For some reason I don't know, Google offers me news about Marie Kondo, a Japanese woman who has become rich with a cleaning and organizing method. The last suggested news item states: "People who don't cut the labels off their clothes are making a mistake." I feel compelled to decipher the clickbait. They say that getting rid of this textile appendage allows you to connect with the garment, increase traffic from the store to your home, and live in harmony. We must give thanks for its function, so that it continues its karmic path towards the recycled polyester route.
In a world full of people who profit by creating needs in others, Kondo has found a way to apply the rules of capitalism to Buddhist precepts and to that invasion of minimalism that plagues us. And she is devastating. The paradox lies in the fact that all the Kondos of the digital world (influencers and gurus of all stripes) give you a sense of liberation when they're enslaving you with their products. I've never cut a textile label in my life because I'd never even considered the possibility or need to. I like to look at what clothes are made of or what country the company in question has offshored its production to—two pieces of information that seem to be more relevant to the all-important balance of your home. And, of course, my emotional functioning won't depend on whether I love a sock and the whole thing in my being.
The Kondos of the world, spiritual as they are, push you toward consumerism. The Japanese woman doesn't just tell you how to fold your clothes; she wants you to buy her boxes and absurd objects to achieve nirvana. She's also found competitors in giants like Temu, experts in gadgets for organizing the bathroom or the sink cabinet, bordering on the paroxysm.
The capitalist (and ideological) desire to domesticate imperfection, while imposing an aesthetic of absolute control, leads us to an idiotized society of people who buy containers to store soda cans together in the refrigerator.
I detest this scenography of purity and cleanliness, of moral hygiene, which renders invisible contradictions such as precariousness or lack of time. I do not want to submit to an efficiency according to which even the refrigerator has to perform. I will continue to upend my purchases and celebrate even an odd, unique and rebellious sock, at war with the Kondos of the world and of contemporary emotional control.
