something to grapple with. And the opposite of that might also be true. Wait a minute. What if, if I don't, if I refuse on a moral stance to stream his music or to support the music in some way, I'm actually taking money away from the victims. And so it becomes this interesting quandary that I don't have a tidy answer for. And I would say the same thing for other corporations.

• 35:33Joshua Fields Millburn?

  If you look at Amazon or Walmart or, I mean, Steve Jobs was apparently a really tyrannical jerk to a lot of employees, right? But made really great products. Picasso was a womanizer for sure, but his paintings are beautiful. And so there's something about, I don't know, being able to enjoy the art and separate it from the artist. When it gets tied up in commerce though, it adds another layer that, I don't know, I'm still wrestling with personally.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, and this is why I think it's, it's important to have a framework for how we think about these things. So when it comes to purity tests, I'll actually say I'm a fan of purity tests. I don't think civilization can survive without them. But we have to uncouple the fact of a purity test from the intent behind the one who runs the test. For instance, suppose you saw someone just standing there watching you. And after a while, you got a little uncomfortable and you said, what are you doing, man? Why are you watching me? And they said, I'm, I'm looking for evidence that you're doing something wrong.

• 36:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  This would be hilarious, by the way. I gotta try, I gotta be that guy, try that sometimes, staring at Savvy D.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  Now, at this point, I do know that this person is doing something that really does seem weird. But there are two options in my mind. This might be your greatest enemy. This also might be your greatest ally. The question is, why are they looking for evidence that you're doing something wrong? A purity test is when you look for evidence of contamination, right? You're looking for evidence of inconsistency. Now, if I'm running a restaurant and I'm checking the food that my customers are gonna be eating, man, I better care about those purity tests. I better make sure the water's clean. I better make sure the food is good. I better make sure the people who work here practice good hygiene and that everything that we're doing in the kitchen is up to code.

• 37:33Speaker 02

  That purity test is gonna save lives and it's gonna save my business and my reputation. At the same time, a purity test could also be a way of me saying, let me see if I can find something on you. I never did like you. Let me see if I can find something, I'm gonna bury you. I'm gonna get, you know, people make threats too, you know? Like, oh, you rubbed me the wrong way, I'll take you down. You better be perfect from this day out, buddy. Because if I ever see anything that is or could be construed as a discrepancy, I'm gonna take you down. Now, in both cases, we've got a kind of purity test. A intentional search for contamination. But one has a motive that is designed to help. Another has a motive that is designed to harm.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  And we don't wanna equate the purity test with the intentions of any particular party. I want my basketball coach to run purity tests on my game. I want him to have great insight into my flaws. TK, you're weak at dribbling with your left hand, you gotta work. I want him to be able to run down the list better than anybody else and say, you do this wrong, you do this poorly, you do this wrong, because I wanna make you better. And at the same time, you know, anyway, I think the purity test is important because, but we just wanna couple it with the right intentions. I think R. Kelly is a good example here of another important distinction for thinking about these things. And there's, there's a distinction between the private appreciation of a creator's expression of artistic genius

• 39:00Speaker 02

  and the public endorsement of it or indulgence of it. So using R. Kelly as an example, let's say you've already purchased the music. You already own the music. And whenever you're cleaning around the house or when you're ever going for a workout, you put on those headphones and you listen to I Believe I Can Fly, because that is the song that jazzes you up, right? Okay, that's your personal business. That's something that you enjoy. And you're able to say to yourself, I like this song, it motivates me to work out. And even if people don't like him, whatever, that's your business. But imagine you're planning a college graduation ceremony and, or any other kind of public event.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  And you decide that the inspirational song you're going to play is I Believe I Can Fly. Now, you might get away with it. There might not be any interesting conversation around it. But I would also say it's, if you're my friend and I know that you're getting ready to play that song, I would say you should expect a certain set of questions around your decision to make that choice, right? Like, there is a conversation to be had and it is a controversial conversation to make that choice. This is very different from you putting that on in your headphones to jazz yourself up as you're going to exercise. You're now taught, and you might not even say, I think everybody should listen to this. I think this is the greatest song ever.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  But a reasonable question to ask is, of the thousands of inspirational songs you could have chosen? You had to choose that, right? And if that conversation happens, it's not one to be resented or resisted. It's one to be accepted as like, you know what? That is a predictable conversation stemming from the choice. Let's talk about it. I can give you my logic. I could listen to your criticism and we can try to see what would be the best decision to make in the future. Would I, would I double down and do that again? Or next time would I say nah, in consideration of these other factors? Even if it does make a money, maybe in consideration of my audience, I might make a different move. Does that make sense?

• 41:05Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It makes sense and especially mapped on to this scenario. Because I feel one way where I want workers, especially garment workers, where who are notoriously underpaid and overworked in terrible conditions. I want them to be compensated relatively well and in conditions that are above board. And yet, at the same time, I don't want to reward someone who may behave in ways toward employees that is a bit tyrannical.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  Here's a question for you.

• 41:37Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 41:37Speaker 02

  Let's, let's change the situation a little bit and say, this is a person that's not famous, not rich, doesn't have a lot of clout. And you are hiring for a videographer. And you're going to hire someone. You've interviewed 10 people and nine of them are serviceable. They could work. You're not excited about any of them. And, and you're probably going to have to work with them a lot, invest in them before they're very valuable to you, but you can make it work if you need to. But he's that 10th person. And he's good. You know what I mean? Like he's good. He's going to teach you some things.

• 42:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 42:17Speaker 02

  And you're, you're thinking, okay, this is my top candidate. But then a buddy of yours calls you up and say, hey, I know you didn't know about this, but like you, you should probably Google that guy. And you Google him and you see that controversy surrounding him. You're still in a position where you, you're like, since no legal action has been resolved around this and this person defends themselves in that way, these people over here say that that guy's BS. If you're, if you're in that situation, do you hire that person?

• 42:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Not a chance.

• 42:49Speaker 02

  Not a chance.

• 42:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Not a chance.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  So, so then the question becomes, if there's not a chance that you'd hire them in that scenario, what changes when I add in the fame and the money and the clout they have?

• 43:02Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Nothing changes there. What changes is that there are some workers that are working in relatively positive conditions. And, and that's the biggest thing for me. Outside of that, it doesn't really, you know, it, it's an easy, easy decision. If I thought the shirts were being made poorly in a sweatshop or, or, and then I would, I'd have, it'd be so much easier, right? The dichotomy there, it's just like, I don't think Amazon is a hundred percent bad. And I can even tell you when my brother's factory closed during COVID and he went and got a, a job at Amazon, he was grateful for the opportunity. It's probably a too strong of a way to put it, but grateful to be able to pay his bills

• 43:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  that way when this cabinet factory he worked in was, was shut down. And so when I, when I think about that, or I've talked to the Amazon delivery driver that comes on my street sometimes, is enthusiastic about delivering for them. I know that's not often the case either, right? And so I recognize that there are some ambiguities here. And what I learned from this whole lesson is I can't simply be dismissive. I can't simply be reactive, but to be responsible means to, well, to pause with it, to sit with the information and recognize I'm probably going to go in a different direction going forward. And I want to wrap this up for the sake of time, but I will say this, that I think we all draw the line somewhere differently, right?

• 44:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I have some friends who are zero waste or, and even them, that, that's their purity test and they will recognize, oh yeah, I failed this, this year because I filled up a, you know, a large thimble or a large cup worth of trash for the entire year or one trash bag even. And so they, even they didn't pass their own purity test, but it wasn't ever about good or bad. They recognize I'm trying to reduce the amount of waste. And I would say the same thing here. I don't come on here and recommend brands as, as though you should buy something. I'm relatively brand agnostic. In fact, I wrote an essay about being brand agnostic. And I think that's, that's important. I don't want to become loyal to a brand.

• 45:17Joshua Fields Millburn?

  A brand's a shortcut. A brand, I buy the same jeans over and over. I tend to buy mine from eBay now, but it's the same brand of jeans that I buy whenever they, they wear out. It's just the ones that, that I enjoy. It's just a shortcut for me. I'm not loyal to that brand. It just, I've already made the decision. I don't want to have to keep remaking that decision unless I get new information. And then when I get new information, it's up to me to say, oh, I need to make a different decision. Or even making the same decision is now a different decision because it's differently informed.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  Or even upgrading, evolving my relationship to the decision and my relationship to the public, like, like we talked about with the R. Kelly example. There is a difference between what a person might have a private ability to appreciate as an individual and what they might publicly align themselves with. Some of the people for whom I am most thankful are friends who saw me going down a path and pulled me aside and say, hey, look, I know you like that dude and I'm not here to slander you, do what you do, but I think you, that might be leading you down a path that's not good for you. And they've protected me from aligning myself with institutions or individuals, not just because it would have been bad for my reputation, but because of things they knew that I didn't

• 46:36Speaker 02

  know that I would be aligning myself with. And so my, my philosophy on this is like, you know, there are three epistemic, you know, stances we can take on, on a person having something negative said about them. One is we can say, I know that that's true, or I believe I have evidence that that, that's true. The other is we could say, I believe I have evidence that that's false and I actually stand by this person and I, and I'm doubling down on my recommendation. I know that y'all don't like them. I know that y'all believe these things are true about them, but I reject it. I think it's false. I think it's BS. The third is you can say, I don't know. I'm, I'm open to where the evidence leads. I don't have a master's degree on this particular controversy, but from the, looking into it, there are some things that seem concerning, but there are also some things that I don't

• 47:21Speaker 02

  know about this person's side. For me, if my position is anything other than I stand by this person and I'm happy to go on anybody's show to debate them, and I'm not apologizing to anybody for my recommendation or my endorsement or my collaboration. If my position is anything other than that, I'm distancing myself from it. Not out of a fear of people, but out of a respect for both my reputation and for the possibility that I could be aligning myself with something that I don't have confidence as good. And that doesn't mean that I need to prosecute the individual, that I need to join a witch

• 48:02Speaker 02

  hunt, but it's like, hey, if I have my doubts about who's right on this matter and there's controversy surrounding it, then for me, that's the reason enough for me to say, let me step back because my endorsement means something, who I align with means something. And I can appreciate the genius of maybe this person's contribution. And I don't have to pretend like what's beautiful isn't beautiful, what's well-designed isn't well-designed, but at the same time, I have no obligation to align myself with anybody and everybody just because they did something good in the world. I'm gonna sit this one out until this gets resolved or unless it does.

• 48:40Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think it's a really useful heuristic. How about you listeners with this new information? Let me know your take. And if you have a brand of black shirts you prefer, you can let me know in the comments as well. Anyone else has a what would Joshua own question or a listener tip for the show? We'd love to hear from you. Visit Patreon, actually no, theminimalists.com. You can do it on Patreon too, I suppose. Would love to see you over there. Theminimalists.com/podcast. Record a quick voice memo for the what would Joshua own segment? Or if you have a listener tip for us, would love to hear from you. A lot more to cover up next for page two. We're going to talk to some more callers here, but first we were just talking about, given new information, it's always important to weigh that information.

• 49:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And during the pandiculation break, Professor Sean came out to us and said, hey, I've got some new information. So ladies and gentlemen, I'll hand it over to Professor Sean and then we can talk about this some more.

• 49:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, thanks for giving me the space to bring this up. I just wanted to introduce into the conversation we were having earlier that you, you mentioned that Dove Charney wasn't found legally liable for any of this. And I thought it was worth noting that the reason he wasn't found legally liable is because he had these employees, there were five of them, sign documents that, I don't know if he had them do this as a condition of employment or after the fact, but he had them sign documents that waived their right to legal claims against him. So these cases had to be handled through arbitration and he was found guilty during that arbitration. That's why he was fired as the CEO of his previous company, American Apparel. It's a large part of why American Apparel went bankrupt.

• 50:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. Okay. So, so this is some, some new information. And if this is true, assuming that it is for a moment, whenever I get new information, it's about, well, how do I process this information? And in light of that information, it's pretty easy to say, okay, if he actually sexually assaulted five employees at his company, would I want anything to do with his company? Well, no, of course not. I condemn that kind of behavior. It's disgusting. And it is.

• 50:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It changes the whole equation here, right? But I also think the heuristic that you had there still applies to this situation. Maybe you can expand on that a bit, TK.

• 50:57Speaker 02

  The heuristic that I have is still stronger than that because it doesn't require the evidence of guilt. So if there is evidence of guilt, then my heuristic accommodates the decision to disassociate and condemn. But even if there isn't evidence of guilt, I've given the example before. Well, I'll give a, I'll give a different version of an example that I gave before. You're hiring for a nanny and you find a candidate that gives you everything that you want, but you hear some rumors that there is some inappropriate conduct around minors. I don't need evidence that that's true. The fact that there are rumors alone is enough for me to say, I'm disassociating, I'm distancing

• 51:40Speaker 02

  myself, there's no way I'm hiring this person for that job. Now, if someone comes along and says, hey, man, I want you to know, there's actually some evidence, then I'm going to say, thank God for my heuristic, man, protecting myself from people like that, you know? Thank God for that heuristic. So I think it's, I think the reason, the reason I stipulated this way is because I think there are two important things we should avoid. One is the extreme of feeling the continual pressure to make sure you do in-depth research on every controversy that someone else thinks, perhaps rightly thinks is important. There are just way too many of those and you've got to focus on a narrow amount, if, if only for physical possibility alone.

• 52:25Speaker 02

  But the second extreme I want to avoid is that of treating ignorance or appeals to ignorance as an excuse to not accept moral accountability. And so I can't just say, oh, well, you know what? I'm gonna stop everything that I'm doing. Forget about the need to provide for my family. Forget about all the other obligations I'm doing that I have. I'm just gonna make this my thing. I'm, I'm gonna read all the court documents for this case, which will probably take me with my lifestyle, like at least a few months to get to a point where I'm like, wow, now I know this for myself. And then I gotta do that with a whole bunch of other things. I'm not doing that. But all, what I'm also not gonna do is I'm not gonna say, well, you know, I haven't looked into it for myself. I hear what everybody's saying, but I'm ignorant, so I, I wash my hands of the matter. No, you, you can't say that either.

• 53:11Speaker 02

  You gotta say, no, I, I accept responsibility for what receives my endorsement and what receives the validation of me publicly praising what it is they do and are about.

• 53:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I think it's worth making that distinction that I think you're alluding to here, that the consumption does not equal appreciation of a thing. Sometimes I just have to consume something that may not necessarily appreciate it. But that also doesn't mean, just because I appreciate something or find value in something, doesn't mean I'm necessarily recommending it, right? And if I recommend something, it doesn't mean that it's a full-out endorsement either. And so I, the reason I wanted to talk about this at all is because it's something that I've mentioned in, in the past, I say, hey, I have found value in that. Given this new information, would I ever buy another shirt from them again? No, I can't imagine I would unless other new information came out. Or maybe he had some sort of plan where he, he, um, he made restitution toward victims and these other things.

• 54:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I can understand a path toward, um, what would you call that? A path toward redemption, perhaps?

• 54:13Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 54:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I could see in a world in which that's possible. I don't think that's going to be the case here, given this new information. But I want to, I wanted to stand up and say, oh yeah, I'm willing to listen to that information just because I found value in something and said, here's the thing I find value in. I can't possibly research every single thing I have ever owned, but when I am presented with the information, it's worth at least stopping, pausing and saying, okay, what's, I wanted to be, do the responsible thing here. And that's what we're doing. In fact, you know what? Let's make this part of the minimal conversation and then we'll get back to page two in a second over on Patreon.

• 54:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, y'all, that is the first 33% of episode 560. We'll see you on Patreon for the full two-hour maximal episode, which includes answers to a bunch of more questions. Questions like, why does a good sale make us want something we didn't want five minutes ago? And what are five ways to declutter hygiene products, cosmetics and cleaning supplies more responsibly? And why is buying things such an attractive way for parents to try to express their love? Plus a million more questions and simple living segments over on the minimalist private podcast on Patreon. The link is in the description. When you subscribe, you can listen to our private episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast app.

• 55:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Plus you'll gain access to all of our podcast archives, all the private archives, back to day one, more than a decade of living with less. And that is our minimal episode for today. On behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, TK Coleman, Audio Ben, Spire, Jeff and Dave, Tom Cat, Professor Sean, Savvy D and the rest of our team, I'm Joshua Fields Millburn. If you leave here today with just one message, let it be this.

• 56:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Love people and use things because the opposite never works. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll see you next time.

• 56:12Speaker 02

  Peace.