Who else has watched Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, and then took all their clothes and dumped it on their bed???

In this episode, we talk about the Netflix original series.

It’s a combination freak-out and philosophy discussion about

• a subversive, but truer definition of "materialism"

• the huge blind spot of the question "does it spark joy?"

• and how one time, we ended up with mice in our house

Keep scrolling for more on those bullet points.

Materialism

It’s not what you think it is.

Supposedly, materialism is a material-centric outlook on life…that is also somehow (?) the reason we treat stuff so mindlessly and disrespectfully.

BUT THAT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE!

If you’re truly material-centric, you would respect material things.

You wouldn’t let them pile up in a corner, collecting dust, or forget you had them.

Actual materialism respects material goods.

The blind spot in ‘Does it spark joy?’

What’s required to play the game of ‘does it spark joy’?

Two things:

1. a thing that may or may not ‘spark joy’ (for example: food)

2. a spark-joy-o-meter, by which you sense that thing, and by which you feel whether it sparks joy (in this example: your taste buds)

In this example, the amount of ‘joy’ sensed can be increased by either:

1. improving the tastiness of the food

2. or improving the sensitivity of the taste buds

You can serve the freshest, most exquisitely prepared food on earth, but if it’s eaten by someone whose taste buds are calibrated to fast food full of salt, fat, and sugar, they won’t be able to appreciate it.

And it won’t be because the food is lacking.

What’s lacking and broken is the spark-joy-o-meter.

So, the game is not just about finding what ‘sparks joy.’

The game is also about improving your spark-joy-o-meter, so that you have a well-calibrated sensitivity, that experiences joy in healthy ways, and because of healthy things.

Mouse Story

…you gotta listen to the episode for this one.