Books Versus E-Books

A dieter’s greatest scourge is temptation. That luscious chocolate-encrusted strawberry croons our names until we respond. That succulent dessert begs to be devoured.
A minimalist diet, unfortunately, has the same nemesis. Temptation draws us whenever we deprive ourselves of those things that we have elevated to the status of delightful. Minimalism, though, holds that “doing without” is the epitome of success.
Since I chose the minimal lifestyle, the temptation imp has stood in my way frequently, and I have been compelled to choose what really is significant in my daily life. Reading is one of those essentials.
Yet, I am “old school;” some say, a dinosaur. I love the feel, the heft, the connection to printed and bound reading materials. Part of the joy of reading a good book is to collapse into a comfortable chair, or sprawl on a lush lawn with an engrossing book in my hands. It is a route to losing the reality of the world around me.
I have found that reading an article on my laptop lacks the tactile pleasure of savouring a pocket novel or hard cover classic. The LCD screen seems to flicker, or the sunlight makes reading impossible, or the computer must be plugged in after an hour or so. There are myriad excuses as to why e-books are inferior to bound copies of the same plots and documents. Yet, by the end of 2010, over 10% of all books sold were in electronic, or digital form. The world is embracing the new technology, while I cling to old ways.
Cognitively, I see e-books as an expression of minimalism. No wasted paper, no bulk or heft to them. A hundred thousand books takes up no more space than a hundred on my shelf. The physical impact of a wall of leather bound books smacks of achievement and intellectual superiority. The display of the newest best seller, in hard cover, says “I have the money to pay the price of this collection of pulp,” while the discreet nature of an e-book offers none of the status or prestige of a bound copy.
The guilt of indecision, and the social pressure of always conforming to the world’s perception of what constitutes a minimalist drives my choice as to whether I should purchase an e-book or a printed one. The very decision to buy either is at the heart of the minimalist dilemma.
Yet, minimalism is about prioritizing. In the end, I choose to buy bound readers when I want the joy of relaxing and reading. I do not want to be tied to a darkened room, or carry my laptop (or Kindle, if I owned one) with me, in case the mood to read attacks me. I choose to read digital media when I want to conduct research, read a technical paper, or am investigating a more formal document or topic.
Minimalism requires choosing and prioritizing, but it also requires getting every last drop of living out of life, at the least cost to the world around us. I will relinquish my deeply-rooted preference for the tactile experience of reading, only when that experience already is soured by routine and mechanical written materials that offer none of the release of fiction or exploration of the unknown. After all, my minimalist diet allows for the occasional indulgences!

Would You Like Apple Sauce or Pork N Beans?

Minimalism is not about doing without. It is not about continual sacrifice. It is about doing more (or, at minimum, the same amount) with less. That may sound a little like one of the three Rs of environmentalism – Reduce. But minimalism is about making choices that make sense, not necessarily making choices to leave less of a footprint. The end result may be the same, but the motivations may differ.
Let us consider the choice of apple sauce or pork and beans. In the grocery store, a can (14 oz or 400 ml) of beans may cost you ninety cents or so, but no more than $1.20. A jar of apple sauce, on the other hand, may cost upwards of $3.00 for 900 ml (32 oz). Yet, both are relatively inexpensive. Both can be grown and produced by you.
If both can be produced by you, then, should not a true minimalist make his/her own beans or apple sauce? Not necessarily.
This fall, we made our own apple sauce, from a basket of tart apples picked from our own tree. To make six quarts took us four hours. That’s hardly a productive use of our time, since we were working for less than $5 per hour! Yet, our only inputs (the tree was in the yard before we were) were a little cinnamon, the jars (which we already had) and the heat to do the canning. We canned on a cool day, so the heat generated would have been generated anyway, to heat our home. That meant our only true cost was less than fifteen cents worth of cinnamon.
On the other hand, we also grew a variety of beans. Those beans could have been made into canned beans with pork. Instead, we chose to pickle them and freeze some. Less energy input was required on the hot summer days when they were ripe for the picking. Our net cost to pickle and freeze? About six cents per pound. To can them into brown beans with pork would have required sugar, cooking heat, spices, and tomato or molasses. And the time to prepare them for canning would have exceeded four hours for twenty pounds. At a retail price of $1.00 per pound, we would have saved $20 over store-bought beans, minus the input costs of forty cents per pound, and worked for $3.00 per hour. That is considerably less than what we earned on the apple sauce.
There are three additional major differences, though. The homemade apple sauce is pure, with no artificial preservatives added, and no sugars. And we used recycled jars, rather than aluminum cans. For the beans, we had an easier option: freezing. For virtually no cost, and little labour, we preserved the same quantity of beans as we would have canned in the pork ‘n beans scenario.
Sometimes, it is an act of minimalism to buy, rather than produce an item yourself. But where your inputs will exceed what is consumed by commercial production, where quality of doing it yourself far outweighs commercial product quality, or where commercial products generates excess waste, “doing it yourself” is the minimalist’s best option.
Minimalism, it seems then, is not as simple as “doing with less” or “doing it yourself.” It is also about “doing it smart.”